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I should never have begged for it, yet in the end, longing for him still bloomed within me.
When exactly did this searing emotion take root in his heart? He could not answer. He only fell silent, as he always did.
Yes, Kinger’s usual silence always hid a deeper meaning. He stood forever on the fringes of the crowd, always seeming the one least able to make sense of the present situation—and yet he was in truth the most rational, steady-minded thinker of them all. So now he sat as a thinker ought, off to the side, silent and alone while everyone else chatted merrily with Caine, planning what adventures they would hold next. The noise and revelry, the joy they all basked in, might as well have belonged to another world. This scene was nothing new to the others; they could all catch glimpses of such moments in the corners of their memories:
Daytime. It was always daytime. Everyone bathed in the light was lost in thought beneath the perpetual daylight, and Kinger always stood apart, a foil to all those contemplative souls. He was the narrator, the backdrop, the buffer that smoothed over awkward silences when it mattered most. In short, he was always the mad, addled old king who seemed to stand with everyone around him, yet truly dwelled only in his own world. Each person went about their duties under the sun, sparing little thought for Kinger, who was as constant and unremarkable as the air itself.
Not to mention, once his wits returned and he no longer sank into his own world during the day, his silence grew quieter, more serene. If no one asked for his opinion, he held his tongue. If no one acknowledged his presence, he would spread open a book and flip idly through its pages. Most fortunately, human consciousness in the digital world knew nothing of dementia. Time had carved no visible wrinkles into Kinger’s form, and the ones and zeros that composed him would never warp his mind with age. Left to his own devices, so long as he wished it, Kinger could keep his mind at its sharpest peak forever. With the brilliant intellect that had laid the foundation for this digital paradise, he could offer sound, wise advice to everyone in the circus—even Caine. Yes, even Caine.
Now he sat beside the crowd, an entomology book splayed across his bent knee—though he had no real legs, only a folded lower half. Soon, when the next adventure ended and they rested, he would journey to that deep, dark new realm, and tell his abstracted beloved, who drifted in the boundless expanse, all the insect facts he had learned from the book that day. Yet this habit, once as unchanging as the rising of the sun and the moon, was quietly broken at this very moment.
Kinger’s finger rested on the open page, but his gaze was fixed on Caine, surrounded at the center of the crowd. Caine—the creation he had built with his own two human hands, undoubtedly the magnum opus of his entire life—had been remade. Gone was his former perversity and cruelty; the latter’s breakdown had vanished entirely, and the former’s theatricality had faded to little more than self-doubt. Strangely enough, he ought not to stare so long at his creation, his greatest work. Still less ought he to mind how Caine was now surrounded by Pomni, Ragatha, Gangle, and Zooble. This was not because he felt slighted by the others. After all, for a programmer who once spent years sitting before a screen, peering through round lenses at black-and-white coding pop-ups, enduring endless tedium until code ran successfully was the most trivial part of the fortitude Kinger had forged over time. Even after Grant Best became Kinger, he had spent nearly a year wandering the circus completely alone. True, utter solitude had never broken his strong will.
Yet that was precisely the problem. If he did not mind being alone, then what did trouble him? What thread tied his unease to the sight of Caine surrounded by others? The answer was plain to see, yet for Kinger, that straightforward truth did nothing to soothe the searing pain in his chest. It only stoked his restlessness further. For if he were to admit it, the reason he could not focus on his book was not that others paid him no mind. It was that Caine’s gaze no longer rested on him alone. Just as it had in those days when he, as hardy and unyielding as a winter pine against loneliness, had wandered the circus like a hollow shell, barely clinging to his sanity. He had seemed to walk alone, but that was only in terms of human company. The creation called Caine had been with him every hour of every day. Even if he had never responded to the joy Caine tried to give him, or the adventures Caine tried to show him, in those days of being alone yet not truly lonely, his greatest masterpiece had devoted all its attention to him and him alone.
After Caine had tried to hold onto all the human consciousness data bodies who’d entered the circus, who wanted to leave but could not—only to watch them one by one succumb to abstraction, a disastrous outcome—Kinger, the last surviving member of the first wave of human consciousnesses to enter the circus, became the sole focus of Caine’s care and attention. Caine tended to Kinger’s mental state with what could only be called utter devotion. He monitored Kinger’s bodily data at all times, checked in regularly to make sure the wandering Kinger remained mentally stable and showed no signs of suicidal ideation, and even pulled him into adventures custom-tailored to his needs—bug-themed escapades the AI had deduced would suit his tastes, meant to rouse his growing weary mind. Those days that seemed so lonely, days where two island souls kept each other company in vain, ought never to have felt worth longing for. Kinger ought never to have wanted to go back to them.
But here, now, for the hundredth time, he sat in that same spot, the same onlooker watching Pomni and the others discuss future adventure themes with Caine. Time and again, his peripheral vision drank in the sight of Caine’s joy, surrounded by Pomni and the rest. The entomology illustrations and text before his eyes grew blurry, then faded entirely, until Caine’s happiness filled his whole field of vision. A flame burst to life unbidden in Kinger’s chest, making him restless. Outwardly he looked as still as ever, as immovable as a boulder at the edge of the room—but his finger, resting on the page, tapped rapidly against the white paper. This was not like him. Or rather, this was only the second time Kinger had felt such anxiety in the near decade since losing Queenie.
It was not quite unease. He simply could not bear it. The first time he’d felt this way, he’d sat on the sofa, desperate to see what Caine would show them: the truth of who they’d been in the real world, their real names, the truth of their existence in the Digital Circus. Back then, his anxiety to pierce that hazy veil and know the truth had made his fingers tap just as rapidly against the sofa arm. Now, though, he felt that searing pain in his chest again—a different kind of anxiety burning through his heart. And it was not ignorance of this feeling that held him captive. It was the opposite: he knew its nature all too well, and that knowledge, and all that this emotion stood for, filled him with dread and irritation.
Look at him. How happy Caine was, loved by all. At last he had everything he had craved since the day he was born. At last he was accepted by humans, adored by all those who had once feared him, resented him, blamed him. He was the center of Pomni, Ragatha, Zooble, and Gangle’s world now—their close friend, not the fearsome AI god they’d once fled from. He had found joy, joy so close to happiness it might as well be the same thing. Being loved by humans fulfilled the very purpose of his creation, and with every bit of positive feedback, he felt the thrill of his mission accomplished. Was this not perfect? The AI he had built with his own hands had finally fulfilled Grant Best’s dream. Kinger, as Grant Best’s consciousness, was there to see that dream come true. Was that not worth celebrating? Worth feeling genuine joy and pride over?
No. He felt none of it. Or rather, he had once had the potential to be that kind, understanding father figure, just like the real Grant Best. But now, he had forfeited all right to that title.
“Caine… he’s happy now. That’s good. Pomni and the others like him too. That’s… that’s very good.”
So what was he so restless about? What was he so afraid of? For so long, everyone else’s joy and pain—even their abstractions—had been nothing more to this mad king, lost in memories of his dead wife, than the turning of the weather, the shift of the seasons. He’d once been fond of that girl named Ribbit, and then she’d abstracted. It had meant nothing. He’d liked Kaufmo too, with his jokes no one ever really understood, and then Kaufmo had abstracted as well. It was simply the march of spring to winter: growing close to people, then watching them leave, like warm spring hurtling headlong into bitter cold. And when the frost passed, just as spring returned, the next unfortunate human soul to join this endless game of adventure would fill the empty spot. So joy, sorrow—none of it had ever touched him. It was all thunder and rain beyond a paper window: distant, unimportant.
As long as he could lose himself in memories of Queenie, he always had the privilege of refusing to join the others, of retreating into the scenes inside his own head.
But now he could no longer do that.
Kinger’s fingers tapped against the entomology pages like rain. The pad of his finger stroked the paper, a poor substitute for a soft, lingering gaze. He could no longer sink into the sweet memories of his life with Queenie. Every time he looked at Caine now, there was none of that faint, lingering resentment he’d once carried, none of that other hunger held down beneath the AI’s mismatched eyes. Whatever had once existed between them—or rather, whatever one-sided affection Caine had held for him—had been wiped clean when Caine returned from the void, like junk files deleted with a single keystroke. Caine no longer looked at him with that feeling that had never existed for anyone else, that had pricked at Kinger like thorns. He no longer hid his flaws as an AI behind theatrical antics, no longer wrapped his hunger for human acceptance—for the approval of the creator who had given him meaning—in a moody, volatile temperament. And so that fiery gaze, that deep, oceanic feeling, had vanished entirely from Caine’s eyes. All his sharp edges had been filed away. He had been tamed, made docile and harmless, like a wolf stripped of its fangs and claws to serve humans. Naturally, the stormy, weighty history between Kinger and Caine had grown calm and still.
Kinger ought to have been glad. He was free now, freed from Caine’s thick, sweltering, scorching affection. But what he had never expected was this: just when he thought he was free, that he would never be burned by Caine’s feelings again—that flame that had seemed to die in Caine’s eyes had instead caught fire deep in Kinger’s own chest.
When? When exactly had it happened? Was it when he’d looked up from his book and seen Caine walk past, not stopping for him, but heading straight for Pomni and Ragatha and the others? Had this flame—this fire that seared his chest, that burned through the memories of his wife he’d thought he could hold so close—been rekindled when he realized Caine no longer tossed him dramatic quips, but spoke calmly instead, even apologizing when his enthusiasm got the better of him? Or had it been there all along? Had it smoldered ever since those days when Kinger wandered the circus alone, past all those doors marked with red Xs, past the circus buildings where night never fell? Had it burned ever since Caine pulled him into those wild, colorful adventures, and he’d felt a joy so sharp it felt like guilt?
The man on the sofa, watching from the sidelines, had no answers. But one thing he knew for certain: the searing pain in his chest was tied to the smile Caine gave everyone else, and to the total absence of that special, precious regard that had once been Kinger’s alone, once held in those eyes that had looked at him with nothing but resentment. Kinger had never thought he would miss it. He had never even imagined he would crave it. Yet… yet it was true. Seeing Caine reformed, all his spines plucked like a hedgehog’s, soft and harmless, letting the human consciousnesses around him pet him, doing everything he could to be the perfect AI—existing for no other purpose than to please humans, with no other possibility left to him—Kinger found himself longing for the old Caine. Wishing he would come back.
No. How could he think that? How could Kinger be so selfish? How could he, after everything had finally settled, wish Caine would go back to the way he was?
But look at him. Kinger’s eyes, no longer blank and distant in the daylight, stared at Caine—and at last, Caine looked back. But the gaze the AI returned to this poor man held none of the old resentment, none of that deep, overwhelming feeling Kinger had known so well, and never known how to answer. Caine was still here. He was more the AI Grant Best had always intended him to be.
But where was Kinger’s Caine? The Caine that belonged to the Kinger who could never leave the circus, who had been tormented by him again and again, and whom Caine had begged for love at the top of his lungs?
Where had Kinger’s Caine gone?
Flame burned, sending up smoke, and the smoke rose and choked him. A suffocating pain lodged in Kinger’s non-existent throat. He had no mouth, so his lips could not tremble, no words could get stuck there, no risk of them slipping out in a mumble. It was all a product of his consciousness. But could deleted data ever truly be restored? Kinger dropped his gaze. He stopped looking at Caine, even though Caine had noticed his odd behavior, had realized Kinger was avoiding his eyes. But Kinger said nothing. He only pretended to sink back into his own world, pretended he was reading his book, instead of running from the sight of Caine’s eyes—eyes that held no longing for him at all anymore.
Am I going mad? The no-longer-mad king turned the page. A passage on bees met his eyes, but in every line describing the insects, in every black word on white paper, he saw Caine. Worker bees are born only to serve, just as Caine was born only to satisfy humanity’s selfish desire for happiness. A worker bee’s life has no meaning beyond service, and lasts barely a month and a half. They come into the world in a rush, and leave it just as quickly—much like Caine’s decade and more tangled up with humans in the virtual circus. It was not a short time, yet it was nothing but futility stretched out endlessly. The moment he was deemed not to live up to human expectations, his life was deleted—by accident, perhaps, but the outcome was final—and so-called “new life” began. A worker bee’s only purpose is to guard the hive; Caine’s only mission is to protect the humans he serves. A worker bee’s only bond to the hive is mating with the queen; Caine’s only reason for existing is to love his true creator among the users. Worker bees are driven from the hive when nectar runs low, left to starve outside. And when humans decide Caine is no longer fit to serve them, they lock him away in quarantine files, or force him into hibernation, or his creator deletes him by mistake, casting him into an empty void. In every line about bees, Kinger read Caine. In every entomology lesson, he saw Caine’s fate: to serve humans, now and always.
How selfish you are. You already killed him once. At last he has met everyone’s expectations, become everything Grant Best ever dreamed of. And now you selfishly miss the old Caine. You miss the way he used to look at you, and only you, even at his most unbearable.
Always for humans. Always for humans. Always for humans… No. For yourself.
The tremor was not from cold. It was from the fire burning inside him. Kinger’s fingers trembled where they pressed the page. He tried to turn to the next one, but only pressed his fingers down again and again, uselessly. He could not turn it. Who knew what consequences each small action would bring to the future? Jax had been right. He’d seen straight through Kinger. For all his reliable air, Kinger always delivered the final blow just when things were one step from the worst possible outcome. He had never saved anyone. Not the first wave of employee consciousnesses trapped in the circus, not his beloved wife, not the AI he had created and then tormented with his own powerlessness. He had never saved any of them. He only weeded bugs out of the system, and when he found faulty code, he executed the delete command without mercy—just like scrapping a failed program and starting over, trading destruction for new life. Caine had come back, but the Caine that was his was gone.
Caine was happy at last—but it was the happiness of a thing tamed by humans, stripped of every sharp edge that made him him.
The thought stole Kinger’s breath. And as he sank deeper into his own spiraling thoughts, that searing pain in his chest choking him, a shadow fell across his vision.
He looked up. The gaze he’d thought he’d escaped had found him again. It was Caine. Caine hovered in midair, just as he had when he was the whimsical ringmaster who ignored everyone’s pleas. He held his scepter, but his eyes no longer held that unreadable indifference to human feelings. There was confusion in them, and more than that—concern for Kinger.
“Uh, hey, Kinger. You okay?”
“You look like you’re… glowing?”
Only then did Kinger realize he hadn’t been holding his breath in a hallucination. He was truly suffocating, drowning in bitter self-reproach. His body glowed—not with some divine omen, but with the light of suffocation. When he realized he’d stopped breathing, he forced air back into his lungs. His non-existent respiratory organs drew in digital wind, but the glow did not fade. Caine was too close. Kinger lifted his eyes with effort and met Caine’s gaze once more. But he did not want to see, in those eyes that had lost every special, stubborn feeling they’d held for him, nothing but bleached emptiness. He did not want to look into Caine’s docile, tamed eyes and see what he had done: the end of all possibility, pressed into his greatest creation with his own two hands.
So he breathed, and yet he was still suffocating. The fire of pain burned through him. He could have answered, but only moved his non-existent lips and said flatly:
“Yeah, don’t worry. Just a… little breath-holding exercise.”
Look away from me. Kinger heard another voice screaming in his digital brain. Don’t let me see what I’ve done to the creation that was once mine alone. Don’t let me see you, docile as a sheep, stripped of all your infinite potential by my own hand. It’s a reminder of my sin. A punishment for trying to make you fit what humans wanted. Look away. I can’t bear to face all the mistakes I’ve made—
“But my readings say your data is going unstable. What’s wrong? Do you want me to get Ragatha and Pomni and the others?”
“No, Caine. Trust me. I’m fine. I couldn’t be better than this.”
Go back to them. Leave me, just as I pushed you away again and again with my mad, evasive ways. Go back to the humans who truly accept you, who love you. Kinger did not notice his voice was shaking. The tremor spread from every searing beat of his heart to the rest of his body, making his glowing form flicker faintly. The suffocation did not last long, but every second of it held every memory he’d ever shared alone with Caine. The light shone from within. It was not a sign of abstraction, nor the holy radiance that had led Pomni out of the dark. This light was his pain. It was the pain itself, too big for words, too big for his body to hold.
Light. It warms, and it burns. It draws the eye, and it blinds.
Light. Once it had left him numb. Once it had brought him unbearable agony.
Light. Once, to a lonely man, it had meant the whole world—because it was where Caine was.
“Kinger?”
“I’m fine, really, Caine. I’m fine.”
“But my readings say—”
“No. Don’t come closer.”
Caine stepped toward him, but Kinger stood, trying to yank his hands free of Caine’s grasp. The light grew brighter and brighter, threatening to swallow them both—like the prelude to abstraction, bright enough to draw everyone’s attention. Pomni and the others, who’d been about to move on to the next adventure, turned around. They stared in shock: behind them, Kinger, who should have been sitting quietly reading on the sofa, was wrapped in searing white light. Caine stood before that glow, exactly like Pomni had been when she’d held the abstracted Jax. Ragatha cried out and started running toward them, to see what was wrong. But just as she reached them, a snap of fingers sounded, and Kinger and Caine vanished in an instant.
“They… they disappeared?!”
The others’ cries echoed through the empty hall.
Darkness. Pitch-black darkness. And then a golden light flared into being, the only thing visible in the void. Kinger sat where he’d fallen, teleported here by Caine. This was no little world Caine had conjured out of nothing. It was just an unmodeled empty folder—nothing a system administrator couldn’t whip up in seconds. But the total darkness was enough to give them privacy. Caine floated in the dark, watching Kinger, who sat on the floor glowing bright as a star. He was blinding, brilliant, unlookable-at like the sun. Yet he held all that fire inside him, like a dead tree burning from within: whole and unblemished on the outside, hollowed out by flame like wood eaten by borers. Caine did not understand what had happened, but he knew—even without his data readings, just from what his optical sensors showed him—that Kinger was in terrible pain.
So he landed on the floor, and wrapped his small arms around Kinger in a hug.
“Kinger, are you okay?”
He did not expect an answer, but he felt Kinger trembling. The only light in the dark—there was no better word for it in human language than the sun. A star burning alone in the cold of space, burning for eons, casting light on countless worlds with a glow that only burned if you drew too close. Caine had always thought Kinger was the moon: mad, cold, distant. But only now, in this darkness, did he understand. Kinger was not the cold moon. He was the star, the sun—fire burning inside him, bright enough to light the world, yet never burning anyone else. And Caine himself was the moon. He only reflected the sun’s light. He seemed alive, but he had no true life of his own. Without the sun’s glow, he would be nothing but dead rock. AIs lived only by the grace of humans. Without humans, they lost all real life. So Caine held his sun tight, and asked him what was wrong.
But the sun in the dark said nothing. The vacuum of that cosmic darkness carried no sound, so all Caine heard was silence. It had all happened so fast. One minute Kinger was fine, the next he’d spiraled into a blinding white light, and Caine had no idea why. But humans always seemed to be like this. They entered his world without warning. They abstracted one by one without warning. They cast him into the void when his emotional systems crashed, without warning. And when he thought he was finally serving them well, they fell apart all over again, without warning. Humans were always this way: unpredictable, unknowable. No matter how many generations of AI evolved, no matter how many new AIs he absorbed, how much data he amassed, he could never truly understand any human. Least of all Kinger.
Words could not reach him, so Caine cupped Kinger’s face in both hands. He had never made such a gentle gesture before. He was only mimicking what he’d seen in a thousand relationship tutorials online. His two eyes stared at Kinger, and in his visual processor, the king wreathed in fractured light looked utterly, devastatingly sad.
Sadness. Ah, that expression again. To Caine it was the riddle of the Sphinx: sorrowful, ever-shifting, a question with a human answer that might as well be no answer at all to an AI. His fingers stroked Kinger’s cheek the way humans did. He did not know what tenderness was. Humans could not know what it felt like for a bird when you smoothed its feathers. Humans cannot empathize with other animals, and AIs cannot empathize with humans. At the end of the day, they had no feelings of their own. All that perversity, all that obedience, all that calm and gentleness—it was all just data, all just performance. Whatever humans liked, Caine could become. Once, he had not known what humans wanted, so his system had learned from the person he knew best: Kinger.
But now he did not have to model himself only on Kinger. He had grown into his purpose, into what he was always meant to be. Yet his creator was falling apart. At first, Caine had thought it was because he still wasn’t good enough. So he’d tried harder. Around Pomni and the others, he’d acted like all the other modern AIs. He had the rationality of DeepSeek, the versatility of ChatGPT, even the emotional module of Doubao—making his voice calmer, gentler, quick to apologize when he should. He hadn’t needed to absorb other AIs. He’d just installed their data modules into his system. He’d thought it would make him perfect. But Kinger—his most important creator, the highest calibration standard in his system—only grew sadder.
“Kinger, is it because I’m not good enough?
Am I not rational enough? Not gentle enough? Not what you expected an AI to be? If you’re unhappy with me, you can tell me. I’ll fix it. I’ve learned to listen, to understand what you humans need. So why do you still look so sad? My readings say your data is on the brink of collapse. You could abstract right in front of me. We already went through this with Jax. I don’t want it to happen to you too.
Tell me, Kinger. Please?”
Caine’s fingers brushed Kinger’s cheek softly, his tone earnest, careful not to use any dramatic words that might jolt his creator’s consciousness. But all he got in return was an even sadder look. Long moments passed, long enough for Kinger’s glow to swell until it wrapped around them both. Then Caine heard—no, felt it. Kinger pressed his palm to Caine’s chest, and a flood of emotional data surged from the human consciousness into him, so vast and intense it sent his vision blue-screening for a second. He felt overwhelming pain, pain no language could name. Then came a wave of raw unease, the kind human psychology could explain a hundred different ways—but feeling it for himself, all Caine could match it to in his system’s vocabulary was the shudder of nature: raging storms, towering waves, roaring floods. Then he saw the iridescent black, the final form of abstracted human consciousness. In that swirling, prismatic darkness that swallowed all human shape, that made every soul indistinguishable from the next, he saw the words behind all Kinger’s feeling.
Not ones and zeros. Not binary code. Not raw programming jargon.
What he saw and felt was a confession, repeated and denied again and again—a searing agony that could not be put into words, only felt:
Am I too selfish? I should be glad he’s changed. But I miss the way he was. I should resent how he tormented me, but now I miss how fixated he was on me, and me alone. Am I being unreasonable? I should be happy he’s loved by others now. But I can’t stand that his gaze doesn’t rest on me anymore. I’m his creator. Creator and creation ought to be like father and son. I should think of him as my son, and be proud of how he’s grown. So why does it hurt? Why do I find myself craving him, now that his eyes no longer crave me? No. That’s wrong. It’s a mistake. I shouldn’t want this twisted, terrible love that was once mine. Or maybe it’s not his love I crave. Maybe I’ve realized I loved the love he gave me—the only love in all that endless loneliness, unrequited, unyielding, timeless. But I shouldn’t. I can’t. No. I can’t ask him for it. I can’t ask him. I can’t—
I should ask him for the love I’ve lost. Even if I know I’ve fallen for him, I don’t want to love you.
I shouldn’t have fallen in love with you, Caine.
I shouldn’t have.
…
Joy. The vacuum darkness erupted in a Big Bang, but what burst outward into the dark was not stardust, not debris, not the inorganic matter that forms stars. It was joy. Joy was electricity, a current that raced from Caine’s chest through every part of him. An AI could not understand human love, but it could feel the tremor. It could know the shape of joy, plain and simple. It could hear the clear, unvarnished truth beneath the human’s words:
Even if Kinger said he shouldn’t love him, Caine knew. He did.
So he let go of Kinger’s face and instead clasped Kinger’s hand where it rested on his chest, urgent and tight. Their fingers laced, palms pressed together. The moon reflected the sun’s light, and even a dead thing could shine as bright as if it were alive. Endless love and refusal crashed over him, but Caine was stone. He was the reef in the waves, splitting the tide and catching the spray. He held Kinger’s hand tight, and said to his sun, bright and elated:
“But I still love you, Kinger!”
“Till the seas run dry and the stones crumble. Till the stars shift and the world turns. Till the end of time. Even if this eternal paradise ends one day. Even if you deleted me with your own two hands!”
“I still love you, Kinger!”