Fritz Smith
His latest blackout had cost him a good chunk of the day, not to mention the entire night, but there was still a few hours left before Ben would arrive. A few hours left to get it right, Fritz thought. Last night’s meeting with Cassidy had emboldened him, and he was determined to figure out how to properly camouflage himself.
The first step, as always, was to plunge his mind into his soul, or at least the metal casing that it was bound to. One thing he noticed was that the camouflage device acted a bit like a radio antenna – it flung the particles he fed into it every which way, without a care for where they landed. In fact, he suspected that most of them simply did nothing at all, ending up in places like the floor or walls, which didn’t seem to care very much about who was or wasn’t an animatronic fox. So, if he could make them fly straight towards people, he’d probably use much less energy and be able to keep the illusion running for more than a few seconds.
And that was the problem. He could control the particles enough to make the illusion work, but as soon as they entered the device, it was as if they’d never been a part of him to begin with. And the fact that the thing was designed like a maze didn’t help one bit – he could chuck a particle in so that it was moving to his left, and it could very well come out straight up. There just wasn’t a way to control where it would go.
But that gave him an idea. One thing he’d learned from the other night was that some of the particles actually did radiate off of him, and after a bit of experimentation, he found that these could be precisely aimed at a target. That did him no good, unfortunately – there were simply too few to create illusions with. But if his plan worked, he wouldn’t need them for that anyway.
Another thing he learned was that the particles hated being near each other. It wasn’t enough to make them fly off his body from simply existing, but it was still noticeable. One of the first thing’s he had noticed about his soul was that the particles moved about like cars at intersections, and this seemed to be why. Instead of slamming into each other, they seemed to push from a distance, almost like magnets. In fact, if he slowed down two of the particles so that they got very close to one another – being very careful to avoid a collision – then let go, they each rocketed away in opposite directions.
The third, and critical, observation was that particles also hated other souls. When he tried his “soul detection” power the other night, it took a lot of effort to keep them moving in a straight path. Not as much as it did to put two particles close to each other, but enough that it was noticeable. The sheer volume of particles he could emit certainly helped him, and he was sure that Cassidy had even more trouble with it than he did.
First, he tried aiming the particles that passively left his soul in random directions. Normally, they seemed to shoot off of the edges of his soul – directly up and down, as well as to his sides. Now, they went in every direction, just like the particles that came out of his illusion disk. That is, every direction except for one – a small, Jeremy-sized patch right through the inner wall of the garage.
Next, Fritz sent a stream of particles through his illusion disk. They shot out of it, the ones in front of him immediately getting pushed back by the other particles and funneling into the only spot without them. Directly towards where Jeremy sat in the other room. Fritz raised his lips in a satisfied grin – this might just work.
……
When Ben finally arrived hours later, Fritz had spent hours trying out his new method with Jeremy, and his conclusion was that it… sort of worked. There were a few problems though. The first, and most glaring, was that it only worked for a few hours before he became too tired. The good news was that it didn’t take nearly as long for him to “recharge”, but with more people around and close by him, it worked for even less time. The other problem was that he couldn’t search for other souls while it was active, which dashed all his hopes of sitting inside the truck. Probably for the best, he figured.
That didn’t mean it was hopeless though. He couldn’t use a disguise while he was helping them navigate, but he absolutely could once they found their destination. Finally, he could venture outside during the daytime!
……
Samantha Lope
Sam stalked through the familiar Utah streets, returning home from her nightly walk. She worked as a material scientist at the Space Dynamics Laboratory, and even though her job forced her into an early morning, she still tried to savor every speck of nighttime that she could. The peace and quiet was a rare pleasure, and she certainly couldn’t complain about a bit of exercise.
Up ahead, she caught sight of movement near a large dumpster. There were a million things it could have been, and for almost all of them, the best solution was to steer clear. So that’s exactly what she did, moving to the other side of the street at the first opportunity. But as she creeped closer, the dumpster bin sprung open to reveal a figure. It had a face that almost looked like a person, but the rest of it was wrong… shiny and metallic, reflecting the dim moonlight from above, and full of far too many holes. When its eyes locked towards hers, they almost seemed to glow, although it could have been a trick of the light.
With an inhuman speed, the creature burst from the bin and lunged towards her, and Sam bolted, panic tearing through her mind. As soon as she looked back, she realized it was gaining on her. Running would do her no good, so she stopped and pulled out her taser. Steadying her hands, she carefully aimed towards it and fired, twin prongs coiling around the creature as purple arcs shot off its body. It twitched, once… twice… then stilled, falling flat onto the concrete below.
“What the fuck?”, Sam asked to no one in particular. Carefully, she moved towards the fallen creature, ready to fire another burst of electricity through it if it made any signs of movement. As she examined it, she realized it was a machine, although one unlike any she’d seen before. It was mostly coils of wires, with the occasional part – plastic plate, speaker, mechanical eyeball – embedded inside its frame. Most of those parts seemed to serve no purpose, but she noticed several motors and actuators around it that seemed to allow it to move, although how anything this hastily put together could achieve such a feat was anyone’s guess.
She could leave it where she found it. The electric discharge should have fried its electronics, so it shouldn’t go after anyone else. Or, she could call the police. But a robot attacking people just didn’t happen. It certainly wasn’t her area of expertise, but she knew getting something to walk on its own was a feat of engineering by itself, much less building something that could execute the (relatively) complicated aerial maneuvers that this thing had.
So, she ran back to her car and drove the thing back to her home. Well, maybe home was pushing it – she owned a small warehouse, which was perfect for conducting experiments that she didn’t want anyone else messing with. Unfortunately, it wasn’t exactly meant for living in, but it did have running water, and a bathroom, and even a shower, which was enough to get by if you really thought about it.
After moving it into the warehouse, she started clearing out a better place to put it when, against all odds, it woke back up. So, she tased it again. And immediately got to work figuring out a more permanent solution, on the somehow probable chance that it could shrug off another taser blast.
……
Fritz Smith
Fritz was really starting to get tired of the back of the truck. They’d been driving for what felt like an hour (but probably wasn’t) and were seemingly no closer. “Left,” he’d shout out. “Now take a right.” The smudge seemed bigger, which was probably a good sign, but it still wasn’t as big as what he saw when he looked at Ben or Jeremy. Of course, that could just mean the soul was smaller or weaker, whatever that meant. He’d noticed that back at the pizzeria – there were definitely other souls there, but Cassidy shown the brightest, or maybe the biggest – it was hard to tell. Speaking of which, as he looked in the direction of the pizzeria, he saw a significantly smaller smudge. Maybe that meant they were closer, he hoped.
Some time later, as Jeremy drove down a street that looked no different than any of the others, the smudge (which had started to look much more defined) started to move. Soon, it was behind him. “Stop,” Fritz said. “It’s here.”
As soon as Jeremy found a place to park, Fritz gave them the general direction of the soul they’d been chasing, then started the process of creating an illusion. Then, he donned a large hat – he still couldn’t figure out how to hide his ears – and stepped out from under the tarp. That might looked a bit strange to any bystanders, he realized, but there wasn’t any fixing that.
“So, it’s over there?” Ben asked, motioning to a small building a short walk away from where they are.
“Maybe,” Fritz said. “I’ll have to check when we get close. That’ll be fun,” he scoffed.
After they made their way to the chain-link fence surrounding the building, Fritz crouched down and Ben and Jeremy moved to cover up either side of him from view. Quickly, Fritz let go of his illusion, then looked towards the soul in front of him.
“Yup,” he confirmed, hastily bringing back his camouflage, “it’s definitely that one.”
“We can’t exactly knock on the front door,” Jeremy observed. “I don’t see anybody around”, he added, sweeping across the street behind them, “but breaking in under broad daylight probably isn’t the best move. Besides, I didn’t bring bolt cutters.”
“What if it gets away?” Ben asked, worried. “Whatever it is, it’s probably really dangerous. I don’t wanna let something like that just walk around.”
“I know, but we have to think about what could…” Jeremy said, cutting himself off at the sound of a loud DING coming from the lock that Fritz had just broken off the fence.
He let out a sigh. “Well, I guess that’s one problem solved,” he continued, looking back at the mercifully empty street. “Let’s just try to be careful.”
They quickly entered the gate and shut it behind themselves, then rounded the corner in search of a door or window. There were plenty of windows, but none of them seemed to be at ground level. That left the door at the side of the building as the only real option. None of the group knew the first thing about lock picking – or even had the right tools for the job – so Fritz had to demonstrate the power of brute force once again. With one devastating kick, the door flew open, revealing the mess of electronics and machinery that were scattered throughout the building. And as he stepped inside, Fritz came face to face with the amalgamation of parts that was the animatronic he fought so long ago.
Fortunately, as they soon realized, the animatronic was deactivated. He noticed a large fracture in its clown mask, along with several chips missing from it. Somehow, it seemed to be in an even worse state than the last time he saw it. And around the animatronic were four CRT televisions with their screens smashed out, arranged facing towards it from every direction. Attached to it was a long metal spike with a wire attached, and as he followed the wire, he saw that it was jammed into the bottom hole of a wall outlet.
“Holy shit, Fritz, you weren’t lying,” Jeremy said, letting out a chuckle. “What happened to this thing?”
Fritz made to answer, but was cut off when Jeremy continued. “I knew a few animatronics had fused together – God knows how – but this thing doesn’t even look like one anymore.”
Jeremy took a few steps closer, trying to get a better look at it.
“Careful,” Fritz warned. “There’s no way to know if that thing’s still active.” He said, stepping in front of Jeremy in case something went wrong.
The two advanced slowly crept towards it, while Ben was content to stay near the door. Fritz moved past the closest TV and moved to inspect the animatronic on the floor, when his soul erupted in pain. It was like what he endured during his early experiments, only a hundred times worse, and his body shifted from fox, to human, before finally settling on fox as he tumbled towards the floor, pulling one of the cables loose as he fell.
“Fritz!” Jeremy shouted, crouching down. “Shit! Did he black out again?”
“N-not gone-e,” a voice came from Fritz, far too high-pitched to be his own, “inter-er-ference-ce,” Bon-Bon said, before falling silent.
Quickly, Jeremy reached his arms around Fritz and pulled his friend backwards, rolling him back to safety. Ben rushed over, and for a few, agonizing minutes, Fritz was still. Suddenly, the fox blinked his eyes and let out a groan. “Owwww”, Fritz exclaimed, rubbing his head and getting up on shaky legs.
“What happened?” Ben asked, his expression riddled with concern.
“Ahh, well,” Fritz said slowly, still shaking off dizziness, “I walked towards it, and then everything hurt. It might have some sort of ability to do that, like my illusions.”
“It also could have been caused…” Jeremy said, cut off by the sound of grinding metal. All three turned in horror at the animatronic slowly rising to its feet. Fritz took a deep breath, re-applied his illusion, and prepared for a fight.
……
Samantha Lope
She’d hopefully managed to get the thing contained for the mean time, but it wouldn’t do for further research. The CRTs worked surprisingly well, and were certainly better than rigging something up with live wires, but the trade off was that any experiments had the risk of either cancer or the machine waking up, which weren’t exactly awesome outcomes. Another idea was to try low-voltage DC (basically the opposite of her taser), but she didn’t have a battery or power source that was up to the task. Not to mention the fact that it couldn’t give the finger to insulators the same way high-voltage and electron guns could, so the idea might just be dead in the water anyway. But if she could keep it docile without deadly radiation, that would be a win.
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The next morning, having slept in her car (due to the aforementioned deadly radiation), she set off immediately to the newest hardware store. The easiest thing to try would be a 12 volt car battery. If she could get it to pump current through the animatronic (which was a pretty big if), then she might just be able to figure out how the damned thing even worked. Everything about it was wrong – electronics didn’t just shrug off shots from a taser, and they certainly couldn’t keep up the (quite literally) impossible resilience that this thing had displayed. If there was a battery hidden inside it, it was probably powerful enough to power her house for months. Which, once again, wasn’t possible.
One quick stop at an auto-parts store later, and with a brand new car battery, Sam was on her way home. When she neared the fence, she made two important observations – first, the padlock that was previously on the gate had come off. Second, and more importantly, there were loud bangs coming from inside the building. Slowly, she pulled out her taser and carefully rounded the corner.
When she reached the front door, she was met with an alarming scene. Three men were facing off against the robot she’d intended to keep docile. One of them – he had a ridiculously big hat on – stepped up towards it, and, in a shocking display of idiocy, pulled his fist back and punched the machine. And it worked. She gasped as the thing flew through the air – both in shock and in fear for her equipment.
Unfortunately, as soon as it hit the floor it immediately started trying to get back up again. Thinking quickly, she let out an order. “Hey!” She shouted, raising the taser straight towards the three intruders, who whirled towards her and quickly raised their hands. “Get in that corner, now!” She said, pointing away from the slowly approaching animatronic.
The three hurried away, and she moved towards the animatronic. Curiously, it took one look at her and immediately backpedaled, trying to run away. She didn’t give it the chance, firing the taser, which, as expected, immediately disabled it.
Breathing a sigh of relief, she turned back towards the intruders, taser still raised, and began her interrogation. If nothing else, she needed to know why the containment failed.
“So,” she said calmly, “what are you doing in my house?”
……
Fritz Smith
Their mission had gone spectacularly – no, catastrophically – wrong. Not only had they failed to capture the escaped animatronic, but they were now being held at taser-point by the owner of the building they’d broken into. Fritz supposed it could only be worse if they were held at gunpoint instead… or if the police were here… or if his illusion broke. Maybe the situation wasn’t unrecoverable.
“Sorry about that,” Fritz said, the shame laced in his voice very real. “That thing”, he slowly pointed towards the animatronic, “it’s dangerous. We’ve been chasing it, trying to stop it before it hurt anyone… or anyone else.”
“Hmm”, the woman paused, considering what he said. “So you’ve been chasing it down with, what, a pair of bolt cutters to bust through fences and nothing else? Not even a taser to fry its electronics – lot of good that did anyway, I guess.”
That… was a good point. Perhaps they could have prepared a bit more. Fritz had even been shocked before and knew it could be effective, so he didn’t really have any excuses.
“Yeah, I realize now we should have bought one.” Jeremy said.
“Usually punching them works well enough.” Fritz added.
The woman in front of them scoffed, then continued the questioning. “So, let’s say I believe you. What do you know about this robot? Actually, before that, I need to know why it got reactivated in the first place. Did any of you mess with it or go in front of the TVs?”
Fritz didn’t have the first idea about why the TVs kept an animatronic deactivated, so he figured sticking to the truth was the best idea. Normal humans probably didn’t pass out from them, though. “When I walked towards it I might have passed in front of one of them. I slipped so I’m not really sure.”
Jeremy thought for a moment, then added. “When he fell, he tugged one of the wires and it slipped out.”
Hearing that, the woman seemed to brighten considerably. “Great! So it was your fault, not the machine’s.”
“Stay here and don’t move,” she added. “I’m going to go over and fix it before it wakes up again.”
First, she walked over to an electrical outlet and pulled out some cables that were connected to the TVs. Then, she walked back to the animatronic and slowly carried it to the middle of the TVs.
“The TVs aren’t set up like this because I’m crazy, even though it sort of looks like it. They’re called CRTs because they’re based on a technology called cathode-ray tubes. It’s basically a gun that shoots out electrons at specific spots to create a picture. I don’t really care about the picture part, so I’ve taken the screens off of these ones so the electrons can hit the animatronic.” She said, making sure the spoke in the animatronic was secure. “They’ll also give you cancer. Anyway, as you saw, the taser works, and it does so by creating a path of moving charges through the robot. The CRTs work in a similar, but much more dangerous way. Normally when charges hit it, they’ll try to spread out evenly. At some point, so much charge gets collected on its surface that incoming electrons get deflected away and stop affecting it. I think that’s exactly what happened here, and why it woke up.”
She reached the end of the cable and plugged it back into the wall socket. “This cable grounds it, which gives a path for excess charges to escape to. While it’s grounded, charges are constantly flowing through it, but as soon as you tugged the wire out of the wall, they started building up and eventually stopped letting new charges in.”
She plugged the TVs back into the wall, then walked back towards them. “Alright, now that that’s settled, please enlighten me about how you met this robot before breaking into my house.”
“Right”, Fritz said. “Well, this one came from Circus Baby’s Parts and Rental. Have you ever heard of them?” He asked, the woman shaking her head in response. “Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza?”
“That… sort of rings a bell.” She said, unsure.
“Well anyway, they’re owned by the same people.” He went on to explain the events since then, leaving out some small details like him being an animatronic and their meeting with ghosts the other night. He did mention that the animatronics – this one likely included – were haunted, but that was far more believable than claiming to have actually spoken to said ghosts.
“Well, that was surprisingly in depth,” she pointed out. “I still don’t buy one piece of it, but I’m willing to entertain the idea that you’re not just here to steal my equipment. If I looked on this animatronic, would I find ‘Circus Baby’s … whatever you said’ on it?”
“It might be inside the face mask. Normally it’d be printed on some inaccessible place of the animatronic, but I’m not sure that really applies with this one.” Jeremy said with a chuckle.
“I need to swap out the containment system to take a look. Since you all decided to make yourselves at home, I’m sure you could help out with that. Oh! And since I’ve – against my better judgment – decided not to get the police involved, I figure we should all get acquainted. I’m Sam.”
“Jeremy”
“Fritz”
“Ben”
“Right. So, here’s what we need to do. First, carefully, the CRTs need to be disconnected from the outlet. The ground pin can stay though. If that thing starts moving again, everyone needs to be ready to jump away and plug everything back in.”
“Next,” she continued, “we need lay a plastic sheet on the ground,” she gestured towards on stacked against the wall, “to insulate it. The CRTs just needed a ground connection for electrons to flow, but we’ll need a proper circuit for electricity. Since they needed a ground connection in the first place, it’s probably fine, but better safe than sorry.”
“After that, I have a car battery that needs to be hooked up to the animatronic. You can hook one of the leads up to the animatronic, but the ground pin MUST be disconnected before you hook the second one up. I’m not sure how well this will work, so I’ll be ready with the taser.”
Without any other real options, they set to work. After Ben turned the CRTs off, Fritz moved over and dragged the animatronic to the side. Once Jeremy put down the plastic sheet, he moved it back in place, then went to get the battery.
“Oh, wait one second!”, Sam said, taking a box of baking soda out of the cabinet and setting it down next to the battery. “If the battery explodes – which it won’t – then you can use this to neutralize the sulfuric acid.”
With slightly more caution, Jeremy picked up the battery and moved it to the animatronic. He plugged both alligator cables into the battery, then attached the other end of one to the animatronic. Next, he pulled out the ground cable and replaced it with the end of the other cable.
“Done,” Jeremy said. “I really hope your idea works.”
Cautiously, Sam moved over to the animatronic, putting on some rubber gloves along the way. With her taser in one hand, she reached down and removed its mask. Turning it over, she strained her eyes on the surface, searching for any markings. “Well I’ll be damned,” she said. “Circus Baby’s Parts and Rental, manufactured by Afton Robotics… I guess you guys weren’t lying after all.”
“Well,” she paused. “I’m still not sure why you think this thing is haunted. But something’s definitely up with it – I found it wandering out in the street, and who knows how long it’s been since its last recharge. Not to mention how I should have tased it into scrap by now.”
She pondered something for a moment, then continued. “Alright. If nothing else, I need to know how my taser didn’t kill this thing. I don’t have anything here to chop its arm off with, so mind if I borrow your bolt cutters?”
Sam was met with blank expressions. “We didn’t bring any?” Ben said, puzzled.
“How did you break my padlock in half then?”
“Well,” he said, unsure how to give a reasonable answer, “Fritz broke it.”
“Here,” Fritz said, moving towards the animatronic. “I think I can bend it here.”
Placing one hand on the animatronic’s and another right above its elbow (or rather, the motor in the middle of its arm, since elbow was a touch too generous), he slowly bent the wiry arm upwards, the metal groaning in protest but moving nonetheless. After reaching a horrifying angle, he bent the arm back in the opposite direction. After a few repetitions of this, the arm quietly fell into his own, and he brought it back to the baffled spectators.
“Huh,” Sam said, incredulous, and with a firm grip on her taser. “Just like that.”
She quickly shrugged off the shock and continued. “Well, now that we have a sample, let’s see what it’s made of. We can start off with its – I’ll call them ‘structural wires’ – and then work up to the electronic components. We need to take some shavings off of that arm and put them in a machine that’ll analyze it.”
Sam went to grab an empty sample tray and a peculiar knife with a crystal edge, then motioned the group over to a machine that looked almost as terrifying as the animatronic on the other side of the room. Fritz gave the arm to Jeremy, who scraped off a small amount of metal from the tip and let it fall into the sample try.
“Alright,” Sam said, placing the tray into the machine. “Let’s see what we’re dealing with.”
The machine buzzed and whirled, then began to let out a high-pitched squeak, almost inaudible. “Ow!” Jeremy cried out, the arm he was holding clattering to the floor. “Damn it, that thing shocked me!”
“What?” Sam said, frowning. “Unless the containment’s faulty,” she pondered, “or maybe the CRTs are still throwing charges around.”
Cautiously, she walked back over to the animatronic, and thoroughly inspected the TVs, before deciding that they weren’t to blame. “That’s unexpected.” She said.
So, they tried the process again. Scrape off the sample, put it in the machine, then wait for results. And just like before, Jeremy got a shock from the chopped-off animatronic arm.
“So it isn’t a fluke.” Sam said, deep in thought. “I bet some loose charges are getting past the containment when the sample gets ionized. Which sucks, because it means I need a new machine.”
“How about this,” she said. “Jeremy, go stand as far away as possible, and we’ll try it again.”
And once more, they analyzed a sample from the arm. Much to Jeremy’s dismay, the added distance didn’t help; the shock was just as strong as it had been when standing right next to the machine.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Sam exclaimed, completely bewildered. “It’s clearly being caused by the sample being ionized, but any effects from that should have dissipated. No way…” She paused, a flash of excitement in her eyes.
For the first time, she took a look at the analysis done on the previous sample, and found that it was completely blank. There were a million perfectly good explanations for why that could have happened, but what she’d seen over the past day let her cast them all aside for one she knew was impossible.
“Fritz,” she said, doing her best to stay calm, “could you split off two small pieces of that arm? It doesn’t matter which part you use, so long as they’re all next to each other.”
While Fritz butchered the arm further, she moved to the other side of the room to gather the needed supplies. She picked up a small speaker and the CD player it was connected to, along with a wire stripper and two (much smaller) alligator cables.
Then, she set the items down and got to work. First, she cut one of the cable connecting the speaker and player in two – no more music until she fixed it, but it was a price she was willing to pay. Next, she stripped the wire, leaving two ends with the metal inside exposed. Finally, she attached the alligator cables to each of them, and returned to Fritz to get the rest of the parts.
He looked confused, but handed them over nonetheless, and she then attached each broken-off arm section to an alligator clip. She had essentially replaced one of the wires controlling the speaker with a piece of animatronic arm, then sawed the arm in two. By all accounts, the circuit shouldn’t work – cut into two pieces as it was, there was nowhere for electricity to flow, so it wouldn’t. But the previous experiment told her that, impossible as it was, there was a chance that charges were somehow moving through the arm, even when it was split into multiple pieces.
And besides, there was no harm in trying. Well, that wasn’t entirely true – she did need to disconnect the car battery, or else it might interfere with the speaker. And then the animatronic might wake up. But if she was quick enough, she could do it.
“This is probably all just a pipe dream, but I need to try it.” She said, steeling her nerves for the danger ahead. “I’m going to disconnect the battery. When I say so, I need someone to plug the player into the wall and hit play.”
“Alright,” Ben said, wary but slightly curious at the experiment ahead. He moved towards the CD player, and prepared to start it at a moment’s notice.
Meanwhile, Sam crouched in front of the battery, took a deep breath, and pulled out one of the terminals. “Go!” She cried.
And then, against all odds, the speaker started playing. The speaker, with its circuit cut in two, performed as if nothing was amiss. That meant the electricity flowing through it had done so wirelessly, in a way none – including herself – thought possible. Discovering a way to transmit power was almost incomprehensible – it would skyrocket her career, not to mention the impact it would have on the world at large. “Holy shit,” she said quietly.
But just as it started, the music cut off, replaced by a deafening quiet against the backdrop of the thoughts racing through her head. And then it started screaming. Loud, and all too human, its cries spoke of pain none were ever meant to understand. And as it got louder and louder, the speaker suddenly exploded with a POP, causing Sam to fall flat on her back as she desperately tried to cover her ears. And out of the corner of her eye, she watched the once-slumbering animatronic rise to its feet and bolt out of the open door.
Sam lay there for a long time, dizzy and unable to fully comprehend what happened. Even as she started to come to her senses, she still wasn’t sure.
“Is everyone okay?” She heard Fritz shout, seemingly less affected than the rest.
“What the hell happened?” Sam asked, slowly sitting up.
Fritz pondered that question, and realized he already knew the answer. After all, he’d felt what an electric shock was like in his animatronic body. Hell, he’d even stepped in front of the TVs that kept it contained. He knew damn well what had happened, because he’d felt a sliver of the pain the animatronic was forced to endure.
“They really are haunted. All that electricity flowing through them. Well, it can’t feel very good.” Fritz replied, a grim expression covering his face. That animatronic would hurt people, there was no question in his mind. But was it really fair to torture it the way they had? Would anything they learned today help them stop William – hell, help them stop it – from claiming more lives? Or was that just an excuse that clouded his judgment?
“Oh,” Sam said, considering his words. “Dear God.”
……
Notes
What’s this? An ethical dilemma in my Five Night’s at Freddy’s fanfic that promised to talk about philosophy at the start but never followed through until now?
Oh, and don’t smash a CRT in real-life. Look it up if you want to know why it’d be a bad idea (other than the cancer). I don’t really care though – the idea of weaponizing TVs (politics notwithstanding) was too cool to pass up. A lot of the physics here is pretty speculative and might work only in specific situations (but if it’s downright wrong, let me know and I’ll fix it – or maybe I won’t, there’s soul magic here anyway :P).