#scratch abstraction

Okay so I have a mini theory please bear with me.

**Obviously spoilers for Episode 7 of The Amazing Digital Circus**

So we know from episode 7 that Caine likely caused Scratch's abstraction by messing with their mind too much. Many people assume it was an accident. That Caine was still learning about how far he could push things and found the threshold through Scratch. Though this is very likely the case, I don't think most future abstractions were accidental.

Being an AI, Caine takes in the information he is given and applies that every time he sees that same situation replicated. He likely knows exactly how far he can push a person before they move to abstraction. (This could have taken a couple abstractions since the threshold is likely different for each person, and he probably had to learn that, too.) However, by the time of Ribbit's and Kaufmo's abstractions, he likely knew exactly how many buttons he could push before a person breaks. Meaning both Ribbit and Kaufmo abstracted at the hands of Caine.

This is further proven in the first episode when Caine pulls Pomni out of the void and, after seeing the state of disarray that the circus is in, says "What happened here? Oh right, my doing." It's played off as a silly little "whoopsies my little adventuring Gloinks got a little too rambunctious," but what if it's more "whoopsies looks like Kaufmo made a mess"?

This brings me to my main point. At the time that the show takes place, Caine is pretty certain he knows how far he needs to push everyone to make them reach their breaking points. So then why would abstractions keep happening if Caine knows how to prevent them?

Because abstraction adds to his adventures.

Abstraction creates conflict. It creates emotion. Caine sees this through the mini funerals that the group has for each other. And to be clear, I'm not saying Caine is doing this out of malicious intent but rather that because it adds to his adventures he believes it's a good thing.

Now, let's take a look at Jax.

He went to his room and got near to the edge of what he could handle before he was interrupted by Caine's newest adventure. Then at the end, when they're in the control room, Jax suddenly begins having a panic attack from the images that he's seeing.

What if Caine saw how close everyone was to pushing the blue button, and instead of showing Jax those images in order to push him to push the red button, he showed him the images in order to cause him to abstract.

In episode 5, when Caine is freaking out about the group enjoying the non-Caine adventures, he snaps his fingers and brings everyone to intermission time. He distracts them from the task at hand. I believe he does the same thing in episode 7, hoping to push Jax to abstraction and distract the group from the decision in front of them at least long enough to change the stakes. Jax is, after all, the person he's pushed the most. We know he's the closest in the group to abstraction because we've seen it before. Caine even seems surprised when Jax starts yelling at him. Maybe it's because he doesn't understand why Jax would be so angry, or maybe it's because he was expecting a different outcome.

I know you might be thinking "but wouldn't Jax abstracting just make them want to leave more? Wouldn't it seem more dire?" And to that I remind you that Caine doesn't understand human emotions. He sees the way the group acts and knows that they've all been hostile to Jax because of how he treats them. Maybe (as sad and untrue as it is) he thinks everyone might enjoy the adventures more if Jax weren't making fun of them all the time. He can't completely change his personality so maybe he thinks this is the next best thing he can do to appease the group. Maybe it's the last thing he can do that will make them want to stay with him.