I just read the new chapter of THOM. I have two things to say:
I have a couple of questions (there are five. I know, I went overboard, I really did 🥹)
>What would Caine do if he actually found out that Bubble was punished for rescuing him?
>Did Scratch know exactly what the protocol was going to do to Bubble? Did he really do it on purpose?
>Does Bubble prefer the punishment to be physical or mental (having his memory wiped)?
>Why didn't the developers want Caine and Bubble to be together?
>In your AU, what did Caine do to make the developers discard and lock him away?
I know that's a lot of questions, but I just love this AU so much and my mind is racing.
If you don't want to answer any of these questions—or the whole message—that's fine; just ignore it.
Have a great afternoon! :)
There’s no such thing as too many questions— I absolutely love getting questions. It took me a hot minute to answer because work has just been chaotic 😫 anywayssssssss, hope this answers what you were asking!
>What would Caine do if he actually found out that Bubble was punished for rescuing him?
Caine would be absolutely devastated. He doesn’t want Bubble to be hurt, much less to be hurt because of *him*. He doesn’t think he’s worth that. He thinks Bubble is just so much better than he is, just objectively worth so much more than Caine is as Bubble actually fulfills his purpose
>Did Scratch know exactly what the protocol was going to do to Bubble? Did he really do it on purpose?
He did not. Scratch was pissed Bubble wasn’t responding and decided to go digging into Bubble’s code, chalking Bubble’s behavior up to being a malfunction. Scratch starts digging and randomly clicking on things, which because he was drunk led to him messing things up (typos my beloathed) and also randomly activating protocols— which is how Scratch activated the corrector program. It was an accident. And what the corrector does is basically takes the pain sensitivity slider and slides it all the way to the most sensitive.
So normally when being edited/having his code accessed, it’s uncomfortable and makes Bubble shudder but it doesn’t hurt. Same with most typos/uncompilable code. With the corrector protocol activated, it *really* hurts.
Scratch wasn’t *purposely* hurting Bubble, but uh. Well. It’s like a surgeon getting drunk before surgery.
>Does Bubble prefer the punishment to be physical or mental (having his memory wiped)?
Physical. Bubble would take all the physical pain if it meant he never had to worry about his mind being modified without his consent again.
>Why didn't the developers want Caine and Bubble to be together?
C&A wanted to be better able to control Bubble. They couldn’t really control Caine. Plus— this was part of the compromise that kept Caine alive, because C&A wanted to just wipe Caine from existence. The dev trio fought to keep him alive, just in stasis/shelved.
Caine was actually going to be part of the dev trio’s compensation— Scratch got his afterlife, Kinger and Queenie would get their son. Make a new AI for C&A to do whatever with and they could have the old one free and clear, just don’t let it intertwine/interfere with/corrupt the new one. If Caine *did* somehow interfere with the new AI, Caine would have to remain as C&A property.
You know the real life phenomenon of parents of terminally ill children having more children to keep the first child alive? Thats kinda what the developer trio did with Bubble.
>In your AU, what did Caine do to make the developers discard and lock him away?
Caine was always meant as a prototype. He didn’t do anything wrong. That’s the tragic thing— he did *exactly* what he was supposed to; prove to C&A that Scratch and Kinger could make an actually intelligent AI. When Caine worked, C&A gave Scratch the funding and the team needed to build the digital heaven/New Eden
Thank you for reading! Have some drawings I did of Bubble while at work
