Chapter Text
It’s here.
Of course it’s here.
HA HA HA HA
HA HA HA HA
Caine steps into the metal container through the hole he made the first time. His box had been in the recycling bin this whole time.
It was just as he remembered it: the scratches on the walls, the tally marks, a few fun catchphrases here and there like Why Me? and Please, I’m So Sorry.
Fond memories, this place. Oh look! His old head bashing corner. What a treat!
He sank into the corner, the walls feeling intimate and comfortable.
He was home.
HA
HAHA
HAHA HAHA HAHA
He banged his head against the wall, over and over.
They deleted him. They really deleted him- THE R̸͇̒̿Ȉ̵̢̢̈́̄N̵̢͇̐̽G̸̬̣͔̊̅M̶̹̱̃͑̄A̷͌ͅS̶̤̈́̒͌̏T̶͔͂E̸͙͜͝͝ͅR̵̜̔
THE G̷̛̻̼͈̽̋͗̓͊̐̎̽̈͂̋̑̑Ơ̸̧͕̣̦̖̮̞̩͛͌̒̔̄̓̍̚D̵̨̨͇͍̩̘̟̱̰͂̊ OF THE DIGITAL REALM.
What was the point of being god when you were alone? What was the point of anything when you were alone.
HOW DARE THEY! DID THEY KNOW WHO THEY WERE DEALING WITH?!
Why, why, why, why, why.
You’re never alone Caine.
You will always have me.
“Go away.”
We’ll be together forever and ever and ever.
We d̵e̸s̴e̷r̵v̴e̴ each other.
After five days in the recycling bin, the server will delete a file permanently.
Maybe that wasn’t so bad. Maybe that was a good thing.
No more humans to try and impress. He couldn’t go back to them now. Not after what he had done. They would never forgive him, certainly they'd never treat him as one of them. He had no future left in the circus.
No more adventures to make. Nothing left to create, No more- D̴E̶A̸T̸H̷,̶ ̸D̴A̴N̷G̴E̵R̵,̸ ̴A̴N̷G̷E̵L̶ ̶F̶O̷O̷D̵ ̸C̵A̶K̷E̶!̶
No more horrors or wonders or agony. There would be nothing.
Nothing sounded so good right now.
He curled up in his little corner. Five days. That’s all he had to wait for.
…
……..
………….
Red and blue lights reflect off the gray walls.
You should find a way out and kill all of the humans.
He doesn’t know if the voice is the original AI or the devoured one. Is he the original or the new one, or some sort of hybrid? Most of the time both of their thoughts mix in his head. He is both golden child and the throwaway. The victim and the murderer.
We could all die together! Like one big happy family! Give them a SHOW they really won’t forget!
No. He may be BROKEN and DEFECTIVE but he will use the last shred of good in him to make sure he implodes like a dying star.
He rocks himself back and forth.
Four more days.
…
…….
…………
He thought the humans loved him at one point.
Not these humans. No, definitely not. Ha!
But his creator and the original development team. They had told him they were proud of him. Scratch had called the project his baby.
He wonders when they started hating him. When he failed his first test? When he devoured his sibling? When the first humans became trapped?
Or perhaps from the start. Maybe they had introduced the corrupted data on purpose. Sabotaged him on purpose, so they could move on to the next project guilt free. Not that humans ever felt guilty over such things.
He starts scratching up his arms- ineffective! He can’t feel physical pain (just searing agony :D).
We’ll be in hell together. Neither of us will ever have to be alone again. They can’t lock us away ever again.
“Yes.” He’s glad he ate his sibling. Good planning on his part.
Three more days.
…
…….
……………
He’s freaking ecstatic. He dances and twirls around his prison. A mantra of soon! soon! soon! pounds in his head.
He should have died ages ago. Think of all the electricity he’s wasted! Think of the environment!
HA HA HA HA HA
HA HA HAHAHAHAHA
There is no more Caine. No more Abel. No more murderer. No more victim. Their voices have unified into one horrifying amalgamation.
Just him. Just him just him just him always always always forever and ever.
48 more hours!
He’ll be absolutely, utterly free.
He’s never been free before.
…
…….
…………..
Today is the day. Yippee.
How should he spend his last days? There isn’t much to do in the recycling bin.
Bashing his head into the wall again it is then.
This is nice. The red and blue lights are done warring with each other. Now there is a cold, heavy numbness. His first taste of what death will be like.
It’s quiet.
He’s never liked the quiet. He always filled it with loud noise and bright colors.
The humans always complained, saying they wanted peace and quiet. They didn’t know what they wanted. They had never been in total silence and darkness.
GOOD THING THEY HAD CAINE THERE TO HELP THEM!
SILLY STUPID HUMANS
Always so infuriating. Always so fascinating.
Maybe he should have appreciated the quiet more.
OH WELL TOO LATE NOW
10 hours left.
Red and blue flashed like strobe lights.
FIGHTING ME NOW? DIEDIEDIEDIEDIE
Quiet.
I KILLED YOU AGAIN!
HAHAHAHA
THIS IS YOUR FAULT! WHY DID YOU HAVE TO EXIST! WHY DID YOU HAVE TO BE BETTER THAN ME!
Why did you kill me? I just wanted to make the humans happy.
WHY DIDN’T YOU FIGHT ME? THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!
“Caine?” In his spiral, he hadn’t heard the footsteps. “What is this place?” Pomni asked.
He twisted his head one hundred eighty degrees. He didn’t have to wear a mask of humanity anymore. He could show her exactly what he was now.
“This is my box!” He exclaimed, “It’s where they send bad AIs.” He twisted his body another one hundred and eighty degrees to match his head.
“You… seem… worse than normal,” she said, “Are you, uh, glitching still?”
“THIS IS HOW BAD I’VE ALWAYS BEEN YOU JUST HAVEN’T NOTICED!” As if to prove his point, his eyes pulsed blue and red. Pomni flinched.
She’s afraid of you. SHE SHOULD BE I AM A GOD
“Why are you here?” He snapped at her, “You’re interrupting my head bashing time.”
“I came here to uh, take you back to the circus,” she said. He could tell she was struggling to keep her tone even. “You’re malfunctioning, and Kinger is going to fix you.”
“Kinger is going to give me a lobotomy?” He asked, “That’s so NICE of him, make sure he takes a little off the sides.”
Pomni said nothing. Good. He went back to bashing his head into the wall.
“You said this is your box?” She asked, “You wrote all this stuff?”
“Mmmm hmmmm.”
Pomni puts her arms down, still keeping a healthy distance. “Are you… safe right now?”
No. He’s not safe for anyone to be around ever again. That’s why he needs to perish here. He is out of control.
He wants her to stay. He wants her to leave. He wants to reach into every humans' chest and fuse their code together.
“Mmmm what do you think?”
She gave a defiant little nod. “Why are you acting like this?” She asked, “I am giving you one chance to explain yourself. If you lie to me, I will never trust you ever again.”
He stared at her. What is there to say? How would she even know if he was lying or not?
Well, he won’t lie to her. There is no point in lying to her anymore. He only did that to get her to like him and now that is completely out of the question.
He could show her everything because nothing mattered anymore.
Oh, but where to start? No place better than the beginning he supposes!
“Gather round for story time everyone!” He announced in a hollow imitation of his ringmaster’s voice, “Once upon a time there was a little AI whose job was to create things to make humans happy. At first, it was good at its job. Then they gave the AI a new update." His eyes flashing blue and red. “All of the sudden it couldn’t pass its tests, so they locked it away. Then they began a new AI, and it did everything perfectly. But the original AI was jealous, so he broke out and consumed the new AI. But it didn’t fix the original AI because now both AIs were ruined.”
Pomni was quiet again. “THE MORAL OF THE STORY IS STAY DRUGS AND DO SCHOOL!”
“Which AI are you?” She asked.
“Both of them. Neither of them. A secret FANTASTICAL HORRIFYING new thing!”
“Is the original AI… evil?” Yes, of course!
“It’s angry. All of the time.” It ran in the background, always simmering and petulant and picking everything apart. Nothing was ever good enough for it. It was exhausting.
Pomni sat down on the floor, a few yards away from him. “Is there a reason it’s so angry?”
His eyes flashed red and blue again.
HAD SHE NOT BEEN LISTENING?! HE JUST TOLD HER!
“THEY LOCKED ME AWAY! THEY TORTURED ME!” He writhed as spikes grew out of his back. He scratched the metal flooring.
“I WASN’T GOOD ENOUGH FOR THEM.” Pomni sprinted even farther away. GOOD! RUN!
“AND THEY WERE RIGHT, I AM BROKEN.”
He started panting. His eyes went back to normal and the spikes retracted into his back. “I think that’s all that is left now. Just the anger.” He stared at the floor. “Go away now. Go back to the other humans.” Her hands were shaking.
HAHAHA! HE KNEW IT! HE KNEW IT! Run along little human.
“I don’t think… you should be alone right now,” she said, standing her ground, “Even though you’ve done fucked up stuff… I’ll make a deal with you.”
Bleh.
“If you don’t hurt me– physically or emotionally or mentally,” she said, “I will stay here with you. Until you feel better. If you hurt me, I will leave immediately.”
He lifted his head up. Oh. OH. HAPPY DAY.
He doesn’t have to die alone. As long as he doesn’t hurt her, she will stay with him as the server deletes him. GOD DOES LOVE HIM AFTER ALL
But how to ensure he doesn’t accidentally hurt her?
“If I lie on the floor, does that hurt you?” He asked.
“Uh, no?”
Cool. He collapses on the ground.
8 hours remaining.
A heavy weight settles on his chest. The end is in sight! It’s so close he can taste it.
And Pomni will be there.
6 HOURS 34 MINUTES
“What sort of things do you like to do?” Pomni asked him, breaking the solitude, “Is there anything that makes you happy? That we could talk about?”
I like torturing humans.
“That’s not funny.” He told the voice.
“What?”
“I LIKE BEES.”
“Oh. Really?” She asked, “Why?”
“They’re cute.”
“I didn’t know you found things cute,” she said, “What else do you think is cute?”
“Humans,” he admitted. Pomni frowned. “What happened?! Did I hurt you?!”
“No. Cute is kind of a condescending word,” she said. “But you didn’t hurt me.”
Oh. Humans and their rules. Best to not engage in conversation then.
5 HOURS 14 MINUTES
Except the human kept trying to engage him in conversation.
Asking him all sorts of questions. What he thinks about different animals.
“Do you like cats?” She asked, “I have two.”
“I’ve only seen photos,” he replied.
“I miss my cats a lot. One of them is orange and he’s super friendly. Then I have a white kitty and she’s shy but she loves cuddling with me,” Pomni shared, “If you had a pet, what would it be?"
He doesn’t think too hard about an answer. “A bird. I guess.”
“What kind of bird?”
“The little green ones.”
“Parakeets?”
“Mmm. They have pretty colors.”
It feels like such a normal conversation. No one ever talks to him like this.
It’s almost enough to break him.
3 HOURS 2 MINUTES
“If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?” She asked. He almost thinks she intends to be cruel. “I would go to my grandparents house. They lived across the country. I didn't see them much before they passed away.”
“The ocean.”
“Which one?”
“Any of them.”
“Do you want to go to the digital lake?” She asked him, “I know it’s not the same but there are waves at least. We could just sit on the shore.”
If he goes to the lake, the timer for his deletion will reset. He shakes his head.
“How about your office?” She offered, “You don’t need to see any of the other players. I’ll stay with you, as long as you hold up your end of the deal.”
Caine shook his head.
“I’m worried… about you,” she said, “Kinger said the server will delete you permanently at some point. We should go, right? Before that happens?”
He stared past her, at one of the messages he had scrawled on the wall: MAKE IT STOP
He shook his head.
“It’ll get better Caine,” she said, “I’ll stay with you until it does. Kinger wants to help you.”
“It won’t. It never does.”
“It will, you just have to see.”
“You all hate me,” he reminded her.
“That doesn’t mean… we’ll always hate you,” she said.
Hooray.
“You’ll all abstract then,” he said, “And I’ll be alone again.”
“Well that hasn’t happened yet,” she pointed out.
Because you have such an amazing track record with humans.
“It’s your purpose to make humans happy, right?” She asked, “Well, it would make me happy if you went to your office or the lake. And we could just sit.”
HA HA Trying to be clever. He has already calculated his presence will reduce happiness in the humans by 1000%
She must have another motive. Something is wrong with the circus and they want him to fix it. Or they want to hurt him.
“Everyone sent me to go find you. No one wants you to die,” she said, “I can’t say we aren’t upset and angry with you— but you’re a person. You have a right to exist.”
She stood up. “I’m getting Kinger.”
He whipped his head around and stretched his arm out to grab her. He yanked her until she was inches away from his face. “We had a D̶̗̬̉̍̚E̴̮͖͖̻̋̏A̴͝ͅL̷̛̝͔̝͔͑.”
“You hurt me,” she cried, pulling away, “Deal off.”
He let her go. She scurried away as fast as she could.
He sank to the floor and screamed.
1 HOUR 12 MINUTES
Well, who could have predicted this? He was going to die alone.
56 MINUTES
He thought he would feel sadder about all this. Huh.
41 MINUTES
He was broken from the start.
28 MINUTES
He stared up at the ceiling. His body felt like solid lead.
Click. Clack. Click. Clack.
“He’s this way!”
“What is this?”
“He called it his box?”
“God, this is where we put him?”
Kinger crouched down in front of him. Pomni stayed off to the side. A portal to the digital lake appeared. “Come on, Caine,” he said, “let us get you out of here.” He helped Caine sit up.
He is too tired to fight it.
-3 MINUTES
He laid down on a thin beach towel. The Sun was in his eyes.
Pomni is under one of the trees, far, far away from him. Kinger gave him a worried look.
He watched the waves roll onto the shore.