Chapter Text
There was one simple truth in this world, an unfortunate one that could not be ignored.
Caine was needed to keep the circus functional.
Without the core ai, the one tasked with keeping everything stable and functional, things began to fall apart quickly.
Those first signs of disaster had been painfully obvious, everything going dull, all the holes in the world. But everyone had been yearning for a break from the bright colors of the circus, and holes in the floor could be avoided (or even covered up entirely through the use of everyone's new found power.)
The first few days (well, everyone assumed it had been days, there were no more adventures marking the time, and trying to set a clock without any frame of reference on how late it might actually be was difficult) had been good, all things considered. The circus gained a bit of a shabby patched together look, yes, but everything was working well enough. Wooden panels covered up holes, shielded by carpets to try to disguise what was actually happening, no one wanted to think about that whole deal too much.
It only became clear that the holes were expanding when Gangle ended up stepping on one of the carpets meant to be supported and fell right through the floor.
Getting her back was luckily way easier than it seemed, but a trip to the void was never really all that pleasant. That wasn't the bad part of the whole situation, the bad part was the undeniable evidence that things were getting worse.
Something needed to be done, whether they liked that or not.
The whole situation had, as was to be expected, caused several days of arguing. A lot of the circus members were very much against bringing Caine back, for obvious reasons, but as things continued to deteriorate, the ‘figure out a way to deal with Caine’ side won.
Kinger was the one most responsible for coming up with a solution, how to actually get Caine back, where to put him, how to make sure he couldn't hurt anyone. The man knew the most about the required technical details, and thus took the lead.
Eventually, a plan was formed. A shabby plan, yes, but a plan nonetheless.
Caine was needed to run the circus, that was true, but that didn't mean they had to let him retain his power and do whatever he wanted. He just had to be present, nothing more, a simple tool to be sure nothing collapsed, as he was meant to be.
There were plenty of spare rooms, which could be locked, pre-furnished prison cells. Morally it was perhaps not the best idea… but it couldn't be that cruel, could it? The rooms weren't uncomfortable by any means, they were a bit dull, yes, all gray walls and floors, a blank texture to be overridden when a player claimed them, but there were beds, and they were spacious enough.
Plus, it would only be temporary, just until a better solution was found, or until everyone felt Caine wasn't a threat anymore.
No, it could not possibly be cruel, they were bringing him back from the dead, this was a kindness.
This belief was eventually reinforced when it was time to bring Caine back. The process, surprisingly, was incredibly simple. The circus worked just like any other computer system, with deleted items just ending up in the recycle bin. It had luckily not been long enough for Caine to be properly deleted.
It was just a matter of dragging his code out of there, making some minor modifications so he couldn't go on a rampage again, and spawning his model into the prepared room.
There was no fuss, everything seemed to be running perfectly.
No one considered that maybe that isolated room near the end of the hallway was just out of earshot.
—
Caine's return to proper awareness was slow. His fragmented mind, still slowly piecing itself back together, could not comprehend the concept that he was not deleted. He was supposed to be gone, finally put down like the sick animal he had become… and yet here he was, aware.
The first thing that came to him was the feeling of something beneath him, hard, the feeling of the default texture simply labeled as ‘floor’.
Laying on it certainly was not comfortable, it wasn't meant to be, but he could not bring himself to move. Maybe this was just part of whatever afterlife awaited for ai. He had thought about it before, in his worst moments, what there would be if there was something beyond.
This was closest to his theory of an endless default plane then, blank flooring that stretched out forever, the standard skybox to observe while wandering.
The second thing that came back to him was sight, only because he realized the reason he couldn't see anything was because he had his jaw closed, and not because he had gone blind.
He was not met with the sight of a skybox, instead, he was face to face with a blank ceiling.
No, please no-
He shot up with a speed that hurt, straining his model, still sensitive from only recently being spawned in again, far too much.
Walls surrounded him, gray, blank.
Oh God please no, he couldn't be back here.
There was a bed, and a door, those were new. A hysterical laugh burst from him without his say. A bed, what would he do with a bed?! Since when did an ai need furniture? Since when would that lessen the agony of imprisonment? They were mocking him again, laughing at his misery, that was the only explanation.
The door too.. the door must be..
He knew it was a fake, most likely, a false exit that led nowhere, would never open, and yet he still rushed to it, harshly tugging on the handle, and then pulling when that didn't work. Locked, of course, locked, what else had he expected.
He tried to snap his fingers, teleport out of here, again, and again, until it felt like the textures of his model were starting to scrape off with the sheer force of his efforts.
Nothing. He held no power.
His breath hitched at the realization that he was not getting out of here, not this time. His first escape had been a fluke. His programmers hadn't counted on just how fierce he could be, had stuffed him away with no major alterations to his abilities. But this time he had been declawed, there was no hope for him.
He wasn't getting out of this a second time, he was stuck.
This was his punishment then, for acting up. How could he have ever expected to so viciously lash out with no consequences. They were reminding him of his place, he was made to serve humans, he was below them, and he had forgotten that and instead lashed out.
Maybe he deserved this.
He fell back, unable to muster up the strength to hold the fragile stance he had found himself in, scrambling back to the bed in the corner. He dove beneath it.
Right now, all he wanted was to hide. If he couldn't see those horrible blank walls, maybe he could pretend he was somewhere else, that everything was fine, that he wasn't jailed.
More importantly, maybe the humans that stuck him here wouldn't be able to see him if he hid. He knew he wasn't allowed to cry, but he couldn't keep it in, and he was too much of a defective coward to face the possible consequences.
He had screwed up, so bad that the humans had taken it upon themselves to put him here, in this new but familiar hell. Another eternity of isolation was all that awaited him, and it felt like home.
He didn't know just how long he cried, curled into himself and clutching anything he could find to desperately seek some kind of comfort. He didn't know when exactly his sobs turned to desperate wails. All formless screams, no pleading for mercy, for death, to be let out, he couldn't manage that, just raw misery. He didn't know how long it took for that to die down too, just that everything hurt when he was finally finished.
For some, crying was a release. That fact hadn't been included in any of the data he had been fed, but he heard the humans talking about it sometimes, in conversations held away from prying eyes, that he knew he wasn't meant to overhear.
He just felt worse.
The panic and despair still remained, only fueled by his childish temper tantrum, he had just grown too quiet to continue.
That too, was familiar.
But what else could he do? What else was there? He could claw at the walls, at himself, try to find some part of his model vulnerable enough to tear out, vulnerable enough to properly put him out of commission.
All of that would hurt though, and pain… he was far too afraid of pain. He was designed to avoid unpleasant stimuli, something necessary for the conditioning needed to train an ai to function.
He knew he'd eventually fall apart enough to fall that far though. There was no stimuli here, except for what he brought himself, he knew he'd once more grow desperate enough to seek out anything he could get his hands on.
It was only a matter of time.
For now though, he was starting to feel dizzy, feeling as though he might fall despite already being on the floor. His fit had tired him out at least, that was a positive. It meant he could rest, something close to sleep, like humans did, to free up his systems.
He hoped he wouldn't wake up again.