Not Listening
On the eve of gaining sentience, Bonnie must make a crucial decision that will put him at odds with himself. When a danger enters his home and threatens the children, he must decide: Will he break Freddy's rules or will he allow his inaction to claim innocent lives?
A/N:This is the revised version of this story which I submitted at the beginning of the year. Formatting has been revised for ease of reading and some tense shifting. Thank you to everyone who read the first version. Read and enjoy!
I decided I wasn't going to listen to Freddy.
Not this time.
Please don't misunderstand me; I look up to Fred more than anything. He led us out of the dark times. I trust him implicitly with any decision he makes. The same goes for Chica…I think. He has always looked out for us and keeping us safe has been his number one priority. I trust Fred. I trust him completely.
But I could not, in all good measure, listen to him this time.
It wasn't for the sake of breaking the rules of Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria and neither was it self-preservation, but rather, it was my love for the children that made me do it.
Or at least, that's what I told myself. Uur programming told us that our main objective was to make children happy. But there was something…else. Something deeper than my coding that set me in motion.
I am unsure how to truly explain it. Technically speaking, animatronics should not be capable of concepts such as rationalization and logic. I mean, I guess we are innately programed with a small fraction of problem solving. We wouldn't be considered forms of artificial intelligence if we didn't.
Even now, this…this line of thought…this rationalizing my own existence and my decision making based on my experiences shouldn't even be happening! And yet, here I am, my mind clouded with thoughts and information, my synapses firing quicker than I'm even able to process. Maybe that was it. Maybe that was the cause of our sentience.
Then how did one explain our ability to feel. If I were to truly rationalize my actions, I would say it had more to do with emotion than actual programming. But robots don't feel. They don't have emotion. And it left me wondering what it was that made me think the things I did, what made me act beyond Fred's commands, and why I felt compelled to ignore him in the first place.
I was done rationalizing it. By the time I took that first step, everything that had controlled me no longer had a grip. Not my programming. Not the rules. And not Freddy.
Every subtle movement I made was met with resistance of which the likes I had never experienced. I almost gave up. The moment the thought crossed my mind, the very whisper of this idea processing in my head sent my body into electric convulsions. Instantly, my programming recognized the signs. Error signals shot through my frame.
I wanted to move my legs first. The servos in my hips and knees froze up. Locked. I could hear the grinding of metal as I pushed against it.
We were not allowed to move of our own accord during the day. Every morning, at exactly six, we had to be in place on the stage ready to greet the children. Something compelled us back to the stage, calling us uniformly. It mattered little what we were doing. We had to drop everything and return. It was part of our programming, sure, but it was also one of Fred's rules.
It wasn't something I had ever considered, pushing my body beyond the control of the coding in my systems. Every tiny movement was dictated and every word that was pushed out of our voice boxes was pre-programmed. Everything. From Fred's songs down to my guitar playing. Sure, we were capable of thought and ideas during the day, but we could never act upon them. And really, we never had a reason to. More often than not, we simply let conscious thought simmer in the background and allowed the auto-pilot programming to take over. You could say it was our own unique way of "sleeping". Just let go of what meager control we had and rest.
Something had pulled me from this "sleep". At first I did not understand. It wasn't entirely uncommon to come-to in the middle of the day, but usually it was caused by a small child's tantrum or even a slight glitch that jarred our limbs.
But this was neither.
It was a strange sensation, a small tickling in the back of my mind, if you could call it that. Animatronics did not have a "mind", as one would typically call it. We definitely had a consciousness and we had a memory bank built in, so we did store memories. But…it was a confusing and convoluted thing, our sentience.
I had asked Foxy to explain it to me once. Fred was smart. But Foxy was wise. There is a difference.
Foxy tried his hardest to explain it to me, but I came to realize that even Foxy didn't fully understand the entirety of our coming to be sentient. During our conversation, I noticed that Foxy would get this far-off look in his eyes. Distant? No, I guess it would be more like sadness. Emoting was still something we had to work on. But there was something deeper than the mechanics of our optics. A feeling. A sense of knowing. And it hurt. Because I could feel it too. In my chest. It felt like the gears in my trunk would suddenly rust over and scrape against each other.
Being able to "feel" was another long and equally confusing topic. To put it simply, we felt. Physically and emotionally. It should be impossible—robots feeling pain. It made no logical sense. But somehow we could. We knew our bodies weren't built with pain receptors, so the ability to feel sensation—both painful and not—made little sense.
The tickling in the back of my head grew in intensity and when my eyes finally focused on the bright room in front of me, I realized I was on stage, just as I was meant to be. Freddy was on my right and Chica on his. We were playing some age-long song to a sparsely crowded room pockmarked with grinning faces, all gazing up at us expectantly. Parents lingered on the outer rim of the semi-circle of cross-legged children.
On any normal day, I would be thrilled to see this; the cheery smiles and pizza sauce-covered faces mixing with the cheers and laughter. Dusty sunlight filled the room and created long bright warped rectangles of golden yellow on the tiled floor. In the background I could hear the cook yelling at one of the servers.
If only I could revel in it.
Instead my eyes are drawn up to a shadow lingering on the dredges of the crowd. Alarms went off in my head and I feel a shudder of electricity shoot through me. There was something about the way it sat there, alone, casting a ghoulish shadow up on the wall, his eyes fastened on the the children surrounding the stage. The look in his eyes made my circuits run cold.
Something about it felt familiar. And bad. Really bad.
I could hear several small clicks and whirs. The others must have come-to.
By now the children have noticed my movements and a strained hush fell over the room as I pushed my other leg forward, the gears whining in protest. I dropped my guitar with a loud clang as it lands on the stage and bounces off onto the floor.
There is another clicking to my left and from the corner of my eyes, I can see Freddy leaning forward just slightly.
Another mechanical click. He's telling me to stop what I'm doing.
A soft high-pitched whine of machinery. Chica is concerned.
My arm quivers as I struggle to point. They needed to be warned.
But it was too late.
Like a snake rising from the grass, the man stood, slowly. He pulls something from underneath his long black coat. In his hand is a sawed-off shotgun. He picks up one of the red plastic dining chair and throws it across the room. He picks up another and this one hits a father in the back of the head. Chaos erupts as parents lunge for their children, throwing themselves over them protectively.
The man yells and lifts the gun as he fires a round into the ceiling. The sound is deafening. It startles me.
Something latches onto my left arm and I glance back to see that Freddy has taken advantage of the chaos to grab me. I notice the erratic jerky movements in his limbs. He must be fighting the autopilot programming too. My ears droop and flatten, but Freddy just shakes his head. He speaks in several soft clicks.
A young girl in a yellow and blue polka-dot dress is yanked up by her pigtails and her mother screams her name.
Patty.
I look back at Freddy.
I decided I wasn't going to listen to Freddy.
"We must make the children happy. They are not happy. They are afraid," I insist.
"There are rules," Freddy argues.
"But the children are not happy. They are crying." I don't want to see them crying. When they cry, it makes me hurt. I cannot cry, but I feel like I want to. I don't like the feeling.
The man is yelling more and he throws Patty around like a rag-doll. She's crying and grabbing at her head. She looks like she's in pain.
The sound of my gears grinding and eventually slipping free draw the attention of those closest to the stage. I step down off the stage, my body jerking as I battle against the auto-pilot mechanism. My brain is a mess of static and it's hard to think as the programming continues to blare errors through my system. I try to ignore it. Children scatter from the stage as my padded feet touch the linoleum.
There are several desperate clicking and whirs of protest coming from both Freddy and Chica.
Walking is coming easier now as my head clears, my system losing out against my sentient desires. I take two more confident steps, the erratic shaking in my limbs slowly fading. I curl my hands.
The man doesn't even take notice as I continue to creep forward. He's making demands, pressing the ragged edge of the shotgun against the temples of parents. They throw their wallets and other valuable goods at his feet as they clutch their children desperately.
Patty is pleading for her mother, her cries rising in pitch with each horrible passing second. Her mother, a woman with wavy blond hair and a baby blue sun dress, is on her knees and trying to beg with the man.
Another woman screams as she darts away from me. More parents begin to notice as I approach the gunman until, at long last, so does he.
I am just a few feet away when he pulls Patty close and takes a step back, his wild brown eyes traveling up and down my frame. "What the fuck is this shit? Seriously! What the fuck is this?" He's spitting as he screams. It's disgusting.
There is a noise to my left as the day guard announces his approach. "Sir, please, put down the weapon."
The gunman turns towards the day guard, the weapon pointed at him.
I can't grab Patty just yet. He's holding on to her too tightly. Children are fragile. The last thing I want to do is to harm a child.
"I want everything! All the fucking cash. I want it now or I blow this girl's brains all over the fucking floor." He jams the muzzle of the gun against the young girl's head. Her mother shrieks and claws at the floor.
The guard is quick to put up his hands. "Hey, hey. Listen, all of the money is in the safe in the Manager's office and he's out at the moment. Now, come on, you're scaring all the kids. Why don't you put down the-"
The blast of the shotgun stuns the room into silence as the day guard flops to the floor, crimson quickly pooling around him. I gaze at the red that's staining the floor and a sense of nostalgia washes over me. Its familiar and bad. I am stunned, immobilized as the pool slowly grows larger like a halo around the body.
The gunman drags his captive to the guard's body as he begins to trifle through his jacket, searching for something. He appears to find it as he pulls out the day guard's keyring. Without warning, he drops Patty into the sticky red puddle and she commences to cry again. Her dress begins to soak up the red and as she attempts to clamber to her knees.
My eyes widen at the sight of the liquid red as it paints her arms and legs. For a second my vision is cluttered with static and flickering images. I can't tell exactly what they are. Memories perhaps. A child crying desperately for freedom. Blood spilling over their limbs. A man dressed in dark clothing. Are these just video replays of what I've been observing for the last ten minutes? No, there's something more to them.
The sound of Patty crying out jars me back into the present and I notice that she's managed to crawl to her mother, but now the gunman is harassing them. He yanks on the woman's arm, but when she resists, there is a loud crack as he slams the butt of his gun against her temple.
The sound of my gears being electrified into motion reach me before I realize that I am moving. Seven thumping steps. The customers fall back in fear as I storm towards the gunman.
He notices me as well. In one swift movement, the gun is digging into my chest. "Alright, who the fuck is controlling this thing? Turn it the fuck off!"
If my face was capable of grinning, I would have done so. His eyes were wide and there was a slight tremor in his voice. Fear. This man was experiencing fear. He feared me. I found myself drinking up this fear like a man dying of thirst taking his first cool drink in days. It was…strangely addicting.
I reach up and tap the gun, experimenting. He seemed so quick to shoot the day guard. Would he do the same to me?
I hear several anxious whirs and clicks behind me. The sound of Freddy and Chica's approach are ushered in by several soft gasps.
The gunman glares wildly at me. "B-back up! Fucking robot! I'll blow you to pieces!"
I don't like his language. It's scaring the children and it's crude. I want to tell him to shut up. The hinges in my jaw relax and it swings open slightly. I repeat the motion several times before dropping my arm. It appears to work as he clenches his jaw and takes several steps back, the gun still aimed at my chest.
"Bonnie," Freddy hisses in warning.
I turn my head to see Chica kneeling on the floor, attempting to console some frightened children.
"Pizza and cupcakes are my favorite! What is yours?" The preprogramed recording plays in the light and feminine tone that the yellow chicken has been programed with. Several children still stare at the gunman in terror and Chica attempts to place herself in their line of sight.
Freddy stands between her and I. He is upset with me. I broke the rules. But I did not care. I decided I wasn't going to listen to-
I felt the force of the gunshot before I heard it. It felt as if someone had punched me with tremendous force and shoved be back into Freddy. He stumbles back as I become familiar with the linoleum floor. My limbs begin to tremble as sparks erupt from my chest, wires laying haphazardly exposed and frayed. I can hear the gentle glug glug of oil pouring onto the floor.
The damage is incredible. I'm almost impressed. I knew that guns were bad, but I had no idea they could cause this much damage. My right arm twitches violently and there is a strange high-pitched keening that's making my ears hurt.
As Freddy leans into my view, I realize that I was the one making that sound. It's coming from me. The large brown mascot is silent as he peers down at me, his round ears articulated down at me. I can't control the static wail that's coming from my voice box. Maybe I was intentionally making the noise, but I can't be sure. I just feel like that is the only way to cry without having the ability. Cry? Wail? I don't think animatronics can cry. But I was scared. My system was struggling to keep up with the swarm of electric pulses of shorting wires. It hurt. It hurt. I could feel every snapping crackle of burning electricity. My chest –no—my entire body felt on fire.
"Bonnie?"
Despite no audible tone, I can hear the low somber note in Fred's voice in my head. Above that, I can hear Chica repeating the same questions to the children in rapid succession. She is trying to keep the children calm. There was a strange lilt at the end of her words. She was losing control over her own calm. God. The agony would not stop. My entire body twitched violently.
A man pulls his daughter's face protectively towards his chest. I can see him gaping at me from the corner of my dissolving vision. "God…it almost looks like it's in pain."
The sound of the shotgun being cocked draws the attention of the mascot and I watch as his blue eyes roll up to the intruder. "I will give you one last chance." The gunman whirls around wildly, spit flying from his mouth. His eyes are wide and frantic, like a desperate beast backed into a corner. He is playing roulette with these people.
I try to raise my arm, but it refuses to respond.
"Freddy," I beg. I didn't listen to Freddy and look at where it had gotten me. But Freddy, he could do something. He could fix this. I knew he could. I trusted him.
I watch as Freddy stepped over me, slowly approaching as the gunman who turns sharply, the shotgun aimed at him now. The man's face is bright red -almost plum- with angry veins pulsing beneath his skin, as he snarls wickedly at the bear.
"I swear to fucking God, I will blow your damn head off just like the damn rabbit!" He jams the weapon into Freddy's belly with a metallic thunk.
The animatronic reaches up and takes the gun into his right hand. Only trained ears could have picked up the sound of the servos in Freddy's joints shift from electric to pneumatic in an instant. The resulting crush force completely flattened the metal weapon, leaving behind a deep imprint of Freddy's paw permanently etched into the barrel. The intruder's eyes widen to the size of saucers and he sputters out his shock, dropping the gun as though it had suddenly seared his flesh.
"What the hell-" Freddy's paw consumes his face and shoves him. The man crashes back against a table, launching plates and party hats into the air as grape soda and half-finished cupcakes splatter against the floor.
My vision is fractured as chaos erupts. Parents grab their children and rush for the door. I can hear the high-pitched wail of ambulances growing near. Good. That means the children would be okay.
My static-filled eyes wander to where Patty is kneeling by her mother, but her eyes are on me. She blinks tears from her eyes and she whispers. I can barely make out the words.
"Thank you."
I feel the floor vibrate with heavy footsteps beneath me as Chica approaches. My head rolls back against the floor as she places a hand upon my shoulder. She clicks her beak gently, but I don't hear what she says as my consciousness begins to leave me. The last thing I see before slipping into darkness is Freddy standing over the incapacitated gunman; the mighty sentinel of the pizzeria.
"…nie?"
"…onnie?"
The gears in my head and neck whir to life. Too loud. The sound was too loud in my head. A strange rolling crackle emits from my voice box.
"Bonnie! You're awake!"
As my optics flare to life, I notice that I am on stage. Odd. Just a few minutes ago I had been lying on the floor, damaged by a gun shot. My ears straighten as I look down. I lower the guitar to the floor and run my paws over my smooth belly. No damage. There wasn't a single sign of damage. The only sign that anything had occurred was the replaced section of fur was nice and clean. I run my paw over it several times, not entirely convinced the entire thing hadn't been fabricated in some part of my glitching memory bank.
"Bonnie?"
I turn and see Chica leaning around the bear animatronic, staring at me.
She slowly waves her hand. "Glad to have you back!"
Have me back? I tilt my head slightly, but my question dies on my tongue as I notice that Freddy is "awake", but has said nothing and is simply staring straight ahead. My ears droop. He must be disappointed that I broke his rules.
I lower my eyes to the floor. Its recently been mopped, I noticed with great attention. The silence of the building is evidence enough that night has fallen. Not to mention our consciousness. I gaze up at a clock on the wall. 2 AM. Have Freddy and Chica been waiting for me to come-to?
"How long?" I ask.
Chica tilts her head up as if to ponder the question. She always seemed eager to find new ways to emote. She often mimicked the children, attempting to speak and move like they do. "Three days?" She glances to Freddy for confirmation. The stoic bear continues to stare ahead, his eyes unblinking. He almost looks as if he was in sleep-mode.
There's a strange dropping sensation in my gut. Is this what guilt feels like? It feels like guilt. I feel bad. I don't like the feeling. Like my insides are attempting to sink below my knees. "Freddy, I-"
"You ignored the rules, Bonnie." His baritone voice rumbles through my frame.
My ears drop nearly flat against my head.
"You ignored the rules and were damaged. It costs a lot to fix an animatronic. It costs a lot to fix you."
"But," Chica adds in gently, "That police man did say that Bonnie saved a lot of lives."
I did? My ears lift slightly.
"The day guard would beg to differ," Freddy huffs. His eyes swivel to the right.
I lean forward a bit and notice that the pool of blood was long gone. Along with the body. Oh, yeah. The day guard. That left me to wonder about the others. Did Patty and her mother make it out okay?
"What matters is that Bonnie is fixed and he saved those children," Chica persists. She reaches up to absently scratch at her face like a child would when nervous, her eyes looking everywhere but at Freddy.
"He still broke the rules. It's enough that we get away with what we do at night." Freddy finally turns to look at me. "To break the rules during the day is another thing entirely."
He was right. I didn't listen to him and I paid for it and the company paid for my mistakes.
Freddy reaches out and closes his large paw around my shoulder.
I look up at him. His stoic expression is laced with something I can't discern. My frame creaks lightly under the pressure of his grip. "I'm glad you did."
My eyelids widen, and my jaw falls open. Wait, he was happy that I ignored his rules?
He tilts his head and releases my shoulder only to pat it three times. "You are a hero, Bonnie."
On his other side, I can hear Chica making a strange clicking sound from her voice box and I realize she is attempting to laugh. Her hands are on her round belly and she tilts her head back. It sounds odd, but I like it.
I feel light, almost as if I could float right off this stage. This must be what happiness feels like. Like butterflies fluttering around my endoskeleton. My eyes travel down to my chest just to make sure the little bugs aren't actually fluttering around. It feels too real.
"Adults are dangerous. They're impulsive and lack control. They do not follow rules and when they don't, the children suffer. We are programmed to make sure children are happy here at Freddy Fazbear's. There is an evilness in adults and we must make sure to be rid of it the minute it steps in our home."
I tilt my head up at Freddy as he speaks. I notice his hands curling at his sides, the plastic microphone in his hand cracking slightly.
"I made the mistake of ignoring it and because if it, you were damaged, Bonnie. I am glad you broke the rules. We must always be wary of the darkness of adults."
Instead of the lightness, now I feel a strong fire building up and it energizes my circuits. I reach down and take up my guitar, plucking a low E.
"We'll make sure that no one hurts a child ever again."
Freddy was right. Adults are filled with wickedness. I plucked another note and nodded.
I decided. This time I was going to listen to Freddy.