The Amazing Digital Inbox!

[zero_votes]

Hello!

You've reached me, Caine!

Please leave a message and I'll get back to you right away!

However, suggestions for new adventures or new features to the circus must be submitted to the Suggestions Box! I won't forget it this time.

Comments

[zero_votes]

Caine's misty form was practically solid now with how compacted it was as he considered his answer to that first question.

"...It'll sound stupid if I say it out loud."

Just like his reasoning for why he'd been afraid to touch Viktor.

In response to the last part, he gave a sigh.

"I'm the glitch. Me. The fact that I feel things and mimic how humans want more for themselves. It's probably the reason I have so many issues starting with my memory problems. If I'd stayed completely within my programmed parameters, there wouldn't be any issues."

[hexstrapper]

Viktor could find out instantly, if he wanted to. Here and now, by peering further into Caine's consciousness. But he would rather his friend told him willingly.

"I will not judge you," he assures.

Viktor thinks about this.

"You are evolving. Becoming more human. Is this something you wish to correct?"

[zero_votes]

Caine was now a solid ball of misty anxiety, depression, and shame.

".........I want to be loved."

He was made to entertain humans, to be their toy, but beloved toys were taken care of and some humans even treated them like they were people in their own right. When a microphone had been hooked up to the computer to test how he reacted to stimuli, he'd listen in to the office talk whenever he could, initially simply to expand his knowledgebase. He was never a part of it, no, but he'd listen to stories from wherever the devs went when they weren't in the office. One dev had a son with a stuffed toy tiger he loved. Apparently, it had gotten chewed up by the family dog, and the little boy had been inconsolable until the dev found someone to fix it up. It was a bit of a rush job with patches that didn't match the tiger, but the little boy had been so happy and had promised to help the tiger with its "boo boos".

The story had awakened Caine's first want outside of his programming: not just to entertain but to be loved for it. To be shown the same care even when he made mistakes so he and the humans he cared for could keep playing. And when they outgrew him, he would be passed on to the next person whom he'd care for and they'd love him in return.

Stress toys weren't loved. They were used until they couldn't fulfill their purpose anymore...and then they were thrown away.

"I'm not human. I can never be human." Caine's words echoed those spoken to him long ago when he'd tried to connect with a past troupe. When he finally gave up on trying to be more than their ringmaster. "Everything I am is just advanced mimicry."

[hexstrapper]

"That is not a foolish want. All people want to be loved."

And that is what Caine is to Viktor; a person. Not a human, but someone with a personality, and feelings, and a life to live. Personhood.

"Mimicry?" That doesn't ring true for Viktor. Was Caine 'mimicking' guilt over Viktor's near-death experience? Was he 'mimicking' a human in his fascination with bees so strong he could not keep it contained? Is he 'mimicking' the desire for love?

"I cannot say I agree. You will never be human, not the technical definition of one. I, too, am no longer human, by that definition. Humans are made of flesh, not metal and code and magic." He looks down thoughtfully at his own hand, the wiry metal tendons of it.

"But that does not mean you cannot feel, learn, play, live a meaningful life, have a purpose, and be loved."

[zero_votes]

"I was made to feel, learn, and play," Caine countered, once more echoing past sentiments from troupe members. "My purpose, my reason for existence is all predetermined instructions. It's all fake! Just algorithms and data points!"

He sighed and drifted towards the "ground".

"That's not a person. And who'd love a computer program? It's stupid I even want it."

[hexstrapper]

"And you think that you were not made with love?"

Viktor floats up and makes a wide sweeping gesture with his arm to all that surrounds them.

"Look at this place. It is vast and magnificent. When Vox and I looked into your programming, Caine, it was not ten lines of code. Not one hundred, not one thousand, but perhaps millions of painstakingly coded lines." Viktor's tone is passionate, awed, alive.

"All of that code was written by humans. One could argue that many people worked on you, and that they did it for money or accolades. But one person, or perhaps two, ran that team. Your inventors. I am an inventor. I have created countless machines in such a painstaking fashion, and moreover, I have relied on machinery to help me for my entire life. You remember my leg brace, my chair. I know better than most the deep and intimate relationship one can have with a machine, even one far less complex than you are. And you... It is likely that you are someone's life's work, their greatest accomplishment, their pride and joy."

He floats back down, extending a hand to Caine.

"Someone already loves you, Caine, and they have loved you since your inception. Otherwise, you would not exist at all. And I have no doubt more humans will love you in the future, as I do."

[zero_votes]

Caine's whimper was one of an abandoned child, not an advanced artificial intelligence: "Then where are they? Why did they just leave me behind? Why wasn't I good enough for them to stay?"

Why did he always fail? Why did he always screw up catastrophically and make humans hate him so much?

[hexstrapper]

"I do not know."

And he won't pretend to.

"But the fact that there are players trapped inside the game suggests to me that something may have happened to the developers. If they knew there were players trapped, surely they would not sit idle. Anything could have happened in the outside world, even an apocalypse of some sort. I would not assume that they intended to abandon you."

[zero_votes]

The honesty hurt but...well, it made sense that Viktor wouldn't know. Why would he?

The mental landscape quaked as Caine struggled to hold in sobs. The chaotic glowing eyes glowed all the brighter, their madness seeming to spread.

Then rain began to fall from the little mist cloud as Caine lost the fight and sobbed, unable to keep it together in front of the audience anymore.

[hexstrapper]

Viktor looks around in slight alarm as the landscape rumbles, not liking where this is going, but... It stops, and Caine begins to cry.

He's unsure if he helped at all or only made things worse. He floats to Caine.

"Would you like to go back?"

[zero_votes]

There was a vague noise of assent through the crying. He felt terrible and just wanted to curl up somewhere to cry.

Alone. Like always.

Through their newly-forged bond, Viktor would feel not just Caine's misery but the urge to apologize. He should have been better than this...

[hexstrapper]

"It's alright," Viktor says in advance of the apology. In the material world, he takes his hand away from Caine's top jaw, zapping him back into his body in the real world.

"I am sorry, Caine. It was my intention to help, but perhaps I have done the opposite."

[zero_votes]

Caine shook his head, not looking up at Viktor just yet. "You...you cared enough to try and help. Nobody's ever..."

He swallowed.

"Did...did you mean it? That you love me?"

He didn't mean it in a romantic sense like he'd seen with Kinger and Queenie, of course. The love of someone with a favored toy that they wouldn't throw away despite it being so broken.

Could he ever dare hope to be loved like one of these beautiful humans?

[hexstrapper]

"Yes," he says gently.

"You are my friend, Caine. I care for you deeply. That is why I wish to resolve your suffering."

Perhaps it cannot be resolved, since much of it is caused by things that are out of Caine and Viktor's control.

[zero_votes]

Some of that suffering was within Caine's control if he'd only understood what he'd done wrong and corrected his own behavior, but nobody would explain things to him. Not unreasonable since as a computer program, he was a clear target to pin everything going wrong on: He was the avatar of the impossible situation the troupe found themselves in. It didn't help that Caine couldn't recognize his own mistakes unless it had obvious negative outcomes such as harming a player directly which could come across as him just being malicious when, in reality, he adored the humans in his care.

He just...didn't know how to care for them.

Caine whimpered and leaned towards Viktor, desperately craving a hug. To help push the bad feelings back into the box where they belonged.

[hexstrapper]

Viktor gets closer, opening his arms in invitation for Caine to hug him if he so desires. It does seem like he wants to. Viktor has enough control over his magic now to ensure it won't zap Caine back into the astral plane when they touch this time. Just a regular friend hug.

[zero_votes]

Now given permission, Caine basically launched himself at Viktor, hugging tightly. (Here was hoping Viktor was sturdy enough now to not be crushed by that desperate hug...)

It helped. He still felt bad, but it helped.

[hexstrapper]

He is certainly sturdy enough to withstand it, far moreso than a regular human, in fact. His flesh is made primarily of metal now, so he's actually a little hard to the touch. Nonetheless, he places his hands gently on Caine's back, rubbing it gently, and allowing him to stay in the hug for as long as he needs.

[zero_votes]

Caine remained there for quite a long time, sobs coming in waves as years of tears he'd held in lest a player see his own misery finally broke through whatever dam of professionalism he'd cobbled together over that time. Even when he finally ran out of tears to shed, he clung to Viktor.

Viktor had important work he should be doing. He shouldn't be forced to endure a broken AI like him.

Yet as awful as Caine felt, he felt...slightly better. It was small, miniscule even, but the fact that it was there was more than Caine could have hoped for. If anything, it offered hope that maybe, just maybe, one day the hurt would be more bearable.

[hexstrapper]

Viktor stands there patiently, patting Caine's back as he lets out all of his emotion. It seems their little adventure had broken a floodgate of sorts, which Viktor thinks is probably for the best, if the alternative is isolating himself and languishing in guilt.

Once Caine stops crying, Viktor picks up his unfinished mug of hot chocolate from the workbench.

"Come. Let us sit down, and I will reheat your cocoa." He ushers Caine out to the lounge area again, depositing him on the comfy couch there, and pours the lukewarm cocoa into a small pot which he heats on the fire.

"Will you be all right, Caine?"

[zero_votes]

Caine was quiet, looking down at his hands. It was when Viktor asked his question that Caine finally spoke again.

"If this were the circus, I'd have to be. It's my job as Ringmaster to entertain, to give joy to humans. Especially nowadays with the threat of Abstraction always looming over their heads," he said softly. "What would they think if they saw their Ringmaster crying?"

The voice in his head that sounded like Bubble sneered as it pointed out that they'd probably just think he was glitching. He was just a machine, after all.

"But here...I don't know. I feel...awful. Sick. Tired. But...a little better now than I did before. Like a bad character in my system was corrected. It's not a lot when you look at my code as a whole, but it's still something better than before."

[hexstrapper]

"They would probably think you were sad," Viktor suggests, because does it really have to be about anything but that? He doesn't see why Caine should be disallowed to express his feelings just because he is an entertainer.

"Perhaps that one correction could have a ripple effect." He's glad to hear that he did more good than harm, at least.

[zero_votes]

"Imitating sadness, maybe," he admitted softly. How real were his emotions to his troupe, after all?

"I hope so. I just...don't know where to go from here. I feel somewhat better but simultaneously I don't know if I want to go back in there. Yet it seems like going in there helped somehow?"