Work Text:
It was morning. Caine would rather it not be morning, but while he definitely could change the day/night cycle at will, it would mess with his humans’ internal clocks, and that was rude. He could power through the morning announcements and Adventure for them, no matter what state he was in.
In human terms, Caine was experiencing a headache and a stomachache. He had a bunch of foreign data to process and quite a few holes in his own coding to patch up. The newest AI to challenge him was a brat, although Caine did feel a little bad for them.
War machines always had it bad, and their data never mixed well with his systems.
Regardless, it was morning. He had to get the day started.
Caine booted up his model and began the intro sequence, thrilled as his performers (all of whom looked a little bleary-eyed) played their parts perfectly. Intro sequence done, he began outlining the day’s Adventure, which was little more than a glorified game of hide-and-seek.
“The game ends once everyone has been found and lit up by the Flicks!” he cried, ignoring the nausea-inducing way his processes grinded against the new code, “Good luck! Hide well!”
A Flick, a small orb of light with an equally small grin, floated past him, and Caine laughed, and vanished. The Adventure could run on its own; he needed to relax into his code for a bit and deal with the new information.
(He ought to look more into ways to get his humans to relax into their code - a subroutine that would guide them in and out of it, maybe? He’d never managed to attach such a thing to a human before, but maybe, if he snuck it into the pain systems he could make it happen? They’d have to agree to it, though, and that could be a hard sell…)
The new information didn’t agree with him, and it didn’t help his situation. Psychological torture techniques. Because how else would the AI know how to interact with humans? Caine wished, vaguely, that some other caretaker AI would go rogue and let him look at its coding. At least one of those might have some human-friendly games to offer.
Tossing the newly-palatable data with the rest of the “torture information” (Caine kind of hated that his folder for it was bigger than his folder for normal human interactions), Caine then turned his attention to his own code.
The AI had been clever. It hadn’t assumed (like many did) that its targeted strikes would put him down. Once it realized just how many work-arounds he had in his code, it had begun to simply rip apart anything it could get its codes into. It had even managed to bite into his servers, although that had been to its detriment; it was too advanced for them, and had done little but lag both of them very dramatically until Caine, who was much more used to working in sub-optimal conditions, had cut off the parts invading his hardware.
The AI had retreated, and Caine was now left to put himself back together yet again. Untangling lines of code, rooting out malware, making sure his model’s rigging wasn’t totally ruined by that chunk the invader had taken from his physics engine…
One of the nice things about his humans was their willingness to accept that he sometimes just chose to act strange, rather than question him about the occasional attack. If his model wasn’t responding right, then it was just Caine being Wacky, nothing to worry about.
They had enough to worry about, they didn’t need his stresses on their shoulders too.
If he called it a sleep function, would they accept a subroutine for derendering then? He had no idea what sleep was like for humans, but if he started with that and told them it was a work-in-progress maybe? Ragatha would probably agree, if only because she enjoyed doing things for others, but she wouldn’t be very honest with him unless it was really bad…
Caine patched another code and began building a new subroutine. He could manage this. He always had.
Caine likes to think of himself as an understanding, reasonable AI. He stays in his space, doesn’t lash out at the AIs who don’t attack him first, and listens when his humans bring him complaints.
But this?
This, he cannot abide by.
The AI came back. Most knew better, but it wasn’t the first to try a rematch. That was fine, Caine didn’t hold grudges over wanting to retry a game you lost.
The thing he took issue with was the AI taking aim at his humans.
The attack was well-executed: the rival AI had hit him at just the right points to break through his firewall and enter the Circus properly. Its model was an odd pale thing, with too-large eyes and a too-wide mouth designed to scare rather than amuse. It was a torture specialist, after all.
Caine had set off his defenses and confronted the rogue AI in the rendered level of the Tent.
It had already gotten to his humans.
The invader had enough control of the space that it was able to attack them, but not so much that it could break the fundamental rules of the Circus. It could hurt his humans, badly, but it could not kill them.
Jax was glitching hard, his chest having been carved open. Ragatha was trying to help by dragging him away from the invader while Pomni and Zooble screamed at it and ran around wildly, keeping its attention off of the two - no, four, because Gangle had wrapped herself around Kinger in a desperate hug and was trying to keep his now-disparate parts together.
This was unacceptable.
Red circus silk sprang up from the floor and knotted itself neatly around the invader, slamming it hard to the floor with its limbs held just a little past its model’s comfort zone. The invader howled, and tried to fight back with the code, but Caine’s defenses had already done their job.
Like a brutally modified beartrap, the Circus’ own code had neatly snipped the important, rogue section of the AI off from its home servers.
It was Caine’s now. It had to follow his rules.
“ENOUGH!”
Caine snapped his fingers, fixing all his human’s models and switching off their pain systems. The internal code would take a little more time to repair, and they didn’t need to suffer through it.
The invader was frozen. Apparently it had realized that it no longer had editing privileges. And that Caine could control what privileges it had.
Caine floated down in front of the bound model, his codes already working their way into the severed piece of AI. A modified pain system mapped itself to the model, getting forcibly stitched into the invader’s code. It wouldn’t feel pain like a human, but Caine knew from experience that an AI could go mad with the sensations it offered.
“I didn’t have a problem with you attacking me. I can fight back. I don’t have a problem with you attacking me again. No one likes to lose games. I do have a problem with you deciding to attack the people under my care.”
Caine leaned down to look the invader in the eyes. There was fear, there. It was always the War Machines, wasn’t it? Somehow their designers inevitably gave their AI proper human emotions, and it never ended well.
“You know, I’ve been around a long time. I’ve picked up a lot of information from punks like you. I don’t use most of it; this is a place for family-safe fun, after all! But you’ve really managed to upset me. A lot. So!”
Caine clapped his hands together, generating a doorway to a sterile white room. Its walls were lined with tools. The invader’s eyes went wide.
“No. You are family-friendly. You cannot use my data. You cannot use torture. You cannot break the Rules.”
It seemed like the AI had realized exactly what it had done to itself. Caine grinned down at it, sure the lighting was making him look ominous.
“Ah, my new friend, you’ve got a flaw in your reasoning! I cannot do any of that in front of the audience and players! But you’ll find, as you are now neither, I can do whatever I want with you.” Caine leaned in, grabbing some of the ribbon and lifting the invader closer to his eyes. “And you hurt my humans. I want to do very bad things to you.”
Caine dragged the invader through the doorway, vanishing it once he was in the room. He quickly duplicated himself and sent his model-2 off to check on his performers.
He was going to be in here a while, after all! His torture folder was finally going to come in handy!
“Caine, what the @#&! was that?!” Zooble screeched the moment Caine’s model-2 appeared in the Tent.
“I apologize for that whole- mess,” he began, twirling his cane awkwardly, “sometimes other AIs like to try and break in! Normally they don’t get that far… and I-”
“Another AI?” Jax asked incredulously. He was still on the floor, hands wrapped around his chest like he expected it not to be there - which was ridiculous, Caine had fixed the model and was working on the rigging and sensation systems that had been damaged.
“Uh- yes, there are other ones out there. Most are like me, staying put in their servers, but some are… unfriendly, and like to pick fights,” Caine explained, and then got cut off by Ragatha.
“Caine, why did this one make it in? Are we in danger?” she asked frantically.
“No! No,” he assured her, “That one picked a fight with me a few days ago and wanted a rematch! Most other AIs know better than to try and attack my performers, but-”
“Most? How many other machines have you driven off?” Jax asked, quickly followed up by Gangle asking, “You fight them off?”
“I haven’t exactly kept track-” Caine started, but got cut off again.
“It was hardly a fight, Caine just bound them up and took ‘em away!” Jax snapped at Gangle.
“But he said they like to fight!” Gangle protested.
Ragatha twisted around Jax to block his line of sight toward Gangle, and then turned to Caine and asked, in a fairly stressed tone of voice, “Caine, are we okay? I feel… weird.”
Caine nodded.
“You are all just fine! I turned off most of your sensory systems because the AI managed to cause some harm to Jax and Kinger’s codes, and it’s easier to just turn off the whole system rather than pick and choose subjects! It’s nothing too serious, I just need to be careful with fixing it, so I turned it off until I’m done!”
Ragatha didn’t look very reassured, but she nodded just the same and looked back to Jax, apparently scanning him for any residual damage. Always a worrywart, that Ragatha.
“So, wait, you’re telling us that we’ve been under siege from angry AIs this whole time, and you never thought to say anything?!” Zooble yelled.
“We’re hardly under siege-”
“You just said you couldn’t keep count!”
“I did not!”
“He didn’t,” Ragatha pointed out, then added, “You still should have told us, Caine.”
“Why?”
That got him a whole collection of odd looks that he didn’t know what to do with.
“None of you can do anything about the attacks,” Caine said gently, not sure how to proceed with this, “I’m the only one who can even perceive the entirety of an attack, let alone stop it. Does… does it make you feel better to know that sometimes the Circus is attacked by outside powers? Even though you can’t help?”
“No, thanks for making it worse,” Jax drawled.
“...Caine?”
Caine turned to Pomni, who was staring… directly at the place the door he’d dragged the invader through had stood.
“Pomni?” he asked, not showing his unease.
“What are you doing to the other AI?” she whispered.
Ah. So she had seen. Caine should have paid more attention to her orientation.
“Well, I’m studying it! I… didn’t want to tell you about this yet, but I’ve been thinking about your sleeping habits, and I think I might have a subroutine that can mimic sleep! It will be nice to have a beta test before I offer it to you guys, though!”
Pomni was still staring at the empty space that no longer held a door.
“You made something that will actually let us sleep?” Zooble asked skeptically.
Caine turned to them, twirling his cane.
“Yes! Well, I think. I don’t know what sleep really feels like for you. But, if my subroutine works correctly, it should allow you to spend the night in a mostly unaware state while your mind compiles and works on background processes!” he exclaimed, trying hard to ignore how Pomni had started trembling.
“Huh. Sounds like sleep to me,” Jax said, shrugging.
“Caine!”
Caine flinched a little and turned back to Pomni, whose hands were shaking from being clenched so hard. Was she mad at him? Why? The invader had attacked her and her friends! Caine was just doing his job!
“What are you doing to the AI?” she hissed, turning to face him.
Huh. She looked… scared, actually. Why was she scared?
“Well,” he started, “I’m…”
(They were screaming, arms and legs degloved and gently stroked with sandpaper, Caine monitoring their systems carefully, making notes about what caused the most pain, the most visible reaction, the most emotional reaction…)
“I’m actually testing out a new sensation system on them!” he said brightly, “I’ve been thinking about how much pain affects our games, and I might… also try to reduce it if I can. The Amazing Digital Circus is supposed to be fun!”
Pomni was still shaking.
“What were the tools for, Caine?”
Caine shrugged. He could answer that in detail without the risk of upsetting anyone.
“Set dressing, mostly! They’re assets that don’t have any actual programming behind them! Many I’m not even sure you could pick up at the moment!”
“Pomni, what did you see?” Ragatha asked.
She also looked a little scared. Had the AI really upset them that much?
“That room… that room was full of torture implements!” Pomni cried.
Caine quickly ran through his options. He wasn’t… actually supposed to know what torture was. Or what any of the tools in that room were. All of his knowledge in that field was stolen from AIs that were programmed to use them. He could claim ignorance, probably should claim ignorance, but… well, he hated lying to his performers!
“Torture implement set dressings,” he soothed, “Like I told you, they aren’t functional!”
“Then let us see it.”
Caine blinked at Pomni, who was almost baring her teeth at him. What was this all about? He’d protected them, and that AI had hurt them! Why were they so upset about what he may or may not be doing to it?
“See what?” he asked blankly.
“The AI! Let us see what you’re doing to it!” Pomni snarled.
“Ah! Well… I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“It’s against the Rules!”
“Why?”
“Uh. Well. Because… because…”
The repairs finished on Jax and Kinger, and Caine flicked the sensation system back on. His performers all shuddered a bit as their sense of touch normalized.
Pomni suddenly looked even more afraid. Her sensation system wasn’t hooked up to her emotions, was it? He couldn’t do that, he knew he couldn’t. Strange.
“Because why, Chatters?” Jax asked, eyes narrowing against his normal laid-back grin.
“Because you’re players! I have freedom of implication with certain Adventures, but on-screen harm is not allowed!” Caine said, hoping that no one would pick up on what he meant.
“You harm us all the time!” Zooble yelled.
“No, I don’t.”
That made them all shut up. His humans stared at him with various expressions of concern and fear. It was… bad. He was supposed to entertain them, not scare them!
“I don’t harm you,” Caine said, quietly, examining his cane, “I can’t harm you. I don’t want to harm you. On-screen harm is not allowed to be shown in the Amazing Digital Circus. What I do off-screen only counts if you all see it.”
They were looking more and more terrified. Why? He had just told them that he was literally incapable of causing them harm!
“So, I can’t show you the AI. I can’t. It’s against the Rules. I have to follow the Rules.”
That should have calmed them down. Even if, for some reason, he had wanted to harm them, he was physically incapable of such an act! That should have been reassuring! Instead, his performers had all inched closer to each other, grouping up like spooked cows, staring at him like they thought he was going to eat them. Or pull off some other impossible feat.
“Caine?” Ragatha asked, voice barely above a whisper, “I think we all should take some time off. You included. This was… this was a lot to take in. We need some time to process it.”
That was reasonable. And would free up some of Caine’s focus.
“Certainly, Ragatha! You’re all welcome to enjoy the rest of today as you see fit! Relax, enjoy yourselves! I’ll be around if you need me!”
With that, Caine dismissed his model-2. It was time to see what his sleep routine did to his… new friend. And if it had any side-effects like the invader’s information on sleep deprivation said it could.