Of Fazbears and Vaporwave Part 1 (1/2)

The sound of distant, elusive music could be heard off in the distance, a car alarm in a different
direction, otherwise general hustle and bustle of the city and the droning sounds of life echoed from
beyond. Syd looked on into the hazy horizon, ignoring the augmented reality advertisements for various hair
products. She pushed her new found loot in a shopping cart to her truck, the final load of parts she had
come for. Some endoskeletons with replacement parts, a few costume pieces, and a vintage guitar that had
unidentifiable orange stains on a spot that could be painted over. As a bonus, even some pieces of some of
the competition 'tronics, and a play tape from the 90s. The old codger took good care of these things for
all these years, that was reassuring to know. It was time to reunite the band.

Not many people in the year 2036 knew about animatronics, most knowledge on them was just in archives, or
on archived forums, the occasional history book about Disney World or Disneyland would mention them too. Syd
however was fascinated with primitive robotics as well as more modern ones, dating back to the early
1960's. This passion for robotics and automatons led Syd to study robotics and AI by the time she reached
college. Syd set all of the parts into the bed and tied down a tarp over the bed of the truck. A reminder
for lunch blinked on her AR in the corner of her vision, she pat her pocket of her jeans only to find it
devoid of any sort of funds. She grimaced a bit, shrugging the missed meal as a small price to pay for the
large gain she obtained.

Syd had grown fond of a certain cast of characters, she had an ancient coloring book given to her when she
was young and watched a few of the cartoons of the Freddy Fazbear gang, and was thrilled to learn they used
to have automatons and pizzarias with arcades, back when those were still viable. She closed the door to
the truck and clenched the steering wheel, nostrils flaring as she grinned a dopey, shit-eating grin on her
score. She motioned her hand to interact with the AR radio controls to turn on a stream of dubstep, like
her parents used to listen to.

The drive home was uneventful for the most part, though Syd noticed every single fast food place on the way
back. She bundled up a bit in her ratty, purple police department sweater, running her fingers through her
slightly greasy, wavy hair, lamenting forgetting a shower in at least three days. At a red light, she
peered into the rear view camera to make sure her cargo was safe, scraped some gunk out of her teeth and
flicked her cybernetic eye to keep it from going wall-eyed. Really need to get that fixed.

Upon reaching home, she unloaded all the animatronic parts, opened her storage shed and pulled a few
incomplete characters into her garage. Syd chewed on a pen cap under her welding mask as she made sure the
parts were all together, there was Bonnie the rabbit, Chica the chicken, Foxy the pirate, and Freddy
Fazbear himself, all together and being put back together. The old codger said he had to remove the power
units entirely as they'd act up otherwise, said they were from the flagship branch of the franchise and the
most fussy. Syd simply understood that to be some sort of programming error that she sought to correct.

After assembling them most of the way save for head masks, she pulled out some cables to convert from the
most current USB standard to an older one to the early custom-made analog data transfer cables, plugging
her computer into the animatronics.

Syd seemed a bit perplexed by some of the notes in the old code, commented out as the jargon goes,
something about murders and whatever, that's rubbish. It was time to fix the errors that made the machines
act odd, something that took about an hour and a half for Syd. She uploaded the new code to the bots, and
went to make herself what has been called a wish sandwich in the past. She grumbled a bit, her lanky form
wobbling a bit as she got the play tape machine ready, putting the guitar in Bonnie's hands, mic in
Freddy's. It was getting late, so she turned the volume down a bit, throwing the switch to test the
animatronics out. They proceeded to tell jokes, silly stories, and sing some old timey music from half a
century ago. Syd smiled a bit dreamily and looked over the original maintenance manual for the things on
her AR, seeing she needed to set them to a free roam mode.

It was getting late, though Syd had finished the various assignments due the next day, what was the harm in
watching her new toys in action for a bit? Perhaps tomorrow, she'd finish putting together Tracy and
Randy... Ah, it was midnight. The animatronics stood still, leaving Syd a bit perplexed. Did free roam take
time to activate or something? She stuck around for a while before heading into the kitchen for a drink.
She grabbed a can of store-brand soda and swigged it, looking at the mess she left on the island before
turning to the garage and...

Freddy was staring at her. His eyes and teeth curiously lit up as old music box music began to play. She
looked around the kitchen and living room adjacent, and when she looked back the other three had appeared,
all staring at her. She set her soda down and began to walk into the living room, keeping an eye on the
robots when her gaze averted as she stepped on a lug nut and winced a bit and when she looked back, the
animatronics grabbed onto her letting out horrifying screeches, ultimately dog-piling on her. Syd struggled
on the carpet to try and get away and call for help, her voice drowned out by the screeching. She left her
phone in the garage, her heart pounded and her thrashing to get away increased before she ultimately had a
crash from adrenaline and slumped, pinned under at least half a ton of robotics.

As she lay there, defeated, the screaming wouldn't cease as she began to tune the noise out and think over
what could've gone wrong. Perhaps it was the operating system being so dated? Some sort of coding conflict?
Were they going to ever stop? It'd be a pretty awful way to go, trapped under a bunch of obnoxiously loud
robots. If they ever get off, perhaps it might be a better idea to make them a college project, something
to do a thesis on.

Syd laid there in a state of being completely lost in thought until the sun came up, the animatronics
moving and trying to pick themselves up from the mess, their screaming ceasing as they began to utter stock
phrases of "Welcome to Freddy Fazbear's!" and "How are you doing today, customer?" With some effort, Syd
pushed the animatronics up and off of her, helping them up and corralling them into the garage to power
them down. With her hands free, she set her AR computer to download all the episodes and short movies of
Freddy Fazbear and the gang to do a little character research, then closed her heavy eye lids as she
realized the time. She hung her head a bit as she grumbled off to the shower, tossing her clothes aside on
the floor along the way.

---------

After a few power naps, a lunch of depressing proportions, and cranking out a 12-page essay in about an
hour, Syd grabbed her safety vest and hard hat she had bought some time ago to swing by a construction
site. While the other workers were busy talking about their respective lives and working a distance away,
Syd proceeded to pilfer some PVC pipe and headed to a local hardware store. There, she collected scrap wood
and headed home with her material bounty. When she finally got home, she grabbed her box of spare computer
parts and various other parts for robotics.

The prototypes took the better part of the evening to get set up, Syd made sure to let the old animatronics
free roam for a bit to keep them from locking up in an inconvenient part of her house. As she looked at the
work that lie ahead, she took a deep breath and rubbed her temples. She turned off the animatronics before
calling it an early night, thinking over what sort of programming she'd need to do, and adjust it for each
AI.

It was when Syd tried to sleep that she had dreams of wandering around the pizzaria in its heyday, the
intoxicating smell of bad pizza, the sounds of antique arcade machines competing for which one was most
audible, and the animatronics performing their routine. Several ethereal images flashed by, too fast for
Syd to decipher what she was looking at, aside from some scenes with gore and blood, which didn't bother
her much, it was the glint in Freddy's eye that caused her to jolt awake and nearly fall out of her bed. In
the minute or two she sat up awake trying to recall the nightmare however, she lost all recollection as her
stomach growled a bit. She took that cue to get out of bed and get some breakfast.

Some time later, she continued to work on the upgraded frames before eventually running out of parts
entirely across all four, she'd have to wait for pay day. Heck, it was around the time the old models of
cybernetic prosthetics would be on sale, could get some good parts for cheap!

---------

A week went by, the animatronics still acting up every evening she left them on too long, sometimes
tackling her, sometimes by destroying whatever furniture seemed to interest them at the time, not really
recognizing the pattern of the attacks. Syd had finally finished the mechanical parts, her artificial
intelligence framework done as well after having worked on it for months prior. Ideally, it'd work with the
new Intel cybernetic brains, having sold just about anything of value in her home and spare cash from her
student loans to get her hands on a dozen of them with student discount. She started adjusting the code to
function a bit more like Foxy as he was the first robot done.

The six robots were all flat-faced with trapezoidal, nearly featureless faces save for a small speaker
attached to the bottom where the smaller side sat, and two dots in the upper two corners of the longer
side, each model had small mics on the sides to simulate ears. The cybernetic arms and hands that were
bought were older models, capable of feeling pressure, temperature, as well as normal human levels of
articulation. Feet were similar though fitted into the respective character costume feet. A pair of bear,
rabbit, chicken, fox, and two dinosaur feet in all, Syd felt they needed something easier to help the bots
distinguish each other from one another. All were attached to the core supports of the old endoskeletons,
as wiring and such hadn't changed too much.

Syd felt a little finishing touch would be to break out her old coloring book and very carefully tore out
the pages of the respective Freddy's characters to tape to the big empty space between the optics on the
robots, at least just for now. A christening for some of the first droids not for industrial use. She turned
on all of them and waited as they'd boot up. The uncanny valley of each droid jolting a bit suddenly caught
Syd off guard as the gentle tune of boot up music played. If this worked, her college degree was pretty
much guaranteed, hell, she might even get some grants!

The first to speak up would be Freddy, LEDs glowing from behind the piece of ragged paper taped to its
face. "Hello there, I'm Freddy Fazbear! Who might you be?" it asked in a hesitant, somewhat cartoony and
digital voice. "The name's Syd, and I'm booting you up for a test run. Care to run diagnostics? Need to
know if I missed any connections," She replied, the robot looked around a bit before examining itself and
began to move fingers and toes, clenching its hands into a fist and unfurling to try and clap. "Power at
22%, getting might close for a recharge, Syd. Is today your birthday?"

Syd smiled as she started taking notes down on the analogue computer. "Not my birthday, though it seems to
be yours, Freddy," she chuckled warmly, keeping an eye on the others as they started booting up. The voices
overlapped a bit trying to wish happy birthday, introduce themselves, and then apologizing to one another
almost all at once and falling silent, trying to judge when the others would speak. Syd interrupted, "It's alright, try
talking at different volumes? But first, Chica, diagnostics please."

"Everything up and running, pumpkin!"

"Bonnie, diagnostics please?"

"Power low at 8%, oh this just won't DO.

"Aaaaand Foxy, diagnostics please?"

"Error communicating with l_leg, model not recognized. Eye patch not detected."

"That's fine, had a feeling that leg might not work, eye patch isn't attached so don't worry."

She looked over to the other two droids who seemed to not be speaking, but seemed to be moving and making
animated gestures. She walked over to them and tapped on Tracy's speaker as the audio came in garbled,
Randy's fell apart. "Ugh, at least those are cheap parts." She powered down Tracy and Randy for the time
being, the dinosaurs were from a rival restaurant anyway. The robots were all uniform in size, she'd have
to make some adjustments, but they were off to a good start. Syd guided the droids into her living room to
plug into different outlets in the wall for recharging before getting her stuff ready to head back out to
class, making sure to lock her house up with extra padlocks and the like this time.

------------

When Syd returned that evening, she brought home a sub sandwich to munch on as she ran diagnostics again,
satisfied that they were fully charged. It was chilly that night, she was wearing her purple metro PD
sweater again, and to her dismay, the droids, uplifted from the old animatronics, proceeded to dog-pile on
her again, this time gripping her limbs with their new hands. She was completely baffled by the screeching
issue persisting, using her fingers to scroll through her code displayed on her AR against the ceiling. Not
much else to do when half a ton of robots are holding you down.

As weeks passed, the routine generally became sleep, school, droids, sleep, work, school, droids, sleep
under dogpile, school, and it went on for a while. All the while, the screeching became more and more
comprehensible, starting to sound more like proper speech. It all came to a head as Foxy leapt to its feet
and backed away as it cowered in the corner, beginning to produce a "ahu.ahu.ahu," sobbing noise. Next off
was Chica whose optics widened before the droid rolled off with angry, frustrated scream before just laying
on its back. Syd could move her legs at least as soon as Bonnie let go and got up to sit on the sofa in a
sulk. Freddy still held Syd down, as the droid began to erratically change pitch in voice from child to
cartoon character to adult before eventually letting the incredibly confused Syd go. Freddy rolled off to
sit up and simply looked around before the speaker let out a simulated sigh sound.