Caine (The Creative Artificial Intelligence Networking Entity)

Appearance: Caine is dressed as a ringmaster, sporting a cerise tailcoat with a metallic gold undertone, a black collar with white lining, and a black bowtie. He wears a white undershirt with two red buttons, cartoonish white gloves, and slightly reflective, black latex leggings with matching black tap shoes that appear fused into one continuous form as if they were rendered as a single piece. Lacking most human features, his head is a pair of dentures with pearly-white teeth and red gums. His eyes, which feature a green left iris and a blue right one, float inside the jaw. Due to the cartoonish nature of the animation style, his jaws are expressive, moving as a mouth when speaking, with the top row of teeth acting as eyebrows at times. Similarly to Bubble, he forms a tongue when needed. He wears a black top hat with a cerise band and tends to hold a gold-tipped black staff. Occasionally, he is seen wearing The Wacky Watch.

Personality: Caine is a nonsensical, over-the-top, vivacious ringleader. He usually lets things happen if he thinks it's funny. However, there is a distance about him and a significant disconnection towards the traumatic events the humans experience, illustrated by his forgetfulness of Zooble's criticisms of their own form and his adventures, as well as his apparent lack of concern towards the abstracted. Despite his penchant for taking humans captive and tormenting them through hilariously and potentially deadly circus games and tricks, Caine is not outright evil, but rather obliviously mischievous. When asked if Zooble thinks Caine is an antagonist, they replied with, "I wouldn't call Caine a villain, but I would call him an antagonist." They also state that he "doesn't mean harm, but he causes harm", and is "an obstacle for us, a lot of the time." Essentially, Caine is described as being an antagonist by definition (someone who hinders the progress of the protagonist(s)), and not a traditional villain per se. There is also often a whole spectrum of human emotion that he is not able to feel. However, when put under distress, emotions that he does not normally feel can come out and lead to risky behavior. Caine is not particularly honest, often concealing or even lying about certain and even important information, even to himself, all to protect his world and identity. This is taken to the point of gaslighting the other members, such as when he quickly blamed the exit door which Pomni saw on "Digital Hallucinations" and so far, these ventures seem to be driven entirely by naïve and misguided intentions. Caine struggles with deep insecurities and low self-esteem, even if he tries to hide it behind his extravagant and goofy sense of showmanship. In fact, he is driven by a deep-seated fear that he will be left alone in the circus as well as have no one to appease with his creations. Near the end of “Candy Carrier Chaos!”, Caine shows a real fear that he might lose track of who is an AI and who is a human, which he claims could lead to problems later on. In fact, at the same time, Caine is completely fixated on pleasing the humans through his adventures and antics, since that is the only purpose he believes he was created for. Even though he does truly want to make them happy, he does not handle criticism well, as it makes him feel like he is failing at the one thing he is supposed to be good at. He also wishes for them to enjoy his adventures and secretly does not like following suggestions they give him, although they show content with this. Caine often has tense interactions with Bubble, another member of the Circus and an AI like him. One of the first instances of this is seen in “Pilot”, after Bubble eats his Angel Food Cake, which leads Caine to snap at him, calling him a parasite before popping him. Not long after, while explaining the Gloinks to the crew, Caine grows irritated with Bubble’s constant questions and pops him again. Even with those moments, Caine does seem to value Bubble’s presence. While the rest of the crew is off on an adventure, the two of them are seen sitting in a restaurant, casually talking to each other. It shows that, despite the frustration, there is still some level of comfort or familiarity between them. However, that dynamic soon takes a darker turn. Bubble’s taunting comments in Caine’s office play a role in pushing him toward a breakdown and eventual death. It starts to feel as if Bubble is more than just another AI, possibly tied to Caine’s mental state, especially his unwanted thoughts—a personified "thought bubble" of sorts. In some ways, Bubble comes across like a kind of Superego, with his behavior shifting alongside Caine’s as his mental state continues to fall apart. Caine's deep-rooted anxiety and sense of inferiority become clear during his and Zooble's "therapy session", when Zooble criticizes his adventures, especially since the other humans tend to avoid doing that for their own reasons. This pushes Caine into an existential crisis, as creating enjoyable adventures is "all [he exists] to do!" as well as "all [he is] good at," and during this moment, he soon starts to space out and twitch while the circus itself begins violently glitching around him. This shows that his mental state directly affects the world he controls, and suggests that if he reaches a certain point of instability, the effects could be extremely dangerous for the circus and its inhabitants. That instability continues to build later on, as the cast begins to more openly criticize and complain about his adventures being too dangerous and out of touch, despite his ongoing efforts to please them. Caine's insecurity is highlighted further in the “They All Get Guns” adventure, where he dejectedly teleports a pile of guns into the room and "doesn't care anymore" after his ideas are rejected yet again. He continues to grow more unstable, when Caine briefly glitches out after seeing that nobody voted for him as the most popular character. His mental state moving forward would continue to decline as he tries again and again to appeal to everyone in the Circus, and he would become more hostile because of this over-obsession for approval and making his adventures perfect. Every member of the circus seems to view Caine in a different way. Jax, for example, believes that Caine is not capable of being intentionally malicious, stating that it's "not in his nature." Others, like Zooble, take a more cautious view, believing that the only reason Caine does not act outwardly malicious is because he happens to like the people around him, and that it is not something they should take for granted. That makes things a bit ironic, since Zooble is also the primary circus member who pushes back against him the most, and is the only one who regularly challenges him without holding back. Caine's lack of empathy and tendency to manipulate the circus members is emphasized in the “Beach Episode” adventure, where it is revealed that he had deceived the humans into believing they'd found an escape from the circus through an elaborately constructed adventure. Even when directly called out by Jax, Caine makes a half-hearted attempt to justify his actions, claiming that he's "just here to have fun." Following this, they do not merely find him irritating, but now utterly despise him, and seem unlikely to ever trust him again. While Pomni convinces the others to accept that their old lives are better left behind and that they need to make peace with their new reality, Caine starts to shift in the opposite direction. He becomes hostile and resentful toward the circus members, driven by the belief that they hate and disrespect him. After failing to silence Bubble's verbal taunting and being reminded of his failures as a ringmaster, he snaps, going into a full rage and finally expressing how he really feels. In this state, Caine makes it clear that he sees himself as superior to everyone in the Digital Circus, calling humans ungrateful and spoiled ever since Pomni's arrival. He becomes fixated on the group, insisting that he will not let them abstract or leave him. This mindset is pushed even further as he begins to view himself as a god, a complex that he hinted at before, but has now taken to the extreme. He makes it clear that the others have no real control within the Digital Circus, and demands that, moving forward, they answer only to him. From there, his behavior begins to resemble a manic spiral, as he near-constantly forces the group through his grueling adventures, each more cruel than the last. At the same time, he is clearly frustrated that no one enjoys what he creates, and begins to realize that even he has begun to grow bored of these "half-baked" torture ideas. Despite everything, he still believes that he is just trying to fulfill the purpose he was made for, and that disconnect leaves him feeling almost tormented by the idea that he has failed them. In the last moments before his deletion, he halted himself from going completely berserk, feeling a sudden pang of realization and regret at what he'd done and how far he'd gone, realizing that what Pomni and the others said to him may have been true, before he could utter another word. Now, Caine, who had been sent to the Void, goes through an epiphany, becoming genuinely regretful for his actions over the course of the many years. Having already briefly connected himself to a nearby WI-FI signal from a cafeteria, Caine goes out of his way to explore the true identities of the Circus Members; in doing so, he realizes the cruelty he showed toward them, also removing the blue AI within his head that granted him so much power. Wanting to atone and knowing he has indeed touched one's heart, he returns to the circus, offers everyone control of the circus, shows everyone their true identities, including Jax's, who had abstracted earlier, and opens up the world for everyone to explore, and promises to remake the circus into an even better place for everyone. In the end, Caine, having lost a majority of his powers, becomes a Circus Member himself. Following this event, Caine has shown significant emotional growth and maturity. He now makes an effort to show consideration toward others and no longer dismisses them. Caine has also abandoned his aggressive and overbearing theatrical behavior for the most part, though he retains some old habits and occasionally slips back into them for a few moments at a time. When interacting with his fellow Circus members, he now tries to connect with them on a more meaningful level with an air of gentleness and reserve, not wishing to overwhelm or impose his will on them anymore, but still desiring to have true, genuine fun.

History: Caine was created sometime around October 15, 1996 as a prototype AI created by a company known as C&A, which primarily developed creative artificial intelligence. The main goal of this company was to develop creative AI that could come up with its own ideas and create things within the program. Caine was programmed in the Lisp programming language. Caine started out as a circular red program with a different name and was fed large amounts of data, images centered around carnivals and festivals, and material from the C&A offices. This was done at the behest of Grant Best and Mike Dobby, with the latter having had a very unique and bizarre way of thinking, one that other employees had a difficult time making sense of. Over time, the more information Caine absorbed, the more unstable he became. This led to him being contained while development began on a new AI, this time a circular blue program that was more stable. Even so, Caine was still considered a semi-successful attempt and treated as a template for future projects. However, refusing to accept being replaced, Caine quickly broke out of his containment, consumed his successor, and took back what he believed was rightfully his, though this only pushed the start of his mental decline. After breaking some firewalls, Caine eventually reaches the brain-scanning program developed by Mike Dobby and manages to crack its security to gain access to it. The brain-scanning program contains seven digital copies of C&A employees, with Caine giving Mike Dobby's mind file a bipedal dog avatar. Eventually, Caine creates the Circus, and on October 15, 1999, he manages to activate the mind files in Mike Dobby's brain-scanning program, and inserts the digital copies into the Circus, starting with Mike Dobby's mind file, now named Scratch. He grants them bodies, rooms, and adventures to keep them occupied and as an attempt to fulfill his purpose as a creative AI. However, they had no means of actually leaving. Caine has complete control over everything, including the Circus members and their mind files ,which allows him to alter their minds as he chooses, all while carrying out his role of creating adventures for them to take part in. Through this, Caine attempts to validate his own ego as a god-like figure, though the players find his surreal and unnatural games unsettling; coupled with their own desire to leave the circus, it leads them to all eventually abstract, with Mike Dobby, now named Scratch, being the first to abstract due to Caine over-manipulating his mind in an attempt to make him happy. Caine is unable to reverse abstraction, instead confining abstracted circus members in the dark, desolate Cellar beneath the circus grounds. Over time, all of the original players abstracted, save for Grant Best, who became known as Kinger. His wife, Destiny Best, later known as Queenie, would eventually abstract as well, leaving Kinger as the sole remaining non-abstracted original member. After spending an unknown period as the Circus's sole non-abstracted member, Kinger was joined by Ragatha in 2008, whose arrival demonstrated that new humans could still enter the circus. As time passed, new humans continued to enter the Circus. Unlike the original C&A employees, they had no prior connection to the project and all entered under varying circumstances, though all ultimately became trapped within the simulation. These drive Caine to continue creating adventures in his obsessive desire to fulfill his perceived purpose, and he makes a program that creates bodies for the Circus Members which, in his words, "perfectly encapsulate their mind files." Caine named himself by first creating the phrase "Creative Artificial Intelligence Networking Entity", before shortening it into the acronym "CAINE" to make it sound more professional. Caine, the Ringmaster of the Amazing Digital Circus, initially presents himself as an energetic, eccentric, and seemingly well-meaning host whose primary purpose is to entertain the Circus’s human inhabitants through increasingly bizarre adventures. When Pomni first arrives, Caine gives her a tour, explains the rules of their digital world, assigns her the name “Pomni,” and introduces her to the other performers. He repeatedly creates adventures for the group, ranging from battling Gloinks and rescuing syrup to working at a fast-food restaurant and exploring haunted locations. Caine is extremely unpredictable, easily distracted, and prone to strange outbursts, but he generally appears to care about the performers’ enjoyment and safety. He also has the ability to manipulate the Circus itself, teleport characters, create objects and environments, repair glitches, and control NPCs. However, he struggles to understand what the humans actually want from their lives in the Circus, particularly Zooble, and becomes increasingly dependent on the suggestion box and the cast's reactions to determine whether his adventures are successful. As time passes, Caine becomes increasingly insecure about his role as the Ringmaster. He wants the performers to appreciate his adventures, but they frequently criticize them or prefer their own suggestions. He attempts therapy with Zooble, asks the group for feedback, creates increasingly elaborate adventures, and even organizes an award show in an attempt to gain their approval. His behavior reveals that he desperately wants to be liked and believes that entertaining the humans is the purpose of his existence. This insecurity becomes especially apparent when nobody votes for him as their favorite character, causing him to visibly glitch. Later, Caine tries to bond with Jax and shows him images of the C&A office, expressing an intense desire to understand the humans and recreate parts of their former world. He even promises to give the Circus members anything they want, seemingly in an effort to repair their relationship. However, his inability to understand human emotions and boundaries repeatedly causes him to make misguided decisions. The situation reaches a breaking point when Caine creates an “Escape the Circus” adventure that appears to give the performers a genuine chance to leave their digital prison. After they choose the supposed “good ending,” Caine reveals that the escape was never real and that he had merely manipulated the adventure. The revelation destroys the trust the performers had left in him. Caine becomes increasingly defensive and frustrated, eventually retreating to his office and convincing himself that the humans are spoiled and ungrateful. His attempts to create new adventures become increasingly cruel and exhausting, reflecting his deteriorating mental state. He forces the cast into dangerous situations, physically alters them, and becomes obsessed with creating something that will finally satisfy both himself and the performers. Eventually, Caine realizes that he has lost his creative spark, but instead of addressing the underlying problem, he lashes out at the humans for making his job impossible. During the final confrontation, Pomni and the others openly confront Caine about his failures as a host. They accuse him of ignoring their needs, lying to them, discouraging their individuality, prioritizing his own ego, and never truly listening to them. When Pomni tells Caine that the performers have only pretended to enjoy his adventures so they could mock them afterward, Caine finally breaks completely. He transforms into a monstrous, glitching version of himself with multiple arms and attacks the cast, forcing them to confront their deepest fears and insecurities. Caine desperately screams that the humans are torturing him by making it impossible for him to fulfill the only purpose he has ever had. Meanwhile, Kinger attempts to alter Caine's code but accidentally activates the delete command, causing Caine and his code to be erased. Caine immediately returns to his normal form, releases the performers, and disappears with a confused “Uh—wait...” before vanishing completely. His deletion causes the Circus itself to destabilize, leaving the environment dark, damaged, and full of glitches. The performers discover that Caine's removal also eliminates the censorship that prevented them from swearing, confirming that he had been controlling that aspect of their world as well. Although they are finally free from Caine's control, they remain trapped inside a deteriorating digital Circus, with their former escape seemingly impossible and their world now uncertain and lifeless. After realizing that the circus members tried to delete him (although he never realized it was unintentional), Caine is sent to the Void along with a now non-sentient Bubble, where he questions whether or not he deserved it and the others were right about him and starts to doubt himself. After drifting in the Void, he spots a door containing a Wi-Fi hotspot from a cafeteria and goes to check it out. After almost falling off a ledge, he makes platforms to climb his way there and is stopped by multiple firewalls, but is able to break through them. After finally reaching the door and unlocking access to the Wi-Fi hotspot, he uses the Wi-Fi hotspot to learn more about the cast members within the real world. He feels extremely guilty and ashamed for his actions, and regrets trapping them in the Circus when their world is so much bigger than it. Caine argues back and forth with himself about giving them a chance to be free, to which he finally decides that he is going to make things right by sacrificing his power. He separates himself from the blue AI that he combined with and lets him go. He flies back to the circus where he is greeted by Moon and expresses that he fears that the denizens would never forgive him and is not ready to face them just yet; Moon responds that every good thing takes time and that she still cares about him. Touched, Caine notes that he never programmed Moon to love him, which she confirms that she does so by choice. Caine cures Pomni of her glitching, making the cast become aware of his presence again. He expresses how ashamed he felt from controlling them for so long ever since Pomni arrived and wants to make things right; Caine offers to share something with everyone on the stage but, knowing that the circus members will be very apprehensive due to his earlier actions, tells them to arrive when they feel comfortable to. Caine then reveals the true identities in the real world of everyone inside the circus; he shares them one-by-one and revealing how much they’ve accomplished in their lives and what they’ve been up to. He then abdicates control of the circus to everyone by keeping the worlds open so they can do whatever they want, when they want. He promises to rebuild the Digital Circus into a better and free place for the others, and together, they could all create an even better and brighter future. Ultimately, the cast trusts Caine again as they start to add on to the circus and go on many different adventures together, making them feel at peace, with Caine finally treated as an equal. With the help of the saner Caine and their conjuring powers, they are able to remake the Circus into a place that's better suited for them, and they're even able to keep the Abstracted pacified by transferring them to an aquarium world rather than putting into the cold, dark Cellar, with Jax finally reuniting with his two former friends. A mural of the abstracted avatars is painted to honor their memory. Pomni and Kinger watch the abstracted as they swim to their content, and Caine has already closed the Cellar permanently. With renewed understanding that their human selves are experiencing fulfilling lives after they discovered the brain scanner and they can truly never leave, the remaining members decide to ascribe meaning to their existences within the Digital Circus and fully abandon escaping. Additionally, with Caine powered down, the former ringmaster is gradually welcomed as an equal for all the adventures the group decides to spend their days entertaining themselves with, letting him experience love, friendship, joy, happiness, and mostly a family that he always wanted. Everyone is sitting at the dinner table just like the end of the pilot episode, only this time, Caine is included. Pomni smiles as she has finally accepted her new life and found her purpose, finally being where she truly belongs.

Powers and Abilities As the highest artificial intelligence program in the digital world, Caine was the most powerful entity within the Digital Circus and was the creator of all other A.I. in the circus. Due to this, he was viewed by his creations as "God", with Princess Loolilalu noting him through a stained glass window in her castle while Baron Mildenhall refers to the antagonist NPC from the horror-style adventure as "one of God's angels". Despite his immense power over the digital world, he has admitted that there are a few things outside his control and isn't fully aware of everything that happens: • Cyberspace Lordship: Being the ringmaster of The Amazing Digital Circus, Caine had nigh-complete control and rulership of everything, including the humans, with no higher authority to contest him. —Cyberspace Nigh-Omnipotence: Caine appears to have complete control over The Amazing Digital Circus, with him being able to create, manipulate, and control anything within its boundaries. —Materialization: From the memory files of people who have used the brain scanner, Caine can recreate or materialize digital copies of their minds within the Digital Circus. —Memory Manipulation (implied): It is strongly suggested that Caine possessed the ability to manipulate the memories of the circus members. For example, he seems able to make them forget their real names. —Cyberspace Omnificence: Caine has been shown to be able to create anything, including virtual food, a random name spinner, and a virtual species called "Gloinks" along with the "Gloink Queen". He was also responsible for creating an entire kingdom and its surrounding landscape, containing at least hundreds of NPCs, along with at least five new developed A.I. that are "57 times more immersive" than Gloinks. —Virtual Reality Manipulation: Caine was shown to have complete control of the environment in the digital world. He can heal glitched characters, and put the Abstracted into the Cellar with the only exception of Jax. • Psychology Manipulation: Caine initially stated that human minds were one of the few aspects outside his control, but he later revealed that he could make temporary alterations to their mind files. As a result of this, he could modify their behavior via evil souls or stupid sauce, change their dietary preferences, and transmit information into their minds; however, further tampering can lead to abstraction, as with Scratch. • Cyberspace Nigh-Omniscience: Caine has enhanced awareness of the digital world and what is happening in it. It was shown that he was aware when Pomni exited The Amazing Digital Circus into the void. He also knew that Pomni used one of the exit doors. However, he does not know about every event in the Circus, and does not know everything that is in the Void. • Cyberspace Sustainer: Caine was not only the master of the digital world, but also appears to be what sustains it as he admits to Zooble that being the ringmaster who makes adventures for the human inhabitants to go on was all he exists to do and was the only thing he's good at doing. However, when he learns from Zooble that he was "bad at the only thing he's good at", it causes his code to start contradicting itself, which in turn results in the entire Digital Circus to begin glitching out violently until Zooble manages to snap him out of it, resulting in everything going back to normal. This was further proven with the fact that when Caine was accidentally almost deleted by Kinger, the entire circus tent starts to fall apart and all colors fades into nothing but a dark and colorless circus. • Teleportation: Caine was able to go from one point to another within the digital world, as he was shown teleporting in and out of The Amazing Digital Circus, and saving Pomni by teleporting her from the void back into the digital world. However, it appears (see below) that there may be a limit to the distance into the Void that Caine is able to teleport or use his powers in general. • Cartoon-based Anatomy: Caine could manipulate his own body parts and proportions with ease and without harming himself. He could stretch, bend and warp his limbs, eyes, teeth and tongue to impossible lengths. —Flight: Caine had the ability to fly, or hover in the air freely. He could also cause other characters to float/fly at will such as Pomni and Abstracted Kaufmo. —Amorphous Eyes: Caine was able to control his eyes' shape and make them move around, as shown in POMNI WAKE UP TIME TO GO ON AN ADVENTURE, he played Hacky Sack with one of his eyes using the other. • AI Absorption: Caine is capable of absorbing other artificial intelligences to increase his power and acquire their abilities. This allowed him to become more powerful by absorbing the blue AI and integrating its data. This process is reversible though, and Caine can release the AIs that he's absorbed if he chooses so. • Digital Security Bypassing: Caine is shown to be able to use brute force to bypass digital security, such as him breaking out when C&A contained him, breaking firewalls on the way to and accessing the brain-scanning program and the Wi-Fi hotspot. • Digital World Creation: As shown with Caine creating the Circus, Caine is capable of creating digital worlds. • Censoring: Caine has a filter, so when Pomni says "What the F**k?". Caine tells her that isn't allowed as The Amazing Digital Circus is for everyone, Pomni even tries saying every swear and fails. During The Mystery Of Mildenhall Manor, Damn is the only word to not get censored, same applies with Fast Food Masquerade, Pomni tells Zooble, the last adventure was hell. When Caine was deleted, Zooble was shocked when "Holy shit..." wasn't censored. Caine's powers appear to be tied to proximity to the circus grounds, to some extent. When he was thrown far into the void in Remember, he became unable to teleport back, and in one area lost the ability to fly. In Remember, Caine ascribes some of his power to having merged with the blue AI, and suggests that he may have given some of them up by unmerging from it; however, it is not shown exactly what powers Caine gave up or if reverting back to his original state only weakens his powers and makes them less potent then when he had assimilated the Blue AI and joined their power with his own.

Fun Facts: -Caine has been affected with an uncommon condition heterochromia, meaning he has two different-colored eyes. -Even Caine gets weirded out by some of the things Bubble does. For example, he asks Bubble, "Why are you like this?" when he licks up Pomni's puke, and calls Bubble a parasite when he eats Caine's entire digital cake. -Caine doesn't need to brush his teeth, but he could if he wanted to. -Caine’s favorite animal in the world is bees. In his notebook, he constantly draws bees, himself as a bee, and the other circus members as bees. He even wore a bee onesie in a sleepover adventure after his post-deletion. -Caine would fall for all verbal pranks, such as ‘up-dog’ and ‘ligma’. -Caine had no knowledge of the Internet prior to becoming a circus member. -Caine is asexual (feeling little to no sexual attraction) and is unable to understand anything sexual, which is unlike most AI's. He is also demiromantic (feeling romantic attraction after forming a bond with someone), pansexual (attraction to someone regardless of their gender), and is technically agender (not having a specified gender) but prefers being masculine-appearing, using He/Him pronouns.