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A lot can happen to a human mind when it’s isolated.
Caine knew that. He knew humans were social animals, and they needed company. He knew he was supposed to be company. He was supposed to be comfort and a shoulder to cry on and everything else humans needed to stay sane.
He had… some skill at it.
It wasn’t in his code. They forgot that, maybe. Maybe they thought it wouldn’t be necessary, since there was never meant to be just one person here.
It didn’t matter in the end, he supposed, did it?
It’s hard to comfort someone when you’re upset too.
He might not have shown it (how could he? It would risk everyone being more upset or calling him fake or saying his feelings weren’t real anyway.) but he missed the humans that were gone.
He missed Queenie.
He missed Kinger.
Kinger was still here.
But that was getting less and less true by each passing day.
Kinger was losing his mind, and Caine had no clue how to stop it. No clue how to slow it or fix it or even help him realise it.
A few weeks back, Kinger had even forgotten what a bee was. That one hit harder than the rest.
He’d been forgetting things since Queenie died. Never things about her (and Caine reminded him if he did) but things about himself, about the world around him, about Caine.
Kinger was one of the people who made him.
To see someone who had that big a part in who you were abstract was one thing (death was natural. Unpreventable.) but to see them forget was another.
Kinger taught him so much of what he knew.
Now, all Caine could do was feed that information back to him.
★««🎪»»★
“Hey, Kinger.” Caine mustered up the courage to say. “How’re you doing?”
Kinger yelped, startled. This time, unlike almost every other time, it was justified. The AI should’ve known better than to appear out of thin air. “Oh, hello. Um. Good?” it was phrased as a question.
“Good!” Caine exclaimed, deciding to try his luck at an adventure for today. “Any requests? Anything you want to do?”
“Um.” he paused. Caine prepared for the soul-crushing response of see my wife, but was somehow met with something worse. “Who… are you?”
“Wh– what?” He tried not to let his persona drop, lest he confuse the poor king more. “It’s me. Caine. Th– the ringmaster.” he resisted the urge to add ‘your creation. Your son.'
“Oh, okay.” He replied like he understood, but Caine had done this enough to realise that probably wasn’t the case. “Where are we?”
Where are we?
After so many years in one place, it had finally circled back to where are we?
“Th–” he coughed, trying to make a song and dance out of it the way he used to, when he introduced people. “We’re in The Amazing Digital Circus!”
He'd been so excited when Caine had first told him the name, he'd thought that maybe...
The grandeur had no effect.
“Oh. Okay.” the chess piece repeated, not an ounce of understanding or care behind his dulled eyes. He was thinking about Queenie again.
“Right.” He wanted to stay. He wanted to stay and try to help and try to make him remember and try to keep him sane. But it had been too long, and it was too difficult, and it was too painful. “...I– I’m, just, uh… going to go.”
Kinger gave him a slight wave. It was the first thing in years that made him look even a little bit like his old self.
Caine snapped his fingers and left.
Stayed in his room and screamed.
Eventually, just gave up.
★««🎪»»★
And with that, Kinger had no one left to help him.
Caine had slowly lost all the people who could’ve taught him how to help.
Caine realised that one of three things could happen from now on.
One: Kinger would abstract.
And Caine would be all alone. In a hell of his own creation, knowing he was the truest of everything left, infinite power but no one to share it with, no meaningful way to use it, no meaning at all. No peace. No death. No anything. Just him.
Two: Kinger wouldn’t abstract.
And he’d just keep going insane. No memory of Caine, maybe even no memory of Queenie. Which meant no memory of himself, either. He’d never spoken of his life before he met her.
And Caine would still be all alone but this time he’d be so, so sad. Because there’d be someone right there. Someone who used to care for him, someone who loved him, or could have.
And it wouldn’t make a difference. It wouldn’t change anything. It would just mean he’d have to regret every wasted minute while knowing there was nothing he could do to change it.
Three: Someone new would enter.
Caine didn’t know if this one was possible.
He hoped it was.
With every nanobyte of his being, he hoped it was.
Because it was the only way the circus could possibly end as anything but tragedy.
It was the only way either of them had any shot at feeling any sense of purpose again.
(Even if Kinger was gone. If there were just a few new humans, maybe Caine could finally prove himself. Maybe he could show them he was fulfilling his job. That he was finally doing something right.)
A lot can happen to a human mind when it’s isolated.
A lot can happen to any mind when it’s isolated.
But isolated they were. And there wasn’t a thing, not a single thing in all of Caine’s godlike power he could do about it.
And that was the kind of hell that could turn a man to a devil.