I never thought that I would get involved with a corporate conspiracy that dated back all the way to 1983, but 2020 had been so off the walls already, I wasn't entirely surprised when I did.
Walking to his place of employment, the oppressive South Carolinian humidity beat down on him mercilessly. He couldn't afford a car yet, that's why he was working at such a questionable restaurant. But until he bought that car, he had to hoof it to work.
Otis's Robot Grill was one of the strangest restaurants I had ever heard of in his life (other than Cabbages and Condoms in Thailand, but I had only found that on Google). Otis himself was an honorable businessman working with a much smaller budget than I felt like he deserved.
I shouldered open the door to Otis's Robot Grill, and was greeted with the welcoming jets of air conditioning, sending goosebumps running up and down my body. The conflicting smells of maraina sauce and bacon tickled my nose, making me salivate.
The main room of the pizzeria was a large room furnished with six tables lined up in three rows, ready for parties. Pushed against the wall were old eighties style booths and tables. I didn't know how many he had bothered to count. The walls were covered with candid pictures of the animatronics and a few other posters. One for the old movie Maltese Falcon, another for Sunset Boulevard. me's favorite, though, was a picture of Myrtle Beach with the caption 'Who retires and moves up north?'. The tables themselves are covered in white tablecloths decorated with confetti floor itself is tiled with blue-and-red tiles. A light illuminates the center of the room and the windows allowing natural light to illuminate the room.
On the stage, where Otis's hardest working employees were, he liked to call them.
The leader of the quartet was Orville the Elephant. me wasn't wholly sure what his act was. Sometimes, he was a failed theatre actor (although, he was a better actor than anyone in the Gaffney community theatre). Other times, he picked up a wand and his act suddenly metamorphosed into a magician.
Mr. Hippo was Orville's friend, I supposed, though I did sense a serious amount of interspecies homoeroticsm from the duo. Although was it really interspecies if they were both robots?
He was a storyteller, but his stories were long and rambling. I could really only describe them as wordbarf. But, he did effectively sneak in some random life lessons for the children to latch on to. The most noteworthy of them was 'Don't feed bread to ducks. It'll kill them'.
The origins of Nedd Bear were a mystery to me. I got the distinct feeling that Nedd Bear was somehow older than almost every other thing in the building, other than maybe Otis. I didn't have any evidence to back this up, though, other than the tiny tears and loose seams sticking out that the other animatronics lacked. Despite his archaic and obviously plagiaristic design, Nedd Bear himself was actually a pretty competent entertainer. He had a library of what I believed to be over five hundred songs. I had been working at Otis's for nearly four years, but I had only heard Nedd Bear perform the same songs once or twice.
Happy Frog was supposed to get a stage name once she was introduced five years ago, but Otis and his wife, Aaliyah, disagreed on a name. When Aaliyah passed away suddenly from some illness Otis was not forthcoming about, the name Happy Frog stuck. Happy Frog was Nedd's back up singer. Whatever song Nedd was about to perform, Happy Frog inexplicably also knew it. Outside of being Nedd's back up singer, she reminded me a lot of that old play character. What was her name again? I'm pretty sure it was Pollyanna, but don't quote me on that. An unwavering optimist.
The last of the main attractions was Pigpatch. He was definitely there to appeal to the hillbillies in the area. I supposed that he was Nedd's guitarist. Although banjoist was a more accurate term. I had trouble considering Pigpatch strictly a banjoist, though. After you see Pigpatch shred his electric guitar after hours, it's hard to think of him and country music.
In the dining room, identical twins Lemonade Clown and Fruit Punch Clown. Even more so than Happy Frog, those names were a mouthful and they bothered Otis. So, he took to calling Lemonade Clown Lincoln, And he shortened Fruit Punch Clown down to Fillmore. I thought for a while that Fillmore's name was a pun, like 'fill more cups.' Turns out, both the clowns were just named after presidents.
Despite allegedly being programmed by two separate individuals at Smiles and Servos, Lincoln and Fillmore acted remarkably like brothers. Fillmore was the older, more outgoing one. He was slightly more popular with the children. While you could reliably find Fillmore in the middle of a group of kids, offering some sickeningly sweet fruit punch.
Lincoln was not so bold. Not to say he was unfriendly, but he'd much rather be approached than have to approach. His lemonade, much to my surprise, was not the overly saccharine Minute Maid that was common in most grease trap restaurants, but a sourer, more natural lemonade that wouldn't be out of place in a three or four star restaurant. Lincoln took pride in his work, and I respected the robot immensely for it.
The final animatronic, if you could even call him that, was Prize King, referred to by most of the staff as Arthur. It was a King Arthur joke once. It was funny at the time, but as time wore on, the humor wore down. The nickname, however, withstood the test of time. Much to Arthur's increasingly exasperated bemusement. If he wasn't complaining about his nickname, Arthur was complaining about being stationary and not having legs like the other entertainers.
Otis himself was an honest, hardworking man. He wore a smile at nearly every moment of every day. He had worn a three piece suit to work throughout 2017 and 2018, but ever since the surfacing of Fazbear Entertainment's atrocious crimes and cover-ups, Otis had resigned himself to wearing polo shirt and khakis. He was a pretty chubby, with a silver beard and dark brown skin. What the citizens of Gaffney, South Carolina knew Otis for, though, was his beat up, dark green Chanticleers cap he was never seen without.
Of course, Otis and I couldn't run a pizzeria alone.
The main mechanic and repairwoman was a blonde, California looking surfer chick named Coral Planundo. She was tall and rather skinny but not so much so that I felt it was unnatural. Her hair was always tied back, no matter what. I vaguely remembered my freshman year's winter formal, the year Coral was a senior. Her hair was still tied back. Her eyes were a light, hazel sort of brown. Breaking the California surfer vibe was her heavily stained overalls she wore everyday. It made sense, if she was working with complicated machinery, but I could never shake the thought that if she wore a sundress, the Southern girls would tear her to pieces. Or at least try to.
Alessandro Mancini was the head chef of Otis's Robot Grill. He was a first generation immigrant from Italy. Why he'd want to move from Italy to the United States was beyond me, but he never said anything about it. Alessandro was cavalier and he even had his moments of arrogance, but there was no denying his culinary skill. Otis would never tell Alessandro this to his face, but his excellence in making pizza, calzones and spaghetti was the only reason customers kept returning.
Otis wouldn't call his restaurant a grill without there being some actual grilling going on, either. Grillmaster Louise Beaman took care of all the americanized foods, such as burgers, ribs...any sort of barbeque, really. Sometimes, I would catch Otis and Louise staring longingly at each other. I thought it was cute.
The last member of Otis's team that I interacted regularly with was the day guard, Nonnosa Mubarak, Nonnosa was pretty much the opposite of Fillmore. While Fillmore was talkative, genial and not a human being, Nonnosa was taciturn and reclusive. Something in my head told him that Nonnosa would be a wonderful friend if we ever got to talking, but that wouldn't happen anytime soon.
I exhaled and stepped into the restaurant. The well-polished floor reflected the sunlight right into my poor eyes. I instinctively closed them and rubbed my eyes, something Alessandro would yell at me for.
"Everything okay, country boy?" asked Coral with a hint of mischief in her voice.
I rolled my eyes and punched into work.
I was the head waiter, but the title was completely superfluous. If I had any authority over the rest of the waiting staff, they certainly didn't know. I simply had more seniority than the rest of them, so I got paid incrementally more.
"I'm just fine, Coral."
Coral gave me a knowing smirk before disappearing in her little personalized domain of parts and services. Rumors flew among the staff as to what Coral got up to in there, each more ridiculous than the last. The only one I was somewhat inclined to believe was that she was creating another animatronic, a spider that played the cymbals. The amount of details made me think someone had seen the blueprints. The rest, though, were way out there. The weirdest of which normally involved either a vacuum or a bucket.
"Good afternoon, me." bellowed Fillmore. He walked over to me as quickly as his stubby, kneeless legs could allowed him. I'm sure if I was Fillmore or Lincoln, the lack of dexterity would be annoying, but Fillmore was rather understanding. If is glass midsection cracked, all that fruit punch would be a pain to clean up.
"Hey, Fillmore." I responded, reaching out to shake his large, white, four fingered hand. His exoskeleton was eerily cold, but I was used to it by now. This handshake was a regular occurrence.
"Care for some fruit punch?" asked the clown, as he did every time he spoke to me.
"After my shift." was always my answer.
Fillmore nodded respectfully and moved on. Alessandro ordered me over to the kitchen to serve a few baskets of complementary breadsticks. I sighed, threw on an apron, and began my last normal day of work I would ever have.