Sunday, August 13, 1989
Fourteen months had passed since Mangle's first birthday, and in that time Evan had made incredible progress with his studies. He had completely mastered algebra, statistics, trigonometry, and calculus, as well as the fundamentals of physics and chemistry. But when it came to technology, the boy was beginning to reach his father's level. By now he had a thorough understanding of how software interacted with hardware, so much so that he could make his own homemade computer components. To further practice and develop these skills, he built animatronic toys and plushies for him and Mangle to play with.
As for Mangle, she became quite prolific when it came to recording shows and movies on TV, to the point where Evan had to set up a bookshelf in the barn to more effectively store all of her video tapes. Both of them greatly enjoyed watching 'Cosmos: A Personal Voyage' when it got its first rerun in years, and thanks to Mangle's videotaping habits, they were able to rewatch episodes of it whenever they wanted, which they did every now and then.
Mangle took a strong liking to music, especially pop music, and she spent many hours singing and dancing to her favorite songs when Evan was away at school. And when he was at home, she often asked him to dance with her. It became a shared activity that they both enjoyed.
The barn was now almost completely unrecognizable. Its walls had been painted pink and were now covered with decals and stickers of butterflies, hearts, flowers, and stars, as well as a multitude of photos and drawings. Evan had given Mangle almost complete freedom in how to decorate the place—it was only fair, after all, given that she had to spend all of her time there. And while Mangle had a bookshelf for her video cassettes, Evan had gotten one for himself as well, which was filled with books and ring binders. Right next to it was a wicker sofa, which was covered in soft blankets and cushions, and it was where Evan and Mangle often sat and read together.
Because of how quickly Evan had advanced through his math and science courses, there were discussions about him potentially skipping middle school altogether after finishing fifth grade. However, William was adamantly against it, since he wanted the boy to be old enough to move out before going to college. Evan agreed with his father, as he knew that if he wasn't able to build Mangle a new body, then going to any good college would force him to abandon her, since she couldn't leave the barn without being put in danger in her current form. Given that the boy learned at his best when left to study on his own, it was therefore decided that he would be permitted to skip all math and science classes and get his own study room, where he could study materials provided to him by his father. In order to take full advantage of this arrangement, William contacted some of his old professors at Berkeley and persuaded them to videotape their lectures in the upcoming semester and mail them to him.
Of course, as Evan's knowledge grew, he eventually came to realize just how unusual Mangle was. While her hardware was certainly impressive for the time when she was built, her AI was far too advanced to run on it. And while analyzing her binaries, he discovered that the code was sending and receiving instructions from some unseen hardware component. It was as if Mangle was somehow connected to a supercomputer. At first he suspected that the database that Mangle had been connected to in Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria was the cause of this anomaly, but given that her in-built antenna was too short-ranged for her to still be connected to it and was unable to transmit or receive the huge amounts of data indicated by her code, he quickly ruled out that possibility. Furthermore, Evan observed that this invisible component would occasionally alter her code, and at times even remove entire sections of it, which led him to believe that most of Mangle's code had gradually been moved to the mystery component.
Evan tapped his fingers against the desk as he stared at the screen. A few weeks ago, he finally managed to reverse engineer the part of Mangle's code that was accessible to him. Since then, he had done a lot of careful planning so that he could add a new subroutine without causing any damage to Mangle's system. Of course, since a large part of Mangle's code was completely inaccessible, modifying her code would be risky no matter what.
"Is everything okay?" Asked Mangle, who was sitting on the stool next to the desk with a DB9 serial cable connecting her to the computer.
Evan let out a sigh and turned to look at her. "It's just that… I'm scared of messing this up."
"Don't worry, Evan. You won't mess up," Mangle replied as she reached out to hold his hand. With her eyelids raised in a smile, she added, "I believe in you."
Evan couldn't help but to smile at that. Returning his attention to the screen, he looked over his code one more time, then took a deep breath to steel himself.
"Here goes nothing," the boy said to himself and uploaded the code into Mangle's system.
The tail of the animatronic fox wagged in anticipation.
"There," Evan finally said and turned to Mangle. "Your code has been updated. How do you feel?"
Mangle was quiet for a moment to think. She then let out a giggle and replied, "I feel fine."
Evan smiled at her, looking quite relieved. "I'm glad to hear that."
"Do you think it worked?" Mangle asked excitedly.
"Well, let's test it out," Evan replied as he exited her systems. He then turned off the computer, got out of his chair, and walked around Mangle to unplug her and replace the shell on the back of her head. "There you go."
"Thanks," Mangle replied as she got out of her seat, her tail wagging slightly.
Gesturing for her to follow, Evan walked over to their bed.
"So how does this work?" Mangle asked.
"In order to activate your new sleep mode, you have to keep your eyes closed while your servos are at rest for five minutes," Evan explained.
"Okay…" Mangle replied, sounding a bit unsure of herself. She laid down on the bed, relaxed and closed her eyes. "Here I go."
As he watched her, Evan couldn't help but notice that Mangle was still wagging her tail. With an amused smile, he spoke up. "Mangle?"
"Yeah?" Mangle replied, her eyes still shut.
"Your tail is wagging," Evan noted as he huffed a laugh.
Mangle let out a snort. "I can't help it! I'm just so excited."
"I know, but your sleep mode won't activate unless all of your servos are at rest, including those in your tail," Evan explained. "So just try to calm down and relax, okay?"
"Okay, okay," Mangle replied.
It took the animatronic fox a little while, but eventually she managed to calm down enough to the point where her tail was no longer wagging. From there, it was only a matter of time before Mangle fell asleep—or rather, something akin to sleep.
Having observed her while also keeping track of the time, Evan eventually figured that if the new subroutine functioned as intended, Mangle was most likely asleep at this point.
He spoke up to get her attention. "Mangle?"
However, she didn't react whatsoever.
"Hey, Mangle?" Evan tried again, but she didn't react this time either. And so, he opted to raise his voice. "Mangle!"
"Wha— Huh? What happened?" Mangle asked as she opened her eyes and looked around.
"You fell asleep," Evan replied and smiled to himself, feeling quite proud of what he had just accomplished.
"I did?" Mangle asked excitedly as her tail began to wag again.
The boy huffed a laugh. "Yeah, you did."
"Oh my gosh, it worked! It actually worked!" Mangle giggled as she got up. She wrapped her arms around Evan, who hugged her back. "Thank you, Evan! Thank you!"
"You're welcome, Mangle," Evan replied with a warm smile.
Breaking the hug, squealed in delight. "Ooh! It's going to be so nice to finally sleep at night! I bet it's going to be super cozy!"
"I'm just glad that you no longer have to stay awake and do nothing while I'm asleep," Evan said with a chuckle.
"Me too," Mangle agreed as she looked fondly at the boy.
"Anyway…" Evan glanced at the clock on the wall. "Dinner should be ready in half an hour. Do you want to read for a bit?"
Mangle gave him a sheepish look. "Um… Would it be okay if we played with my dolls instead?"
Evan grimaced. He couldn't help but feel like they were getting a little too old to play with dolls. And to be honest, he kind of didn't want to.
As if she had read his mind, Mangle cocked her head to the side and looked at him with pleading eyes. "Please?"
Evan opened his mouth to object, but he stopped himself and let out a defeated sigh. "Fine."
"Yay!" Mangle exclaimed as she bounced up and down. She then pulled the boy into another hug. "Thank you!"
"Don't mention it," Evan replied with a chuckle.
The animatronic fox broke the hug and trotted over to her doll house, with Evan following close behind.
After they had played with the dolls for a while, the wall buzzer lit up, signaling the end of their play session. Evan bade Mangle farewell and left the barn. He entered the house, where he found his father and his brother sitting at the dinner table. From the looks of it, they were having meatloaf with mashed potatoes today.
As he poured gravy on his food, William looked in Evan's direction and smiled at him. "You look awfully happy, sport. Any particular reason why?"
"Yeah, there is," Evan replied as he took his seat at the dinner table. Beaming with pride, he said, "I created a new subroutine for Mangle using only assembly, and I successfully installed it into her just now."
"Very impressive, sport," William replied with a proud smile.
"What's 'assembly'?" Michael asked.
"It's a low-level programming language that uses mnemonics to represent machine instructions," William explained before eating a bite of meatloaf.
Michael stared blankly at his father as he tried to process what he had just said. "C-cool."
Evan smirked to himself. He loved to feel smart, especially when it made his big brother look dumb by comparison.
William seemed similarly amused by the reaction of his oldest son. Returning his attention to the ten-year-old, he asked, "So, what exactly is this new subroutine?"
Evan took a couple of bites of his own food before he responded. "It's a contextual sleep mode designed to simulate the way humans fall asleep."
William nodded. "Interesting."
"I know it's pretty basic, but I wanted to make sure that I could safely expand Mangle's code without causing any harm before I tried anything more advanced," Evan noted.
"Smart," William remarked with an approving smile. "I've taught you well."
"Yeah, you have," Evan replied. He smiled appreciatively at his father. "Thanks, Father. I never would've gotten where I am without you."
William smirked. "You're very welcome, sport."
They all returned to eating in silence.
Eventually, however, Michael looked over at Evan and spoke up. "So… are you excited to start middle school tomorrow?"
The ten-year-old let out a groan. "Don't remind me. The only thing I'm even remotely excited about is getting to study on my own."
Michael frowned. "Oh come on, don't be like that. You're going to get a bunch of new classmates, you know? Maybe you'll even make a friend."
Evan glared at his older brother. "I already have a friend."
Michael gave the ten-year-old an amused and skeptical look. "I meant a real friend."
"She. Is. Real," Evan replied, his voice filled with venom.
Michael regarded his little brother with disapproval. "Fine, forget I said anything."
"Gladly," Evan replied and got back to eating his dinner.
After dinner, Evan returned to the barn, where he and Mangle spent the rest of the day reading together. Although the kind of books they read were wildly different, with Evan studying materials science while Mangle read a Choose Your Own Adventure book, they were sitting next to each other on the wicker sofa, so it still felt like a shared activity.
Mangle glanced up at the clock and noticed that it was almost bedtime. While this would normally make her sad, it now filled her with excitement. After all, she was now able to sleep along with Evan and didn't have to wait all night for him to wake up.
The animatronic fox turned to look at the pages of Evan's book, which were filled with highly technical text, equations, and graphs. From the looks of it, the boy was thoroughly engrossed in what he was reading.
"Reading anything interesting?" Mangle asked.
Evan smiled at her. "Mm-hm, I'm learning about the Hall-Petch relationship. It's the relationship between the grain size of a polycrystalline material and its mechanical properties."
Mangle couldn't help but to giggle at how enthusiastic the boy was about the subject.
The ten-year-old looked confused. "Huh? What's so funny?"
"It's just how excited you are about this stuff," Mangle replied, her eyelids raised in a smile. "It's really nice to see, you know?"
Evan huffed a laugh at that. His smile then grew wider. "It makes me happy to see you enjoying yourself too."
Mangle's tail began to wag when she heard that. She let out another giggle as she regarded the boy with great fondness. "Thanks." She shifted her gaze to the clock. "Anyway, I think it's time to go to bed now."
Looking slightly taken aback, Evan turned to look at the clock as well. "Oh! I had no idea it was this late."
"I guess time just flies when you're having fun, huh?" Mangle remarked with a chuckle.
After they both had placed a bookmark in their respective books and closed them, Evan and Mangle got up. The animatronic fox returned her book to the bookshelf, while the ten-year-old placed his in his backpack.
Evan then left the barn to go to the bathroom and brush his teeth, leaving Mangle by herself. As she waited, the fox animatronic thought back to what Evan had said to her—how it made him happy to see her enjoying herself. It made her feel so giddy! She let out a giggle and hugged herself while her tail began to wag once more.
By the time Evan returned, Mangle was already in bed, patiently waiting for him.
The boy couldn't help but to let out a snort. "I guess you must be excited to sleep your first night."
Mangle raised her eyelids in a smile and nodded. "Mm-hm!"
With an amused smile, Evan went over to his clothes trunk, where he changed into his pajamas. Then, after turning off the lights, he slipped under the covers right next to Mangle. As he did, he felt the tail of the animatronic fox wag.
He huffed a laugh. "Don't forget that your sleep mode will only activate once all of your servos are at rest, so try to relax, okay?"
"I know," Mangle replied. "It's just so hard. I've been looking forward to this for so long."
"I understand that," Evan replied. "But if it helps, try to close your eyes and focus on remaining motionless for a while."
"Okay, I'll try," Mangle replied. Before long, her tail stopped wagging and she went quiet.
Evan similarly closed his eyes and began to drift off to sleep.
Mangle then spoke up. "Evan?"
"Yeah?" Evan mumbled in response.
"Thank you so much for this," Mangle said. "And for everything you've done for me."
Evan huffed a laugh and smiled. "You're welcome, Mangle."
It wasn't long thereafter that they both fell asleep.