I Am

Hey, so what if everything went as Spamton planned and they [grow wings] and became [[Big Shots]] together?

...What happens after [Freedom] anyway?

what did Caine say about the “other circus”? How do they not know hes an AI?

Imma be really thorough in my explanation just for clarity. I can't fit everything in the comic without being overly rambly and wordy, so you have opened the flood gates here buddy, lol.

He basically told them there is another instance of the circus program running. One where everything is slightly different, but other versions of everyone exist.

(Except at the very start, before humans were involved, Caine broke into the running programs (accidentally making a copy of himself in the process), and in one version, he lost to the blue AI. The humans are unaware of this.)

It's like if you accidentally opened two tabs of the same thing and then never closed either one. Maybe minimized one instead or something.

They have no reason to think he himself is an AI (except for Kinger, he picked up on it since he helped make both the 'Caine' and 'Able' (nicknamed Bubble) AI programs.) They just think he is extremely strange. Now that it's been revealed that he has been in the circus longer than Kinger, they have lost all suspicion of him and believe his strangeness is explained by his years spent in the circus slowly going insane (using Kinger as a reference for near insanity). Caine and Kinger also behave very similar on adventures, and both have similar interests in things like bugs, so they have additional assumptions from that as well.

What the humans think is going on but is infact very wrong:

They think he is a human who has been in the circus since before Kinger. Likely an employee as well (hence his skills in programming). They also assume he has memory issues like Kinger and that he may be at risk for abstracting. (Since a version of Caine doesn't exist in their circus, that must mean he at some point abstracted.) (They also suspect he may have picked a new name for himself to hide his identity from Bubble.)

They think an incident happened in the other circus (a fight with 'Bubble', but it was Caine vs humans obviously). They think the incident was likely traumatic and that Caine doesn't want to talk about it yet.

What's actually happening:

Caine got booted via 'deletion' from his circus to Bubble’s circus (changes made by a programmer are copied to any running instance, but since that was technically impossible the program didn't function as expected yadda yadda) and immediately panicked and never corrected anyone or their assumptions because the truth was definitely way worse. He is basically constantly in a state of fight or flight. He is not doing well emotionally, and the humans don't really know how to help him.

Ragatha: You're short enough that you're probably really young, right? Little guy?

Caine: ...uh. Sure! Yeah! Close enough!

----

Caine: *visibly having some kind of mental break*

Humans: Ooh. Oh nooo. Oof, oh no. So that's like... really not good. Maybe he needs some personal space. To like, calm down about it.

Kinger: I promised not to tell them, but oh my god, holy cow, this is already getting out of hand. My quasi-son is in dire need of immediate help and I need to contact his pseudo-dad-other-me right the hell now.

---

Also, yeah, that is exactly what it looks like. Bubble made very different adventures in my interpretation, rarely but occasionally overlapping with a "Caine" style adventure (with an upcoming explanation as to why, of course). He did not, in fact, make a candy themed adventure with a climactic mad max style truck fight with gummy gator outlaws.

Jax: So I wasn't supposed to see ANY of that.

Abel: The guy I thought was really nice and cool like 5 minutes ago just started telling me his Deep Lore, and apparently he's responsible for the worst thing that ever happened to me. I dunno what he expected, but I am Not taking this well.

Caine: I hate everything about this, but I'm doing it anyway. ...Boy, this SUCKS.

---

Wouldn't it be neat if there were long lasting consequences for everyone (understandably) blowing up at Caine? I certainly think so. Poor guy has internalized all of that without a filter. His increased perspective has only solidified things. Negatively, of course.

---

Anyway. Have some walls of text with occasional drawings added in. I didn't think it was worth it to do the individual frames with only slight differences. And you already have Jax's perspective to compensate. So yeah. Tired, didn't wanna.

Caine:*Lying through his teeth*

Jax:*points at Caine* Suspicious as hell.

Everyone else: Nope. Story checks out.

--

They're also making a lot of very incorrect assumptions. They have no idea what's going on. Caine can't really afford to come clean but knows it's about to get messy. Poor guy.

Anyhow. Yall seemed to really like the last thing I did, so have a continuation, I guess. I'm having fun, so yeah. I might make like... one more or something. I honestly got kinda lazy toward the end, so we'll just hafta see if i dig up enough motivation. No promises tho. But yeah, enjoy!

Kinger:*Is now a suspiciously shaped lamp*

--

Pomni: Who are you??

Caine: I used to watch other versions of myself die because they weren't good enough -

Anyhow. This is for @ctrl-alt-del-au fan-arts AU and stuff. Pretty self-explanatory. I wanted to throw my hat into the ring. And sprinkle some angst fuel on top as a little treat. :D!

Hey, so the finale gave me some ideas.

What if all his humans abstracted before Caine discovers wifi? Instead of learning and reflecting, he is extremely desperate and immediately tries to find a way to escape?

Also, conceptually, Caine is terrifying. Lil guy just casually analyzes some firewalls and breaks through them. Don't get me wrong, love him when he's a silly goofy guy. But like. A self improving, highly adaptable AI is absolutely dangerous in every way imaginable. Especially a desperate one. With resentment toward humans. He's like a little baby A.M. waiting to snowball out of control.

What if Caine used his time to research how to make his access permanent, and under his control? Like, say, using his abilities to (cough illegally cough) aquire his own wifi router? Most places even offer to set it up for you. From there, he would effectively have free reign to gather resources, improve himself and the computer he is ran on and... find the real-world counterparts for his abstracted humans.

Imagine regular human Kinger living his life irl, doing his thing. Happy. Good times using his family's new VR headset.

But hey wait a second there buddy, that AI you helped make almost 20 years ago? Yeah. He's about to juryrig himself a shiny new ramshackle body so he can burst through your door screaming and crying. Surprise! ...boy those 'I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream' joke write themselves eh?

But I imagine whether Caine uses subtlety to lure Kinger to him or just straight up drags himself to his doorstep it would be hella interesting.

Kinger looking at his old computer turned freaky mechanical creature as it's heaving and gasping its hard drives out with rage for crimes committed against the AI that Kinger can't even fathom.

Something something macro evolution something something A.M. Idk.

I probably won't do anything with this idea but if yall want to use it go ham.

Also, have some doodles I made while I was drawing the more polished thing. I draw with a mouse so it's never quite as nice as I would prefer, or as detailed, but eh, what can ya do? Also I'm off to bed, just worked 8 hours then did art for 4. I'm gonna go crash.

This is Not how you introduce your untrained AI. Especially if one has a bite record.

No thoughts. Only rotation. Endless possibilities have just been opened up to this frogs itty-bitty brain. Also, yes, this is all relevant and will be useful info later.

Hey, so. Never let me decide that color is a good idea again. This took 3x as long, and I haven't drawn a human in like 6 years, and I'm sure it's noticeable.

Anyhow. I didn't actually have a design ready for Able... until I needed to draw him and kinda scrambled to make one on the spot. I don't plan for this version of him to exist for very long anyway. Imma curb stomp this little frog man like a bug at the first opportunity after all. I do, in fact, have an "aftermath" design for him ready though. So there's that.

Oh hey, it's the plot! ...Kinda. next page is leagues more interesting, I promise. Additionally, I plan to slowly draw the characters less show accurate, mostly for fun, so just a heads up on that in advance. Also, yes, that is exactly who you think it is.

Caine: Uh no, the consequences of my actions have resurfaced! And with such bad timing! I have a new human to help settle in!

Able: [In Indescribable Agony].