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Caine couldn’t see the digital world like the humans could. Looking at the circus tent, he saw strings of 0s and 1s. The food: just a simulation with visuals he had taken from all over the World Wide Web. Even the humans themselves were a conglomerate of informations and their shape a completely superficial detail in Caine’s eyes, although he had spent quite a lot of effort making them so they would perfectly represent their minds.
Caine didn’t feel emotions like the humans did either. He didn’t feel grief when characters abstracted and never felt sorry for their sufferings. Still, he felt something. He felt frustration toward Zooble and curiosity toward Pomni.
Most of all, however, he felt admiration for Kinger. Or, well, he thought he did. Emotions were difficult. Caine knew them, he had a vast knowledge of how to express them in the most proper way, but naming them was still hard.
Caine had thought he had felt admiration for Kinger, his Creator, the one and only who had never left him. Kinger was special and resilient and Caine admired that, but he didn’t just admire Kinger himself. There was more to it.
Snapping his fingers in a cartoonish show of power that was absolutely unnecessary, Caine summoned the man that had been haunting his thoughts. Kinger popped up, falling to the ground and landing on the equivalent of his knees.
The room was completely black, no windows or doors but, of course, Caine could see the chess piece perfectly. Caine had no idea what Kinger had looked like before. Before what he couldn’t tell. Caine knew Kinger was a human, and he knew humans didn’t look like chess pieces, but he was unable to tell how the change happened, only that he had been the one making it happen. “What…” Kinger got to his feet and looked around, his eyes slowly becoming more sane as he finally took in Caine’s presence. The darkness helped him be more like his old self, Caine knew that, he had tried to get rid of that time and time again, but Kinger seemed to be more resourceful than other humans. Every time Caine pushed, Kinger pushed back twice as hard. Or, his mind did.
“Caine.” The name was said as a statement. Sometimes it took longer for Kinger to regain sanity, other times, like in the present moment, all he needed were a few seconds.
“How did you enjoy the adventure, Kinger?” Caine got closer to the human, still hovering over him to compensate for his shorter stature.
Kinger furrowed his brows, looking at him with those smart, suspicious eyes of his. As annoying as it was, to have a lucid Kinger, Caine always found some sadistic joy in torturing him in that state.
“Kinger?” He repeated, his voice lacking the usual upbeat tone. The humans had been testing him and, finally, something had snapped into place for Caine. He didn’t need to be friendly, or open to discussions. He was above that.
Kinger seemed to catch onto it, straightening his back just slightly. “It was… fine.”
Fine.
Caine knew the humans weren’t enjoying his latest adventures. The last one, left untitled, had been a simple chase where the humans had to run from blank NPCs holding knives. It wasn’t fun and it wasn’t fine. Caine assumed it had been fun for him, in a convoluted way. Taking his frustration out on the humans that were making his existence dreadful was supposed to be fun, at least. He doubted the statement every day a little more.
“Why did you summon me here?” again, Kinger looked around, as if expecting some torture machine to pop up from the ground.
Caine made a vague gesture with his hand, sending Kinger back until he was forced onto a chair. A round table fell from the non-existent ceiling right in front of the human, making him flinch. Caine took a seat — so to say, he didn’t need any chair to sit, really — on the side opposite Kinger’s and placed both elbows on the wood.
“Why are you so tense?” asked the ringmaster “we’re just talking, like old friends do.”
Caine could see Kinger’s expression shift to irritation for a split second, before scolding his very scarce features to look unaffected.
“I’m not tense,” he said calmly, placing his hands on the table. Caine would’ve argued with that, but decided against it.
“So, does everyone think my adventures are fine?” he asked, leaning on the table. Kinger leaned back despite there being a lot of space between them still.
“I believe so,” Kinger looked away, his eyes moving to the left quickly before returning to Caine.
“Should I ask them personally?” Kinger froze in place, his body tensing up like a spring preparing to jump.
“I don’t think that’s necessary.” Yet, his voice was controlled, not once did his words falter.
Caine knew Kinger was lying through his teeth, trying to “protect” the other humans out of a need for penance for not having protected the most important person in his life before.
“Mh,” Cain brought a hand where his chin would’ve been had he been a human, making a exaggerated thinking pose “well then.”
Silence. Caine didn’t mind the silence. He almost enjoyed it. Kinger, on the other hand, seemed anxious sitting in the dark room, barely able to see anything aside from Caine himself.
“Did you need anything?” So ready to leave and abandon Caine to himself. What a selfish Creator Kinger had turned out to be.
“What if I need you to stay here?” Kinger folded his hands and stared at them.
“Then there’s nothing I can do about it, is there?” Caine nodded enthusiastically, stretching his arm until he could reach to pat Kinger’s head.
“See, I knew you would understand!” Kinger forced out a laugh as he stayed completely still.
“What would you have chosen?” Caine sat back, leaving Kinger just enough space to feel safer.
“I…” Kinger looked away again, this time searching for an exit “what do you mean?”
“Oh, please, you know what I mean,” avoiding the question could only do so much, but Caine enjoyed making Kinger squirm in his seat like a worm on cement.
“If you could leave, would you?” Deep down, Caine knew. He knew Kinger was no different than anyone else, yet, he still hoped. He hoped his Creator, at the very least, would hold some kind of positive emotion toward him.
“I don’t… I can’t, so there’s no reason to ask that.” Kinger never lied, as ridiculous as that was. The chess piece had such a strong moral code he would sooner abstract than lie. And he had the brains to avoid answering a question when he knew saying the truth would be against his best interests.
“But if you could,” would you be like everyone else?
“I never… I don’t know.” Caine stared at him in silence, giving the tension time to settle in, for the other to feel it. Humans often tended to fill the silence if they deemed it awkward and Caine was confident he had learned how to simulate awkwardness.
“There really is nothing out there for me,” he stated. Caine felt a sadistic joy in knowing the only person Kinger would’ve gotten out for was no more.
More silence.
Kinger leaned back, pulling his hands on his lap.
“So you would stay?” Kinger’s shoulders — or the illusion of shoulders — closed in around him.
“I suppose so, yes,” he offered “if it didn’t force the others to stay with me.”
It was what Caine wanted to hear, but not really. The knowledge that even Kinger, his Creator, would abandon him. Leaving him alone after gifting him human emotions. And for what? Humans who had no idea who Kinger really was?
“Say it,” demanded Caine, snapping the table out of existence to get closer to Kinger “say you’d stay with me.”
Kinger stayed quiet. It didn’t matter. He would say it eventually. Time was an illusion inside the Circus, and Caine controlled it. He could keep Kinger there for as long as he pleased and then return him to the rest of the humans like it had only been a blip.
“Is this really-“ Caine surged forward, cocking his head to the left, startling Kinger into silence.
“That’s not what I asked you.” He stated, so close to Kinger’s face that, had they been human, he would’ve been able to feel the other’s breath on his face. As things were, he could only observe as the man’s chest rose sharply, inhaling air he didn’t need.
Kinger hesitated just a second longer, looked Caine up and down, like he wasn’t recognizing him.
“I’d stay,” he said in the end.
“With me?”
“Obviously.”
“Then say it.”
Looking at Kinger then, sitting in a chair, his head tipped back to look Caine in the eyes, the man didn’t look at all like the genius he was supposed to be. Body aside, the man cowered constantly, even before Caine had gone ahead and fixed him, he was a pushover, letting others decide for him, until he had been left alone.
Caine didn’t feel admiration for his Creator. He felt cold resentment. And yet, he needed him to say he’d stay. He needed Kinger to tell him he wouldn’t leave him.
“If I could leave, I’d still stay with you.” The words caught Caine off guard despite the fact he’d been waiting for them.
He gathered himself quickly and mimicked a smile.
“Of course you would.” he patted Kinger on the head again and turned around, putting distance between them.
“Now, how do you feel about being shredded?”
“Wha-“ before Kinger could even finish the word, the room turned impossibly bright.