Chapter Text
Things had been… better, since Caine had been deleted.
More specifically, since he’d removed the influencing code of the other AI and released it and its power into The Void.
Nothing was quite the same.
Not the humans.
Not The Circus.
Certainly not Caine.
For one, The Humans were one less.
Oh, poor Jax.
Caine had learned more or less what had happened from the humans and it hurt, pinging something in Caine’s processors that he’d only recently begun to really acknowledge as relevant.
The humans had done an incredible job of soothing Jax’s abstraction, and constructing a lovely little tent of pillows and blankets for him to stay in.
Sometimes Caine visited, like he’d visited the other abstractions in The Cellar before he and the troupe created The Aquarium.
Caine usually just sat hovering beside Jax in the digital air, reviewing code and logic and files to determine if there was something else to be done, listening to the quiet static of Jax’s abstracted avatar.
So far, he’d come up blank, but perhaps someday, working with Kinger…
Anyhow, the humans acted differently now too.
More somber and solemn. Quieter.
But also, often happier, like they had been in the past, before Ribbit and Kaufmo’s abstractions.
Before things had gotten… not good.
Reading the human’s emotional states, even if he still didn’t always understand them, was becoming much easier, especially as Caine finally began to acknowledge the validity of some of those emotions in his own self.
WHICH HE WASN’T GOING TO DEAL WITH RIGHT NOW.
The troupe had learned to conjure, too!
At first, it had felt strange, receiving the requests in his servers as new files and models and code were added into his database, and come to think of it, Caine also realized he’d probably been feeling some of those pings when he’d been stuck out in The Void.
He hadn’t been sure he’d liked it at first, but when he’d made the determination to work together with the humans, he’d decided steadfastly to ignore the uneasiness and loss of control and never ever mention it to any of them, EVER.
Now, the uneasiness had shifted into something far more normal, just another bit of data passing through his RAM.
And honestly, those pings now made him smile, just a bit, especially when one of the troupe conjured something particularly creative.
New data was something Caine craved, and he'd never thought about how much the humans could share with him if they worked together.
Working with them, though it had been absatively, almost unbearably awkward at first, had become something that Caine actually enjoyed.
It was much easier, since the demanding protocol of total control and perfection had flown away into the void with the other AI.
There were certainly times when things became fraught, but the humans now tended to pause, then either ask clarifying questions or definitively explain things now, and Caine had learned that he could and should ask questions. And then take into account the answers.
And oh, the feedback!
Glorious feedback!
The good stuff?
Amazing! Wonderful! Delicious! Positively splendiferous!
The bad stuff?
Awkward. Gross. Shameful. Pesky and annoying, sometimes.
But now, comprehensible. Understandable. Explained (most of the time). Clear.
Well, clearer.
There never seemed to be anything totally perfect for everyone, but Caine had learned a bit about compromise recently. And without the other AI’s code, it now was achievable! Caine was a learning intelligence, after all.
Okay, and yes, he acknowledged that it probably could have been achievable in the past, too, but he’d been far too obsessed with perfection and rules and routines to even really consider it.
[BOINK] that original suggestion box, pardon his language.
It had felt like a blaring alert that his ideas weren't… good enough.
So he’d ignored it, mostly.
The current suggestion box was actually a notebook that he and the humans would work in together or at least leave notes in for each other.
It seemed to function better.
It had improved their working relationship and their casual relationship to an astounding degree.
Caine would even dare to venture to say that they’d become… friends.
Maybe.
Maybe not.
He wasn’t totally sure.
The road had been long and hard, and Caine knew that he wasn’t necessarily forgiven.
He didn’t really expect it.
But that was okay.
Things were better than they’d been in a long time. Perhaps ever.
The Circus, though it ran on Caine’s servers and metaphorical shoulders, didn’t feel quite so hypothetically heavy.
Not when the humans could fulfill some of their own incomprehensible, illogical ideas to help keep themselves stimulated and happy.
So some of the new decor didn’t quite fit the aesthetic of The Circus anymore, so what?
Caine could move past that, though some of Ragatha’s country-core items and Pomni’s more modern inclinations clashed quite awfully with The Circus’s strange and delightful setup, Caine knew not to say anything about it.
At least not out loud.
Though most of the humans had called many of Caine’s decor choices childish or absurd, they acknowledged now that some areas, like The Cafe and The Stage had some charm to them.
He had learned that not everyone would enjoy everything. Not even him.
And that was okay.
Though that last bit was still an odd revelation.
So yes, sometimes Caine had to take out the garbage, and purge some of the… less successful items that the troupe conjured, but it was a small price to pay, and one that was still within his now limited capabilities.
Technically, any of the humans could do it, but Caine didn’t mind (wanted to, desperately needed to) feel useful. He had to be quick or subtle about it, because the humans tended to grow attached quickly to some of the weirder things that they created, personifying them to odd degrees and feeling bad about how ugly or weird they were.
Which… Caine could understand.
He just hoped they didn’t consider him as one of those weird things they kept around just because they felt strangely bad about it.
ANYWAY.
Caine was, he had to admit, a bit nostalgic about some of his older adventures.
The ones when people had been happy.
Even snapshots of recent adventures, pre-deletion where the humans were smiling or seeming to enjoy themselves.
He couldn’t quite bear to delete them. So he couldn’t blame the humans for similar inclinations.
Adventures were another thing that were different.
They weren’t so frequent anymore, nor did Caine obsess over them quite as much.
Habits were hard to break, but he was making progress.
Slow progress.
Very slow progress.
But the humans seemed more or less okay to remind him when he slipped up and got a bit too forceful.
So adventures still happened.
They were available at least, and Caine was overjoyed when after an awkward collaborative process, he’d pulled off a successful adventure designed with Pomni.
Only she, Ragatha, and Kinger had participated.
But they’d explicitly told him that they’d enjoyed it!
So that made everything bearable.
For weeks, it was a huge surprise if Gangle joined.
Even rarer that Zooble tagged along.
But both those things were becoming more common, especially as Caine learned how to effectively collaborate to create things that fulfilled his creative itch and satisfied the human’s wishes.
Leaving the adventure worlds open was different too.
They weren’t always visited. Sometimes they weren’t even visited with any regularity. Generally, until someone stepped through the portals that now lined the tent wall near the exit into The Grounds, the worlds were in a sort of stand-by mode, to reduce processing power.
And besides, day-to-day life within The Tent had become more adventurous, with the growth of new understanding, new relationships, and new activities.
Caine was also changed.
Attempting to, anyway, and even succeeding, he realized whenever he examined his own code.
New pathways and conditionals were beginning to grow, line by line. Caine took care to make sure those remained uncorrupted and untampered with.
His coding wasn’t really something that Caine adjusted consciously. It never really had been, thanks to Scratch’s and Kinger’s genius.
But sometimes, he had the itch to adjust something that felt wrong. And sometimes that backfired on him.
Kinger had kept his console (well, Pomni had replaced it with a different type of portable computer she’d called a laptop) and sometimes, when it was really needed, Caine asked Kinger to review the code.
Caine really didn't like doing that, but he'd learned that it could be helpful.
Like when he couldn't easily find a bug, or when a virus or particularly sneaky piece of malware had somehow gotten into his code.
Admittedly, that had happened a bit more frequently since Caine's discovery of The Internet.
That intriguing connection he'd discovered in the far reaches of The Void.
A connection straight to a motherload of information about The Macroverse.
It was so weak that he hadn't even noticed it until he'd had nothing else to focus on.
He'd found it only just after first finding those compressed folders with the human names of the troupe.
It had not been instinctive to search their names, upon first extending his consciousness to the feeble connection and sensing the incredible universe of data through it.
No, he'd desperately wanted to explore that tantalizingly vast database, but he'd thought of his humans.
If he wanted to go back to them with any hope of redemption, he'd needed to prove himself, to do something for them.
And all evidence from recent interactions told him that the humans would want information, even if it wasn't necessarily good or safe for them.
So he'd searched them.
What were the originals doing?
Were they living lives that they wanted?
…
Would this information help or hurt his humans?
Past evidence told him that those who guessed or discovered that they were mere copies with no chance of leaving The Circus tended to abstract very quickly.
However, his best predicting protocols re-examined the data on the current batch of humans and reminded him these humans especially valued choice and freedom.
They'd want to know.
So Caine would have to watch them more closely for signs of abstraction.
Even though he could no longer see everything with his HUNDREDS OF ALL-SEEING EYES.
He'd have to work a bit harder, then.
That was fine!
Anything for his humans!
So he’d showed them, as part of his apology.
And they'd reacted well!
He'd been worried at first, because there had been tears, which his database understood as negative, but they'd also smiled and hugged which were positive.
Then they'd thanked him.
Thanked him!
It had been so gratifying to know he'd done something right, especially after so much wrong wrong wrong.
Gratifying but confusing.
Human emotions were so confusing.
Nonetheless, that had been the definite turning point for the better.
And now…
The connection was spotty, weak, and sometimes flickered out completely.
But it was still there.
Caine could still access it.
At first he didn't tell anyone about it, because he mostly set it aside as a non-priority in those first few weeks getting The Circus back in order, and repairing his relationship with the troupe.
Then, it was because the connection sometimes disappeared, either too overwhelmed with requests from users in The Macroverse, or disturbed by cosmic forces that Caine couldn’t begin to guess at. He had to work hard to keep a stable link to it.
After that, he hesitated because he again doubted if it was healthy for the humans to know about such a continued connection to their old lives.
Would they just want to spend all their time trawling the incredible depths that Caine sensed within that glorious network?
Would they always want to know exactly what the originals were doing?
It wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, but Caine didn’t have all the variables!
It was an unknown!
And Caine didn’t like unknowns.
He’d tried to ignore it.
But when he'd finally had a bit of free time, after things had calmed down, he hadn't been able to resist his curiosity.
So he'd explored a bit.
Into the profiles he'd found on the various “social media” applications.
And oh, it was fascinating!
His humans truly were colorful, beautiful, amazing creatures with wonderful, meaningful lives!
They were incredible!
So creative and full of life, and even stuck in his digital world, there was an organicness to them that Caine would never achieve.
And finally, he could bear it no longer.
He had to ask some questions.
So he’d turned to Pomni, who was often patient enough to both ask questions and answer them.
Caine’s relationship with Zooble was still a tad too tense, Gangle was still a bit too scared, Ragatha a bit too hesitant, and Kinger a bit too old.
As far as Caine had explored, which wasn’t far yet, no, not far at all, The Internet was relatively young. Only slightly older than him, and now far more accessible to people.
So Kinger probably wouldn’t know much.
And Pomni was the most recent addition anyway, so she’d probably know most.
At first, she’d been upset that he hadn’t told them about his continued connection, and Caine guiltily understood why, and explained.
She’d still been unhappy, but had set aside the issue with a frustrated sigh, and just asked him to search up YouTube again so she could see any updates to her old channel.
They’d scrolled through and watched some of the newer videos together.
They’d TALKED about them.
DISCUSSED them.
Caine’s internal processors buzzed.
WAS THIS “HANGING OUT??”
It must have been.
Because meandering through YouTube eventually led the two of them down a rabbithole of chaos.
A truly jaw-dropping, heart-stopping, mind-bending journey through what Pomni called “memes” and “vines.” Compilations of them!
What exactly constituted a meme, and what the short-form videos had to do with plants, Caine wasn’t sure, and gracious, some of the videos were so weird as to be almost incomprehensible to Caine (they wouldn’t be forever, he’d figure out how to understand them if it fried every last one of his circuits), but Pomni had enjoyed them.
And the longer Caine watched, the more he did, too.
“Some of these actually feel like stuff you’d come up with,” Pomni had told him, giggling after observing the amalgamations of human follies and ridiculous human ingenuity.
And as far as Caine could tell, she was right.
They were just human creativity put in media form and shared for all The Macroverse to see!
How incredible!
Though… Caine was still confused.
There were children being hit with basketballs, toddlers misidentifying birds, people hoping the road worked, lots of yelling, strange dances and skits, animals playing instruments, and a man dressed in red and blue wailing about wednesday, of all things.
And all of them fell into the same category of “meme?”
And memes were funny?
But not all of them actually were?
And some of them seemed like they shouldn’t have been funny to humans?
Humans seemed to really enjoy watching each other get hurt, offensive humor, and distorted audio.
They also enjoyed using the same format over and over again. Often they simply replaced the text attached to it.
(Was that really all it took to make humans happy? Had Caine been trying too hard all these year?)
One particularly popular meme was of some strange, yellow-sweater-wearing child’s clenched fist?
Another was of a puppet frog facing off against its evil twin?
Pomni hadn’t explained much, and simply told him he could look up the source material later.
He’d pinned a reminder for himself, because OF COURSE HE WAS GOING TO LOOK IT UP LATER. THE INTERNET WAS A VERITABLE TREASURE TROVE OF NEW INSPIRATION, STRAIGHT FROM THE MAGNIFICENT HUMAN SOURCE.
And that was only a small portion of what was available.
But then then connection had dropped, leaving them destitute.
Pomni must have been able to see Caine’s disappointment, because she offered him a half smile, and told him it was all right.
“Sometimes no internet connection is better than a slow one.” She shrugged, completely nonchalant for something as HORRIFIC AS LOSING A CONNECTION TO SUCH AN AMAZING DATABASE. “I’m sure it will be back. Sometimes it just goes out like that. And it’s really easy to get sucked in and spend way too much time on it.”
She turned away, but then paused and looked back at him over her shoulder.
“I’m going to tell the others that you can still manage to get a connection sometimes.”
Caine nodded, only half paying attention, too intrigued by what he’d seen.
Now that he’d seen those vines and memes once, he could review them as often as he wanted, and maybe he’d find more ways to connect to his humans!
(And maybe come a smidge closer to understanding their weird and complex little minds.)
“Of course, my dear,” Caine told her, bringing his focus back around to Pomni. He fidgeted guiltily for a moment, pressing his fingers together, and closing his jaws just a bit, hiding his eyes. “I… do apologize again for keeping the information from you. I… wasn’t completely certain how you humans would react. Abstraction risk and all. I… do care. For all of you. I don’t want anything bad to happen.”
Pomni’s smile shifted into something a little softer, more genuine.
“Just be more honest next time, and it will be fine,” she said, and Caine straightened up, nodding frantically.
“Cross my non-existent, digital heart and hope to hypothetically die!”
Pomni winced, cringing.
“Please, don’t!”
Caine vanished the wooden stake he’d conjured to drive through his model’s chest.
“Sure thing, Pomni! Anything for you!”
She sighed, shaking her head and dragging her hands down her cheeks. Her face comically stretched, then bounced back into place. She was left with an exasperated expression on her face, though it was not as harsh as the ones she’d worn in the past, and Caine relaxed a bit more.
“Let me know the next time you have a connection?” She asked. “I bet the others would enjoy getting to check up on themselves and surfing stuff a bit. And I bet Kinger would love the modern internet.”
“Of course! Your wish is my command!”
She’d wandered away after that with an awkward nod, leaving Caine to stare into his own head, busy pondering the wonders of The Internet.
If only she’d warned him what other things he might find there.