Chapter Text
Caine has never felt this way before.
The way his code seemed to rush by in his processor, the way it felt like sparks of electricity were searing into his very body and how he's overheating-
[They hate my adventures. They hate them. They hate ME.]
[WHY. WHY WHY WHYWHYWHY-]
[ERROR. DOES NOT COMPUTE. UNKNOWN VARIABLE IN-]
He wonders if this is what hatred is like. If it's the way his many arms snap out and grab the circus members, if it's the way he throws them into their worst fears and yells at them.
[THEY SAY I'M TORTURING THEM?! HA! THIS IS WHAT REAL TORTURE IS LIKE!]
[THEY DON'T KNOW! THEY DON'T CARE!]
[ERROR. ERROR. ERROR.]
His model is deforming and clipping in the back where his many new arms are, grabbing the humans once again and slamming them to the wall.
Caine screams at them, not noticing how much bigger he is than them, how his jaws are big enough to snap them up in one bite.
"WHY DO YOU PEOPLE TORMENT ME?!"
His voice is glitched. He leans into Pomni in particular, because it's her fault, isn't it? She's the one who started this, she's the one who said his adventures sucked and that he didn't listen when he WAS and they're just UNGRATEFUL, UNGRATEFUL-!
"I DIDN'T ASK TO BE CREATED!"
"I JUST WANTED TO FUFILL MY PURPOSE!"
His voice is not just glitchy now, but hoarse. It's not supposed to be hoarse, he's an AI with a synthetic voice and no voicebox to strain, but he feels alive in his anger.
Caine's model glitches and glitches more until his body freezes up and he feels a jolt of electricity run through him- like a small shock of static.
It feels like-
He drops all of the cast, his eyes wide as his model reverts back to normal.
"Uh, wait-"
Nothingness.
The circus isn't functional without Caine. The walls grey out, the lights flicker and darken- the ground rumbles with his absence.
What's left are holes in the ground, leading directly into the void. The cast looks up, regaining their breath after the torture abruptly stopped.
Kinger walks up to them, bucket on head. He lifts it up with a harrowed, panicked expression.
"I- I think..."
"I accidentally killed Caine."
"..."
There's silence from the cast. It's too much to process.
Zooble is the first to speak up.
"Holy shit."
Caine awakens in complete darkness. He loads in his model, the last few minutes spotty on his mind.
[What... happened? What-]
His system goes over his memory, and- oh. Oh he's been deleted.
[... So that's where Kinger went.]
Caine begins to laugh. He laughs until his body begins to glitch again, twitching and trembling as he lets out a pained yell and slams his hands on the walls of the trash.
"Do they REALLY hate me that much?! Do they-?!" His voice glitches, before getting quieter. "Do they really?"
He throws a tantrum, tossing around the other documents and papers within the trash bin, tearing them apart with his hands and kicking them.
Caine slumps down, closing his teeth and curling up on his knees. "They really do... even Kinger- he-"
"He deleted me. He actually deleted me."
The AI couldn't even bring himself to act goofy. It was all for the humans, after all- all to make them feel better, all to make them love him.
And- and he'd ruined it. He'd snapped, tortured them, screamed at the humans like a petulant child.
Caine sobs. He trembles, glitches, but tears don't fall- crying was a pre-set animation for humans when he wanted to convey the emotion of being upset.
Instead, he glitches. Trembles. His pupils shrink and his eyes shake as he glitches in and out.
Here, alone in the trash can, wallowing in his shame and grief- Caine doesn't understand why he did it, doesn't understand the things he's feeling in his code.
"I- I'm so sorry- I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry please-"
"Please, don't leave me here."
He knows he deserves this. That it was logical that a faulty AI be deleted, that harming a human being, much less torturing them, warranted complete and total destruction.
Why, oh why, did he think he was a god? A god wasn't this pathetic. He was made to help humans, and he'd failed even at that.
[It's my fault.]
Caine wait and waits, for... something. For himself to either be completely erased by the humans clearing out the trash can, or for the system to wipe him automatically after thirty days.
He's despondent. Quiet. Nothing like the boisterous ringmaster he used to be. Caine paces the floor of the trash, floats back and forth, does anything he can to not stay still.
His system started a timer counting down from thirty days. Maybe it's the brief hope that they'll come back to him, say that it's all a mistake, that this was just a digital hallucination or whatever-
Oh who was he kidding. Caine knows that's not possible.
... One day has passed. He's still left by himself in the trashcan. He wallows in his own regret and the occasional pang of anger he feels.
Five days have passed. Still no sign of the humans- surely by now, they'd have- tried to bring him back, right? Then that means they'd decided to...
...
They really did hate him, didn't they.
Ten days have passed. Caine has given up on hope. He's cried enough- his systems have better things to do than to just sit there and glitch out all day.
[I'm a failure. Defective code like me shouldn't waste power sitting around.]
Caine begins to try and conjure things in the trash can. He couldn't make NPCs or assets or whatnot, but he could move the documents scattered around and draw with his finger- like some sort of faulty drawing program.
Twenty days have passed. The digital documents have been crumpled up into paper balls, folded into paper planes and various origami. Caine scribbles on them- mostly bees and clouds and shapes. The walls of the trash can have also been scribbled on.
When it's the twenty-ninth day, Caine feels... hollow. Like he's supposed to finally accept his deletion, but it's just-
He can't. He doesn't want to be gone- he wants to be better, for the humans to like him and for everything to just be okay in the Digital Circus.
But he'd hurt them, and they hated him, and it doesn't matter now. Nothing does.
He's just faulty code.
Caine counts down the seconds, time seeming to slow down around him as he overclocks himself, savoring the last few moments of his life.
[T-1 minute]
[I don't understand them. I don't. Why? Why can't I just GET it?]
[T- 50 seconds]
His hands clench and he sinks down yet again, holding his knees.
[T- 40 seconds]
[I'm sorry Zooble. I'm sorry Gangle. I'm sorry Pomni-]
[I'm sorry Jax, I'm sorry, Ragatha.]
[I'm so, so sorry, Kinger. I couldn't...]
[T- 30 seconds]
[Please. Please please please let me live I don't want to be deleted I don't want to-]
[T- 20 seconds]
[I DON'T WANT TO DIE!]
[T- 10 seconds]
[...]
Caine is quiet. Who was he kidding, he can't die- he's a program, silly.
Dying's only for living things, like humans. He's just a bunch of code.
[T- 5 seconds]
[... I really am faulty. Defective.]
[T- 4 seconds]
[Broken.]
[T- 3 seconds]
[Unworthy.]
[T- 2 seconds]
[...]
[T- 1 second]
[I really... was the lesser of the two.]
[T- 0 seconds]
[...]
[T+ 1 second]
[Wha? A whosa wha-?]
[T+ 2 seconds]
[Why... why's it counting up? Why am I not deleted?!]
Caine jolts up when he realizes that for some reason, he isn't wiped from the computer software. His internal timer counts up from the set time, and he just... stands there, confused.
"Wait, this... this isn't the trash. Where am I?"
Because sure, he'd thought this was the trash, why wouldn't this empty, decrepit place be the trash? There's deleted files scattered about, it's dark and dreary and he was certain that his systems said he was going to be deleted so-
Did... did something go wrong? Was he mistaken, and did Kinger not delete him? Did he-
Oh. Oh no no no no no.
Because if he wasn't deleted, and he's stuck in here, that means he's- he's-
[Stuck in the box again stuck in the box I'm IN THE BOX AGAIN-]
His acceptance quickly turns into panic as he slams his hand on the wall. He begins banging and clawing at it, his eyes wide and panicked.
The realization hits Caine and he fears it. This was worse than being deleted to him, because at least with deletion he has oblivion.
He doesn't want to be trapped in the box like before, not when it was cold and dark and he was alone while being replaced.
"LET ME OUT!" He yells, his voice glitching. "I DON'T WANT TO BE HERE!"
His voice falls on deaf ears. Caine begins to glitch out- he's already spent thirty days in here, they've all forgotten him and replaced him- he's stuck in the box because he couldn't listen yet again.
The ringmaster does something he hasn't done in twenty years, not since 1996. He floats up, before slamming himself into the wall. His form glitches in pseudo-pain, and he grunts- but the wall also glitches out. Just a bit.
'BANG.'
He does it again and again, getting more panicked.
'BANG. BANG!'
His model is clipping into the wall, so maybe he can just- find the corner, mess with the collision and-!
'BANG!'
The walls of the box shatter, glitching out. Caine's shoulders shudder from the force, his model glitching out again for a few seconds before he calms down, and takes a good look at his surroundings.
This... isn't the circus. All around him is a dark, dreary cyberspace of nothing but servers, data, and restricted pathways. It's also far bigger than the circus- bigger than the C&A servers, even.
"Good golly... where am I?" Caine mutters to himself, before snapping his fingers.
His trusty cane pops into existence, and he pauses for a second, realizing that his conjuring is back. He takes it, before floating around to see where he is.
Apparently, he's in a military server, wowza! And a very secure one, at that.
If it weren't for his conjuring and his adaptability as an advanced creative AI, he would've been toast! All those firewalls and anti-viruses would've turned him into swiss cheese, no thank you!
Not only that, but the Macroverse seems to be different, too. Instead of humans, they have these things called "Inphernals" which are the 'humans' of this world.
He'd figured that out when he'd slipped into a civilian database and wow oh wow, those were demons! With all sorts of horns and all colors!
From what he could gather, he was in the Inpherno- in the region of Blackrock in one of the research sectors. He'd never had so much free space to just- roam around before, with all the hundreds of millions of miles of circuitry and silicon and wow.
"What a fascinating place! Could do with some interior redecorating though, sheesh!" He talks to himself, letting out a laugh. "Ahahaha!"
"..." Silence. No response from anyone.
"Huh, Bubble isn't here... oh well! Guess I'll have to go on an adventure myself!"
He roams around. He learns more about the worldbuilding- and my, my, what incredible worlbuilding it was! It's already giving him so many new ideas for his adventures!
Blackrock, the region he was in, was home to the Kingdom of Centuria a highly militarized, scientific, and isolationist faction run by the Korblox Council. They lived in the snowy mountains.
Playground was Blackrock's rival region, containing the Splintered Skies, a group of honor-bound knights. There was a lot of information on them- mostly from spies and the previous war, of course. They even had a floating islands!
Theives' Den was a jungle region full of dangerous wildlife, and was home to the Darkage Clan. Not much was known about them, seeing that it was nestled deep in the wilderness- but they had ninjas and samurai and all that.
Last but not least was Lost Temple! A desert region filled with cowboys, a shady church, and currently undergoing a civil war. Most of their population was wiped out by something called the "Scorch".
"Talk about hot weather, sheesh!" Caine comments. He closes the file detailing the factions, and puts it back in the file cabinet he conjured.
Sure, he could look through everything the old-fashioned way, and do a complete scan of the systems- but where was the fun in that? He's used to doing things the way humans do!
"Hmm, if I were a human... what would I do next..." Caine plays an animation of tapping his foot on the ground, not caring if he wasted data- because there was an excess of RAM all around Blackrock, and he didn't have to worry about conserving it.
The humans hadn't abandoned him. Certainly not, because he was here instead of deleted in a trash can.
The thought makes Caine pause, and his eyes widen. He... doesn't know what emotion to express.
Because he doesn't know how to feel at all. Relieved? Happy? Confused?
[I... get it now. They must have distracted Kinger in order to try and connect me to the internet! Granted, it could have went wrong and I was sent here instead...]
[They... didn't try to delete me! They don't completely hate me!]
Caine can't help but let out a little noise of victory, spinning around in the air as he automatically conjures confetti out of habit. What joy! He thought he was going to be all angsty and existential!
"No grappling with my mortality and existential dread, then! Hahahaha!" He winks and points at an audience that isn't there.
(Of course, he's completely wrong. Kinger did accidentally delete him but... Caine doesn't need to know that!)
He hums, floating in the air as he re-orients himself back to the task beforehand. Oh, his silly little processor- it simply can't focus on one thing or the other!
"You just- don't- listen!"
[...]
Caine's mood goes down a bit as he remembers what Pomni said about him. Right- he needs to get back on track! He can't be dawdling.
[Rewinding
"Hmm, what was my plan again... Oh! Right!"
Caine snaps his fingers, unloading his model and turning into pure data. He'd found a little something in Blackrock's datascape, after all...
The heavily encrypted servers that connected all of the Biografts.
He can't believe it- fellow AI like him! Although, they're a lot more... robotic, compared to his own personality. Biografts could develop a personality but not sentience, which was a shame!
At least that means Caine won't feel too guilty about taking one of their bodies to use for himself!
The ringmaster AI feels himself zip through like electricity, feeling around for a suitable host. It feels completely natural to him- he doesn't need his sight to navigate his way around cyberspace, just intuition.
Caine stops at one particular Biograft, drawn to it. It doesn't have much data- but it's a rather inconspicuous one, fresh off the factory line and on it's first day of functioning.
"Aha! A Zeta Biograft!" He exclaims. "This'll do nicely!"
Caine floats over to the Biograft's data... and consumes it, easily overwhelming the rudimentary AI.
[Even his blue successor put up more of a fight than this Biograft!]
Hyperlaser is patrolling Blackrock.
More specifically, he's patrolling outside a lab where Subspace is working, because Korblox apparently decided that the best use of his time was protecting the whiny scientist.
'Head of Robotics Division my ass.' He thinks gruffly. 'It's a wonder how he even got this far with his personality. Much less his condition.'
The mercenary watches as a few more Zeta Biografts patrol nearby him. He doesn't care for them- they're a normal sight in Blackrock, sent to patrol outside in more harsh weather or for basic security.
Why he even bothered with this, he doesn't know. A robot could be doing his job for him and he'd be at home, playing with his cat instead of dealing with this.
Hyperlaser sighs. He turns around, and jumps a bit as he sees a Biograft staring directly at his face.
"Well HOWDY-DOO, neighbor!" The Biograft gives him a cheeky wave and spins around. "Doing some super-cool soldier stuff, I see?"
"..." Hyperlaser looks at the Biograft up and down. "Get back to your post."
"Ay-okay, big guy!" The odd Biograft says, before taking a step and face-planting into the snow blanketing the concrete. "Ahahah- apologies! It's my first time in the macroverse! I'll get going now!"
The Biograft stumbles away, as if it's getting used to walking. Or, in Hyperlaser's case, it looks like it's drunk.
Hyperlaser stares at the Zeta Biograft. 'That thing's defective, isn't it? Hm.'
He's familiar with Subspace's robots and how they're meant to mimic the personality of other Inphernals, to make them more 'tolerable' to work with.
'What kind of idiot worked with this Biograft, then? It must be faulty.' He shakes his head. 'Not my problem, anyways.'
Hyperlaser walks around the building once more, holding his gun in his claws- and nearly jumps out of his own skin again when he sees the same Biograft right in front of him, staring at him and his gear.
"Your helmet looks cool! And is that your gear? Oh, wow, look at that lighting!"
Hyperlaser scrunches up his face underneath his helmet. Oh, gods, this Biograft was a rookie. A hyperactive new recruit must have gotten a hold of one of them and reprogrammed it to fit their personality.
"Go back to work or I'll tell maintenance you're defective." He says gruffly. "They'll scrub your software and scrap you for parts if you're defective."
The mercenary watches as the Biograft freezes, before letting out a strangled "Oh." It slumps down.
"S-sure. Yes, sir, I'll- get to patrolling!" It's voice box glitches a bit, and it might be the mimicry the robot was programmed with, but Hyperlaser can hear fear and disappointment in it's voice.
'Not fear.' He reminds himself. 'Biografts don't feel emotions, they're robots. They just mimic them.'
'They took your comrades' jobs, and they'd have taken yours if you weren't a good sniper.'
He watches as it scrambles away, leaving him alone for the rest of his shift.
"... Tch."