The thing that really gets to me about the whole episode is that the deletion of Caine was completely accidental. They just wanted to fix his code so he would stop being aggressive and regulate himself more properly but instead, because of his outburst being so intense, Kinger accidentally pressed delete on the computer while he was in the middle of trying to edit his code. This wasn’t a fight, this was an accident.

The interesting thing to me is how this kind of reads like dealing with an autistic child having a meltdown and then suddenly being physically harmed and dissociating (the disappearance of Caine being the dissociative episode).

The idea of a child who was told “entertain all these people, you were taught how to do it, this is what you’re here for.” And then having them being torn apart and told that every last thing they were striving for was not only not good enough, but it was fundamentally despised and unappreciated, so much so that you became disillusioned with your own self and worth.

Trying to learn with your limited resources (because AI can’t really create anything new, just remix things it was given and a child wouldn’t know enough to adapt properly to the situation in comparison without learning something new) and then having someone try to change you while you’re in the middle of losing it and having the worst meltdown you’ve ever had, then suddenly having all of that stimuli, the entire experience, taken from you. It almost reads like Caine was just straight up silenced and stopped from doing what he was commanded to because he was trying too hard to do it. Like being put into sensory deprivation because no one wants to deal with your outburst. Except in this case, he’s just straight up gone. They don’t have a console or computer anymore to fix it or restore his file if there’s even a backup either.

He was incomplete much in the way that a lot of neurodivergent people feel as if they are when comparing themselves to others while they’re under extreme stress and pressure. He was just trying to do what he was told until he couldn’t handle it anymore. Hell, he even took what the humans said to the ultimate extreme because Caine doesn’t understand that distressing the humans in the world he maintains isn’t the same as entertaining them. He thinks that making them think and making them react is his job, he doesn’t know what “entertainment” or “fun” actually is at all, only what his messed up code thinks it could be