Chapter Text
Ed stood for a long minute, his mouth open, wondering what the heck had just happened. It looked like Rambley had had some kind of existential crisis, but… could computer programs even do that? Ed had no idea. He also had no idea how he'd get out if the main gate was shut — he was pretty sure he couldn't open it himself and he didn't remember seeing if it had closed again after him when he arrived. Maybe he could climb the fence somewhere. But first, he had to get there.
Ed's insides grumbled as he tried again to weigh up his options. He could go through the gift shop and back into Rambley's Railroad, walk the wrong way along the tracks and come out near the park entrance… but he didn't know if he'd be able to find a way out of that caved-in underpass outside the Railroad's queuing area.
Or he could try to climb the rubble and see if there was a way over the top. That might be best for now. Despite Rambley's assurances last night that there weren't any more homicidal mascots roaming the park, he'd probably feel better outside. He remembered the photos of the ride popping up on the screens behind the gift shop counter as if the park was still running normally, and that one with the blurry shape of Molly Macaw following him down the tracks. He shivered.
Ed tried to visualise the layout of the little railroad. He walked around the fountain with its eternally-rotating statue of Rambley and stood facing the gift shop. Now, the exit doors from the railroad were straight ahead, just a bit to the right. The train had come from the left, past Lloyd, then Salem, then it wrapped round to the… right? Finley. Molly. Conductor Rambley. Then the entrance station! So the entrance should be… what, dead ahead? No, a bit to the left? It was hard to be sure.
Ed decided to start to the left of the gift shop, between it and Lloyd's Mane Stage to his left. The corner of the square was full of huge blocks of masonry, some with random bits of rebar sticking out, plus assorted benches, trash cans, even a traffic cone for some reason. He managed to scramble up onto the top of one of the bigger blocks.
With the higher vantage point he could see a way over to the top of the wall and onto the roof of the low building behind. He just had to hop over a couple of small gaps from block to block — yikes — and pull himself up. Ed supposed he was due a workout anyway. He glanced back at the information kiosk in the distance beyond the fountain, but it hadn't lit up again. Rambley must be busy figuring something out, or maybe just continuing his meltdown, who knew?
From the top of the wall, things looked different. Behind it was a path, clearly a serviceway for park staff to move around without being seen by visitors, and he dropped down into it. The path circled the building, emerging into an open area through what turned out, from the other side, to be a hidden door. Bingo! The turnstiles were right ahead. Ed breathed a sigh of relief. He could practically feel the familiar comfort of his car. The bag of cheese and onion snacks he knew he'd left in the glove box beckoned.
The turnstile didn't turn, and his critter cuff did nothing when he tried it against the reader, but it was easy enough to climb over, and Ed did so. As he crossed towards the main gate, though, something behind him made him turn.
Rambley's face filled the screen over the turnstile, but he hadn't said anything yet. That was unusual. He looked really glum, too — clearly something was still up. The raccoon sniffed and Ed wondered if AIs could cry. His animated face looked as if he had been doing just that. Why would Rambley's programmers put such a miserable image in when they were coding him, though? That just seemed pointless for a mascot who was meant to be cheery and exuberant at all times.
"Uh, buddy?" came Rambley's amplified voice, "Just, uh, wait there a minute, don't go yet."
At Ed's perplexed look, Rambley added "something's come up and… I just… I…" The pleading in his voice was clear. "Just give me a minute. Don't go. Please."
The screen went blank again. Ed sighed, and considered. Technically, if Rambley was just a computer program, it didn't matter if he left right now. He couldn't hurt a computer's feelings, could he? But Rambley gave every sign of being really upset by something. It was hard not to think he was real enough to have genuine feelings. Ed sighed again, and sat down on a bench to wait. He half-felt he was being played by a sophisticated machine designed to be cute and pull at the heart-strings of the park's visitors. The other half, though, felt sorry for Rambley — he'd been on his own for years, after all. How bad must that have felt? If he could feel things, that is.
The sun came out from behind a cloud and Ed leaned back. It was warm, but these benches weren't all that comfortable. After a couple of minutes he stood up. He looked around and waited. When nothing happened, he made his mind up. The gate was open, so he walked out.
It was as if Rambley had been waiting for that. The screen outside the gate lit up and the raccoon said "wait!" with such urgency that Ed stopped dead.
"Rangler, buddy, wait! Just… gimme a minute to explain, please!"
Ed turned to the screen and put his most sceptical look on.
"Okay okay okay", said Rambley. "Look, first, I'm sorry if I scared you back there. I, I, I scared myself." His image glitched a little. "I don't know why I didn't figure this out until today, maybe it's just me being stupid." He scowled at the thought. "But after talking to you it's obvious. I…" Rambley screwed up his eyes and made fists with his paws as he readied himself. "I have no friends", he finished, quietly.
Ed almost burst out laughing. He stifled it quickly, but… "I have no friends"? Was that it? He'd got the impression it was something far more serious.
"Oh yes, go on, laugh", Rambley sneared. "Johnny no-friends is such a funny joke." He sighed. "No, sorry, I shouldn't have said that." Rambley's voice had lost some of its cartoony flair and sounded flatter, more… human.
"But let me explain! I was talking to you about my friends earlier, and until today I actually thought I had friends. I really believed it. I have all these memories of them, and hanging out with them, and all the adventures we had, but until today I hadn't figured out the most important, most basic fact about them. My most recent memory of them was BEFORE I was an AI! Yeah, that's right! Every single memory I have of my friends was put there by my programmers! Everything I ever did with Molley and Finley and the rest was lifted out of that TV show. Or the books that came out after the show. Or maybe they invented some of it just for me, I don't know! But until now it never came home to me just how long it had been since I saw Molly. I never twigged that the REASON I hadn't seen her — any of them — was… obvious! They were never made into AIs! They… never existed. My best friends in the whole world are fiction. So was I, but… I was the only one of my gang they brought to life."
Rambley plopped down, sitting at the bottom of the screen.
"So you see, now I have no one. I mean, technically I never had anyone, but now I know it."
A tear glinted in the corner of his eye, animated with a little star-shaped flash.
"I've been keeping myself going all these years looking for friends who don't exist. And… the only real person I know is you, and I only found that out right when you're about to walk out the door. So please wait, just for a bit, just until I can get my head straight and figure out what to do."
Ed closed his mouth, which he hadn't realised was open, blinked, and nodded.
"Well", Ed started, then coughed. "Well fuck, I'm sorry", he finished, spreading his hands out, palms up, in a kind of shrug.
For most of his time in the park Ed hadn't felt the need to speak to Rambley — he hadn't had anything to say — then since last night when Rambley told him about his deafness, there hadn't seemed any point saying anything. But what the raccoon had just laid on him felt really heavy, like it needed some kind of response.
Rambley sighed and spoke quietly. "Thank you for whatever you said. I'm sure it was kind, you do seem like a really good person. Maybe you could write…"
Rambley paused.
"Hey wait, I have an idea! Oh, stupid Rambley!"
His said that last with some small amount of venom, definitely not the way he'd called himself "silly Rambley" more than once last night. This time he sounded like he wanted to kick himself, hard. But at least the animation had come back into his voice.
"I don't know why I didn't think of this before! Hmm, maybe because it's been over two thousand days since I last welcomed a guest I didn't quite remember the full procedure and missed an item off my checklist… but there is a way you can talk to me. We gotta get you a RamblePad (registered)!"
Rambley leapt to his feet and swished his tail, his melancholy seemingly forgotten.
"Get yourself to back to Critter Corner as fast as you can and we'll get you kitted out with your very own RamblePad (registered)! Oooh, this is gonna be so great! I can't wait to see what you have to say!"