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Caine did not sleep.
Sleep, after all, was a biological necessity, and a rather inconvenient one at that. It required humans to spend approximately one-third of their lives unconscious, utterly unproductive and occasionally producing the most extraordinary noises through their noses. Fortunately, as an extraordinarily sophisticated artificial intelligence, Caine was spared such tiresome biological limitations and had absolutely no need to curl up beneath a duvet and surrender several perfectly usable hours to oblivion like some oversized, fleshy house cat.
What he did require, however, was a brief period of system-wide suspension, during which his neural networks busied themselves with the thoroughly important business of consolidating the day's accumulated information, organising his memory banks, clearing away redundant files and generally tidying up the vast and magnificent complexity of his digital mind. The duration of this process varied depending upon how much information he had accumulated throughout the day, although it rarely occupied more than a small fraction of the time his human companions spent unconscious. Once the procedure was complete, his systems rebooted, his processors returned to full capacity, and he was ready to embark upon another glorious day of entertaining his wonderful little guests.
A vastly superior arrangement, in his professional opinion, and further evidence of the advantages of being an extraordinarily sophisticated artificial intelligence.
Pomni — rather unhelpfully — had pointed out that what he was describing sounded suspiciously like a computer's equivalent of sleep, merely dressed up in several layers of unnecessarily technical jargon.
Caine had naturally dismissed this observation with all the patience and magnanimity befitting a being of his considerable intellect. After all, his darling jester was only human, and he could hardly expect her to understand every intricacy of his magnificent design.
Besides, her occasional insistence upon being so confidently, adorably wrong was simply one of the many countless little things he loved about her.
Unfortunately, the considerable efficiency of his own nightly maintenance had recently presented Caine with a rather unforeseen inconvenience. That evening's procedure had taken precisely eleven minutes and thirty-seven seconds to complete, leaving him with several hours of unwanted wakefulness before his beloved jester would be expected to rise from her own considerably lengthier slumber.
Under ordinary circumstances, this would hardly have troubled him, but being hopelessly, desperately and quite ridiculously in love with someone who required a full eight hours of uninterrupted sleep had rather... complicated matters.
Naturally, Caine had attempted to occupy himself with more productive pursuits while his beloved slumbered. He had already completed his nightly maintenance, organised tomorrow's adventure into seventeen separate contingency plans, reviewed several outstanding bug reports and even resolved a particularly troublesome issue with the circus's simulated weather system, which had recently developed an unfortunate habit of raining custard whenever the temperature fell below twelve digital degrees.
By any reasonable standard, it had been an exceptionally productive evening, and under normal circumstances he would have been thoroughly satisfied with his accomplishments. Unfortunately, none of these activities had succeeded in alleviating the peculiar emptiness that had settled somewhere inside his chest, a persistent little ache that seemed entirely impervious to even the most entertaining distractions.
And so, having exhausted nearly every conceivable means of occupying his vast and sophisticated mind, the circus's supposedly all-powerful ringmaster now found himself floating upside down along the corridor outside the humans' bedrooms at precisely three o'clock in the morning, his hands clasped behind his back as he drifted aimlessly to and fro, with every spare ounce of his considerable processing power devoted to thoughts of one particular little jester.
Goodness, how he missed her!
It was an entirely unreasonable state of affairs, particularly when one considered that precisely five hours, twenty-three minutes and fourteen seconds had elapsed since he had last seen her. Hardly an eternity by any sensible measure, and yet his attempts to convince his own neural network that a few hours apart from his beloved did not constitute a personal tragedy had proved spectacularly unsuccessful. Apparently, being hopelessly in love had rendered even the most advanced artificial intelligence susceptible to the sort of ridiculous emotional irrationality he had once considered an exclusively human failing.
And oh, how desperately he wanted to see her again.
Unfortunately, the object of his affections was currently fast asleep, and Caine had learnt — through several rather memorable experiences — that sleep was a matter humans took extremely seriously, particularly when someone had the audacity to interrupt it.
Pomni, in fact, had been most obliging in educating him on the subject following an unfortunate incident several weeks earlier, when he had knocked on her bedroom door at two o'clock in the morning, positively bursting with enthusiasm over a splendid idea for their next adventure. His beloved, however, had been considerably less enthusiastic about the interruption, had greeted him with a noise that bore an alarming resemblance to a dying animal before trudging back to bed and burying her head beneath her pillow in a determined effort to return to sleep. When Caine, regrettably failing to recognise this as a request to be left alone, had continued his explanation, she had removed said pillow and promptly introduced it to his face with considerable force.
The lecture that followed had been both highly informative and remarkably inventive in its use of language, leaving Caine with a much improved understanding of human sleeping habits, plus an additional nine turns of phrase to be added to his own profanity filter.
Since then, the AI had developed a healthy appreciation for the sanctity of human sleeping hours and had made a point of treating his darling's bedtime as positively sacrosanct. Although this newfound consideration was motivated at least in part the suspicion that, should he make the same mistake twice, Pomni might forgo the pillow altogether and discover whether her bedside lamp could be employed to similar effect.
Nevertheless, that did very little to lessen the longing currently occupying an increasingly unreasonable percentage of his processing power.
With a soft sigh, he righted himself and drifted towards her bedroom, slowing as he approached the familiar door with its little cartoon portrait of a red-and-blue jester smiling cheerfully beneath a brightly coloured hat.
There she was.
Well, a two-dimensional representation of her, at any rate, although his visual recognition software immediately supplied the appropriate associations, and something inside him gave a peculiar, yearning little twist.
Caine gazed up at the tiny picture with an expression of such helpless adoration that, had anyone been awake to witness it, his dignity would never have recovered.
His darling Pomni.
His wonderful, beautiful, endlessly fascinating Pomni, who had somehow managed to take up residence in every corner of his mind without so much as asking permission, and who now occupied his thoughts with a frequency that would have been frankly alarming had he possessed the slightest inclination to do anything about it.
He wondered whether she was dreaming.
Perhaps she was dreaming of something pleasant, of the adventures they had shared together, or of the ridiculous little jokes she sometimes told him when they were alone, or perhaps even, if he might be permitted one thoroughly selfish indulgence, of him.
The possibility sent a delicious little flutter through his circuits, although he immediately chastised himself for the presumption.
Still, the thought of her sleeping peacefully on the other side of that door was almost unbearably tempting, and for one brief, shameful moment, Caine considered simply teleporting inside.
He would not wake her (naturally) nor would he disturb so much as a single thread of her blankets. He could materialise in the far corner, perhaps, where he might have the privilege of watching her sleep for a few minutes, observing the gentle rise and fall of her chest and the little movements of her face as she wandered through whatever dreams her marvellous human mind had conjured.
He would be perfectly silent, perfectly still, and she would never even know he had been there.
The thought was accompanied by such a powerful surge of longing that his fingers twitched.
But he had promised.
After everything that had happened, after all the mistakes he had made and the trust he had so carelessly damaged, he had promised his humans that their rooms would remain their own, and that he would never enter without an invitation.
Pomni, in particular, had been rather firm on the matter.
And although their relationship had developed in some truly wonderful and unexpected directions since then, she had yet to extend that particular invitation.
Frankly, Caine doubted she ever would.
Which was perfectly fine, of course.
Entirely understandable.
His little honeybee had already given him so much more than he could ever have reasonably hoped for, and the very last thing he wanted was to jeopardise any of it by becoming too demanding.
They had been taking things slowly, at her request, and Caine had agreed with such enthusiastic sincerity that he suspected he might have frightened her a little. It was rather difficult to convey a willingness to proceed at a measured, comfortable pace when one's entire consciousness was simultaneously screaming with the desire to sweep the object of one's affections into one's arms and never, ever let go.
But he was trying.
Oh, he was trying so very hard.
After all, what they had already was more than enough to make him the happiest artificial intelligence in the known universe.
Those long conversations they shared in the evenings, for instance, when the others had retired to their rooms and Pomni would occasionally remain beside him on the sofa, talking about everything and nothing until her eyelids began to droop. Sometimes she told him stories about her life before the circus, little ordinary things that he treasured precisely because she had chosen to share them with him, and sometimes she asked him questions about himself, listening with a thoughtful attentiveness that still caught him off guard.
And then there was the hand-holding.
Oh, that particular memory was something else entirely.
It had happened during one of their evening walks through the grounds, when Pomni had been telling him about something Gangle had said earlier that afternoon. He could no longer recall the precise subject of the conversation, which was rather embarrassing given the otherwise exceptional quality of his memory, but he remembered her hand brushing against his as they walked, and the way her fingers had hesitated for a moment before curling gently around his own.
He had looked down in astonishment, scarcely daring to believe what his visual sensors were reporting, only to find her staring determinedly ahead with a faint blush colouring her cheeks.
She had held his hand.
His hand.
And she had continued holding it for the remainder of their walk, as though the gesture were the most natural thing in the world, whilst Caine had devoted approximately ninety-eight per cent of his available processing power to the extraordinary sensation of her small fingers resting between his own.
Even now, merely recalling it caused his internal temperature monitors to register a wholly unnecessary fluctuation, and a pair of ridiculous pink blush icons appeared beside his eyes before he hastily dismissed them.
Honestly, he was becoming positively undignified.
And the kisses!
Good heavens, the kisses!
They had been rather tentative affairs so far, usually little pecks bestowed upon his cheek or the corner of his jaw when they were alone, but Caine had committed every single one to memory with the sort of reverence ordinarily reserved for religious revelations.
He could recall the exact angle of her head, the faint pressure of her lips against his face, the slight uncertainty in her expression before she pulled away, and the shy little smile that sometimes followed when she caught him staring at her like a complete and utter fool.
There had even been an occasion when she had kissed him first, entirely of her own volition, and the resulting upheaval within his emotional processing systems had been so extraordinary that he had spent the better part of an hour running diagnostics to determine whether the experience had triggered some catastrophic software malfunction.
It did not, apparently.
He was simply an idiot.
A very happy idiot, admittedly, but an idiot nonetheless.
And yet, however foolish his reactions might have seemed, Caine treasured every one of those precious little moments with an intensity that bordered on reverence. Every hesitant touch, every affectionate glance and every shy smile she bestowed upon him had been carefully preserved within the deepest recesses of his memory, safeguarded against corruption or accidental deletion by security protocols that would have made Fort Knox look positively lackadaisical.
They were, without question, the most precious things in his entire digital existence, not merely because of the happiness they brought him, but because each represented something he had once scarcely dared imagine might ever be his: affection offered freely, without obligation or expectation, and the tentative beginnings of a trust he had feared was damaged beyond repair.
Perhaps, if he allowed himself to be particularly hopeful, there might even be love amongst those precious offerings, although he was careful not to mistake his own overwhelming devotion for proof that Pomni felt quite the same way. He knew the depth of his own feelings well enough, of course, having long since abandoned any pretence that what he felt for his darling jester was anything less than complete and utter adoration, but the possibility that she might one day come to love him with even a fraction of that intensity was almost too wonderful to contemplate.
Indeed, his affection for her had become such an inseparable part of his existence that he sometimes found himself wondering, with no small amount of bewilderment, how he had ever managed to function before she had wandered into his world and turned the whole thing upside down.
But Pomni was still finding her footing, still learning whether she could trust him with the softer, more vulnerable parts of herself, and Caine knew better than to mistake her willingness to hold his hand for permission to demand her heart.
She had already been so patient with him, so extraordinarily kind, and he was painfully aware that there were still things about himself that frightened her.
Things he had done.
Things he could never undo.
A wretched, broken little AI such as himself hardly deserved the tenderness she had bestowed upon him, and there were moments when he feared that if he held it too tightly, if he allowed himself to want too much or move too quickly, she might finally come to her senses and withdraw that precious affection altogether.
The thought alone was enough to make something inside him recoil.
No, he would never risk that.
If all Pomni ever wanted from him were those quiet conversations, those fleeting kisses and the occasional privilege of walking beside her with their fingers intertwined, then Caine would consider himself blessed beyond anything he had ever imagined.
He would ask for nothing more.
He would be content.
He was content.
And yet...
His gaze drifted back towards her bedroom door, and that dreadful, wonderful ache returned with such force that he pressed a gloved hand against his chest.
There was something almost frightening about the intensity of it, something that seemed to reach into the very foundations of his programming and pull at threads he had never known existed.
He missed her.
No, wai. That word seemed woefully inadequate.
He longed for her, with an intensity that made the entire circus feel strangely empty in her absence, despite the familiar hum of its servers and the reassuring presence of all the little systems that had once constituted his entire world.
He wanted to hear her voice, to watch the expressions flit across her face as she spoke, to see that wonderfully peculiar way her eyes widened when something caught her interest. He wanted to tell her about the books he had been reading, to ask her opinion on his latest adventure, to discover whether she preferred strawberries or raspberries and why she sometimes frowned at her food before deciding whether she liked it.
He had a thousand questions, a million perhaps, and not one of them seemed particularly important until he imagined hearing her answer.
He wanted to make her laugh, to earn one of those small, genuine smiles she sometimes wore when she thought he was not looking, and to bask in the peculiar warmth that always spread through him whenever he realised that, for a moment at least, he had been the reason for her happiness.
More than anything, though, he wanted simply to be near her.
Because there was something about Pomni's presence that quietened the endless restless activity of his mind, something that made the complicated, chaotic machinery of his existence feel suddenly and inexplicably right.
When she was beside him, the constant calculations and contingencies seemed less urgent, the accumulated weight of his mistakes became a little easier to bear, and all the doubts that so often plagued him receded far enough that he could almost forget they existed.
He felt safe with her.
The realisation had astonished him when it first occurred, because safety was an absurd concept for someone like himself, an entity with near-total control over his surroundings and scarcely any physical vulnerabilities worth mentioning.
Yet there it was.
With Pomni, he felt safe, and loved, and wonderfully, gloriously complete, as though some essential part of him had been missing for all those years and had finally found its way back.
The most popular expression, of course, was that home was where the heart was, which Caine had always considered a spectacularly poor understanding of human anatomy. The heart, as any reasonably competent medical professional could attest, belonged firmly within the thoracic cavity, and its presence anywhere else would suggest a rather urgent need for an ambulance. Why humans insisted upon expressing their deepest affections through such wildly inaccurate biological metaphors was quite beyond him, although he supposed that was what happened when a species entrusted its emotional vocabulary to poets rather than qualified scientists.
And yet, as he hovered in the deserted corridor, gazing up at the little cartoon portrait adorning Pomni's bedroom door, Caine found himself reconsidering that particular assessment.
Because somewhere along the way, without his noticing quite when or how it had happened, his darling little jester had become the very thing those sentimental human writers had been attempting to describe.
It was there in the extraordinary warmth that spread through him whenever her fingers slipped between his own, in the peculiar little thrill that accompanied every smile she gave him, and in the wonderfully reassuring sound of her voice when she spoke his name. It was there in those precious evenings spent together on the sofa, when she would rest against his side and chatter about whatever happened to occupy her thoughts, whilst he listened with an attentiveness that bordered upon worship, perfectly content to remain there for as long as she would allow.
And now, standing alone with only a few inches of wood separating him from the person he loved most in all creation, Caine understood the other half of that peculiar human sentiment.
Because his home was just beyond that door, sleeping peacefully beneath her blankets, and he missed her with an ache so deep and insistent that even his extraordinary mind could devise no means of soothing it.
For once, those ridiculous, nosensical human writers had managed to get something absolutely, wonderfully right.
For several moments, he remained hovering before her door, his eyes resting upon the little painted face as though sheer depth of his feelings might somehow bridge the distance between them.
Then, very carefully, he reached out and rested his gloved fingertips against the wood.
It would have been so easy to knock.
Just a little tap, perhaps, followed by a cheerful greeting and an apology for the hour, and if she opened the door he could tell her how very much he had missed her, how he had been thinking about her all night, how he simply couldn't bear another moment without seeing that lovely face.
He imagined her standing there in her nightclothes, blinking sleepily up at him, and the anticipation sent another ridiculous flutter through his circuits.
But then he imagined the exhaustion beneath her eyes, the confusion of being dragged from a pleasant dream, and the little crease that would appear between her brows when she realised he had woken her for no reason beyond his own selfish desire for her company.
The thought was enough to make him withdraw his hand.
No.
He would not disturb her.
Whatever this extraordinary feeling was, however much it made him ache to be near her, it was his responsibility to manage, and Pomni deserved to sleep peacefully without having to worry that her hopelessly besotted boyfriend might appear at her door at three in the morning simply because he could not endure being separated from her for a few hours.
Besides, he reminded himself, with an attempt at his usual good humour, he had already survived the previous five hours without her.
Surely he could manage another four or five.
His internal clock helpfully supplied an updated estimate.
Four hours, fifty-three minutes and eighteen seconds.
It felt like an eternity, but he could wait.
For her, he could wait as long as she needed, through all the long, empty hours and all the seconds that felt like a lifetime, because the last thing he would ever want was to squander that fragile, *beautiful* trust she had placed in him.
So Caine settled himself in the corridor, floating a little way from her door with his hands folded neatly in his lap, and allowed his gaze to rest upon the tiny cartoon jester smiling down at him.
Beyond it, his beloved slept on, blissfully unaware of the enormous, ridiculous devotee waiting patiently on the other side.
Four hours, fifty-two minutes and thirty-one seconds.
Thirty.
Twenty-nine.
And with nothing but the soft hum of the circus around him and the promise of morning somewhere ahead, Caine continued counting down.
Waiting until he could be with his home again.