Chapter Text
Chapter 1: Coming home
Charlotte’s hands tightened on the wheel as sign welcoming people to Hurricane appeared on the side of the road. She sighed in relief as her two-day journey had finally came to an end. Charlotte Emily was returning to her family home after the first year of her bachelor’s studies was over. Well, her ‘family’ included only her and her dad Henry Emily, a retired robotics enthusiast.
Nevertheless, it felt great coming home; She hadn’t seen her father for months and was eager to return to the small rural town in the Hurricane Valley, situated at the far south of Utah, where she had spent her childhood years. Charlotte had to slow down as she entered the town centre where the majority of shops and few attractions this place had to offer where concentrated. Despite her tiredness, Charlotte took a moment to observe the families that were out, enjoying the warm early summer evening. Her mind drifted back to the days when she was a child, meekly following her loud group of friends; Gabriel, Fritz, Susie, Jeremy and Cassidy. Large colourful posters covering lampposts, read as:
‘Grand Opening; Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza in Salt Lake City. Come Join a place where Fun and Fantasy comes to life!’
Salt Lake City?, she thought, that’s not very far. I wonder if dad knows about it.
…
‘Charlie!’, a voice called out as she entered the small driveway of her family’s cottage. Charlotte was elated to see her father walking up to her all smiles and hand waves. She leaned out of her car window and called back.
‘Dad!’. Not having the patience to park the car, she just left it in the middle of the driveway and sprang out of the car and into the arms of her father. Her dad used to say that even though they were they only family they had, they made one hell of a team and Charlotte couldn’t agree more.
‘How’s your studies going? How were the exams? Not too hard, I hope… Have you gotten used to your life in Portland? Have you made friends? I made you fresh lemonade, your favourite’, her dad bombarded with questions before even they broke their embrace.
‘One question at a time dad’, she mockingly scolded him. ‘I think I will have that lemonade first then we can talk all about my studies’. She quickly grabbed her backpack and they both headed to the front porch where an enticing jug of iced lemonade rested on a low table between two comfy-looking bamboo armchairs.
A few glasses of lemonade later, Charlotte had recounted the main events of her first years in university, studying for an Electrical and Computer engineering bachelor in Portland State University. She mostly talked about how gruelling the first-year final exams were and how her first year had been mostly focused on math-related subjects and they hadn’t gone anywhere near computer programming or her most anticipated course of all; Electronics. But that was bound to change on the next year where towards the end of the summer semester every student was expected to complete a small project by building a small, automated machine that could carry on a simple task; for example, one that can open a beer bottle or finely chop vegetables. Charlotte had come up with a better plan; she wanted to build a small animatronic instead which could have a single function like serving tea or playing music.
Animatronics had accompanied Charlotte for most of her life; her father Henry was once the owner of a dinner and later pizzeria filled with large animatronic animal characters that sang songs and served pizza. Her dad had designed and built all these animatronics and for a whole full decade their family home was full of animatronic parts, unfinished projects and small custom-made robots that were made just for her. The restaurant her father owned was no other than Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza which used to be situated in the commercial centre of Hurricane. But during her freshman year of high school, her father had sold the company to a large multinational corporation for an insane amount of money. The company started capitalizing on the already famous animatronic characters to open a chain of similar themed restaurants throughout the state of Utah and beyond.
‘That’s a great idea!’, her father exclaimed when he heard her idea for the next year’s electronics project. 'Looking into Fazbear Entertainment’s next generation animatronics could help a lot; do you know that they recently opened a new location on Salt Lake City?’
‘Yes, I saw the posters’, Charlotte nodded eagerly. ‘I am thinking of visiting it at some point’
‘How about I arrange a backroom access for you? So you can look into the maintenance and spare parts rooms of the restaurant?’, he dad suggested.
Charlotte’s heart leaped at the prospect.
‘Can this be done?’, she questioned, ‘You are no longer the owner of the Fazbear Entertainment…’
‘Aw com’on Charlie, I am not that irrelevant yet’, said her dad, pretending to pout.