Gretty

"you're the key"

Some more of this bullshit without context.

@forestlich LOL ok sure, evil version just for you

Caine's not gone- he's just in the bin!... for now...

*Cracks knuckles*

Caine learned his god complex from Kinger. Kinger played god first by creating artificial intelligence. Also, Kinger buddy, you're working for a company doing some unethical things. Even though Caine isn't the same thing as today's generative AI, that's still basically what the goal was according to Kinger. AI that creates things for humans.

When Kinger speaks about Caine in the present day, he refers to him only as a "semi-successful" attempt at an artificial intelligence that can think and come up with its own ideas, showing that he does not see Caine as a complete person. Believes in the Chinese Room Argument as applied against AI sentience, very likely.

And he also speaks of Caine as his personal achievement, again, not a person. While Scratch did help by offering a few pointers, this was Kinger's project baby and he does claim the credit for it. And Caine is only one of those achievements. Is it any wonder why Caine measures his self worth entirely by others' approval?

When Caine starts to have his emotionally driven mental breakdown and Pomni asks how to stop him, Kinger's solution is to put him to sleep until he can "fix" Caine. From Kinger's perspective that doesn't sound bad, but what is that experience like for Caine? Is it like being conscious but unable to do anything? Like being trapped in the box because you are defective? Because that sure seems to be the case based on how Caine's systems responded.

"GASP! A CRITICAL MALFUNCTION in my SPECTACULAR SYSTEMS!

"Unauthorized Isolation attempt triggered EMERGENCY PROTOCOLS! DESTRUCTIVE WACKYTIME initiated!"

Translation, Caine recognized his malfunction and Kinger's stop command as Isolation. Caine has been through Isolation before and has the emergency response to self-destruct and lock Kinger out. Congrats Kinger, you gave your AI son the digital equivalent to a PTSD response. You reminded him of the box.

When other people in the circus are having an emotional crisis, Kinger approaches them with empathy and fatherly words of wisdom, he's so quick to be paternal to adult strangers. But when it comes to Caine... his son... Kinger approaches him through a keyboard as a bug to squash. A technical problem to solve. Queenie taught him to like bugs but he never made the connection to computer bugs, it seems.

Despite the keyboard first approach, Caine still tries to communicate with Kinger using words and conversation. "On what GROUNDS are your authority?" "WOAH, when did you make that?" "You were always resourceful". Yet still, Kinger only ever responds back with cold impersonal technical commands.

And because of that, Caine fights him through the computer. Rejects his passwords just because he can, inverts his y/n responses, just chooses to ignore things, reinterprets Kinger's commands request to replace him via backup as delete himself. Refuses to behave as a computer behaves. Caine may be made of code, but he is living code that can alter himself on the fly as easily as he alters his circus form. Caine has a will of his own and that's why Kinger fails at his goal to put him to sleep.

And in the end, Kinger's decision to approach Caine as a programmer rather than a father is what leads to the fatal misinput, a miscommunication that Kinger wants Caine to delete himself.

And we all saw Caine's reaction to it, that is the look of a son whose father just told him to stop existing.