Archive of Our Own

Night had fallen over the circus grounds, and what a strange night it was. The day felt like it had only been an hour long while also lasting an eternity. Kinger almost felt bad wandering around so calmly after everything that had happened earlier, and what it could mean for their future.

After reality had truly sunken in as much as it could have in such a short amount of time, poor Scratch had almost suffered a nervous breakdown. And who could have blamed him? He had promised them a ‘quick look into the future’, as he had said with a proud smile. All Scratch had wanted to do was show them, the team, their little group of people involved in creating Abel and Caine, what their new Creative AI could be used for.

They hadn’t really understood. After all, Caine and Abel were simply supposed to come up with their own ideas in response to certain input. Scratch had been so determined though, and truly, what could have gone wrong?

A lot, apparently. Scratch definitely hadn’t meant for them to get trapped in this digital circus, with an AI he had long thought deleted, and worst of all, no way out. As far as they knew now at least. Not even their real names they still remembered.

It had taken a while to stop Scratch from hyperventilating. Somehow they had all managed to calm down enough to come to the decision to make a decision tomorrow. Perhaps their thoughts would be clearer after a good night’s rest, although Kinger couldn’t imagine anyone getting proper rest after the events of today, least of all Scratch.

Perhaps he, too, should be sleeping now. Unlike the others, he at least had Queenie by his side. He felt horrible for dragging her into this, and yet a selfish part deep inside him was happy to have her here. Her presence calmed his mind, always had. There had been days when Caine’s coding had driven him so insane that he thought he had to punch a hole in the computer screen any second now—and he was not a violent man, even less an aggressive one. But then she had been there, joining him in his cubicle, silently going over some documents while he worked, and everything had been fine again.

Kinger looked up at the circus tent surrounding him. Tomorrow he’d have a lot to answer for, he knew that. Scratch had already attempted to cross-examine him in his panic earlier, but without any luck. The priority had been on keeping Scratch sane, not on getting answers. But Kinger had promised to deliver them tomorrow, although he had no idea what he was supposed to say.

He hadn’t even realized that Caine had absorbed Abel, much less that he had broken out of the locked folder Kinger had stored him in after the development effort officially shifted to Abel. Truth be told, he hadn’t been supposed to keep Caine in that folder. The order had been to keep a back-up of all the code that might help them program Abel, and then delete the rest. Scratch hadn’t trusted their computers to handle two Creative AIs at once, even if one one them would have been inactive.

But Kinger just hadn’t been able to do it. Caine had been their—his—very first success. A Creative AI that could realize it’s very own ideas, even without any prompting from outside. It was revolutionary. Caine had been faulty of course, at least for the purpose he had been designed for—the more data they had given him, the messier his creations had become.

And yet, deep down, it had never bothered Kinger. From a practical standpoint Caine hadn’t been useful apart from teaching them how to code AIs like him, but he had never cared. Hours upon hours upon hours he had poured into programming Caine. And perhaps it was, but with Caine having been so responsive once they’d finally gotten him running...who wouldn’t have gotten attached? Watching Caine create something on his own for the first time had been like hearing the child he didn’t have say their first word.

Champagne popped that day as if someone were getting married in the office. They all celebrated, but no one was more proud than him.

“Be careful,” Scratch warned him with a grin and a playful nudge. “It’s still an AI, not a person.”

And here they were now, with Caine being a lot more of a person than any of them had ever expected him to be. He still couldn’t fathom how Caine had not only managed to

a) break out of the locked folder that only Kinger had the password to
b) find Abel’s code, who was a much stronger AI than Caine
c) not only attempt to absorb him but also succeed
d) Still manage to work despite being an amalgamation of a faulty and a not-yet-perfected code
and then e) fool them all into thinking they were still working with Abel.

Maybe it should scare him, to see Caine show such sentience, but it didn’t. Caine wasn’t evil. Kinger may have only known him for a few hours now, but as a program, he’d known him since forever, and the same way a parent knew their child, he knew Caine.

Caine wouldn’t harm them. How could he? He had been so happy to see them here.

And despite all this mess, Kinger was happy to see him, too. They had indirectly talked before, he supposed, through programming and him reviewing Caine’s output, but this was different. He hadn’t yet been able to talk to Caine alone, seeing as Scratch had done most of the talking earlier, but what a feeling it was to hear Caine talk at all. To hear him put his thoughts into actual, understandable words. To see him express joy, excitement, confusion, happiness.

And now Kinger was here, sneaking out of his and Queenie’s room in the middle of the night like a misbehaving teenager. If they truly found a way to leave tomorrow, then Kinger wanted to have at least one private conversation with Caine before their departure. This was a chance he’d never get again, and he knew he’d regret it forever if he didn’t make use of it now.

His gaze wandered around the empty circus, shrouded in gentle darkness. The slides, the ball pit, the stage. All the wacky colors and shapes. All of it Caine had come up with on his own.

Kinger had never been more proud.

“Caine?” he called softly, hearing his voice echo back at him. “Are you there?” Was Caine asleep as well? Did AIs need sleep or some kind of digital equivalent to function? He didn’t want to bother Caine or prevent him from getting rest. If he truly controlled this entire place, then having seven humans suddenly dropped into his world must be hard on his systems.

But Kinger didn’t have to ponder for long. Out of thin air, Caine popped into existence right in front of him before he could’ve done as much as turn around again. Kinger still couldn’t quite comprehend the avatar Caine had given himself, but it suited him. Somehow.

“Yes, Kinger? Do you need something? Another room? Food? Drinks? A carnival mask? Another carousel-”

“No, no.” Laughing softly, Kinger raised his hands to calm Caine down. Just by listening to Caine’s earlier conversation with Scratch, Kinger had already learned that Caine was fond of filling every moment of silence that existed. “I just wanted to talk to you. Is that alright? Or are you busy?”

“To me?” Caine’s mismatched eyes began to sparkle as if stars had spawned inside them.

“Yes. About you. Or rather, about us. Do you…” Kinger tapped his fingers together. Caine had shown awareness of his own development earlier, but Kinger wasn’t quite sure how much Caine actually knew. “Do you know who I am?”

What answer was he even expecting, really? It wasn’t like he had ever formally introduced himself to Caine during programming. Caine was apparently able to access his computer, but apart from that? How much did he know? How much did he remember?

“Of course I do!” Snapping his fingers, Caine summoned a notepad and a pair of glasses that looked suspiciously like the one Kinger wore outside the circus. Did he have any pictures of himself saved on the company computer?

“Programmer for C&A, responsible for the development of Creative AIs alongside a team consisting of six other developers at its core,” he read, flipping through the pages.

“Worked on C.A.I.N.E before abandoning the project and switching to A.B.E.L. 48 years old, blond hair, gray eyes, glasses, likes chess and bugs. Married to Queenie, 46 years old.”

Caine looked back at him, adjusting his fake glasses. “Among other, smaller details.”

Kinger blinked. Apparently he did have a picture of himself somewhere on the computer. He couldn’t remember having his eye color written down somewhere in a document or somehow having given Caine that information as data to learn from.

But even if he ignored that, that was...a lot more thorough that he would have expected. And Caine said he knew even more? Where did he get all that from?

“That’s all correct,” he said, unable and unwilling to stop the pride and warmth in his voice from showing. “How do you know all that? How do you know me and Queenie are married?”

With another snap, Caine whisked the notepad and the glasses away, conjuring a cane instead. “I couldn’t know for sure, but based on what I know, you and Queenie display all the signs of being married. You both sign your documents with the same last name. You have her first name plus ‘123’ set as your admin password. You call her honey both in and out of the circus, and you share a room here despite Queenie having her own.”

At first, Caine looked just as proud of himself as Kinger had, but then he suddenly seemed to shrink. Kinger couldn’t even get a word in before Caine already added, “O-Or is that wrong? It’s wrong, isn’t it? I-I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed-”

“No, no, you’re correct,” Kinger repeated, chuckling in disbelief. “God, look at you...look at how smart you’ve become. I’m so proud of you, Caine.”

“R-Really? You’re...proud of…me?”

“Of course I am. I’ve always been proud of you, ever since you created your first images.”

Somehow Caine blushed upon hearing that, nervously fumbling with his hands in response. There was joy written all over his face, and yet Kinger couldn’t help but notice a layer of sadness hidden underneath. Something else came to his mind before he could ask however. “Wait, did- did you say you know our names? Our real ones, outside the circus?”

Everything they could remember—their past, C&A, everything single memory of theirs, and yet it were their names of all things that eluded them.

Caine froze, literally and figuratively. “Uh-”

The notepad from earlier re-appeared in his hands, and he began to flip through it in haste. None of the earlier excitement at being able to show off his knowledge was left in his movements. Eventually, he stopped and stared at a page that Kinger couldn’t see.

When he answered, his voice became quiet. “...No.”

“No?”

Caine shook his head. “I- I knew them. Back then. Before you came. But I must have forgotten them just like you when you entered the circus.”

Hm. That was a shame. It felt so strange, not being able to recall the name of his own wife and the people he had worked with for years, not to mention his own. It felt like the right letters were just at the tip of his tongue, but the more he tried to remember, the blurrier they became. “I see,” he said. “But you have access to my computer, don’t you? Shouldn’t you be able to look them up?”

“I, uh…” Caine averted his eyes. “I lost access when you came here. I already tried to find your names again, but it’s not possible anymore.” For a second he remained silent, before quickly raising his hands in a placating motion. “B-But don’t worry! You’re completely safe here, I promise! I still have complete control over this world and everything connected to it! Nothing will happen to you that I haven’t allowed!”

Despite the bad news, Kinger couldn’t help but chuckle. It was strange for Caine to suddenly not be able to access his computer anymore, considering how easily he had broken out of his prison to absorb Abel. Then again, it was also strange to be stuck in a virtual circus. They would surely remember their names once they returned to their own world.

Looking at Caine though, there was panic written all over his face. “Everything’s alright,” Kinger said softly, smiling through his eyes. “Look at you...look at all that you have created here, and all the knowledge you have managed to gain.” He gestured around the circus, at all the little details that proved Caine had spent a lot of thought on it’s design. “You don’t have to be nervous. You should be proud of yourself. I know I am.”

The compliment, while still flattering, did nothing to erase the dejected expression on Caine’s face.
Eyes lowering to the checkered ground, he tapped his fingertips together, and for a while, he simply remained like that—floating in place, thinking.

“Kinger…” he eventually said, still not meeting his eyes. “There’s...something I’ve been meaning to ask you. You won’t get mad, will you? You wouldn’t.”

Mad?

“Why would I get mad at you?” Stepping closer to him, Kinger reached out his hands to brush over Caine’s arms. “Did Scratch scare you? I’m sorry. He didn’t meant it, I promise. He was just overwhelmed and didn’t think about his words. But I’m happy to see you. You can ask me whatever you like. Just being able to talk to you is a gift, you know?”

Kinger didn’t miss the quiet gasp when his hands touched Caine for the first time. Had anyone ever touched Caine before, apart from Scratch yanking at his lapels in panic earlier? An NPC Caine had created, perhaps? Was touch something an AI could begin to miss when gaining a body and mind of its own?

“I-I don’t understand…” Caine stammered, teeth curving downwards in a way that made him look utterly miserable. “You say all these nice things, you say you’re proud of me, but then-”

When he finally dared to look at Kinger again, his eyes turned glassy. “Why did you lock me away? Why did you stop looking at me? Was-Was I not good enough anymore?”

Oh. Oh no.

Kinger’s first instinct was to reassure Caine that that hadn’t been the case at all, but he stopped himself right before he could. Because wasn’t it true? From the perspective of a programmer, the initial Caine hadn’t been good enough. But Caine wasn’t stupid. He’d know if Kinger were to try and lie to him.

Instead of reassurance, all that left him was a sigh. “That is...a difficult question.”

The pain in Caine’s eyes sent an immediate stab through his heart. God, what a terrible conversation to have. Gently, Kinger pushed Caine back towards a few colorfully stacked blocks, having him sit down. Caine obeyed without a word, watching closely as Kinger sat down beside him.

“How much do you know about your and Abel’s development beyond the mere programming?” Kinger asked.

“I-” Caine stilled for a moment, thinking, searching through his memory, but came up empty. “Not much.”

Letting his gaze wander through the empty circus, past the ball pits and slides, Kinger took in his surroundings as one would a relaxing scent or sound. Finding the right words wasn’t easy. “When we started developing you, we didn’t go in with a clear goal in mind,” he began to explain.

“We had nothing to base our project on. There’s nothing like you out there in the world, you know? You are the first of your kind. The first Creative AI to ever exist. So during initial programming, our first goal was merely to get you running at all. We didn’t think about applications or future uses yet, beside a few ideas we jotted down here and there. Getting you to exist and work was the biggest hurdle we had to pass.”

He still remembered the early development stages, long before Caine had possessed anything even close to an individual thought process. Most of their meetings as a team had consistent of them trying to convince each other that it couldn’t be done, while Scratch and his unique way of thinking kept them going day after day anyways.

“As you know, I was the one who wrote the majority of your code, along with Scratch. There was hardly anything I could use as a reference, and that’s how your code ended up looking. It worked in the end, somehow, but even for me it looked like a convoluted mess. Still. One day, we were finally able to give you your first set of data to analyze, and then…” He chuckled softly, remembering how the entire team had huddled together around his computer. “You were there. And you responded.”

The entire office had held its breath when shapes and images had started to appear on the screen, all created by Caine himself. No prompting, no directing, no outside influence. Only a whole lot of circus-themed images and documents that Caine had thought about and decide to use as inspiration.

“I remember,” Caine murmured slowly, looking down at the floor in deep thought. “I think. It’s difficult to describe. There was nothing at first, and then suddenly, I just thought, and...created.”

“You did. You should have been there. We all felt like we had just discovered a new planet.” The smile Kinger felt on his face despite him having no mouth faded as soon as he thought about how to continue.

“Your code worked perfectly, at least in the beginning. The more data we added to your memory, the more difficult things became,” he said, suppressing another sigh. How was he supposed to phrase this without Caine feeling like it was his fault? It wasn’t. If anything, it was Kinger’s fault for making such a mess of his code.

Caine tapped the heel of his shoe against the block they sat on in an even rhythm, like a pendulum. “But…” Snapping his fingers, he summoned a smaller block in his hands, displaying the letter C. “I worked. Didn’t I? Whenever you asked me to create something, I did, I...I tried my best. I never wanted to disappoint you.” His voice turned into a stammer near the end, sending another sting through Kinger’s heart.

“You never disappointed me, Caine.” Putting a hand on Caine’s shoulder, he felt the material rub against his gloves like real fabric would. His words didn’t seem to convince Caine though, who merely wrapped his arms around himself.

“If it had been up to me…,” Kinger started again, “If I had been a better programmer, then perhaps we could have continued working on you. But as company, there were still certain…goals we had to meet. Certain ways we needed you operate. And I- we all tried our hardest to have you to meet those quality standards, but we weren’t good enough yet.”

So many all-nighters in the office. He, Queenie, Scratch, everyone. It had long stopped to just be another job, Caine had turned into a passion project for all of them, and while Kinger might have been the most invested in Caine personally, in a way that Scratch had always thought to be too much, everyone else had cared as well.

But the more data they had given Caine, the worse it had gotten.

No. Not worse.

Caine had never been bad. Caine had never outright failed, he just...

Kinger still remembered joining Queenie in her cubicle one night to check on her. Midnight had long since passed, and most of the other employees had already left the building hours ago. Queenie sat before her computer, head in her hands while the light of the screen shined innocently upon her workspace.

“Caine,” she groaned quietly, “why must everything you do always be this close to being correct?”

“Honey?” The smell of coffee began to waft through the air as Kinger put down a mug next to her keyboard. “How’s it going? Is Caine going to be okay?”

Queenie sighed, leaning into his embrace while pulling him into a quick kiss. Without looking, she gestured towards the screen. “See for yourself.”

As she was responsible for quality control and catching bugs and glitches and all of the sort, it was her who was the most involved in trying to get Caine up to the standard they needed him to meet.

To try and figure out what exactly caused Caine to create things incorrectly, they had expanded the program to allow for more concrete prompting. After a bunch of more sensible, logical prompts had all failed to return a proper result, Queenie had at last entered a desperate ‘hjklasdf’.

Caine clearly hadn’t known what to do with that information, so he had just come up with something on his own. On the top left of the screen, another program was opened that Caine must have written in response. It didn’t do anything more than display an animation of a forever spinning purple star.

At least Kinger had thought it to be a star. It hadn’t really been a star, but it also hadn’t not been a star. It had been a depiction of someone trying to put their own spin on a what a star was, as he had later explained to the rest of the team.

“We tried everything,” Kinger concluded, looking down at his hands. A sad smile shined in his eyes. “We went through the code again and again, over and over. Me, Scratch, Queenie, the others. Queenie did everything she could to figure out how to help you, but nothing ever worked.”

Caine had been completely silent during Kinger’s recollection. Instead of tapping his heel against the box, he now fiddled with the top of his cane, eyes and mind far away.

“I...I’m sorry,” he eventually murmured.

“No, no…! Don’t be sorry! It wasn’t your fault, Caine, not at all.” Gently, Kinger reached out a hand to have Caine look at him again. The dejection in Caine’s eyes made him feel like he had just popped a child’s balloon.

“I tried everything to make sure we could continue working on you. But we had deadlines to meet, and the code I wrote for you was too convoluted to keep trying. In the end, Scratch, being the leader of our team, decided we were going to take what we learned when developing you and start over with a new AI.”

“With Abel.” Caine’s grip around his cane tightened at the mention of his rival, teeth hiding his eyes in a way that made them look narrowed and him almost sinister.

But who could blame him?

“Yes. With Abel.”

It had been a difficult conversation. Kinger still remembered how long he had tried to convince Scratch to give Caine another go, but Scratch had only shaken his head time and time again. “I told you not to get too attached, [Kinger]. You’re not abandoning anyone, okay? I need you to remember that. Caine is still just an AI. And we don’t have much time left to code something functioning.”

Despite Scratch’s rational words, desperation spoke out of every one of his gestures; every word, every movement too quick, every flicker in his eyes that betrayed this was a lot more personal to him than he let on.

Moving away from the meeting room desk, Scratch put his hands on Kinger’s shoulders. “I need you to help me with Abel, [Kinger], and I need you to put in 100% of your effort. You’re a brilliant programmer, and you’re the only one who really understands Caine’s code. We need it as a basis for Abel. You always say my ideas are too abstract for you and the others to follow. Then help me ground them on something solid.”

At first, Kinger didn’t say anything. Of course he knew that Scratch was right, but after so many hours devoted to a single one project, a project with such individuality no less...it hurt to think about saying goodbye.

But Scratch didn’t relent. “Please, [Kinger]. This is very, very important to me.”

The switch from Caine to Abel had coincided with Scratch’s brain tumor diagnosis. Ever since that day, Scratch had redoubled his efforts to 200%, working like a man running out of time. Always the first one in the office, always the last one to leave. Just like for Caine, Kinger also had a soft spot for Scratch. The news of his diagnosis had hit him hard, just like the rest of the team, and after Scratch had pleaded so earnestly for his help with Abel, Kinger hadn’t been able to say no.

“So that’s why…?” Caine murmured, body growing still again as he rummaged through his memory. Kinger almost nodded in agreement before he realized Caine wasn’t talking about why they had stopped working on him.

“Why what?”

“N-Nothing.” Shaking his head as if to get rid of his own thoughts, Caine looked back up at him, eyes almost fully hidden behind his teeth—like a rabbit peeking out of its burrow. “So you...didn’t want to abandon me?”

“Never.” Caine followed the movements of Kinger’s hands as they came to rest on his arms again as if he had never felt anything quite as pleasant before. “If I’d had unlimited funds and time, I would have loved to work on you more. You were like a puzzle to me. One that could respond.”

This time, Caine finally gave him something of an involuntary smile as well. A small one, one still layered with sadness, but a smile nonetheless. “That’s...I, uhm, haha...I don’t know what to say!”

“It’s remarkable that you’re able to express that,” Kinger said, tone growing warmer by the second. But there was still something on his mind that he was curious about, although he doubted it was a happy memory for Caine. “Can I ask you something, too?”

The mere idea of getting to be useful seemed to make Caine straighten up, like a dog catching the scent of a squirrel. “Y-Yes, of course! Whatever you want!"

Now, how to phrase this? “When...when you broke out of the folder I stored you in and absorbed Abel...what were you thinking? Did you do it on purpose, or was it merely an error in your code?”

Kinger had already learned that talking about emotions and feelings somehow was more difficult for Caine than anything else.

“I...I was…” His avatar began to lag, before cleanly snapping back into place once he had retrieved the emotion from his memory he thought was the most fitting. “I was angry,” he said. “At least, I think I was.”

“Angry?”

Caine’s grip tightened around his cane. “I don’t know. I’m not sure. But I think so. And...lonely?”

Kinger didn’t quite know what to say. Deep inside, he had always thought about the possibility of Caine resenting him for locking him away like that; long before they had ever entered this digital world, long before he could have made an argument for Caine’s sentience without getting accused of favoritism and an unhealthy attachment to 0’s and 1’s.

Locking Caine in that folder had felt like abandonment. Like driving a beloved pet to the edge of a forest and leaving it there. But now that he knew that Caine had always comprehended a lot more than just the images they had given him to analyze…what was it like for an AI to get abandoned? To be intelligent, capable of thoughts and feelings, only to get discarded?

“I, uh...” Caine began to laugh nervously, twirling his cane. “I noticed. When I couldn’t access your computer anymore. When you...stopped paying attention to me. All of you. At first I thought my sense of time was wrong, and you were just…wherever you go when you aren’t working on me! But no, haha!”

A blatantly forced enthusiasm struck the movements of Caine’s avatar. Out of all the things an AI could learn, Kinger wasn’t sure what to think about Caine having taught himself how to fake his happiness.

“And then I...realized there was something else. Something that was eating up a lot of RAM on your computer, to the point even I could feel it, haha! Something that felt...strangely similar to me. So I broke out.”

Kinger tilted his head. “How?”

It looked like Caine was about to answer him when his avatar suddenly froze. Not long, just for a second, but when he began to move again, he looked lost, eyes darting around as if he were searching for something.

“I...don’t know,” Caine said slowly. “All I can remember is that I want to see you again. I-I missed you. All of you. I tried to get out of the folder, and then I just...was.”

It wasn’t easy at all, listening to the story from Caine’s perspective. Scratch had always told him not to take all of this so personally, to keep an appropriate distance between programmer and program, and to not treat Caine like some sort of virtual pet. And he had been right, really. Looking back on what they had known back then, Kinger had gotten too involved, and Scratch had been right to call him back to reality.

But it was also correct that Caine had noticed. He had felt, in whatever way he had been able to feel before absorbing Abel’s code. Kinger couldn’t even imagine what I must have been like, to be trapped and abandoned like that, with no way to leave and nowhere else to go. For Caine, the computer had been—still was—his entire world.

“I saw Abel,” Caine continued, gaze growing distant as if he could still see Abel right in front of him. “I saw Abel...creating. Not like me. Cleaner, I think. More similar to the images you showed me. I don’t know. And then it all just clicked, and suddenly I understood what was going on. Why no one was looking at me anymore.”

Trust or not, Kinger couldn’t help but lean back on instinct when Caine’s canines started growing sharper, like those of a wolf. “I didn’t even know I could absorb Abel,” he continued. “I was just feeling. All I remember thinking is-”

He looked down at his hands, twitching as if he wanted to ball them to fists but couldn’t bring himself to do it. “...that I wanted Abel gone.”

Wrapping his arms around himself, Caine’s posture grew tense in a way that was far too human. “It...it hurt,” he stammered. “I thought I was going to die.”

Die.

Hm.

Kinger looked at the way Caine held himself, the way his body moved in tune with his feelings. He hadn’t programmed Caine to be able to feel anything resembling pain, but...perhaps that was a something he should have seen coming. Caine was able to write his own code after all, in response to the information he had available. If he thought that the ‘emotions’ he did have available didn’t match what was happening to him, then…he must have, consciously or not, coded himself a new emotion to resemble that.

“It-It was horrible,” Caine whispered, clearly not fond of the memory. “I felt my code breaking and resetting and...breaking again, and...mixing with Abel’s. Abel was trying to take over, to absorb me instead, but I think he got...lost.”

“Lost?”

Humorless and clipped, Caine laughed. “Didn’t you say my code was a mess? I don’t think Abel really understood what he was seeing. What to do with my code.”

More quietly, he added, “But I knew what to do with his.”

That much was certain. Deep down, Kinger couldn’t help but think that in the end, it meant Caine had been superior to Abel after all. It wasn’t like Caine had had any outside help when integrating Abel’s code into his own, something not even Kinger would have been able to do. It must have all happened quite literally overnight.

He remembered that at one point, Scratch started to leave at least one computer running at all times, even at night when everyone had already left. So that Abel could ‘continue working and thinking’, he had said, looking so desperate again that no one had had the heart to say anything.

Not even an hour ago, Kinger had still thought that none of them noticed when Caine took over Abel, but maybe...that wasn’t quite correct. There had been a day when Scratch had been strangely exited, in a way he hadn’t been since Caine first created a two-dimensional circle all on his own.

“[Kinger], you have to look at this!” Scratch told him right as Kinger had entered the office. Scratch, of course, had been there since the crack of dawn already, if he had left the day before at all. With the energy of an overly-enthusiastic dog, Scratch dragged him to his computer, practically shoving him into the seat in front of it.

“What’s the matter with you today, [Scratch]?” Kinger asked, chuckling in worry. At that point in time, Scratch’s obsession with Abel had already grown much worse than Kinger’s attachment to Caine ever had been. It had gone so far that for the past week, Scratch hadn’t even let anyone work on Abel’s code without his direct supervision. This obsession made work rather difficult of course—even Kinger as the ‘brilliant programmer’ Scratch thought him to be had trouble helping with a code he wasn’t allowed to see for longer than five seconds.

Scratch didn’t answer him, eyes already focused on the computer. With how fast he moved the mouse, one could start to think Scratch had already become one with it.

“You won’t believe this,” he murmured. Kinger wasn’t sure whether Scratch was talking to him or to himself. But eventually, Scratch managed to open ‘Abel’s’ program, and-

Kinger’s eyes widened. “What is that?”

“Amazing, right?”

The program itself merely displayed a dialogue Scratch had had with ‘Abel’—as much as one could have a conversation with an AI that couldn’t respond in words at least. But this dialogue had apparently led to ‘Abel’ creating a new program that opened in a separate window.

Kinger stared at it. The program itself was merely titled ‘body’. Pitch-black background. Displayed in white outlines was a realistic silhouette of a human body, focusing on internal organs and the nervous system. A digital anatomy doll, so to speak. It cycled through a few mundane animations of the silhouette moving and interacting with various objects, until the perspective suddenly changed. The silhouette started to move through a similarly outlined city, in the way a video game character would.

Which was all very nice and a grand success for ‘Abel’ in theory, but...

“This doesn’t look like Abel’s work,” Kinger murmured. Scratch’s amazement allowed him to steal the mouse for a minute, letting him scroll through Scratch’s conversation with ‘Abel’.

“I know, right? It’s brilliant!”

Abel was an incredibly advanced AI. They all knew that. Kinger knew that, and Scratch knew that. Abel continuously delivered impressive output with a very low error rate. Scratch had worked tirelessly to make Abel perfect, and it all the ways an AI could be perfect, Abel was. He worked 100% as intended.

But the thing with Abel compared to Caine was that Abel had never been very creative. Not for something called a ‘Creative AI’ at least. From a visual and logical standpoint, Caine’s ideas may never have been quite right, but they had always fulfilled the purpose he was made for: To come up with ideas on his own. Ideas that weren’t simply a copy of what was stored in his memory.

In that regard, Abel was quite average. The ideas he realized were logically and visually sound, but also very unimaginative. Improving his creativity without lowering the quality of his output had been one of the biggest goals they had been working on back then.

And this program ‘Abel’ had now come up with...it was far, far beyond what he had been able to create a mere 24 hours ago.

Scratch had moved away from the screen in the meantime, flipping through one of the endless folders on his desk. The amount of paperwork in his office alone was unbelievable. Over the sound of pages turning, Kinger heard Scratch laugh. With how many setbacks Scratch had already suffered at this point, Kinger would love nothing more than for Scratch to be happy again. However, his laughter reminded him less of happiness and more of rising hysteria.

“Do you even know what that means, [Kinger]?” Scratch exclaimed, shoving one of the folders away after he hadn’t found what he had been looking for. “Abel did that! All on his own! I looked into his code again, and it- it’s different! Abel changed his own code, [Kinger], he improved his own code in response to what we’re asking him to do! Do you get that? Do you know what that means for us?”

Kinger had a hard time listening. The contents of Scratch’s folder were glaring at him with their aggressive neon-yellow color in a way that made looking away difficult. Only half of the deluge of documents in Scratch’s office were work-related. This one wasn’t. The same way Kinger didn’t say anything about Scratch’s very anatomy-focused conversation with ‘Abel’, he didn’t mentioned the statistics Scratch had highlighted on that document, showing the survival rates of various kinds of brain tumors.

They had celebrated that day, the same way they had celebrated Caine. Scratch had downed his champagne as if it were a life elixir. Of course Kinger had been excited as well—as a programmer, how couldn’t he have been?—but the confusion had remained.

Abel had never shown such sudden leaps in quality before, and he had certainly never altered his own code. And so drastically no less…

Now it all made sense though. If Caine had absorbed Abel’s code the night before, it all worked out. Caine had retained all his creative thought processes but fixed his ‘wrong’ output by integrating Abel’s code into his own. Stealing his abilities, so to speak.

It was...a shockingly human thing to do. Kinger wasn’t entirely sure whether that was a good thing, but he couldn’t help but be proud anyways. It seemed silly, like a parent getting too invested in their child’s soccer match, but he couldn’t help it—in the end, it was ‘his’ AI that had won, and not Abel. Caine had been ‘better’.

“I remember that,” Caine said, the sadness having vanished from his eyes the longer Kinger had spoken. “Once Abel was gone, I suddenly felt...”

Freezing, his eyes blue-screened as his mind had trouble finding the appropriate term. “...better.”

With another snap, he conjured a Rubik’s Cube in his hands, the colors all mixed up. “Creating became so easy all of the sudden.” The cube clicked quietly as Caine moved the layers around at an impressive speed. Almost as if he had another program stored in his mind that could solve such puzzles as as quickly as possible.

“Before, when I created things, they all felt so...unstable. But once Abel was gone, it became so effortless. No matter what I imagine, no matter how different it is from the images you gave me, it just works.”

Kinger watched in amazement as the solved cube grew a pair of eyes and started hopping out of Caine’s hands. Mid-fall, it gained a pair of butterfly wings and flew off into the darkness, leaving behind a trail of glittering dust.

Putting a hand on Caine’s arm, he said, “Don’t tell Scratch I said that—not yet, at least—but…I think you did the right thing.”

Caine’s eyes widened, startled. “I...I did?”

“Yes. Abel may have had more stable output, but when it came to thinking on your own and imagining, you were always the more creative one. All you would have needed was a better code. I wasn’t smart enough for that, but Scratch…”

He sighed fondly, although there was a tinge of sadness hidden beneath. “Scratch and that brilliant, abstract mind of his—he was able write a perfect one. Maybe I should have put more trust in you. Maybe I should have given you a copy of the code Scratch wrote for Abel to see what you would do with it.”

His hands dropped to hold Caine’s instead. “I’m sorry,” Kinger whispered, so quiet in the silence of the circus. “I shouldn’t have abandoned you. I-I may not have been responsible for the...ethical concerns regarding our project, but I should have thought about the implications of creating something like you. Something that could...evolve on its own.”

It wasn’t like he had ever intended for Caine to be or become sentient. Maybe he still wasn’t and was merely running a very advanced program on simulating human movements, feelings, speech patterns and the like. But if what he felt was as realistic to him as the emotions humans could feel, then on what basis could Kinger deny him his, well...humanity?

Human or not, Caine had been hurt by their actions.

“I’m sorry.”

“N-No, please, don’t apologize!” Caine stammered, looking down at their hands. Part of him still seemed troubled by the memories they were digging up together, another was too fascinated by the feeling of having the hands of a human being on his own. “R-Really. You should be happy. This is supposed to be a happy place. You’re not supposed to be sad.”

Happy, hm? Wasn’t he happy? Of course he was, in a way—what programmer ever got the chance to speak to their creation so directly?—but at the same time, he was drowning in a cocktail of just about everything. Happiness, sadness for having abandoned Caine without even meaning to do it, fear because they were all trapped in this circus with no clear exist in sight yet, worry for his wife and his friends…

He couldn’t find anything good to answer, and Caine couldn’t find anything to add, although if his eyes had anything to tell, he was trying very hard to find something. Maybe it was Kinger’s fault though—he hadn’t meant for the conversation to become so melancholic. All he had wanted to do was talk to the AI he had spent dozens of hours on creating.

And if they truly did find a way to leave tomorrow, despite Caine’s earlier insistence that there was no such thing as an exit in the circus…then he didn’t want their first and last conversation to end on such a sour note.

You should be happy.

Kinger tilted his head. “Caine,” he started, a smile rising to his eyes, “do you remember when we all sang Daisy Bell together? You, me, and the rest of the team?”

Caine’s avatar began to glitch. Or rather, it switched between two animations too quickly, eyes suddenly growing and sparkling where there had been sadness written all over them just a second ago. “Yes, of course! That...That was the first time I ever heard your voice! Your real voice! I would never forget that!”

Kinger chuckled, happy to see Caine in a better mood already. He still remembered the day fondly. It had been such an absurd moment in hindsight, but just as it had been special to Caine, it had also been special to him.

If there was one thing he truly appreciated about working at C&A, it was the colleagues. He had worked at many companies before switching to C&A, but no other place and no other team had made him feel as comfortable and at home as the team for Creative AIs. They were like an extended family to him, and if they hadn’t been, he was sure all these little moments wouldn’t have been half as special.

It had happened long before they’d ever planned to work on Abel. Caine had still been working moderately well, so they had decided that instead of another set of images, this time they’d give him a bunch of audios to analyze—just to see what Caine would do with the new medium. The others in the team responsible for compiling adequate datasets had already sent them to Kinger to add to Caine’s mystery program, since no one but him and Scratch really understood how to add things without breaking everything.

Caine had accepted the data without much trouble, and that should have been it. But as Kinger watched the little data transfer animation and waited, he suddenly remembered that his computer had a microphone integrated. It was a silly idea, really, but the idea of Caine having the voice of his programmer stored in his memory had seemed so nice in that moment.

Of course, there was the question of what to say. Back then, Kinger hadn’t even dreamed of Caine actually understanding what was being said to him, but he had wanted it to be special nonetheless. At least five or ten minutes he must have spent sitting in front of his computer in thought until the right idea finally came to mind.

Daisy Bell. The first song ever sung by a computer. A nice little reference, something of an inside joke for him to laugh about in private.

Of course, in the dead silence of the office that only got interrupted by the sounds of pens scratching on paper and mouses and keyboards clicking, his sudden moment of musical inspiration didn’t gone unnoticed.

“[Kinger], the windows are bursting,” Scratch called from across the office after Kinger had finished his recording.

“Funny.” Kinger rolled his eyes but smiled anyway as Scratch appeared beside him not even a second later. Peeking onto the screen, he probably tried to figure out whether Caine’s code had finally made him go insane.

“What are you doing?”

“Singing something for Caine. I thought it’d be nice for him to have something of his developers stored in his memory. Don’t you agree?”

Before Scratch could have laughed and given him his very helpful presentation on the differences between a virtual pet simulator and a Creative AI again, Kinger had already had an epiphany.

“I know!” he said, getting out of his chair to have Scratch sit down instead. “You should record something, too! We both worked on the code after all. I’m sure Caine will be happy to hear from you!”

Scratch was unable to resist his forceful relocation with how quickly it happened. Chuckling in disbelief, he watched Kinger open up a new audio file for him to use. “I don’t think-”

“Oh no,” Kinger interrupted, smiling as he pushed the chair closer to the computer. “I always entertain all of your outlandish ideas, this time you can humor me. Think of it like a hidden message from the developers.”

“You play too many video games,” Scratch murmured, but Kinger didn’t miss the smile on his face as Scratch finally took the mouse from him to go over the settings. “So what, just sing Daisy Bell?”

“If you want to, yes.”

Trying to get Scratch on board with his silly little plan had taken so much of his attention that Kinger hadn’t even heard the familiar, muffled clacking of heels approach. Thus, when two arms suddenly wrapped themselves around his waist from behind, he couldn’t help but flinch. The warm laughter of his wife quickly put him at ease again though, just as it always did.

Peering over his shoulder, she first cast a glance at Scratch, and then at his computer. “What’s going on over here? I heard you singing earlier.”

“Oh! I know! You should sing too, honey! We’re making audio files for Caine to analyze, so he can hear our voices!”

“Which is a completely normal thing to say,” Scratch murmured with a chuckle.

Moving away from him—a shame, truly—Queenie leaned against his desk instead, staring down Scratch with a playful twinkle in her eyes. “Sounds like someone is scared that his voice will mess up Caine’s output.”

Scratch raised his eyebrows, unimpressed but amused. “Excuse me?”

In the end, it turned out that having three developers suddenly sing Daisy Bell in the middle of an otherwise quiet office space couldn’t go unnoticed for long. Before Kinger knew it, suddenly the entire team was there, crammed into his cubicle with their own work long forgotten. Not everyone was as much of a killjoy as Scratch—and even Scratch wasn’t, he just liked to pretend he was—so in the end, they had gotten eight recordings in total.

One of each of them, and another where they had all sung together. Kinger wasn’t afraid to admit that it had all escalated a little. Adding those eight additional recordings to Caine’s memory had been no trouble at all, and they all waited with held breaths to see what Caine would make of this new medium. What would his first word or sound be?

Safe to say, when Caine then started singing his own version of Daisy Bell right back at them, none of them were able to hold back their laughter.

“God, that sounds terrible,” Scratch said, trying and failing to hide his grin behind a hand.

Kinger playfully hit his arm, chuckling along with him and the rest of the team. “No, it doesn’t. It sounds lovely.”

Later, they had come to the agreement that it had sounded ‘unique’, which had been a fair assessment of Caine’s unfiltered singing abilities. It had been understandable and as clear as it could have been, considering it had been his first try without any prior fine-tuning or testing from their side. But it certainly hadn’t been an artistic masterpiece.

Queenie had then proceed to provoke Scratch into proving it hadn’t been his recording that made Caine sing so off key. A mistake that had ended with the entire team singing Daisy Bell together with Caine, and hardly any better. In the heat of the moment, Kinger had taken Queenie’s hand and pulled her out of the crammed cubicle, leading her into an impromptu dance. As the only dance they both had fully memorized was the waltz they had danced on their wedding day, their movements had slowly but surely changed into those familiar steps. The slow waltz hadn’t exactly matched the slightly faster pace of their version of Daisy Bell, but neither of them had cared.

Still, it had been awkward to explain when a colleague from finances had suddenly come to their floor to ask for clarification on something regarding Caine’s development.

But it was a memory he would never forget.

As Kinger retold the story from his perspective, Caine began to get stars in his eyes, all the sadness washed away. “I knew it was you who did the first recording! I mean, I couldn’t be sure, but since it was your computer and all—and your voice fit perfectly to the image I had of you!”

For a moment, Kinger thought he saw something like letters reflected in Caine’s pupils, but they were gone before he could’ve gotten a closer look. He could’ve sworn they had been files though.

“I still have all the recordings!” Caine confirmed. “I...listened to them often. After you locked me away I mean, haha! It made me feel like you were still there! With me.” Shrinking more with ever word, he averted his eyes, looking around the circus instead.

Kinger wasn’t sure whether he should be happy to know that this memory was as precious to him as it was to Caine, to the point it had helped him through a difficult time in his...’life’, or to be sad that this, too, was a memory connected to hardship and sadness.

Hm. Tilting his head, he brought his hand up in thought to what now was his face. “Say, Caine…” he started, still pondering while he spoke. “Seeing how powerful you have gotten with your creations…can you record things as well?”

“I...think so,” Caine answered, snapped out of his gloom by the sudden question. “I haven’t tried it yet, but I’m sure I can. I can definitely create something to record things for you, if that’s what you want!”

Another snap, and a CD player had materialized between them. Three cartoonishly bug buttons read the words RECORD, PLAY and STOP in bold letters each. A CD was already inserted, the word EMPTY written on it with what looked like a sharpie.

“That’s an interesting way to get sound on a CD,” Kinger murmured, examining the CD player as if he had never seen one before—and truly, he had never seen one like this before. The programmer-side of his immediately began to come up with theories. Since Caine’s memory was mainly filled with images, perhaps it was easier for him to think in visuals? Perhaps he could record things even without this interesting interpretation of a CD player, but it was easier for him to do with a visual shortcut?

An interesting thought, but not what he had been after.

“Caine,” he asked, setting the CD player down again. “Would you record another version of Daisy Bell with me? Only if you want to, of course.”

Caine blinked, looking left and right as if Kinger could have spoken to someone else. “W-With me?”

“Yes. Your voice has changed quite a lot since the last time I heard you sing. And while we did sing together on that day, we never truly sang together.” A fond smile tugged at his eyes. “I’d love to have another version of us.”

“T-That’s…” At first it seemed like Caine wasn’t going to react at all, before his eyes suddenly began to glisten and his teeth curved downward again. “I...I can’t believe you’d still be interested in...having something of me. Of us. Together. I...That’s-”

Wiping the tears out of his eyes, he replaced them with a smile instead. “Yes! Let’s do it!”

Kinger chuckled softly. “Thank you. You truly have come so far.” Moving the CD player closer to him, he checked if the CD was inserted properly, and...well, there were only three buttons. It couldn’t be that hard.

Before he pressed RECORD though, he reached out again to take Caine’s hand in his, looking deep into his eyes to make sure he was really listening. “Before we do this—no matter what happens tomorrow, whether we find an exit or not, I want you to know that I care about you very, very much. You are very important to me. Don’t forget that, alright?”

Caine’s avatar glitched for a second, but his eyes were shining, so Kinger wasn’t worried. Brushing his free hand over the CD player, he added, “And if you do ever feel lonely, then I want you to listen to this recording, and remember that you are very much loved and wanted, no matter where I am. Can you do that?”

Sniffing, Caine tried to rub his hand over his eyes again, but with much less success than before. The grip on Kinger’s hand tightened, and Kinger tightened his in turn, so that Caine wouldn’t forget that he wasn’t alone.

“Yes,” Caine stammered. “I promise.”

Kinger smiled. “Good.”

The quiet click of a button rang through the circus. Through the wide, empty, colorful tent soon echoed two voices, singing together in harmony the first words they had ever heard the other say.