Productive Discussion

"Say hi, Iris!"

"Beh", Iris said.

William Afton bounced the baby on his knees up and down. "She'll get there someday", he said, beaming.

"She's the youngest, right?" asked John Matthew.

"Yes, she is. Michael just started preschool, and you all know Billy very well" William said as he gingerly placed the child into her basket, stationed next to his seat. “How about you, John? Do you have any kids?”
“Yeah. Jim’s five, he’s in kindergarten. Wally’s in second grade. We’re struggling with that one.”

William Afton found this funny to an uproarious level,  he and the other men filling the conference room with laughter. As it died down, John spoke again.
“Well, Mr. Afton, let’s talk some more about these plans,”, Mr. Matthew said. “To figure out what we can streamline, and make more feasible.”

“Please, call me Will. Everyone does. I like to be on a first name basis with my friends, and Will is much less snobby than William.”, he said with a smile on his face. It didn’t quite meet his eyes. A brief but noticeable silence filled the room before a few chuckles rose and died out.

“Well, sure. Will, I don’t know how exactly we can implement these blueprints you’re proposing. Don’t get me wrong, they’re brilliant, but-”

“But?”, asked Will with a hint of derision in his voice.

“They’re a little too ‘out there’. See here.”

Mr. Matthew passed a folder down the table towards Will. Several pairs of hands passed it forward, until it reached Will. It was a manilla folder, with the stamp of a “Jonathan Matthews” on it. Will’s fingers undid the metal prongs, and dumped the documents enclosed out onto the desk.


Will’s eyes looked them over. Immediately, he could tell these were his blueprints. First one in the stack was Circus Baby.
Encircled in red ink were the internal ice cream systems, with a few question marks connected to it via scrawled on arrows.

“Right. Circus Baby,” Will said. “What do you mean by this, John?”

John cleared his throat. “I think the ice cream dispenser requires too much maintenance. It’s also very situational. Humidity and other factors in the summer have encouraged a company-wide push towards robotics, in lieu of human performers. That’s why we have the springsuits now.  Ice cream would throw a wrench into things just like the faintings did.”

“Would you mind explaining to the room, John?” Will asked. “I’m not too sure everyone’s had a good look at these papers.”

“Sure thing, Will.”
John looked around at the boardroom. He could feel his heart in his throat. It was easier to carry what felt like a conversation with one man than it was to speak directly  to a dozen.
Will was dangling a rattle in front of Iris’ face.
“Ice cream would be fine if it was being served at a stand, or part of the menu. But for Circus Baby, it’s being stored inside of its machinery, and-”

“Her machinery,” Will corrected.
John looked at him for a brief instant, and made eye contact.

John continued, stumbling. “Her m-machinery. And that makes a lot of p-problems.”

“How so, John?” Will asked. He sat upright now, with his hands in his lap.

“Well, for one you have to keep it cooled.  It’s gonna melt if you don’t. W-we don’t have the technology for it, at least not reliably. If it melts out of Baby during the day, then it’ll mess up her systems and require maintenance. If it melts at night-”

“It makes even more problems,” William concluded. “How do you propose we fix this, John?”

“I don’t know if we can,” John said. He rubbed his temple with a handkerchief. “I think the technology might be beyond us. And the weight…”

“What do you mean about the weight?”, Will asked. He stared straight into John’s eyes.

“Circus Baby would need…” John paused, and swallowed.
“A lot of complicated parts. I don’t think she’d work at the goal of two hundred pounds, or at the height of four feet. We couldn’t really condense all that stuff into a single endoskeleton, even with some feet added. We’d need to work on it for at least a year and a half.”

“Okay,” Will said. He leaned back in his chair, and loudly clapped his hands together, leaning his head forward and closing his eyes.

“W-what do you mean by ‘okay’ ?”

“We’ll do it. We’ll work on it.  You said it yourself. We need some time to work on it, and I’m a patient man. I think all of us are; you included. We wouldn’t be in this room without being able to make such decisions like this, “ Will said.


“Everyone’s fine with waiting a few years to roll out Circus Baby?”, Will asked to the room. He raised his hand.

Grunts of confirmation rang out, accompanied by the raisings of various hands.
Will nodded his head with each addition to the count, whispering the number to himself.

“11 to 1,” Will announced. “Seems we’re in almost unanimous agreement, I’m going to ask John why he didn’t vote ‘yes’ on pushing Baby out later.”
Will cleared his throat, and looked at John.

“John, why didn’t you vote ‘yes’?”

“Well, I think we should just skip over the ice cream and start Circus Baby. Freddy’s is already taking off, I think if we struck now we’d have the best chance of another hit.”

“Good point, John.,” Will said. “We’ll discuss that later on. Let’s talk about these ‘minions’ now, I’m interested in hearing your thoughts on them,” he said. He shifted Baby to the bottom of the stack, and took a closer look at the blueprint showcasing the backup dancers and the Bidybabs.

John hesitated for the right words.
“I think that the…” John struggled. “The Bidybabs are a little too detailed. Kids might be put off by them.”
Will looked down at the blueprints, and then at Iris.
“You’re right, John. They look too much like actual babies. We’ll revise them. And the dancers? I don’t see anything about them here.”

“The dancers are fine.”

“Good,” Will said. “Now, Freddy and Foxy…”

“Like Baby, Freddy is simply bizarre. The idea of a storage cell in his chest cavity is not only unrealistic, it’s also impractical. What could we put in there?”

“Many things, John,” Afton said. He rubbed his temples, wearily. “The Bidybabs, pizza,  ice cream; catering in general would be  a lot more convenient. A storage tank opens up a lot of options.”

John was quiet. After a few seconds, he gathered his words.
“Foxy’s going to be a similar-”
“We’ve only got a few minutes left, John” Will said as he glanced at  his watch. “Let’s speed it up a little.”

“Foxy’s not that popular. He-”
“She, John.”
“Th-this Foxy’s been removed from the tie-in comic books and the cartoons. The character’s popularity is waning, and having her and Freddy at the forefront might not be best for Circus Baby. And forcing those those names might hurt Freddy’s restaurant, from-”

“Names are an important thing, John. They give off an aura. They have a tone; a brand. It can be for good or bad, but it does affect how people perceive you and your product.”
Will paused, and scribbled something on the back of a blueprint, before sliding it into the folder.

“Look at Iris. She’ll be running this place someday, because we’ll be around for a long time. And people like us. Our clients love us. Our competitors fear us. Right now, Freddy’s name is more than healthy enough as a brand to pop up in two restaurants, and everyone here agrees with that opinion, so we’re going ahead with Circus Baby. If you have any more complaints, please share them now because this meeting is almost over and we’d all like to go home.”

John saw all the faces at the table staring at him. He hesitated.
“Ballora’s not really marketable,” John said.

A grimace flashed across Mr. Afton’s face.  The other men in the room had gathered up their belongings, and funneling out the door. John was sitting across the table, and was raising himself out of his seat when-
“Stay”
John obliged.
Mr. Afton stood up, and took Iris’s carrier by the handle. He sauntered across the room to where John was sitting, and looked down at him.

“Tell Linda I said hello,” he said as he left the room. Mr. Afton turned off the lights, and closed the door behind him.