Day 3 - March 8

After the AI incident of last night, I was a little curious about what would happen when I checked on it. You know, if it remembered our "conversation" and all that. How would it react if it saw me? Would it be giving white eyes and staying in Scared-by-the-Stare mode? Would it still pull the invisibility cloak thing if it did?

Okay, enough questions. This is a journal, not a novel. Turns it did just fine, even though it was still using those creepy voice lines to communicate. Good thing I have a translation guide in my other notebook. It's also a good thing that I wired the speech synthesis that way... for now.

The costume came today, which is a little surprising. What's not surprising is the fact that it looks like the decrepit remains of a rushed mascot suit. I know, I let her use some artistic license here. Buy, hey, it's more accurate this way.

I even tested the AI again to see if it would tolerate the suit. All it said was "got you" and laughed like a top-hat wearing supervillain. That's currently code for "I love it", but I'm obviously planning on adding some new dialogue options later.

On an entirely different subject, I looked more into the founder's history during my lunch break. Turns out this guy had a wife, presumably three kids, and a whole lotta bad times. Some he brought upon himself because he was being criminally stupid while others were just plain sad. I won't get into much because I'm pretty sure some kid might stumble across this. But if you know, you know. Besides, since half of the facts I collected are from speculation posts anyway, I kinda need to hold off just in case I'm wrong.

Oh, yeah. And the guy's name was William or something like that. Dunno if I need to start calling my project that or not. What would happen if I did? Hmmm... That's something I might need to look into.

All right, I'll add some more news to this later. Octavia out.

Late Night Update: Well, turns out calling it "William" was an... interesting decision, given the results.

You see, I decided to run one more diagnostics check before I went to bed. Everything was running smoothly. No glitches to report, no weird error messages, etc. And then, as I'm seeing how the system is running in "sleep" mode, I notice two things. First, the cooling fan speed is at max. Second, the movement tracker is running in the background and giving off signals. This, if I had to relate it to monitoring an actual person, is the closest thing to catching someone in the middle of a nightmare while scanning their sleep cycle.

Of course, I was terrified. Was the remnant overheating the metal and that triggered the bot to move? If so, then why wasn't the overheating message popping up? I figured the best way to find out was to go down to my "lab" and see what's going on. So, I put my phone in my pocket and walked out of my bedroom.

Long story short, I went down to the basement and saw Heart-Break Bun curled up on the floor and making the most pathetic whimpering I never thought I would hear. I skimmed the readings coming the laptop tethered to him before giving it a light, controlled shock. Its eyes snapped open and a strained, higher-pitched version of a growling noise played as it uncurled. It promptly rose its upper half and looked at me with its lower jaw slacked open. Of course, I stared back and waited for another response. It took a minute, but this custom Spring stayed true to its old name. "I'm... back," it said, probably grinning in relief if the suit didn't have such a restricted set of expressions.

"Yeah, welcome back from the dream world," I joked, trying to keep the mood more upbeat and less stress-inducing for the cooling fan. "So, what happened? Did some nightmare drag you down or something?"

Of course, Heart-Break took that as a challenge to test itself. It rose to standing height, then gestured towards its fellow "roommates". There were one bear, one chicken, and one fox. All of them were set to be next in the line of modded bots, but nothing like the rabbit standing a few yards away from them. One in particular it was having a fit over: the bear. Heart-Break kept pointing at it and using some of its (H-B's) own voice lines with a slight change in pitch. "I am here to claim what is left of you," was one of the many lines it sputtered rapidly, backing away with as if the sleeping bear was a culprit or some ghost of the past. This was what it did for at least a minute or two until it was right beside me. Then it just ducked behind and hid like a scared kid from a huge dog.

Laugh all you want (and I'll join in, trust me), but imagine trying to make a replica of a villainous rabbit act like it just got rejected on Valentine's Day. Now imagine that robot suddenly getting a mood of its own and reacting just like how I described above. Funny as it seems now, this was annoying and unnerving at the time. This was when, out of pure tiredness, I did the thing that I mentioned at the start of this update. I pretty much asked: "Hey, William, you want to explain to me why you got threatened by an angry bear animatronic? Did you feed it the wrong kind of fish or something?"

"William" placed a cold hand on my right shoulder. A muted laugh sound clip rang out in the dark as its eyes glowed white. "Will... iam.." it sputtered, splicing and fusing syllables faster than I can write. "Fascinating... But no. It... wasn't fish."

"Then what was it?" I asked, trying to push past my astonishment of how quickly it learned to 'talk'.

"It was... me."

"Wait, you just being there made it mad?"

"Yes."

In case anyone's confused, here's what I think Heart-Break was trying to say: he had a "nightmare" where some bear animatronic had a metal bone to pick with it. Then, something happened and the bear taunted it until I used that shocker thing. I have no idea where he got the camera feed or images from but that's something I'll figure out another time.

Unless the remnant's been giving it something from the actual William. Like... a video link? I mean, I guess the guy's dead now but it wouldn't surprise me if he set up some horror-themed prank for any house burglars. Or folks wandering in the lost pizzeria after dark. Dunno. Just a thought.

Again, I need to figure this out tomorrow if I remember. This has been a long night for me...

A just-as-confused-as-the-reader Octavia out.