*Fritz approaches the mic from a distance, giving a sigh of relief.*
-Phew- Right, that should do it.
*Clears Throat* Hey, glad to see you’re working there. The name’s Fritz, and welcome to “The Popgoes Pizzeria”, the next generation of kids entertainment!… *Slight chuckle*
As you already know, you’ll be guarding this place until 6 in the morning, and as your boss I am obligation to help you understand your job and the tools you’ll be allowed to use during the shift.
So first things first. I got to be honest, your current setup might not be very… optimal, so to say. I didn’t have time to prepare a designated room for you in the location, so you’ll just have to manage with using one of the internet café monitors near the stage, next to the gang. Don’t start complaining just yet, I set a nice spot near the window for you. Even brought a fan.
Anyway. The phone you have on your hand. It’s usually used by kids during the day for games and whatnot, but I’ve sorted out a security application that only activates during the night. Which is when you’re here obviously. Everything you’ll ever need for your job is ready to use. Go on, press some buttons. You can check all the rooms with set cameras that are connected online, and the ventilation system too.
*Long sigh*
Alright, I know what you’re thinking. First night on the job, I’m rambling a bit, it’s a lot to take in. And, yes, I know there are a bunch of anthropomorphic plastic animals around you watching you work. Trust me when I say I know how that feels. Your imagination might get a tad bit out of control, stress does that to you.
But don’t worry, you are completely safe here. I’ve built this place from the ground up to be one of the most transparent, honest, and safest places on earth. Unlike… some other businesses. If you ever start feeling anxious, looking out the window or, just, you know, taking a look outside should calm you. That tends to work for me at least.
Right, back to the anthropomorphic animals. I’m sure you’ve already guessed by now that these are our animatronic characters. Top of the line technology. Honestly, the name “animatronic” doesn’t do them justice; they’re more like multi-purpose robots. They can be programmed to do anything I can think of. They pretty much run this place now! Of course, again, they are completely harmless, they aren’t physically capable of hurting anybody, made sure of that myself.
*Stops to see time* Hm, I think I might be going on for too long. Last thing on the list: You may have noticed that this is a pre-recorded message, which means if you want to ask a question, you won’t get an answer. But hey, to fix that, I’ve given you some options. I stayed up all night to set up a simple Q&A system to go with your app. When this call ends, you will get three topics to choose from, and when you select one of them, another audio message of mine will play to help explain whatever you want to know more about! Quite nifty, right? Obviously not quite as much freedom as a normal phone call, but it’ll have to do for now.
Well, that’s it for your first night. Check those cameras and don’t forget to take a breather once in awhile, alright? Your three options should appear… now.
Oh, and don’t worry about breaking any machinery or something, they will just go back to do their normal activities once the shutting down procedure is complete, which is about 5 to 10 seconds long.
Alright, well, that’s your first night. I’ll do the same thing for you tomorrow. You know what to do. Goodnight kid.
Did I tell you that I built the characters too? That’s what the 3D printers were originally for, before they were repurposed to do the same thing, but… a lot smaller. Haha! Didn’t need anyone for that either. Designed, printed, put together, all by yours truly. Relying on other people is nonsense, I tell you.
Uh… Oh, of course, don’t let that discourage you from doing your job. There are always exceptions. Right. Uh… That’ll be it for the first night. I’ll do the same thing for you tomorrow. Seeya kid.
Of course that’s not everything, but these options are meant to be short, so I’ll try to be more specific with the other set of questions. That’s it for the first night. Seeya tomorrow.
Oh, and I’ll let you know now, don’t start slacking off, I’m paying attention. After your first week is done, I’ll be doing a review of your progress to see if you are fit to continue or not. If you do your job especially well, I might even give you a bonus!
Ah, but I guess there isn’t even that much for you to do. I know I haven’t given you much to work with just yet, as this is just the test run… Hmm… but there is something for you to do in case you get bored, I suppose. Since, well, I’m not going to treat you like those robots behind you.
So, we’re entering the winter time. I imagine you’ll be working just next week, so it’s going to get pretty darn cold for you. But – and I’m sure you’ve already noticed this from yesterday, I don’t know – I have given you access to the ventilation system, which means you should be able to turn on the heating grids once in awhile to warm up the place. They’ll stay on for about a minute probably, that’s long enough right? Bear in mind, the vents go around the perimeter of the building, so… oh, I’m sure you’ll figure it out.
Well, that should keep you entertained. God, I hope you’re as easily pleased as I am. That’s all for tonight. Oh wait, now it’s your turn to talk. Here ya go.
*Tries to mention his time working at FFP, he starts to get a bit nervous*
Uh… I remember I worked with a similar problem. You know, being under constraints like that. But, I don’t know… It was fine. I was fine. I’m sure you will be, too. Nothing dangerous about vents.
*Sighs, repositions himself in chair*
Ah, what am I saying. Just check on the heat sometimes and yes, you’ll have limited use over it. And I’m sorry about that. Right. See you tomorrow.
During the night, Popgoes and the others are supposed to be, you know, resting. Oh and Stone, the crow in the car park, he can’t physically move out of his birdcage. So he’s pretty much resting all the darn time, haha. Anyway, the vents are only for air to travel around the building. It could be dangerous if someone, especially plastic-covered robot, were to get stuck in there or if they touched one of the heating lasers.
It’s pretty easy. I thought you’d have fun with it anyway. Just get that done, and you should be alright. Alright? Excellent. See you tomorrow kid.
If you think it’s in one of those cameras, well, you’re wrong! I’d hate being recorded all day. You can guess how much work I do in here, and being on camera would only interrupt that. I think it’s the only room that isn’t surveilled. Hm… Oh, the bathrooms aren’t either, of course. If you still can’t see my office, and you REALLY want to know where it is, just look to your left, the door’s right there next to Popgoes’ stage.
That’s about it, try out the heating and I’ll see you tomorrow.
I’m kind of tired right now. I’ve been doing all of these calls in one take, so I just noticed it. Such a huge difference too. One minute, should be ten seconds. Jeez. I’m an idiot sometimes. *Sighs heavily and begins to relax*
Hey… Now that you’ve been here for… two nights, correct? Beginning your third one now, yes? Tell me. What do you think about the place? The pizzeria, I mean. *sigh* It’s real special. Let me tell you, during the day, you can really feel it. The… fantasy. The fun.. uh… and the safety, you know? Kids can run down the halls and be greeted by the characters. They gather around and sing with them on the stage, they… Uh, build and print out these… figurines. Like, poseable toys. And of course they get to paint them, coat them in binding agent, etcetera. Makes them feel grown up. Makes them feel special, you know?
Heh… I remember this kid, one day. Totally heartwarming. There was this kid, he was running around and somehow managed to open one of the locked rooms. The server room, I think it was, and he started messing around in there. Well, I was in my office like always, and I see this kid on the camera. I start to get a little worried, “Ah, here we go again” I’m saying to myself, and I was about to go get him sorted out myself. But right then, as I’m taking my jacket off, Blake – that badger character to your left -, gets in the room with the kid and starts to play a little game, using the server room’s monitor. Have you, you know, uh… You you know the game, Simon Says? Well, it was like that, he just turned the-
*Distant sounds of Simon in the background*
Oh, h- hold on now, I’ll sort the rest out later. Uh, I’ll leave this message here, the options should be up for you now. Sorry about this.
It’s moments like those that can make you smile, you know? Getting to use these characters to make people as happy as they’ve made me. It’s really something.
At least… I hope you feel the same way. I know you aren’t here during the day, so I suppose you’ll just have to take my word for it when I say it’s great, and the kid I mentioned has been a loyal customer since. Though, I don’t really like using that word.
See you tomorrow.
For a quick explanation, it’s a game where someone shows you a colour, like you know, green, yellow, red, and you have to repeat the same colour back to them. Sometimes there are multiple colours which you need to repeat in the same order back… but in the case of Blake and the boy, who was quite young, it was only one. Sorry if that wasn’t that good of an explanation, but it’s just a kid’s game, nothing more. During the day you can play it on one of the monitors here, with that panel in front of you. Bit more complicated than just a colour appearing on a screen, but you know, same concept. They use the phone for that too.
That’s children stuff though, don’t let me down with me catching you playing games during your shift. Speaking of work, you should go back to it. Seeya tomorrow..
Right. Speaking of the order… I think I’ll also leave an option to finish off that story I was telling you about. And this one should be to explain why I left, just so you don’t get suspicious that I’m hiding anything from you. As I said on the first night, I’m trying to be as transparent as possible with my business here, so covering stuff up from my employees obviously wouldn’t do.
Right, I think that’s it for tonight. Good luck on your shift!
Hmm. I think, at this point, you must be pretty confident with your job now. If you can even call it that. I think now might be a good time for you to know a little more about me. I have a feeling that you might be curious, am I wrong?
Right then. I was born in November 1968 in Texas, lived a fine life up until my teens, had no real problems with family, but we weren’t exactly rich. My father was an architect at the time, and my mother stayed home with my brother and I. Until the 80s, we lived in a flat, or… I suppose it would have been called an apartment over there. It was pretty decent I think, but I honestly can’t remember much.
I had an accident in my teens… Stuff I- I really don’t want to talk about, please don’t ask. Might explain in a later call or something, if there is… uh… Time. Anyway, fortunately I survived the injury, believe it or not, it was all down to a very generous donor. Of blood. The whole thing was pretty strange and vague for us, and all I know is that a small team of people, or maybe it was one person, was willing to give tons of blood to the hospital, and after an entire encyclopedia of signed papers, the transfusion was allowed on behalf of the procedure being an “experiment”. I was close to death, bear in mind.
I lost most of my memory from before the incident, and the whole event caused a huge stir in the media. I was 18, and with the state I was in, paparazzi wasn’t the best treatment. You know? So I sorted out something with my parents, and we moved here in England.
So uh… Hopefully on top of being security guard, you can be a friend too. I wanted to get some of these stories off my chest for a while… Since uh… I don’t have many people to share them with. And my daughter is kind of busy most of the time. Just someone for me to talk to. And of course listen to, so go ahead. What do you want to talk about?
Money isn’t really an issue for me anymore. I’ve sold stuff before the pizzeria was opened, mainly based around robotics, machinery, whatnot. And of course the pizzeria itself brings in a significant amount of cash to put back into ingredients, electricity, materials for the printers, etcetera. As I mentioned earlier, Popgoes does most of the work so I don’t need to hire a cleaner or a chef. I also got a decent amount of money from the injury I mentioned. I can’t remember how that worked, but I’d rather avoid mentioning it in case it was a mistake and they want it back, heh.
Anyway, hope that cleared it up. Good question! See you tomorrow.
I’ll try to go over some of the more interesting things though. Hmm… In 2019, I made a self-driving car in my garage. The technology isn’t that impressive nowadays, I know, but it was an amazing feat. Looked like garbage, but it worked. Since then, it’s been modified to be road-safe and now my daughter uses it. Back in the late 90s, I made a few electric guitars, sold them to a secondary school, and in 2016, I made a video game with Bonnie’s help. Oh, Bonnie is the name of my daughter, not sure if I’ve mentioned that. Oh yeah and of course I made the 3D printers recently, which helped me print smaller, plastic parts for projects and toys and whatnot. That’s it really, don’t think I should mention anything else right now.
Hope that clears it up. I’ve been a real busy guy, love creating things. See you on your fifth night!
I get nightmares pretty easily. Stupid stuff, like going to the zoo or standing on a tall building. I’ll go to sleep that night and wake up in a cold sweat, from a nightmare about a creepy porcelain doll. It’s ridiculous. Anyway, not a lot of medication can help with that kind of thing, so for a few months, I tried a… psychic route. Like, mystic, almost religious kind of solution. It was recommended by a friend I’ve spoken to online, and it worked, but only once.
The idea was that if I designed and created a scarecrow kind of ornament that was entirely designed to fight what I was having nightmares of, then it would appear in those nightmares and destroy, in a sense, the fear from its core. So for example, if I had a nightmare of falling from a great height, then making a model of a trampoline in the real world might help get rid of the fear in the nightmare world. You understand?
Anyway, I ended up making a load of these scarecrow designs, with only one of them actually working. At that time, I heard about this auction thing going on in America, travelled over there, ended up buying some things, one of which was a hat that used to belong to a famous pizzeria character which caused a bit of controversy in the area. I bought the remains of an old busted robot, based the gang around it. And a box filled with… uh… parts, I have them here in the attic. Anyways, from there, I thought to myself “What if I started my own pizzeria and changed the remaining scarecrows into cartoon animatronics?”
And well, I did. Of course, since they’re garden animals and not actually designed to fight my fears, they never really helped get rid of my remaining nightmares. So I still have them. The old scarecrow designs were scrapped, can’t remember what I did with them. Quite a backstory, huh? Hope it was interesting. See you tomorrow.
I’m wondering, since I can’t remember how much I’ve taught you up to this point… Do you know about Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza? I think these calls might be getting to my head, but I don’t know… I’ve been thinking of that place a lot more than usual for the past hour or so. Not in a disturbing or scary sense, just… Not sure. It’s like some pieces are being put together.
Freddy Fazbear. You know, they used to say those characters were haunted? There were some murders related to the location back in the 80s, people found some corpses buried in the animatronic suits. Really sad. I was a fan of that franchise, named my kid after one of the characters there. Not BECAUSE I was a fan really, but because… Well, because I wanted to love that name again. After, you know… Ah, doesn’t matter. I was a fan of the restaurant, and it hurt to see it fall so morbidly, that’s all.
I wonder sometimes, if there was some kind of moral reasoning behind whoever killed those kids. I have my own suspicions, as do hundreds of other people, you know. You should see what these people put online. There’s a popular theory going round that the guy who did it had purple skin. Totally purple skin, and purple clothes. Sounds like a demon or something, right? Something paranormal. I don’t know.
But around that time was when I got help from someone in the hospital. We uh… don’t know where the blood came from.
*long pause*
It’s… all… What if he… What if that was him?
Ah god, this is ridiculous. I’m sorry. It’s times like these when the nightmares sometimes visit me during the day. Ask me a question then. It might calm me down, haha.
The main theory surrounding this guy was that he was a mental patient on the loose, stabbed kids with a cake knife or something. It technically can make sense, but it’s pretty boring. I love a good horror story, and that’s not how you tell one, you know what I mean? They found something like 20 kids stuffed into suits over the span of the company’s run, which is crazy. One is crazy, I know, but 20 is just… why? There has to be a reason for that, more than “he was a mental patient”.
Also yeah, they thought he was purple. Someone found a drawing that a child had done while at one of the pizzerias, which showed a purple figure in the background, I’m pretty sure that was the only evidence for that, but it’s enough for me. And uh… you know, the rest of the theorists. I really don’t delve too deep into this kind of thing.
Okay well, that’s it for today. See you again tomorrow.
They had loads of different locations, more than an average independant restaurant. Each building had an exclusive character, which had its own toy, I think. It was like a collection thing, so that kids had to go to every Freddy Fazbear’s in the area to finish the set of figurines or plushies, or whatever. It was clever and I’m sure it did wonders for them money-wise, but I can’t help but wonder how sad that system would have been for a child on the poorer side of town.
Although the characters had smaller cameo additions based on the restaurant you were in, there were always the main four guys, which were in the adverts, on the billboards, and on the pizza boxes of course. Freddy Fazbear obviously, Chica the Chicken, Foxy the Fox and there was also a bunny rabbit called Bonnie. These four characters were huge where I lived, way bigger than Ronald McDonald and Colonel Sanders, you know?
My past with the location is pretty personal though, so I’d rather not go on about it. Not that I’m hiding anything from you, it’s more for my own sake. I don’t really like to talk about it anymore, not even with my daughter. But I’m sure that, from the figurines around the location, you can guess that I know quite a lot. See you tomorrow.
Uh, so Weaselware is an operating system, again, created by myself. It’s a very simple, very nifty system. It links almost ALL of the machines in this place. If you have access to it, you can control almost every function of other things wirelessly. Cameras, vents, printers. Even Popgoes himself!
It’s a reprogrammed version of something else I used to work on. Originally, I used it to track investigations of DNA around the world. I made it to find one person in particular, and I mean, it worked. Anyway, that turned out to be illegal, which I understand, but thankfully, I wasn’t sent to prison. They just told me to stop using it. So yeah, it was changed to run a pizzeria instead.
And of course, in its current state, there are some locked features. I can’t let a kid mess around with one of the characters. I am the only one who gets full access. But again, if you show substantial effort, maybe I’ll give you some more freedom to mess about with your phone, maybe you’d like to print yourself some figurines?
Ha, well, we’ll see about that later. G’night kid.
*Very long sigh*
I have a question for you. A serious, personal question.
I’ll try to set an example. There’s this, uh, person. That is really close to you. He has recently been acting strange, maybe a bit scary. People say he has done horrible things. But… You’ve trusted him for all your life, he has been listening to your problems, and you really look up to him.
Even if this person has made big mistakes in his life, if he does regret it in the end, would you be willing to forgive them? If you know who he is, would you look past his errors and… Try to bring him back. Into your life?
Do you think… You could trust him?
*Bonnie knocking*
I… uh… no, this will do. Thank you for working with me, so much. This is the end of your shift at the Popgoes Pizzeria. Let me know your answer.