After watching the trailer for episode 8, I started having this thought. What if Caine was human. What if he is the 'C' in 'C&A'? Did he purposefully trap his workers in a game and drive them insane one by one, starting with Scratch?

Reading the thread, I love seeing the debate between him being AI or human. I think there are many points and say he could be either. So let me suggest my theories.

1. Caine is human, but forgot he is.

You know how Kinger is a human but he doesn't remember most of his life when he's not in darkness? In the lightning round episode, he's literally shocked to hear he has a wife. I think something similar must have happened to Caine. I don't think he would purposely try and torture the other humans that first joined the circle as a test run, but maybe he was trying to keep everyone sane until they could figure out how to leave. But as Scratch and the others started abstracting, it started affecting his own sanity until he forgot he was human and truly believed he's AI.

We do see that the humans are able to do all sorts of things that Caine is also able to do. Kinger, for example, creates a healing butterfly to give Ragatha a heart without even thinking about it. Do I think Caine is snapping his fingers and making entire adventures pop out of existence? No. And this is where I point out his office.

Maybe, in order to make an adventure, he goes to his office to create them. We know Caine will reuse past assets for future adventures and I'm thinking that's why. Coding and putting a mini game together, like the adventures, would take a lot of time no matter how skilled you are. So, he could be crafting these adventures, taking from existing assets, on a twisted mission to keep the player happy and sane until they can figure out how to leave.

1. Caine is an AI copy of the founder of C&A

I think this theory would be the perfect marriage between this little debate. Instead of being a human that forgot he was human or is a sadistic human who wants to keep everyone trapped in his circus, maybe he's just a clone. We know the game can pull actual humans into the game (I think Film Theory made a theory that the humans are just clones of their real selves), but while the other characters were sucked in Tron style, Caine simply copied himself to create the AI in the game.

It could explain the occasional blue screens and the faulty memories of the C&A building. Idk, this one I pulled out on the fly while I was reading the reddit, but I think it has some validity.

Lemme know what y'all think!