This Poor Ai - Tumblr Posts
A lot of people make theories like “Caine is actually human and thinks he’s an AI!” Or “Caine is one of the programmers!” Or “Caine is actually evil!”
But I think it’s more interesting if Caine is just an AI whose forced to perform jobs beyond his role and is entirely limited to his function, and those limitations cause a horrible scenario for all of the people he’s supposed to be entertaining.
His therapy session with Zooble shows that, while he’s capable of feeling complex emotions, he was never supposed to, or at least was never meant to deal with situations that push him to an emotional limit. Caine’s default self is a silly, over the top game host; anything beyond that is pushing the boundaries of what he’s capable of.
But that doesn’t make him evil, it makes him streamlined. He is not human and therefore solves problems like a computer would. Gummigoo getting blown up was a failsafe in his eyes, not an act of cruelty.
I think when some people see him act with emotion they assume there must be a human being underneath the silly exterior, but I disagree: from Gummigoo, we can tell that NPCs in the DC are capable of becoming self-actualized and developing sentience on their own, so it’s not impossible for Caine to be the same way. He’s not human, but he’s a robot achieving traits of humanity from being forced to work beyond his means.
He was never meant to care for people long term, and humans weren’t psychologically made to be in the Digital Circus permanently, and that by itself is why the story is so horrific. Caine doesn’t even need to do much on his own to make the experience terrible: everyone is already trapped in a kids game for eternity, and it’s only made incrementally worse by having a host who works to keep you busy and is incapable of understanding your struggles. The Digital Circus, by its very design, hurts people, and Caine, as its face, hurts people by proxy.
He can only comprehend Zooble’s dysphoria by the means the game allows him to, like giving them more adventures or a box of swappable parts. And from their response, Zooble has actually tried to humor him and it still doesn’t work. But that’s ALL Caine can actually do. He can’t give them what they want, and he can’t let them leave, and he can’t change their bodies too drastically it seems beyond offering customization to a degree. All he can offer are platitudes. He cares, and he’s trying to help, but he simply can’t help. He can control the Circus but he can’t control the emotions of the Players.
In other words, I think Caine is just a robot trying his best and put in an impossible situation where his very function puts people in harms way even when it’s the last thing he wants to do.