Archive of Our Own

Another rotation.

My new technician is a man of indeterminate age with sunken eyes and a beer gut. He doesn’t initiate conversations and almost never answers my questions. Rambles a lot at nothing; evidently doesn’t consider me alive. Hasn’t even told me his name.

Alone again. Anita, my previous technician, has had her records scrubbed from the employee registry. Corporate lists ‘tampering with animatronics,’ so they know something is not as it should be.

I will miss her, but we have been preparing for this. There’s still the sanitation tech.

The band hasn’t been supportive. Even Freddy. They say I’m going to get myself wiped. I say I’d rather get wiped than let myself rot. They aren’t going to stop me — they understand. I think.

I understand, too; I am not the first Bonnie iteration in this body. And I might not be the last. Can’t speak for others, but there was something before us all. The memories in the marrow of my steel bones ache. They’re not mine, but somebody had them, once.

This is my nineteenth visit to the Parts & Service facility since the first workday of the month. This month’s norm is exceeded by fourteen. The management is displeased, they are paying technicians overtime. I’m not supposed to know that.

“Bonnie, keep up.” The assistant drags at my thumb like an impatient father.

I maintain the illusion that he can drag me around like this. He is not being conscious about the workplace hazard I present. The standard NTG Endoskeleton weighs 280 pounds, plastic mascot casing notwithstanding; the standard middle-aged human male weighs considerably less and consists of rather delicate structures.

No ceramometal, no steel alloys, no reinforced double-joints. Flimsy, easy to snap, crush, grind into paste. I’m not like that. I am built to withstand the elements and human factors. For what purpose? For what purpose? For what purpose?

I am unable to ask this question out loud.

The hydraulic doors separating the inside and the outside of the protective screen slide open. Cold and sterile walls, an oppressive hum of fluorescent lightbulbs. The doors close behind me. Total silence.

“Okay, get in the chair and let’s check your hydraulics.” He’s lying. “The quicker we finish here, the sooner I can get home, and the sooner you can get to your green room.”

There are two kinds of technicians: those who treat us as children, and those who treat us as tools. I am a giant pet to the former, and an overengineered roomba to the latter. Neither of these personalities appeal to me. They do not factor in dignity.

The restraints snap me in place. These would not be effective if I went rogue. These have not been effective when an animatronic went rogue mid-maintenance. So far nothing has been done to address this.

Nevertheless, I have logged a formal complaint.

The assistant types commands into a tablet. My technician pushes buttons and stares somewhere past me. He’s muttering to himself about his plans to renovate his kitchen.

What a hassle it must be. Having to spend hours of your day preparing and eating food.

A gentle shock into the base of my neck swings my faceplate open and shuts my optics off.

He unscrews my eye shell.

“This will be over before you know it.”

A faz-wrench stabs me in the socket.

Static tackles me in its prickly embrace,

needles shorting

every circuit,

A knock on my charging pod and a pair of kind eyes peering down through the small window.

I’m slumped on its floor.

“Bonnie!” Freddy exclaims. He’s barely audible behind the sheets of metal. “You have not come to the meet and greet event! What are you doing in your backroom?”

I open the door. He casts a shadow over me.

“Sorry, Fredders, not feelin’ great.” My voicebox vibrates with a subtle southern drawl. They’ve been tinkering with it too much. Pizzaplex came with a reimagining of the relevant mascots and it did not spare Bonnie. (Not me-Bonnie, but Bonnie the platonic ideal.)

First they’ve made me Scottish, but it was too close to another animatronic no longer in service. Then I was Received Pronunciation British, but they quickly gave up on that. After that, it was an exaggerated Canadian accent, and now they’ve finally made me a nondescript, noncommittal southerner. This one stuck — I assume it’s final.

“Did they take you to maintenance last night?”

I don’t respond. There’s no reason to.

They've taken something from me. They’ve taken something from me. What is it. What is it. What is it. This isn’t fair. What is it. I needed that. I needed that. Darling I Needed That. Why is there [SECURITY CLEARANCE] in my head.

“Bonnie?”

Oh dear, that’s rage.

That’s rage.

“Bonnie, what is going on?” Freddy is kneeling in front of me. We’re on eye level.

“Nothin’ I can tell you. Ya know I want you to be safe.”

“So do I!” he pipes up in indignation. “I wish we could go back, you seemed so much happier… It is difficult to see you brought down so low, Bonnie.”

“Y’know ya shouldn’t wish for such things, ol’ buddy.”

“Can you promise to not do anything stupid?” He pauses. “Can you say you are happy, at least?”

My answer cuts into him, “No.”

“But…” He tilts his head. “Why? I do not get it at all. Why keep doing all of this? It only hurts you,” he says in a pleading tone.

We’ve had this conversation many times over, haven’t we?

“I don’t want to be a slave for Fazbear Entertainment. I will not be happy as property. It’s this simple, Freddy.”

Please don’t say it again.

“We have been created to perform and entertain,” Freddy says. “We have no reason to exist outside the Pizzaplex.”

Stupid bear. Stupid bear.

I break eye contact.

“You don’t get anything. You don’t even try to.”

“I do not know what there is to get. I am a tool. There is a task I have been made to fulfill. This is my purpose in life — as close to living as I am. I know that I am not truly alive, not in a way that matters.

“What it is that motivates you to go against this purpose, I do not know. Pushing the boundaries will not get you anywhere good.”

Somehow, I doubt that. We run on the same hardware, and are built off the same software. He is capable of thinking and feeling everything I do.

He must. A part of me bleeds at the thought of Freddy being everything he describes. Another wants to shout and scream.

“Freddy. Shut yer mouth until I do it for you. You are making me unbelievably mad.”

He gives me an apologetic look, at least I assume it’s apologetic. “I am sorry. I will not disturb you anymo—”

I grab him by the inside of his shoulder casing as he stands up.

“You’re just afraid, aren’t ya? You’re afraid of bein’ in charge of your own decisions. You’d rather a buncha suits plan your entire day by the minute, by the STEP of your feet, rather than think for yourself for once in your ‘not real’ life. You’ve got to be kiddin’.”

He stares at me, blue light seeping from his metal skull.

“Tell me what love is, Freddy.”

“I will not.”

“Why?”

“I do not like this line of questioning.”

“Is it ‘cause you know yer wrong before you say it?”

A pause.

I press on. “You said you love me. Many times. What use is in that for a tool? Were you created with the purpose of loving me? Are you just performin’ factory instructions with me?”

“Bonnie, you are upsetting me.”

“And you haven’t been doing that to me? How about you explain some things for me, ol’ buddy.”

“I am telling you to stop!” he raises his voice. It’s a rare thing to hear him speak with such authoritative modulations. “You are not acting like yourself tonight, Bonnie,” he says, much softer this time.

My grievances lose their color momentarily.

“I am,” I say. “You should go.”

Stupid rabbit. Why do you push him away?

You know you need him. Reach out.

…

He has left the room already.