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Chapter 1: A Chaotic First Meeting

Wally n' Friends Play Center was hiring, and you scored the job by asking around and browsing the web for information on the place. Fortunately your efforts were rewarded with a video call interview that lasted about maybe ten minutes before they asked your size in uniform, requesting for you to come in on Saturday in plain clothes for a tour then Monday as your official starting date.

Today was Saturday, and you're standing at the front doors, starting to wonder if you might run the risk of hating it here.

It's not the pay and you doubt it'd be the coworkers, given that most of the staff was replaced by animatronics and what was said about the small amount of human staff was that they mostly kept to themselves. Most of the human employees did things that robots couldnt do; customer service, building maintenance and repairs, troubleshooting sound systems, and other fine-tuned or messy work that is either impossible for an animatronic to do, or very dangerous. Besides, even though the robots are based on characters loved by many, some folks can get a little creeped out being surrounded by robots with no living worker in sight, so it wasn't unusual to have the one working the entrance desk of the play center be a kid around your age working a summer job.

Your job is..something like that. The pay is around $30 an hour with some benefits. That's not an opportunity to pass up on and you thought that you could deal with hyper, loud kids and overbearing parents if it meant finally having some money of your own to put aside for the future.

There is a small catch that follows this though. You'd be tasked to do a little bit of everything in working at the play center. From clean up to robot repairs; if there was something you were able to do, you were expected to do it. Does this mean that you qualified for a lot of the more advanced work? No, absolutely not. But the company couldn't afford having really advanced mechanics busy plugging something back up that fell out of a wall outlet, so all the smaller, meager repairs are going to be left to you along with some occasional manual labor. Besides, robots can't pass the human verification captchas on most of the equipment's computers anyways.

So starting today you're just staff. The background employee that handles nearly everything as best as possible with mediocre skills and no exact specialty. Well, technically starting Monday.

You were thinking about how this opportunity seemed too good to be true until you walked inside. Instantly you notice how busy the place was, with children's screams easily being heard above the buzz of voices, some of joy and others from a fit, while their parents try to console them. Some teenagers are goofing off in the distance, talking to a tall bot whose features you couldn't really make out but you were sure you'd see them around the center sometime while working there. The whole place is neon lit, bright colors against a darkened atmosphere, and you understand why management kept the inside of the play center dim even when it was the middle of the afternoon.

Strangely, no one greets you, considering that you were requested to arrive at this specific time and place. You stand awkwardly in your spot in the entrance, finding the space at the front desk to be empty, you assumed someone was supposed to be there but maybe they were on break. So instead of going to look for someone to get directions from, your attention is instead taken to another entrance to the right of you, this one having a small sign above the door reading "Eddie's Post Office". You look around to check no one is actually around and decide to let your curiosity take over while you make your way over to the side room, settling on the idea that you'd just take a peek inside before asking around for help.

Silently you open the door to the room and are quickly greeted with the sight of a small group of children, some running about with small envelopes in their hands and some seemingly content just sitting where they are and simply crafting their letters in the far side of the post office. You decide to close the door back before any of them notice you but a voice from behind startles you.