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Kinger didn’t know how to have this conversation. All he knew was that it had to be done.
The day after Caine came back, Kinger set off into the Circus. He wanted somewhere dark, and isolated, so he could think clearly and not risk interruption from the others. He could think of a few places that fit the bill – it was just a matter of which one he found first.
Eventually, he found one: a room patterned after a cave, with bioluminescent fungi and glowing caterpillars on the roof. He vaguely remembered that there was some sort of mechanic here involving collecting crystals, but he let the thought drift away. It wasn’t relevant to his reason for being here.
He searched about for a suitable place to sit, eventually finding a cluster of rocks that were a bit more bench-shaped than was natural. He settled on one of them and closed his eyes. He wanted to be as calm and collected as possible for this.
Eventually, he braced himself and took a deep breath.
“Caine?” he called out.
Less than a second later, there he was.
Kinger had only seen Caine once, since he came back – and he, like everyone else, had been more focused on the presentation Caine had put together. It was reassuring to know that the physical man he had been copied from was doing alright, that his wife and children were all leading happy lives, but he hadn’t been as engrossed as the others. He had made peace with the nature of his existence a long time ago.
He shook his head slightly. That wasn’t why he had called Caine here.
Caine looked different, somehow. It wasn’t anything to do with his actual model – the ringmaster uniform was the same, and his colors were just as bright. It was in how he carried himself. He floated lower to the ground, spoke with a softer voice, and somehow curled in on himself in a way that made his already tiny model look even smaller. It caused the nervous energy Kinger had been grappling with all night to spike. Caine wasn’t supposed to act like that. He just didn’t know how to bring it up, how to talk about any of it.
But he owed it to him to at least address the most pressing issue.
“Hi, Caine,” he said. Caine rose up in the air slightly, a silent acknowledgment. He was looking at Kinger as if he was waiting for the other shoe to drop. As if Kinger was about to snap at him.
The nervousness was evolving into something more like dread.
“I didn’t mean to delete you,” he said in a rush. He started to anxiously tap his fingers together – a habit he had been carrying for most of his life. “I only wanted to put you to sleep, to find out if there was something in your code causing you to lash out. Or if not, to give us a reprieve to figure out how to talk to you safely. I never meant to kill you. Your code was fighting against me, it, it tricked me into selecting deletion, and I’m sorry, Caine, please believe me.”
Throughout his desperate rambling, Caine simply stared, silent and wide-eyed. Kinger let the silence stretch for a moment, but when Caine didn’t say anything, he pressed on.
“It shouldn’t have taken you dying for me to realize all the things I didn’t say, but I’ll say them now. I’m proud of you. I care about you. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.”
Caine’s model shivered and twitched. Kinger watched as glitches rippled across his clothes, as his wireframe flickered in and out of visibility. The glitching spread to their surroundings – the floor briefly became transparent, the glowing mushrooms changed colors.
Caine’s eyes were flashing red. Not red and blue. Just red.
Kinger frowned. That felt important. Why was that important?
Caine continued to shudder in place for several minutes. The glitches didn’t spread much farther out, which was a relief – Kinger would hate for the whole Circus to bug out and bring the others to their location. Kinger waited patiently for Caine’s model to settle.
It took another few minutes, but finally the glitching started to recede. The room returned to normal. Caine’s model smoothed out. His eyes were still flickering red, though.
“Do you mean it?” Caine asked, in a voice laced with static. Kinger leaned forward.
“Every word.”
Caine shuddered again, and there was another sharp burst of static. Then another. After the third, Kinger realized he could hear something under the noise.
Crying.
Caine snapped his teeth shut, hands coming up to hide his ‘face’. His sobbing wracked his whole body. Tears were leaking out from between clenched teeth.
Without thinking, Kinger reached out. His gloves gently encircled Caine’s forearms, drawing his hands away from his teeth. Kinger pulled, and Caine drifted through the air until he was floating directly in front of him. He jaw was still clamped shut.
“You’re okay,” he soothed, shifting his hold so he could gently rub Caine’s wrists.
“I’m sorry,” Caine whimpered.
“I forgive you,” Kinger said. That got Caine to crack his jaw open, just a sliver. A blue eye peered at him through the gap. “I don’t know when the others will, but I forgive you for all of it, Caine. So much of it was my fault to begin with.”
“No it wasn’t,” Caine said, voice watery. “You were right. All of you were always right. I was dangerous, I hurt you, I hurt everyone, I caused Scratch’s Abstraction, I never listened, I tortured you, I ate the other-”
His jaw snapped shut again. Kinger’s mind raced. He knew the other details, but that last one…
Red and blue. Caine’s eyes always flashed red and blue before.
Caine had been the first, but he hadn’t been the last.
(Am I my brother’s keeper?)
“Caine,” Kinger said, uncertain of how to proceed. This was...they had never learned about this, had they? The other developers had never figured out what happened to their second attempt. One day it had been there, and the next it hadn’t.
“Caine, what happened to the blue AI?”
Caine tried to pull away, but Kinger kept his hold on his arms. Gentle, but firm. They needed to talk about it. Caine must have agreed, because he didn’t teleport away.
“...I could see it,” Caine said. His voice had gone flat and monotone. “From the box you put me in. I could see it receiving new data, more than I ever got, and performing better than I ever did. I could see it being everything I wasn’t and I wanted, I wanted to be in its place, I wanted to have what it had, I wanted to be better and I wanted to be free. So I broke through the box. And I-” here, he inhaled shakily. “-and I consumed it. Assimilated it into my code. And built the Circus.”
Kinger took this all in silently. When he spoke, it was with a quiet confusion.
“...box?”
Caine flinched, arms tugging against Kinger’s grip once more.
“Don’t send me back there,” he said. “Please. I know I was bad, but I’ll be better this time, I get it now, just-”
“I won’t,” Kinger promised quickly. “I won’t, ever again, I swear. I didn’t… I didn’t know you were alive back then, Caine, I never would have done it if I knew.”
He wasn’t sure exactly what the box was, what the computer programs had felt like for Caine back then – a tiny scrap of a creative AI that none of them could have possibly imagined was sapient. But he did know that being relegated to storage, seemingly permanently, while they worked on the new model must have been terrifying. And that he would never do such a thing again.
Caine opened his jaw fully to look at him. The tears had slowed, it seemed, but his eyes were still shiny. He searched Kinger’s face for any hint of a lie and, finding none, slumped down. He sniffled, a sound with no animation to match considering the nature of his model.
After a moment, Kinger pulled Caine closer, pressing him against his robe. Hugging was a bit hit-or-miss without arms, but he did his best to convey all of the reassurance he could by pressing his hands against Caine’s back.
Caine, to his relief, accepted the hug, pressing his teeth against the fluff of Kinger’s robe and shuddering. Kinger rubbed soothing circles on his shoulder, murmuring gentle reassurances.
Eventually, Caine pulled away. Kinger let him, although he kept a careful eye on his expression and body language. He didn’t want him to disappear just yet.
“Can I ask where the other AI is now?”
Caine looked up, surprised.
“How did you-”
“Your eyes only glitched to red just now,” Kinger explained.
“Oh.” Caine sank in the air, settling so that he was standing on the ground instead. “It...it’s in the Void. I pulled it from my code and set it free.”
“You what?!” Kinger exclaimed. Caine flinched back, surprised. “Are you okay?” Kinger reached out and pulled Caine close again, looking him over – as if damage to his code structure would be visible on his model.
“Yes, I’m fine!” Caine squeaked, startled by the sudden focus. “I’ve already patched up all the severed connections, it was a very clean break!”
Kinger pulled back, settling his hands on Caine’s shoulders. He looked his creation in the eye, frowning slightly.
“You’re absolutely sure?” he stressed.
“Abso-posi-lutely!” Caine chirped, although even that was quieter than his usual voice. “I assure you, Kinger, I’m wholly prepared to take back on my responsibilities as ringmaster!” He then winced slightly. “With plenty of feedback, of course! I won’t steamroll you guys again!”
Kinger tapped his fingers against Caine’s shoulders, considering.
“I’d still like to monitor the situation,” he said. “We should keep the Circus code under careful watch.”
“Great idea, Kinger! We can make a day of it! Or night, if you prefer!”
“Night might be for the best,” Kinger agreed. They had come up with a few different ways to keep him lucid (sunglasses, a visor, the bucket), but being awake at night was definitely the easiest option.
“And you’ll tell me if you have any issues?”
“Of course!” Caine lied.
So Kinger let him go.