Absurdist Phone Guy Stuffed in a Suit

1 - Night 4

Background

If you just want to get into the story, and don't really care about the philosophy, you can skip this part. Otherwise, read onward!

The goal of this story is to explore Phone Guy after Night 4, as well as absurdism. You don't need to know anything about absurdism – or philosophy, for that matter – to understand and enjoy this story, but I'd still recommend reading the Wikipedia article on it if you have some time to kill. It's a good read.

The idea behind absurdism is basically that we, as humans, want to find order in everything around us, but the universe we live in is absurd. There are important questions – "Why is there something rather than nothing?", "What creates consciousness?" – that can't really be answered without running into some pretty major roadblocks. Try coming up with an answer – if you dig deep enough, every conclusion leads to there being something very wrong – absurd – with not just our universe, but any universe we could conceivably live in.

And our universe is absurd, mind you. GPS (the thing your phone uses to figure out where you are) wouldn't work if the people who made it didn't account for TIME TRAVEL! This one's worth reading about as well, but the gist of it is that time moves slightly differently for people on Earth than for satellites in orbit. Wild! And that's one of the things we actually understand about the universe.

What most people do is look away from the absurdity. They don't dig deep enough to reach it. But as soon as you do, it will haunt you. You will try, over and over again, to reconcile with the universe, and it will not work. You will never find an answer that doesn't just lead to more questions.

There are ways to cope with this. One is to keep trying – after all, if no one sought answers, we wouldn't be where we are today. But unless you're willing to dedicate your life to these questions, seeking them out will simply serve as a reminder that the universe doesn't work the way you think it should.

Another way is absurdism, the idea that instead of trying to force an absurd universe to have order, we should allow ourselves to forgo order and embrace absurdity. Normally it's used for what I described, but it also works nicely with someone facing the impossibility (absurdity :P) of living as an animatronic.

Okay, textbook mode is over, and will stay off for the rest of the story. I know I just did a big info dump, but I promise that the story will be a story and won't just force-feed you philosophy.

Also, please keep in mind that I've done almost no writing in the last few years, so this is bound to be rough. Especially for the first chapters.

Oh, and if you notice any mistakes, please let me know! Don't be afraid to leave comments or critiques – the worse that can happen is me thinking "Holy shit! A comment!"

......

Fritz Smith

Fritz did not want to be a night guard. Sure, the pay was decent (well, half-decent, seeing as it was Freddy's), and he was well aware of the danger, but the gravity of it only really dawns on you after you actually work the job, y'know? Especially after the 4th night.

He supposed there was nothing inherently wrong with the role. It was a job, just like any other, and he'd seen his fair share of horrors during his years at the company. It was the stress. It would be the death of him. Hah, if he didn't get stuff in a suit first, that was. It wasn't the robots that scared him. Freddy's had made damn sure of that, seeing as his first day on the job had him calling an ambulance after that poor kid had his head chomped in half. No, it was the anticipation. The waiting. Haha, the power being limited didn't help one bit either!