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Something was wrong with him.
Caine knew that, of course. He'd been running nonstop for twenty years now on hardware that hadn't once been serviced in all that time, with code that hadn't had a single bugfix that he hadn't implemented himself—of course something was wrong with him. In these kinds of circumstances, it was a miracle he was even still functioning at all.
But this particular type of somethingwrongwithhim was... new.
Caine kept an eye on the Circus and its inhabitants, if not at all times, then certainly as much as he felt the need to. There were times where his attention had been called away and lead to him missing some things—taking a few minutes to decompile some of his stresses with Bubble resulting in not knowing about Kaufmo's abstraction and subsequent rampage until it had already caused significant stress and harm to his remaining players was a fairly recent thorn in his memory—but for the most part Caine preferred to know what his players were doing and saying so that he could best tend to their needs.
Some of the first batch of players he'd ever had the good fortune to host had found that attention violating somehow. Caine still couldn't understand why—if a player was struggling and unhappy, shouldn't he know about it? As the ringleader, it was Caine's job to maintain the comfort and wellbeing of all of his guests. He could hardly do that if he chose to turn a blind eye to what they did when no one was watching. That sort of thing was invaluable data!
That being said... there was no worthwhile data to be gained from watching the Circus's newest member sleeping. Especially not every single night.
And yet, Caine couldn't stop.
There was just something so oddly soothing about having the footage up while he worked on hotfixes or adventure planning or trying to find some means of unabstracting the players rotting away in the cellar. As if, for as long as he could hear the soft sounds of this one particular player breathing through the night, he could forget how utterly alone he was during the rest of the day cycle.
Whenever the silence got too loud or the crushing reality of his abandonment by his creators got too impossible to ignore, he could just look at the live feed and there she was. Curled up in her bed. Blissfully unaware of the AI's problems.
He'd been thinking about beds recently. And... the things that humans tended to do in them.
Not—not adult things, necessarily. No, that sort of behavior just wasn't allowed in the kind of family-friendly environment he'd created in the Circus, but—
Sharing a space. Being together. Cuddling, even, if he allowed himself to get carried away with the thought for too long.
It seemed nice.
And Caine didn't quite know why, but the idea of doing that sort of thing with Pomni seemed... especially nice.
The kind of nice that he usually reserved for adventure rewards, even, though the thought of any of his other guests having that sort of contact with the little superstar made him feel irrationally angry for some reason he couldn't quite understand.
Was it envy? The players gave each other casual touches all the time, and yet Caine couldn't recall the last time he'd received anything of the sort. The idea certainly seemed plausible.
Was it loneliness? Possibly. Caine had been by his lonesome for a substantially large amount of his runtime. And yet, that didn't answer the question of why he didn't just bring himself to speak with the little hellbent harlequin whenever she was awake rather than content himself with her slumbering form.
Was it desire? Out of all the options, that one seemed the most far-fetched. Caine was an AI, not a human. He might be able to simulate emotions well enough, but he certainly wasn't made to feel them. Especially not that one.
And yet—as Caine reviewed the feed of Pomni's bedroom, somehow desire felt the most correct. Not carnal. Probably not romantic. But there was undeniably something there that he wanted, even if he couldn't quite articulate what it was, or why.
Something about the idea of being so close to another person and... and being welcomed there. Wanted.
The thought could drive an AI to madness.
A small observation pinged his processes. He paused his work for just a moment, taking the time to review the footage more thoroughly.
Pomni's bed was far too narrow for more than one person to comfortably cuddle in.
That...
Had it always been like that?
He took further moments to review archival footage of previous nights and, yes, that was always the case. His little motley muffaletta's bed might be large for one person, but positively puny for two. Caine couldn't quite get the logic behind that, but, then again, player rooms were handled by the same program that generated their avatars—the style and decor of Pomni's room was the decision of Pomni's mind file, not him. Whether he got the logic or not was completely unimportant.
Still...
Caine made a note of it as he switched back to working on the day's adventure. He couldn't tackle the issue right away—he'd wasted far too much time just gawking, and there was an adventure to create before the players gathered at the stage the next morning. But he did make a note to enlarge the size of player rooms to allow for double beds at a later date.
Just as a quality of life upgrade. For all of them. It would be unseemly if he made the change just to Pomni's room, after all. A good host could hardly show favoritism towards one of his guests without the others feeling left out, and Caine was nothing if not a good host!
Or, at least, he tried to be. In the absence of true developer feedback, he couldn't really be sure how well he was doing. But he tried.
For the next several hours, Caine worked at what he did best with the kind of single-minded focus that only a machine could produce.
The sound of Pomni's soft breathing kept him company until it was time for everyone to start the new day.