Author's Note:

Thank you, as always, for your continued readership! I hope that you are enjoying the story so far, and I enjoy reading your reviews!

Pressure

Having managed to avoid suspicion for the time being, I was free to finish work on the animatronics, though time had grown quite short, so I had to make do with some rather crude revisions.

I had divided up several of the pieces that were supposed to operate in the robots into separate component pieces that could be retracted from each other. They would require a great deal of pressure keeping them together, however, to keep them operating correctly while in animatronic mode, so I had to load up some strong springs that kept all those pieces pressed tightly together.

I added a couple of gears and a chain connected to these spring-loaded components, and installed a hand-crank socket to the back to access the main gear to allow enough mechanical advantage for a normal human being to retract the pieces against the strength of the springs. I just needed to add something that would keep the thing retracted while in suit mode without someone needing to hold onto the hand-crank the entire time.

An engineer with enough time could have developed a multiple point locking system that required some sort of careful maneuver, like the insertion of a particular key, in order to release the springs and return the suit to an animatronic.

However, I was not an engineer with enough time on my hands to go through that trouble. I received repeated notices from corporate reminding me of the deadline for my new suits, and I do take such pride in my work, so I made haste to complete the project on time. I installed a couple of small locks inside the suit. The wearer could slide them into place to interrupt the chain, to keep the thing from switching back to animatronic mode. It was flimsy at best, but, well... one makes do with what one has on hand.

The man in the charcoal suit came to see my work on the day of the deadline. I heard a knock on the door to my workshop. I was tired and finishing some things up, and it was in the middle of a busy evening at the restaurant. I imagined that it was likely either some young employee who mistakenly thought that I could help them, or otherwise some unruly patron exploring around where they did not belong, so I replied: "Go away; I am busy!"

After that, a small business card slid underneath the door, and the knocking resumed, somewhat more slowly, but even more firmly. I took a look at the business card.

Asif Albaf

VP – Customer Experience

Fazbear Entertainment

I sighed and opened the door. The man stepped in. As he had beforehand, during the investigation into the death of Mark, the boy I killed outside the restaurant, the corporate executive had come to monitor this situation wearing a charcoal gray suit, a white dress shirt, a maroon necktie, and a scowl.

"Vice president of 'customer experience'?" I asked.

"Yes. It's basically PR, Legal, Marketing, and R&D all rolled into one. There used to be more department heads. We cut some dead weight to make the company leaner."

Asif said this proudly. He was giving the clear impression that he had somehow beaten out a field of competitors all at the executive level. Without coming right out and saying anything aggressive, he was implying that he was a ruthless corporate player, not someone to be taken lightly. I took notice of this and used this impression he had of himself to inform the rest of my interactions with him.

"Come to see the finished product, I presume?" I asked.

"Indeed. Your status updates have been less than reassuring."

"I told you that I would have them finished on time."

"Yes. That is all you said. Not very reassuring."

"Did you really want a thirty-page technical log describing every gear, spring, and rotor added or adjusted in these things? I doubt someone whose time is as valuable as yours would care to read such mundane details. The only thing about which you really cared was that I finished... on... time. Am I right?"

"Fine. Show me."

I gestured to the two animatronic/suit hybrid prototypes I had developed. Each one had been based on one of the original suits, in this case, the Golden Freddy Fazbear and the yellow Bonnie.

I powered each of them on, and I allowed them to move around a bit in the back of the workshop. There was not much room, but they looked around and did a rudimentary sort of dance.

I will not get into how difficult it was to program them to "dance" without falling flat on their faces. It really consisted simply of them lifting up one foot at a time while lifting and spreading their arms. It would be somewhat pathetic for a person to do this, but for robots, it was quite state-of-the-art, if I do say so, myself.

While the golden Freddy was up on one foot, mister Albaf walked up to it and shoved it firmly with his right hand. The Freddy animatronic immediately took a step back, planting both feet on the floor and regaining its balance. It then proceeded to laugh a cheerful, somewhat deep tone:

"Ho, ho, ho, ho!"

Asif responded:

"Alright. Not bad. You know kids can't keep their hands to themselves these days. We couldn't have robots that would fall over as soon as the kids started getting rowdy."

"Of course not." I replied. "You won't find more advanced robotics anywhere... for the price. These are custom-made."

"Alright, then. Show me suit-mode."

I picked up the hand-crank and shoved it firmly into the socket on Freddy's side. This stopped his automatic movements. Then, I began turning it. Freddy sat down as his robotic components slowly compressed and retracted into the sides of the suit, his back opening up. I gestured to the hand-crank and to the spring-locks inside.

"Well?" Asif asked. "Go on."

I did not feel particularly comfortable being the first one to test these things as suits. I was fairly confident in my ability, but the safety measures were the things on which I had cut the most corners to make this deadline. I had never expected to find myself inside one of them. I was an engineer, not some minimum-wage high-school dropout entertainer.

"Actually, mister Albaf..." I replied. "I think I might be able to provide a better demonstration."

"What do you mean?"

"Part of the value of my machines is that they are simple to use. Bring someone in without a degree. Bring someone in who would actually be wearing this suit, and I will show you not only that this suit works, but that it can be used by... unskilled labor."

Asif nodded thoughtfully. He seemed to agree with my statement and stepped out, presumably to pull in some pimple-faced teen to be my first guinea pig.

I felt a bit conflicted. The kid would likely be less careful than I at keeping the spring-locks in place, more likely to fuck it all up, and if he did get himself crushed, things would go very badly for me, presumably... but at least I would still be alive, and that was priority number one.

Asif came back leading a red-haired teenager in front of him. Affecting a cheerful tone, Asif told him: "You get to be the first to try this out! It's gonna be great!"

The teen grinned awkwardly and looked at the machine lying on the floor. He leaned in, and I pointed out to him the different spring-locks, speaking loudly and clearly enough that Asif would also be able to understand me.

"I have the mechanical parts retracted right now with this hand-crank, but to keep them pulled back, you need to set these spring-locks. Just move them into place, like this."

I flicked one of them into its locked position, barely holding against the chain into which it was inserted.

"There are three of them. One here, and the other two there... and there. Just make sure that they are all in the locked position, and keep them there."

The boy looked a little nervous.

"Huh... uh, is it... y'know... safe?"

"Do not be ridiculous. Of course it is safe." I replied. "You only really need one of these locks engaged to keep the machine in suit mode. With three locks, there is plenty of redundancy."

"Uh... b-but, so... what happens if the locks undo... while I'm in it?"

"What did I just say? That will not happen."

"O-okay, sorry! Yeah, I'll just set the locks."

I noticed Asif grinning out of the corner of my eye. I think he liked the way I spoke to the teen. I suspected as much. Asif is used to dominating others, so he was likely to respect that in others.

The teenager whose name I never bothered to get then flicked the remaining two spring-locks into place and climbed inside. I squinted a bit as I removed the hand-crank, wincing briefly, just a bit concerned at the possibility of getting a spray of blood in my eyes.

However, as I had hoped and expected, the locks held in place. The back of the suit closed, and the boy stood up and began walking around. His voice came a bit muffled from inside the head of the golden Freddy suit.

"Oh, wow! Ha! This is pretty cool! I mean, it's a bit tough to move around 'n stuff, but I feel... y'know, strong and... stable."

"That suit is very well proportioned and weighted. You will have an easier time keeping your balance in the suit than you will out of it." I added.

"Yeah, cool! So... um, how do I get back... out of it?"

"Just flip the release underneath where your fingers rest inside the hands of the suit. Lift it up, and the back will open back up for you to climb out."

The teenager did as I commanded, the back hatch swung open lightly, and he gingerly stepped out. "Ah, nice! Well, that's some pretty rad stuff!"

"Yes. I could not have put it better myself." I replied with some sarcasm that I knew the boy would not detect.

Asif clapped his hands and said "Alright, then! I hope you enjoyed this, but break-time is over. Let's get back to delighting our customers!"

"Oh? Okay, then. Sure." The boy walked back out to the loud restaurant. The sound of screaming children was not something I enjoyed seeping into my workshop during those brief moments when the door was actually open.

The moment the door closed behind him, Asif renewed his stern look and tone and asked me: "So, how safe is it really?"

"For liability purposes, I would say to give a very clear warning about those spring-locks, but as long as people follow those instructions, they will be fine." I said, peering into the machine, checking the state of the thing, making sure that it was still in proper order.

"How about you show me how it goes back into animatronic mode, then?"

I found myself unable to stifle a smile. I felt nearly giddy. "Well, that is my favorite part."

I stuck the hand-crank into the socket to keep everything in place for the moment, and then I reached inside to undo the spring-locks. I released two of them, and then noticed that the last of the three had already been released while the teenage employee was piloting it. I grimaced and looked more closely. It was not the firmest switch in the world. If the kid had brushed against it wrong, that might have been what had caused it to slip out of position, especially if most of the strain of the chain were on the other two locks, but all things considered, I thought of this as quite a successful test.

I returned to the hand-crank and simply slid it out of position.

Immediately, all of the mechanical components inside the suit slammed together with a loud CLANG followed by a couple of brief clicking sounds as the last few pieces locked into place.

I turned to Asif beaming with pride and said: "You see? It could not be easier. It is ready to run in animatronic mode right away."

I loved that part. I love automation. I love that machines can do exactly what you tell them to do, that in the hands of a skilled engineer, a whole array of things requiring great physical strength can be made to happen with inhuman spatial and temporal precision all with the push of a single button, and it can be made to happen precisely the same way every time.

You know, before everyone had a computer, engineers made machines to handle just about anything. We had adding machines and cash registers that worked using a complex and intricate system of tumblers, locks, gears, and axles to always produce the correct output. No electricity was even required. I would be willing to bet that you have no idea about such things, do you?

Oh, what am I saying? Of course you have no idea. Everything you know is electronic, governed by messy computer code produced and compiled in layer upon layer of wasteful, error-prone software. Do you know why every computer crashes? It is because every operating system is shit. What competent engineers do is get a set of simple machines, and then make them do exactly one job. You build a complex machine with a single purpose, you engineer it from the ground up for that purpose, and if you are somewhat competent, it will do what you want it to do.

We landed on the fucking moon with a computer more basic than the electronics in your modern toasters that have probably have some ridiculous computer-controlled stop/start/defrost buttons. The Apollo computer had sixty-four kilobytes of memory and operated at a clock speed of forty-three kilohertz. Do you know why it worked? It had one job, and it was designed to that one job well.

It used to mean something to be an engineer.

…

Wait, where were we? Oh, yes, I had finished my demonstration to the vice president, Asif Albaf. He was thoroughly impressed, and he had me write up some safety notes and operating instructions that would be provided to Leonard, the head of security, to read. He would be recording training tapes for the employees that would end up wearing these things.

"Let's try these at our... sister location, first." Asif said before leaving my workshop.

"Where would that be?" I asked.

Asif paused before responding.

"Somewhere we can test certain things without worrying about OSHA and other regulatory agencies breathing down our necks. Globalization is a wonderful thing, Vincent."

"Are you going to be moving me to this 'sister' location to perform maintenance and oversight?"

"No. There's no need to pay for your travel expenses. You just showed me how even 'unskilled labor' can work the machines, right? If the real value here is their ease of use, then I can hardly leverage that value if I need to lug our engineer around the globe for 'maintenance and oversight'."

"Right. Well, then, with the recent deadline 'adjustments', I was only able to produce these two prototypes. You will be sending them to the sister location?"

"No. Let's keep those here. It'll be nice to have backups. No, just turn over copies of your schematics and blueprints, and we'll have the machinists build new machines based on them on location. It's much cheaper that way."

"You... think that you can have the world's lowest bidder produce my machines with the same quality?"

"Ha! No, not the same quality, just enough that it will work. After all, if you're a good engineer, then your blueprints should be perfectly adequate, right?"

"Of course."

"By the way, they're not your machines, understand, Vincent? You designed these schematics for Fazbear Entertainment; your salary pays you for the designs, which are the property of Fazbear Entertainment."

I had to bite my tongue to keep from replying sarcastically "Oh, and what a generous salary it is!". I knew that would not help my situation, but I could not help but be perturbed by the way Asif insisted on emphasizing his control over everything, regardless of my importance in the matter.

Have you ever had to deal with that? Have you ever had to endure someone who barely knows what you are doing and who you are, who tries to assert control over you, over your situation, trying to act dominant just for the personal satisfaction of being in charge? Have you, Karl? Well, I can tell you that it is most... annoying.

Anyway, I simply replied:

"Yes, of course, mister Albaf. The schematics are all here. I just need to make some backup copies."

"Be quick about it, though. We are trying to get the factories producing them next week. Just get the copies made at Kinko's or wherever, then mail them- express- to the corporate office address on the back of my business card. Get them in the mail tonight."

Asif turned and started to leave the workshop. I asked:

"Is there a corporate expense account I can use? Blueprint copies are not cheap, and neither is express mail-"

He did not reply. He did not even stop. He just closed the door behind him as he walked out.

I have to say, I did hate him in that moment, but underneath the momentary frustration, in retrospect, I had to respect the man somewhat. He had a mind for efficiency, at least, and he took advantage of his position. He leveraged his power to the best of his ability. That is something I admire.

Even so, I was upset. I had just shown him a great technological achievement, and he had just dumped another unreasonable demand on my docket. Sending my blueprints overseas to have third-world machinists bang out some crude facsimile of my work was not only a personal insult, it was just asking for trouble. The man may have had some idea of management, but he was no engineer.

I gathered up my technical drawings and started trying to think of where the nearest copy shop was. I would have to go to the main office to get a phone book. I was loathe to make multiple trips through the messy, loud, and crowded restaurant, so I decided to take the schematics with me to the main office.

On my way, I would encounter additional annoyances, but I would also find an outlet for my recent sources of frustration.

Author's Note:

I am producing more OC's in this story than I had originally expected. Have you ever written anything and felt like it was growing beyond your original plans? Yeah. This might take longer than I originally thought, but I am getting there! I have a plan, I have an ending (or two? ;) ) in mind, and with each chapter, I am getting a little bit closer.

So, what do you think about Asif Albaf? What do you think about how things are going so far in the story?

What is this outlet Vincent found for his frustration? Did he perhaps decide to pick up whack-a-mole and play some of the games in the arcade? :D

See you next time! :)