Replica

It's human nature to only remember the negatives and unpleasants. I'd grown to only remember the routine of day in, day out at Fazbear's, and I was growing to hate it more and more. It'd been gnawing away at the back of my mind that this entire stupid restaurant just drains the life out of everyone who works here, but my suspicions were unfortunately confirmed.

It started months ago, when the guards, both day and night, seemed to abruptly lose their legs, not terribly far from one another, with no explanation other than they fell and lost them. It seemed absurd that should happen, and suspicious that it'd happen so close to one another, within the same week, and that they'd have clean amputations within a day of the accident, no bandages. Weeks later, several servers were complaining how stiff their joints all seemed as they would have stutters in their movements around the restaurant, and all of the ones who smoked stopped smoking cold turkey.

As one of the cooks at Freddy Fazbear's, I was concerned when a fellow chef was having problems out of the blue tossing pizza dough and catching it successfully, that I had him instead chop the tomatoes for the in-house sauce we make. While prepping, he was struggling with chopping the tomatoes fine enough for the sauce, and out of frustration ended up lopping off a fingertip. That's when we both learned something horrifying; beneath was metal and wires rather than flesh and blood.

We both panicked at the fact that not only had he lost his fingertip but also that he was mechanical when he shouldn't be, and in his panic attack he scratched his forearms raw until more and more metal and conduits were exposed, revealing some rather sophisticated machinery, with a corporate logo just barely visible. We applied the knife painfully to his skin and peeled it back a bit to find that it was the same logo as the company that'd provided us with our other animatronics, the wonky ones that wander around at night.

Of course we had to keep the food coming for the guests, but as soon as the shift was nearly over, I'd made a phone call to Afton Robotics to demand to know what was going on, and they said they'd send someone right over.

After the shift ended, myself and the other, torn up chef sat in the empty parking lot behind the restaurant when a beat up pickup showed up with the Afton Robotics logo on the side, and out stepped what appeared to be a mechanic. She greeted us and started investigating the chef who'd turned out to be a machine, and started getting to work by reattaching the fingertip and sealing up the skin that'd been torn open. We understandably became quite upset by this and the lack of explanation and implored her to tell us what was going on.

She looked at us like we were crazy, and after about a minute spoke again when realizing we weren't joking. She mentioned that the staff's been getting gradually replaced by more durable and reliable options that are far more cost effective. When I wasn't quite getting it, she asked if I remembered fighting in the gulf war. I of course said yes, although it was brief, it was quite traumatizing. She then asked if I remembered the first birthday of my daughter, which, to my horror, I couldn't recall at all.

She had pulled out a clipboard and continued down a list of my recent life history. I could remember the grease fire that left a permanent carbon scorring on the ceiling, but not even a second of footage from the last great movie I went to, Aliens. I could remember the fight with family at Thanksgiving that ended with some family members cutting contact, but not Christmas Eve with my spouse and kids. I could recall every single person's name who'd bullied me in school, but not my own name. She said the top of the line models retain a bit more of their humanity, and that it looked like mine was in that state all I could focus on was the negatives. Then she proceeded to open my face to get a good look at my gauges.