Wednesday, July 22, 1987

Today Evan brought a backpack filled with comics and a flashlight to Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, and despite being relentlessly mocked for it by his older brother, Evan was very excited to spend the day with his animatronic friend.

As Evan approached Kids' Cove, he spotted Mangle hanging from the ceiling. It didn't take long before she noticed him too, and she immediately brightened up when she did. Climbing along the ceiling, she met him by the entrance of the Cove.

"Evan-an-an-an!" Mangle exclaimed excitedly as she lowered her head so that it was closer to the eight year old's level.

Evan grinned at the animatronic. "Hi, Mangle!"

"I miss-miss-miss-missed you," Mangle said, lowering her ears slightly.

"I missed you too," Evan replied with a sympathetic smile. "Now that I'm here, can we go to our private spot so we can read comics together?"

Mangle tilted her head to the side. "Pri-ri-ri-ri-ri-rivate spot?"

"You know, in the vents? Where we were yesterday," Evan clarified.

"Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh yeah!" Mangle exclaimed as she recalled yesterday's game of hide-and-seek.

Climbing along the ceiling, Mangle exited Kids' Cove and made her way over to the vent with Evan following close behind. Before opening the vent cover, they both looked around to see if anyone was keeping an eye on them. Once they were sure that no one was, the two climbed into the vent and put the cover back in place behind them.

While Evan got his flashlight out of his backpack, Mangle crawled deeper into the ventilation shaft. After turning the flashlight on, Evan crawled after her. With the illumination, Evan was finally able to appreciate just how well Mangle was able to squeeze through this cramped space.

Once he caught up to her, Evan reached into his backpack and pulled out a comic book with a white ghost on its cover.

Mangle tilted her head as she stared at it. "What is-is-is-is-is it?"

"It's 'Casper the Friendly Ghost'," Evan replied with a smile. "Want me to read it to you?"

"Mm-hm," Mangle replied with a nod.

Evan proceeded to open the comic and place it down on the floor sideways so that they both could see it fine enough by tilting their heads a bit. The first frame depicted the titular character being chased out of his home by three older ghosts.

"Um, so that's Casper," Evan said and pointed at the child-like ghost.

Mangle looked the comic page over with curious eyes before she asked. "Who a-a-a-a-are those other three-ee-ee-ee?"

"They're the Ghostly Trio. They're Caspers older brothers, or uncles, or something. I dunno," Evan explained. Pointing at them, he said, "They're chasing him out of the house and saying 'And don't come back, Casper, until you bring home some food!'." He then pointed at the child-like ghost and continued, "And then Casper says 'It's not my fault you've eaten everything in sight!'"

Mangle looked up at Evan and asked, "Why are they-ey-ey-ey-ey so mean to him?"

Evan shrugged. "I dunno, I guess that's just how older brothers are." He then pointed to the next frame where Casper was drifting through the woods. "Then Casper says 'Ghosts have no money! I have no idea how I can get groceries! Even if I worked I couldn't earn enough for a sandwich! I wish the ghostly trio would work sometimes!'" Evan continued to the next frame. "Look, as the animals see Casper they all run away from him."

Mangle's ears drooped. "Why are they run-un-un-unning away?"

"Because he's a ghost, and ghosts are scary," Evan replied. "One of the animals says 'A ghost! Run for your lives!', and another one says, 'Eep!' And Casper says 'Wait! Don't run away! I'm Casper, the friendly ghost!'" He then pointed to the next frame that depicted the ghost now all alone and looking sad. "Here he says 'Why does everybody have to run from me...'"

"Poor Ca-Ca-Ca-Casper," Mangle said and gave the cartoon ghost a look of empathy.

To say that Ramón Rivera was frustrated was an understatement. Not only did he have no idea of what was corrupting the code of the animatronics, but he had no clue as to how to fix it.

Out of ideas, Ramón trudged over to the manager's tiny office and knocked on the door.

"Come in!" Walton responded, and as Ramón entered the room, he swiveled his chair to face him. "Oh hey, Ramón! How are the animatronics doing? Have you fixed their code yet?"

Ramón shook his head. "Sorry, Mister Walton, but the problem is way worse than we thought. Frankly, they shouldn't even be able to function in this state. We're going to have to do a complete wipe of their systems and reinstall their software. Do you know where their backups are kept?"

Walton thought for a second and then replied, "I don't know. If we have any, they should be in Parts and Service."

Ramón couldn't help but let out a frustrated sigh. "Mister Walton, I've looked all over the room. There are no backups of the AI software in there."

"That's a shame," Walton said with a frown. "Are you sure you can't fix the animatronics without them?"

"No, Mister Walton, that's not possible," Ramón replied. "Look, if this problem was only affecting some of them, I could use the code of an unaffected animatronic to overwrite the damaged code in the others. It would be very time consuming, but I could do it. But because every single animatronic is affected by this, that is not an option," he explained. "To make matters worse, the corruption of their code seems to be growing at an exponential rate, and given how it's altering the behavior of the animatronics, this will probably have catastrophic results. As such, there is no solution other than to restore their systems with a backup of some sort." He paused to think and then asked, "Do you at least know who wrote their code?"

"Oh, that would be Henry Emily himself," Walton replied. "Apparently, he's a brilliant programmer."

"Could you give me his number?" Ramón asked.

Walton grimaced. "I'm afraid not. Mister Emily is something of a recluse. We don't even know where he lives," he admitted. "The only thing we got from him is an address to a warehouse and bank account number."

Ramón let out another frustrated sigh. "Mister Walton, without any backup to work with, I won't be able to fix the animatronics' AI."

Walton thought for a moment and then suggested, "How about some kind of workaround instead, then? Would that be possible?"

Ramón considered it and then replied, "Maybe. But I can't make any promises."

Walton nodded. "Do whatever you have to."

"What about the Mangle?" Ramón asked. "Do you want me to try to develop a workaround for her too, or should I just focus on the other animatronics?"

Walton waved dismissively. "You can ignore that thing. It's on its way out anyway, so I'd rather not waste your time with it."

Thursday, July 23, 1987

Like the past couple of days, Evan had been greatly looking forward to going to Freddy Fazbear's Pizza so that he could spend a few hours with Mangle. Playing with her was always so much fun, and as he had found out the previous day, reading with her was really fun too.

However, at this point Michael was getting more than a little annoyed at his little brother's excitement while they were making their way to the restaurant, and so he decided to curb it by repeatedly pinching him and giving him a couple of Indian burns.

Much to Evan's relief, he and his older brother finally parted ways once they entered Freddy's. Smiling to himself, he headed towards Kids' Cove. However, as he approached, Evan suddenly heard someone cry out in distress.

It was Mangle.

Evan rushed into the Cove to see what was wrong and found Mangle being tormented by two boys he knew all too well—Ned and Timmy. They were both just a year older than him, but they were some of his worst bullies at school. Ned was sitting on top of Mangle's torso, pinning her to the ground while pulling on her wiring, intentionally trying to break her. Timmy, meanwhile, kept pulling on one of her ears as if he was trying to tear it off. And while some of the toddlers and preschoolers were joining in on the 'fun' by pulling parts off Mangle and putting them wherever they pleased, most of the younger kids just watched on.

"Sto-sto-sto-sto-sto-stop! Please!" Mangle begged, but the kids just ignored her. Upon seeing Evan, she looked at him with pleading eyes.

Normally, Evan would go out of his way to avoid the bullies, but he knew that if he didn't do anything they might very well destroy his friend.

Mustering up all of his courage, Evan ran up to Timmy and pushed him off Mangle and onto the floor. "Stop it! You're hurting her!"

Timmy quickly got up and scowled at Evan. "Well, if it isn't the crybaby. Since when did you grow a spine?" He stepped over to the eight year old and continued, "So what? You wanna fight me? Huh, crybaby?"

Evan desperately wanted to say something. Anything. But no matter how hard he tried, he found himself unable to come up with a response.

"Got nothing to say? Fine!" Timmy pushed Evan onto the floor and then gave him a hard kick to his knee.

Evan yelled out in pain and began to cry as he clutched his leg. He had no idea something could hurt so much.

Timmy laughed. "That's what you get!"

As Timmy went back to Mangle, Ned said, "Hey, instead of pulling its ear, why don't you try pulling on the wires coming out of its head? I betcha that'll break it for sure!"

"That's a great idea!" Timmy replied with a cruel laugh as he knelt down in front of Mangle's head.

Mangle looked on in terror as Timmy reached out and grabbed the loose wires under her left ear. In her fear and desperation, she did the only thing she could think of.

She bit his arm.

Evan heard the sickening sound of a meaty crunch, which was followed by Timmy shrieking in agony. He looked up and saw that Mangle had completely crushed the bully's forearm between her jaws, with blood pouring out on her mouth and down onto the floor.

All hell then broke loose as all of the kids in the Cove started screaming and running away from the animatronic, with many of them calling for their parents.

Mangle let go of Timmy's arm, and her ears drooped as she looked on in horror at what she had done. She then heard a large number of parents and members of staff shout and yell, and upon seeing them run towards Kid's Cove, Mangle crawled under one of the tables in a desperate attempt to hide. She trembled, her eyes were full of fear as she watched the scene unfold.

One man rushed up to Timmy to tend to his wound and pull him further away from Mangle. Several parents grabbed their kids and quickly got out of the room, all while staring at the animatronic like she was some horrible child-eating monster. Many other parents shouted angrily at the staff who were present.

"How could you let a broken robot be around little kids?!" One woman shouted while pointing at Mangle.

"What kind of place is this?!" Yelled another.

"You said the robots were safe!" One man roared. "I'm never taking my kids here ever again!"

The staff then began to awkwardly usher everyone out of the room.

A man in his early twenties who was part of the staff then walked up to Evan, and upon seeing him on the floor and clutching his leg, he worriedly asked, "Did it hurt you too?!"

Evan shook his head. "No! One of the kids did!"

The staff member grabbed Evan's hand and pulled him up. "Okay, well, you need to get out of here! It's not safe to be in here right now!"

"No, I wanna stay with Mangle!" Evan pleaded.

"Absolutely not! That thing is dangerous! Didn't you see what it did?!" The staff member said as he began to lead Evan out of the room.

"She's not dangerous! They were trying to hurt her!" Evan exclaimed with tears in his eyes as he tried to pull out of the staff member's iron grip. Evan turned to look at Mangle, who looked back at him with pleading eyes, as if she was begging him to stay with her. Turning back to the staff member, he shouted, "Let me go!"

"No, kid!" The staff member yelled back. "It's not safe!"

Evan glanced back at Mangle and gave her an apologetic look before he was pulled out of view.

Once in the Main Area, it wasn't long before Michael ran up to his little brother.

"Evan! What the hell happened?!" Michael asked, looking uncharacteristically worried for him.

"Some of the kids tried to break Mangle!" Evan sobbed and tried to wipe away some of his tears. "And then she bit one of them!"

Michael blinked. "Bit them? Like, how bad?"

The staff member then turned to the fourteen year old and replied, "The damned thing almost took that kid's arm off!"

Michael's eyes went wide. "Jeez! Father's going to go ballistic when he hears about this." He then grabbed Evan's wrist and pulled him along as he headed for the entrance. "Come on, Evan! Let's get out of here."

"No!" Evan sobbed. "I wanna go to Mangle!"

"Are you crazy?! That thing will just bite you too!" Michael replied as he led his little brother out of the building.

Evan frantically shook his head. "No she wouldn't! She's my friend!"

Michael let out a frustrated sigh as he led Evan away from the crowd of angry parents and crying children. Coming to a halt, he turned to his little brother. "Evan, look at me."

Evan did nothing but sob uncontrollably.

"I said, look at me!" Michael yelled as he cupped his little brother's face and lifted it so that he was forced to look into his eyes. "That thing in there is not your friend! It's just an animatronic programmed to act friendly! It's not real!"

"You're wrong!" Evan sobbed.

Michael let out another frustrated sigh. "Evan, you remember Fredbear from when we were little?" He asked. "It was programmed to act friendly too! But if I had put your head into its mouth, it would've malfunctioned and killed you! Mangle is just the same! If it malfunctions, it could kill you!"

"You're wrong…" Evan repeated and sniffled.

Michael rolled his eyes as he let go of his little brother's face. He then grabbed Evan's hand. "Whatever, you ditz. Come on, let's go home."