No wonder the ND's flock to this guy. He's US. He's representation that doesnt shy away from the not-cute, not-quirky, not-cool, not-edgy, not-mysterious of Neurodivergence. It shows the ugly parts. The painful parts. The parts where you come across as scary, or uncanny valley, or annoying, or unfeeling, or uncaring, or egotistical, or selfish or like you are not even trying.
When the truth is, you are so, so scared. The truth is, you don't understand these alien people around you. The truth is you just want to be yourself but you have to wear a mask to be considered merely tolerable to those around you. And that still doesn't seem to make you acceptable or likable. When the truth is you do feel, even if the way you experience or understand those feelings are Different. You certainly can feel Hurt. When the truth is you do care, its just that what you understand to be important is so different to what most other people consider important. The truth is you have often learned to bury your own needs and desires, sometimes just to survive. When the truth is, you never wanted to be bad or harmful, but sometimes you find that you are.
When the truth is you do nothing BUT try, until you just can't anymore.
Caine was only ever treated like a person when the humans wanted a person to be angry at or blame or be frustrated with. Outside of that? He was just a Problem. An annoyingly malfunctioning computer program that refused to work properly. A Vending Machine that refused to dispense exactly the product you wanted.
Yeah, sometimes we ARE the problem. But we would be the problem a lot less if people cared about us beyond if we are a problem to them or not.
Caine cared and loved so, so so much. It took 20 years for him to break under the strain of being depersonalised, unloved, uncared for, confused, ignored, hated, unappreciated, overworked and never, ever being thought of as good enough. I really don't think an undersocialised human with very little in the way of emotional maturity or emotional regulation skills, paired with having vast amounts of unchecked power, would have lasted nearly as long before giving into the temptation to lash out.
It took Caine 20 years and having a mental breakdown before he did.
Maybe Caine's denial/ ignorance really was that strong for all this time of how disliked he was and how unhappy everyone else was. But Caine isn't actually stupid. Very bad at understanding humans, but not stupid. And he's been watching the humans for a long, long time. He hears the things they say. Including the things they say about him when he's not there. the "insults I have to ignore to do my job".
Maybe more than denial, it was love that held him back. And a desperate hope that one day, one day... he would have a Creative Idea that would finally get a human to love him back. And consider him someone who was worthwhile. A hope he hung onto until it was shattered utterly.
And he didn't even fully understand why.
After that his options were; to utterly drown in his despair and self-loathing, to accept the belief he always had deep down that he deserved to be abandoned and locked in a box. Alone in the dark, thrown away. Accept the fear he was always running from, that maybe he never deserved to exist at all because he was so broken and faulty and unworthy.
...Or to grasp onto his anger and frustration as a lifeline. To maybe let himself stop feeling so horrible about himself, to instead seethe with the perceived injustice of it all.
It's a pain familiar to those who grew up ND.
