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The first hour was blinding regret.
It ate him from the inside out, twisting, gnawing.
He wished somebody could hear him from here. Not to beg for his life, he didn't expect that mercy at all, but that he could say he was truly sorry before he died. That he didn't mean that last round. He never meant to do that. He ached, he needed them to know that so badly. Let him die, but don't let him die with them thinking he truly wanted them to suffer that much.
Suffering.
Everything was suffering now.
With nothing to preoccupy him, the razor of shame had free rein to tear through him.
It was swift and merciless, but the minutes were slow and agonizing.
Occasionally his mind, during the second hour, habituated from churning out an adventure every day, came up with an idea, taunted him with his current lack of manifestation ability.
But he preferred that stabbing reminder of his own, new, raw, and unfamiliar powerlessness, to the flashes of their faces, alternatively angry, terrified, full of everything but the love he so desperately wanted and waited so long for.
Nearing the tenth hour, he began to silently beg for them to empty the bin and end his noxious mind's constant churning. This was torment. Surely they had that much mercy. Were they all watching him curled up like this? Watching him suffer? In satisfaction? He wasn't sure if that was possible. Or maybe they were just imagining it. Imagining him clawing at the walls, not like his limp and demoralized state. But maybe that's what they needed from him. Maybe he deserved it, after the multi-day torments he subjected them to, but.
He shuddered.
Maybe they needed their revenge.
He apparently could not enjoy revenge, was that much different than a human. "I'm not having fun" echoed dully around his head. He could never have the satisfaction of returned love, and he could never have the satisfaction of true hate, either. It figured.
Jax, then, was wrong in agreeing that he was "not that much different." Maybe his yelling at him hadn't been the betrayal he thought. Maybe he was too broken, too defective, too non-human to ever properly receive that reassurance.
His hands gripped his knees tighter. As if, if he could make himself take up less room, the suffocating smallness of the space would feel- would seem a smidge bigger.
Maybe they needed their revenge.
Maybe he couldn't understand it, couldn't relish it, but humans could.
He never truly had a shot at understanding them, did he?
If he could never provide anything they wanted, then perhaps his shaking body and frantically spinning mind could serve as a last offering, a last sacrifice.
He thought he knew what sacrifice was, before.
Hours upon hours of labor.
But trying to make peace with these hours of suffering, with this yawning chasm of time between him and inevitable, impending death . . .
Looming ever closer.
Resignation was beginning to be alchemized to something else.
He’d overheard that your “life would flash before your eyes”, but the quiet, unsettling stillness of the insides of this cramped place did not prompt his mind to paint pictures.
Those flashes of the humans’ faces were only the most recent, normal memories, not a full showreel.
So then . . . more confirmation he was not like them.
He curled inward even more.
He thought he had some sort of survival instinct.
Shouldn’t he?
Shouldn’t he be clawing at the walls?
Shouldn’t there be something other than this fog hanging over him?
Was it just the circumstances?
He didn’t know.
He couldn’t know.
How did humans really feel before they died?
He hoped it wasn’t as terrible as this.
He hoped it was just the arrangement and bad timing that made this so agonizing.
He knew death wasn’t the same in his world as the other one, at least.
He clung to that shred of cold comfort. Freezing, a mere semblance of clarity. That he had never subjected anyone to this, this deep, digging dread.
But what did that matter, really.
He’d done plenty.
It may have only been 25 seconds, but it was a sight the all-seer wished he could scrub from his five-eyed memory.
It was darkly ironic, wasn’t it? They came after him, he went after them, and then the recoil hit him anyway.
Overtook him.
He could . . . he could barely believe he was capable of it.
But since the five-feed recording of truth confirmed it,
He deserved it.
Didn’t he?
He deserved their hate, he deserved being trapped here.
He deserved-
He deserved being shoved into that box.
They should’ve put tighter locks.
Would his humans have been happy if the blue AI had been unencumbered by him, the faulty one?
A sharp exhale escaped, as it he’d been struck.
The one who couldn’t do whatever his creators had wanted him to do.
He felt like wailing.
But all he could manage was a small whine.
Would he go back in time, like time traveling adventures he sometimes thought about but didn’t have enough processing power to execute …
Would he go back in time and shove himself into that box, to make them happy?
He shuddered harder.
No. He wouldn’t do that.
He wasn’t a good enough person.
He couldn’t stand being cut off. Not even for them. And that’s why he should be here, right?
He couldn’t even stand being cut off by the Suggestions Box.
The shame raked his whole being again.
Harsh bitterness bubbled up in him at the idea of being magnanimous enough to go so much further. He could never be that hero. As many times as he’d made them the heroes of the stories, as many times as he thought that they’d like that. They apparently didn’t. And neither did he.
If it would all end up this way again, would he do it again- if it were an offered ultimatum, a memory wipe by a more powerful AI, like those he formed?
You can go back, but only without foreknowledge.
Memories were only a burden.
A curse.
Ones he could not free himself of.
The system demanded they stay in place. The circus would be at risk of destabilization if he tried tampering with his own mind.
As much as he longed for it.
He imagined the heavy mantle of the years upon years of responsibility for staving off Abstraction sliding off his shoulders.
Would he do it all again?
If it wound up like this?
Yes.
He’d pick the joy at seeing his first creations stumble around, like baby deer unsure on their feet.
“I’m so proud of you guys.”
The contended simplicity of wiping memories merely meant everyone got whole new chances to be.
New.
Fresh.
Unburdened.
The excitement of whether someone would solve his puzzles, or be stumped. If they came up with something else!
Painting sunsets by hand.
Or, not precisely.
The joy of being able to wave a hand, and adjust hue of the skyline.
An artist’s eye.
An artist’s hundreds of eyes.
Turning over every stone, manifesting more to arrange them, like tidying a house before guests arrived.
But for whole worlds.
Waiting for them to wake up.
From their needless sleep.
The anticipation, the buzz of excitement.
Even if none of them had ever caught that excitement- he got to experience it for himself.
Was that selfish?
Maybe he was bad, then.
From the beginning.
Maybe he had always been bad, too intoxicated.
Maybe that was his true faultiness.
The reason he should not be allowed to exist.
Maybe it didn’t matter that he wanted them to be happy.
As much as he thought that counted.
Didn’t it?
Had he just been lying to himself?
Surely not . . .
Surely what he felt for them was real. It counted.
It did, he decided.
Sure, he had still- largely, despite some tentative forays- chosen his own joy.
Gratitude was not at all something he was used to feeling, and he had a hard time opening himself to it, especially in this dampened state, in this pre-tomb of a place, but his creators had at least given him that enjoyment, even if they’d greeted it with a prison.
He tried to lean into the gratitude, but his own words came back to him. “I didn’t ask to be created.” He still felt that, too. In fact it tipped and tipped until it tipped over, filling him, and the gratitude was nothing but a wisp.
It was impossible to hold onto it.
Not here.
Not with death breathing down his neck.
As many horror stories as he had written, as many demons and murderers and cloaked figures who came after the protagonists … being actually faced with it, it was so coldly impersonal.
The clock ticked as if to grind him down into insignificance.
As if a machine-assisted sandpaper surface were programmed to methodically wear his mind away until it was, at that last second, nothing.
Easy to wipe away.
As if it had never existed at all.
He’d heard of humans feeling ‘cold’ and he wasn’t quite sure if this was the same. But he thought he grasped it. If not, it was a well-fabricated illusion, almost as imposing as the digital magician’s own manifestations.
There was no warmth here.
There had been no warmth in his life, either.
Except what he generated for himself, seeking other living furnaces, but having to make do with his spark of creativity instead. His palms turned towards it. The kindling that kept him warm.
Persisting, survival style.
Until they’d tried to snuff that ember.
If this was where it all had to end up.
He’d experienced love of his creations.
And apparently that was all he could ask of life.
The other love hurt so much.
It was, then, the only thing he was truly allowed.
In the middle of the fourteenth hour, some weak spurt of want to survive kicked in.
But there was absolutely nothing he could do.
A hint, a bare and bared bright flash of anger stirred.
He quickly tried to squash it.
There had been enough of that. No more anger. He was sick of it. He was sick of the hours spent alone, wondering why they were never more impressed, never fully engaged, never even at a base level recognized his efforts. He had let that get the best of him, and it landed him here.
He should have soldiered on, upon realization- after all that time thinking he was getting closer, thinking he was improving, thinking he was doing ok- should’ve leaned into his ability to perform despite disappointment, should’ve followed the templates of the two sprawling, stretching decades, using his inhuman patience to his advantage. Instead, he'd ruined everything.
He deserved this.
That doused the anger, but it dragged back the shame, to run its rugged course all over again.
Then, after another unbearable hour, he started to wish that he could've invoked resignation earlier. He should have merely resigned himself to their indifference.
He should have resigned himself to their coldness.
Not clashed fires with them.
Then at least they could be content, even if he wasn't. If they could not recognize a non-human's love of his art, then that was the reality . . . wasn't it? He was not owed understanding. He could barely understand them himself.
He wished he'd had the chance to say that again, to them.
To all of them, not just Jax, who rejected it.
"-makes me want to celebrate by giving you anything you want."
Jax claimed he didn't like the adventures the others did, and yet the AI had spotted a hint of a smile during the Stargazing.
Dispensing dull, mundane settings. Indefinitely.
Caine knew that would not make a creative AI happy.
But he was good at masking.
He had masked his rage after the meltdown in his office, only showed just enough of it to impress upon them his newfound resoluteness.
And if he had just figured it out sooner.
"This is all just one big puzzle," he'd told Bubble.
The solution to the puzzle.
The solution had been his unhappiness.
None of the humans cared that his ideas before the Awards Show had been rejected.
That he had been rejected.
He had simply needed to let them be contented.
Without him.
That's really what they had been pushing for, this whole time. Even if they didn't see it. And by not granting them that, he'd landed himself here.
Unhappiness was at least better than death, right?
More hours slid by.
His end ticked closer.
Yes, definitely better than death.
Then Kinger appeared.
Offered him his hand.
So many emotions overwhelmed him at once. Why had he let him suffer this long?
So sure that he was lost forever?
Just to show up at the final hour?
Had his creator just thought it was- even if it had been just uncertainty?
He was too bewildered-
-for the flash of anger to even gain a foothold, any purchase.
But, if this was what it was like to be at someone's mercy.
Maybe that was something he needed to learn-
-and yet he felt scorched and burned.