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“By the way, Kinger, I need you for something.”
With a snap of his fingers, Kinger and Caine were transported to his office. The ringmaster quickly positioned himself in his desk chair, hands resting on the wood he sat behind. In front of him, Kinger stood idly, still wobbling side to side. Probably just the motion sickness of their teleportation. Not that Caine exactly understood what that meant. He knew it was like having a virus in your code, but there was no way for him to fully grasp how that felt to humans. But he wanted to know, so badly. He wanted to understand the humans in all their confusing glory. He wanted to think the way they thought, feel the way they felt. It was the only thing stopping him from fulfilling his purpose. Caine was supposed to make the humans happy, he just didn’t know how. They want thrills and wonders? Done. They want mundane tranquility? A little out of his comfort zone, but fine. They want an exit, despite everything he’s done for them? Sure, here’s a whole adventure about it. And they still hated it! How was it that no matter what he did, nothing was ever good enough for them? How could they hate him even when he was trying his best?
His hope was that Kinger had the answers he was searching for. He was Caine’s creator, after all. Well, one of. The rest were long gone. Kinger was all he had left. But he was gone too, in a way. Ever since Queenie abstracted, he’d been… different. Before, they would talk and plan adventures together. All of them did. They’d say how he was doing a good job, and he should be proud of himself. Those days were far behind him. And he wanted to know why.
“Kinger, my precious pole-vaulter,” Caine began with a spin of his chair, the room of shelved glass orbs whizzing around him. “I’d like to discuss my adventures with you. More specifically, why you humans aren’t enjoying them. I’d feared that perhaps I’d lost my knack for creating them after going so long without making anything while you were the only one here, because I was… out of practice. But I thought I fixed that when more humans started arriving and having fun. Now it seems no one’s liking my adventures again, but it can’t be my fault this time. I’m doing everything I can, but it’s not working. Tell me, what do I-”
Caine turned toward Kinger, who just stared blankly at him.
“Will there be bugs on this adventure? I’ll have to bring my net!”
After an impatient groan, Caine snapped the lights off. All that remained was the multicoloured glow of his adventures hung up like a child’s drawings on the fridge. He approached the wall, looking into one of the globes. The humans were kidnapped by an immortal alien in his time machine that looked like a police box to save a different alien species from yet another type of alien on another planet. He’d loved making that one. The other-worldly setting allowed him plenty of room for creativity. Though, as he watched them eagerly from his office, they didn’t pay attention to the worldbuilding, or the foreshadowing, or any of the details he worked so hard to include. They were all just focused on how miserable they were. There was seemingly no way to make them not miserable.
“Caine…?”
Kinger’s voice was different now. Instead of the stark high and low inflections, it was more consistent, controlled. Like a regular human’s voice rather than an insane one’s.
Taking one last glance at his adventure, Caine turned to face his creator. “Ah, Kinger. Good to have you back.”
“It’s nice to see you too.” Though he had no mouth, his eyes showed his smile. “I’ve missed being able to talk like this.”
“I, uh…” He tried not to let himself dwell on the fact that Kinger had missed him. Now wasn’t the time to get all soppy.
The chess piece shuffled forward. “Was there… something you wanted to talk about?”
“Ah, yes,” Caine adjusted his bowtie to get his mind back on track. “I wanted to ask you about the adventures! You see, the humans aren’t exactly appreciating them the same way you and the old humans used to. Remember how it used to be? You all used to love everything I made!”
As he spoke, Kinger listened while walking around the sides of the room, looking into the globes. Most likely to jog his memory. He’d been there for every single one of these adventures, but with every one he seemed to be less present.
“Even at the simplest, most basic conjurations, I would receive applause and praise and congratulations. But now all I get is complaints! Nothing’s good enough for these pesky humans. The only reason I still bother trying to satisfy them is because it’s what I’m meant to do. It’s what you told me to do. Making them happy is supposed to be what makes me happy, so why does it only make me- I don’t know what to call it.”
Caine started to glitch, his head twitching sharply. He liked to believe that was his equivalent of heavy breathing. “I’m not human, I’m not supposed to feel things. But if this isn’t a feeling I don’t know what it is. It’s not a nice feeling. I just wish I could reach inside myself and claw it out!”
He turned back to look at Kinger, though not all that effective as his vision radius began to close in. He’d heard that when humans began to cry, the water in their eyes began to make it hard for them to see.
Caine flew towards Kinger, falling to his knees. “Tell me how to make it stop! Tell me what I’m doing wrong! Tell me what I’m supposed to do!”
The glitches became more severe, so much so that his adventures began to fall off their shelves, shattering on the ground. He clutched his arms, digging what should be his nails into what should be his skin. But he didn’t have either. He didn’t have skin or bones or blood or a heart.
A white gloved hand reached for his shoulder.
Everything froze.
Caine looked up and locked eyes with his creator. Kinger slowly made his way to the ground, now face to face with his creation. His failed project. His faulty work. The other hand reached for his other shoulder, giving both a firm squeeze.
“Caine, you are so much more than I could’ve ever imagined you’d be.” Kinger’s face, though lacking in features, displayed a look of intensity unmatched by any he’d ever seen. “I set out to make a creative ai, and not only are you creative but you’re caring. As much as you can be. You may not fully grasp the way us humans work but you try anyway. You want to make us happy, which is something I never programmed you to do. You are filled with more compassion than a lot of people I’ve met.”
As his body began to jitter once again—this time smaller, more contained—Caine anticipated the coming departure of Kinger’s hands on his shoulders. Much to his surprise, they stayed put, withstanding his glitches.
“You have faults and weaknesses, but so does everyone else. Even the humans here, as well as the ones on Earth.” Kinger’s eyes smiled. “You may not have had a life out there, but you have a life here. That life still matters, regardless of whether it’s objectively real. You’re the one experiencing it, so it’s real to you.”
A particularly intense blip knocked Caine onto his knees. Kinger pulled him close to stop him from hitting the ground, even though it wouldn’t have hurt him. His hand gently caressed Caine’s arm, slowly soothing his glitches until they were gone.
He reached up for his top hat and clutched it to his chest. “Do you… really think I’m- uh, real?”
“You always have been. Ever since you were a little red dot on my computer screen.” He dug his finger into Caine’s waist, forcing out his child-like giggles. Not because he was ticklish, but because of a little weak spot in his code. It didn’t do anything other than cause a reaction when touched, and Kinger always used to use that to his advantage.
Once they went away, Caine wrapped his arms around Kinger. The two just sat there for a while, surrounded by the weight of their mistakes that didn’t feel so heavy anymore.
“I wouldn’t change a thing about you, son.” His voice was soft, barely above a whisper. “I love the person you’ve become.”
“Thanks… Dad.”