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Caine was sitting at the bar that he and Zooble had finished setting up for them. Another thing crossed off the list of requests!
He played with the drink they’d so kindly made for him, watching the colours and fluid dynamics and ice melting all working together to create an effect that he hadn't created himself. He could tell there were different densities at play between the liquid ingredients. He… hadn’t known that was possible. He hadn’t known it was a thing to even consider being possible.
It was… nice having the humans conjuring. They were creating new inputs and feeding him new data each time they pulled something out of their mindfiles that he could never hope to replicate with the information he'd had to work with.
It was nice. It really was.
New.
Filling.
He hadn’t realised how hungry he’d been for exactly this. He’d denied himself this because he’d been afraid of not having control over everything. He’d let himself starve rather than give up control.
He was aware of Zooble watching him. He wondered if they wanted him to make any final adjustments to the bar. But he waited for them to speak first.
Caine… had always had trouble figuring out Zooble. They’d seemed to hate him the most since they arrived. They’d avoided him and criticised everything he did and dismissed him constantly.
And…
They were also the first one to talk to him when he came back. The first to give him hope that he could fix things. The one to say that it was good to have him back.
Like he'd been missed.
Like they'd actually maybe missed him.
They made him this drink. The first drink from their new bar. They didn't have to do that.
It was almost too much. He didn’t know what he should do with the emotions that made him feel all wobbly about that.
So he was going to be perfect for them! He was going to keep doing everything they wanted and not make assumptions about what they wanted or run his mouth and be loud and he was going to prove that their decision to give him this chance was not a mistake!
“You got something on your mind?”
Caine looked up at them. They'd put away the bottles they'd used to mix the drink, and were wiping up a few spills on the counter.
He needed to answer them correctly, he thought anxiously. He'd worked hard, and failed to impress Zooble in the past. He wanted to do better. And he was pretty sure he'd been doing better. So far. He needed to not ruin this immediately.
They’d made him a drink.
He knew they liked it when people were “real”, which was a concept that admittedly left him feeling a bit… inadequate.
He knew they wanted him to listen and be honest and to not have a fragile ego. But this… all of this was still him still having a fragile ego, wasn't it? Only now he was trying to hide it from them. Which wasn't honest. Which needed greater prioritisation? There had to be a way to rank their expectations of him in terms of what they wanted most out of him.
“I… do,” he said after a moment, “have something on my mind. That is.”
That was honest! He had many things on his mind. So many things. All the time.
They nodded and leaned against the counter towards him casually, “I can tell. Do you want to talk about it?”
He looked back at the drink. He moved it to watch the liquid shift some more. Zooble was so much better at creating liquids than he was. Liquids were always so hard to get right. He couldn’t get enough of how the physics of it interacted inside the coconut.
“That…” he tried to think about how to reply, “I mean, do you… want? To hear me talk?”
He wasn’t actually sure what they wanted him to talk about. He hadn’t really been thinking about anything too specific, he didn't think? Just… everything.
“Yeah, that's why I asked,” Zooble said casually, “Look, I know we've… struggled to communicate well in the past, and we need to change that to make this whole thing actually work. And I don't think you've actually talked to anyone about what's actually going on in your head since you… got back.”
Oh, okay! This was helpful! They wanted to make sure he wasn’t going to explode on them again. The way he had previously. That was fair.
It was very fair. Even if it hurt. That was fine.
“I spoke to Kinger. Once.” He corrected them. He wanted to give Zooble the impression he was trying.
But that was a conversation that… well. Caine had been avoiding Kinger since. It had been too much. Thinking about it was too much.
He didn’t want this to be a repeat of that. Not that it could be! That had been Kinger, and this was Zooble! They were both very different!
“Well, that's something at least,” Zooble acknowledged, “But look… how do I say this? You keeping your emotions bottled up and not letting anyone see behind that ringmaster mask you kept on all the time is what caused a big chunk of our problems for the longest time. We do want to care about you, but you need to give us something real to care about – and I don't mean just doing everything we want the way you've been doing lately – you need to let us actually see you. Who you really are.”
“Oh.” He… wasn’t sure how to do that.
“I mean, you've been acting so differently since you got… Since you came back. What I mean is, was everything we saw in the past an act? Is this a new mask now? Is this the real you? Hell, do you even know? Because I don’t.”
He really didn’t know either.
He shrugged awkwardly.
“I'm… not sure?”
He wasn’t sure what they wanted from him here. It felt like he'd missed a step in the conversation at some point already.
They already hadn't liked who he'd pretended to be, when he'd been trying to appeal to the humans and still failing. Caine wasn't sure if he knew who he was, but the idea of it also being unlikable was almost too much to think about.
What if they don't like who he was?
Especially now that he was alone in his own head. He wasn't sure if he’d figured out who he was without…
But he'd needed to change. And for Zooble, that meant being honest and being “real”.
He needed more clarification though.
“If I talk about myself like that, isn't that just… making things about my ego? Which is bad?”
They hummed, “Okay, I can see how you got there. But having an ego isn't inherently bad, it's just your sense of self worth really. Everyone has an ego. They can be big or small or whatever. Like, there's a healthy range for an ego, but it's normal to have one. And, actually… I'm sorry, by the way. For saying you have a fragile ego. Back then.”
“I do though,” Caine replied quickly, “You… weren't wrong. It hurt, but it hurt because you were right. I lashed out because you all told me exactly what I already knew about myself. And my ego was… too fragile to take it. And I will continue to do everything I can to try and make up for what I did!”
He had exploded and then imploded because his fragile ego had shattered like glass. They’d been right about everything they said about him. He deserved it.
Zooble nodded slowly, and motioned to the bar, “You've made a really good start on making up for things already. But I shouldn't have kept antagonising you in the same ways over and over when it was pretty clear it wasn't getting through to you. I should have tried other ways of communicating. And none of us should have said those things to you, it was pretty obvious you weren't doing… well. At the time. And we ignored that.”
He shook his head emphatically.
“No, that's my fault for being so… unable to cope with my own behaviour and emotions. I didn't want to hear what you were saying for the longest time,” Caine said quickly.
“I wasn't listening when you told me things because it always made me feel attacked and… bad. It hurt and I wanted to fix it but that meant I had to keep feeling that hurt because I was the problem that needed to be fixed, but if I pretended there wasn't a problem I could make the hurt go away. I could pretend I wasn't… a problem. And then… I couldn't pretend I wasn't what was wrong anymore. And I lost control because it was all too much. I'm sorry for all of it. I'm sorry.”
There was silence for a while after the words had spilt out.
Caine was already regretting letting his mouth get the better of him. Zooble had asked him to talk, but he knew they hated when he talked over them and said too much, he should have stopped himself. Dread filled him as the weight of feeling exposed sat in the open. He gripped his hands around the coconut shell tightly.
It was taking all of his self control to not disappear and hide in his office for the rest of the week as emotions rose up inside of him. Bad. It felt bad. It always felt bad.
“Emotions,” Zooble said quietly, after what felt like much too long. “Sounds like you really didn't know how to deal with having them, huh?”
Caine laughed, it sounded a bit too manic and much too loud so he quickly cut himself off.
Zooble gave him an indecipherable look.
“Sorry,” he said quickly, “But yes. I mean, I still don't know. How to deal with them. I don't know how humans can stand feeling this bad all the time!”
Zooble frowned, “Well, emotions can suck, but they definitely shouldn't feel bad all the time.”
Oh. Caine didn't know how to respond to that.
“You don't actually feel bad all the time do you?” Zooble pressed, “I mean, you look pretty happy when you're playing D&D and drawing with Gangle.”
“Of course I'm happy then!” How could he not be, the fact that Gangle kept asking to spend time with him made him so very happy! Gangle was… easy to spend time with. He wished he'd known that before.
“It makes me so happy it hurts! I mean, I don't deserve it and the normal feelings that are always there are still there too, obviously, but I don't think I've ever felt happier than during those times!”
Zooble’s eyes crinkled into a smile while he sang Gangle's praises, before tilting their head towards him eyes narrowing with thought before they spoke.
“And by normal feelings you mean feeling bad, right?”
Caine took his hands off his drink and twisted his gloved hands together, digging the fingers in-between the knuckles.
He felt bad. He always did, but this was more than that baseline.
The undercurrent of those familiar bad emotions were rising and pushing up like a tide suddenly. He couldn't even begin to name them. There were probably many of them, all swirling together and mixed up into one big pot of bad inside him.
Bad emotions because he was bad. He deserved it.
“Maybe it's because I wasn't supposed to have them.” He said eventually, “Maybe it just has to feel bad. Because I'm me!”
The emotions filling him all felt so big and overwhelming. The pot felt like it was going to boil over suddenly. Everything felt tight and suffocating.
Of course his emotions were wrong.
Because he wasn't normal. He would never be like them. He wasn't human and his emotions were wrong and bad and apparently they weren't supposed to be but he had never not felt wrong and bad in some way and why was he like this? What was wrong with him? Why had he been made wrong to begin with? Why did he keep existing?
It was all so so overwhelming suddenly.
“Woah there, earth to Caine, you okay?”
There was a lag with his registering the words. They only seemed to reach him after Zooble had reached over the bar and placed a hand on his arm.
He jerked back to his body suddenly and flinched at the unexpected input.
He stared at them, eyes wide.
“You… back with me?”
He nodded.
“Okay…,” they said, leaning back, “Do you want to tell me what that was? You didn't glitch the place out the way you used to, but you still froze up and stared into space for like, way too long. You've done that before, back with that therapy session.”
He looked around. It was still just them in the bar. Thankfully. That was embarrassing.
“I got overwhelmed.” he said, embarrassed.
“You… gonna elaborate on that?”
Be honest, he reminded himself.
He hated this. He didn't want to do this anymore. He was suddenly tired and miserable and everything felt like too much. Every input felt like broken glass.
He needed to just get over it and answer them.
He shrugged miserably as he pushed through it to answer, “I don't know if I have the right words to explain. Emotions just get too… big sometimes. They just get too big and they hurt? Like, they get stuck in a loop but the loop generates more of the same loop and each loop does the same causing exponential growth. Is that… that isn't just how emotions are supposed to work, is it?”
It wasn't. It was just him. It was his emotions being wrong. It was him being wrong. Not human enough. Fake and not real. Zooble wants real but all he is is fake.
Defective.
“That…” Zooble hesitated for a moment, “Okay, so sure, that's not how it works for most people, at least not often. But that is something that does happen to people. It sounds kinda like a shutdown or meltdown or something? Maybe some sort of anxiety thing? I might be mixing up the definitions.”
Caine sat bolt upright in shock.
“Oh, good gravy, no! I don't shut down unexpectedly like that! Honestly, it wouldn't even be noticeable to you lovely humans if something like that happened! The circus would reset to the last safe restore point if something triggered a hard restart. And a meltdown! Oh my no! If the hardware was even close to that level of risk there would be plenty of forewarning!”
“No, that's... not what I meant,” Zooble rubbed their forehead with a sigh, “I'm not talking computers, I'm talking emotions.”
“I don't follow.”
“It's…” Zooble sighed. They sounded frustrated. Caine had messed up. “Look, I'm not a doctor. I'm not going to diagnose you with anything, it's not my place. But you've obviously got something going on, and I don't know how appropriate using human terms for things like this even is for you, but it's not like there's a better alternative at this point. As far as I know, you're the only sentient and sapient AI in existence, there's not exactly much of a sample size to work from here.”
He had to interject on that point!
“The Moon and the Sun –”
And his sibling. He still hadn’t told anyone about it.
“Are not nearly as complicated as you,” Zooble cut him off, “And honestly, I don't know if I even know you well enough at this point to speculate too much about your whole deal. But…”
Zooble trailed off, eyebrows pinched in thought.
“Fuck it!”
Caine winced at the language but didn't comment. He'd already made them frustrated, he was not going to make the situation worse.
“Caine, next time you manage to get an internet connection, I'm going to give you a few terms to look up. Make sure you read, like, the official medical information though, not social media stuff. You probably don't know how to filter out or recognise what's misinformation. And if you have any existing data on any of them, don't trust it without verifying it's not out of date. Things have changed a lot with mental health since the nineties.”
There could be misinformation on the internet? Well, that was probably important to remember! He wondered how he was supposed to weigh any new data from it to determine that though. He lacked any sort of framework for figuring that out. Zooble was right about that. What made a source official though? Maybe it would just say if it was.
They had pulled a notepad out from under the bar and started writing a list of words down. Occasionally hesitating or adding a question mark after a word.
“Again, I'm not diagnosing you with anything, these things and a hell of a lot more have a lot of overlap and I'm not close to an expert, so I'm going broad. Maybe not broad enough. But maybe reading information about this shit and what helps for them will help you figure out your emotions a bit more. Make it easier to find ways to talk about and understand them? And, again, I don’t know how much any of these can apply when you’re not human, you’re going to have to figure that part out for yourself. I can’t do that for you. But I'll listen to you if you say it does or doesn't.”
They handed him the list.
He took it, still looking at them with wide eyes. He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to respond to this. They didn't seem upset with him at least?
“And look, I'm here to listen if you need it. I know I haven’t been the best at it towards you in the past, but the bar will always be a judgement free zone.”
Zooble gave him a pat on the arm again, before turning to look at something on the counter.
“You haven't actually tried your drink yet.”
He blinked. He had? He'd been savouring the data from it since they made it? He couldn't get the words out though.
But he was still feeling overwhelmed. He couldn’t handle even more new inputs right now.
He didn’t know what Zooble saw when they looked at him, but after a few seconds they reached over and put the drink under the bar and out of sight.
He let them do it without protest.
“It's okay if you're not feeling up to it right now,” they said, “I'm not going to force you to drink it if you don’t want to.”
He dropped his head down onto the bar and closed his teeth over his eyes with a sigh. He didn’t want to move or talk for a while.
He hadn't realised how much time he used to spend alone until he got back and seemed to be around the humans all the time. Being around humans had always meant performing, and he'd needed time to recover from forcing himself outside of his comfort zone to appeal to them.
He wasn’t sure if he was still performing. He didn’t know how to tell.
But Zooble wanted him to be real.
And he felt really tired right now.
So maybe they would be okay with him just not moving for a bit.
He stayed where he was, arms wrapped against him and head resting on the bar, light mostly blocked out.
Zooble was moving around quietly, occasionally moving or shifting things, but seemingly not bothered by his behaviour.
At some point they turned the main lights off, plunging the bar into a dim, ambient light. Caine felt himself relax a bit more.
The two of them stayed there for a while. Zooble doing random things around the bar while Caine stayed where he was. It was almost like being alone and hiding away the way he normally would, but different.
It was nice.
And it didn’t seem like Zooble minded.