The Bite of '23

Chapter 2

It was absurd. Murphy was not supposed to do this.

Dr. Frank Kelvin stood outside the police closed restaurant, and couldn't possibly fathom why any of the animatronics had gone against their programming. He had designed them not to do this. He knew that they could be unsafe, but he designed them to stop if they were going to break. They passed all the tests! They were safe!

But regardless, it was not something he had expected here.

"You alright?" Frank turns around to see a tall, skinnier man in an outfit not unlike the stereotypical Sherlock Holmes, without the hat and trench coat at the moment. The detective had returned.

"Who are you?" Asked Frank, after jolting around to see who it was. "Detective James Harriet with the Columbus Police. Who are you and what are you doing standing outside this place? It's dangerous you know." "The name is Dr. Frank Kelvin, Detective," replied Frank, "I'm here because I'm trying to understand what happened to my babies." "Ah, you must be the dad of the kid that got his hand bit off, yeah?"

"What? No. I built the animatronics."

"And you are calling them your babies...?"

"Well I birthed them, did I not?"

"...you are a lonely man aren't you?"

"...yes..."

"I'm sorry I asked. Touchy subject?"

"No, it's ok. You have to ask don't ya?"

"Well, yes. It is a suspicious act to be standing outside of a crime scene. But you said you know how they work?"

"Yes, I do. And they are not supposed to be able to bite children's hands off!"

"So, it wasn't programmed to do that?"

"No, I care about kids safety just as much as the next guy."

"Do you have any kids yourself, Doctor?"

"...no...my wife was murdered in '97."

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that..." James shuffled his weight to one side, pushing away from Frank a bit. He felt bad for the guy, but couldn't eliminate him as a suspect. "Tell you what," James said, gesturing towards the boarded up restaurant, "I'll let you in there if to have a look around, and take your animatronics to be reworked, but you have to help me solve this crime." "Oh, you mean that?" Frank perked up. It was clear he hadn't had this excitement in years. "Certainly! Why, when you may not be a police detective like me, but I'm sure your knowledge of the animatronic will be quite useful."

It was nice to have a partner in crime, especially for a case as ambitions and ambiguous as this one. But it was also a chance to get close to Frank, and either find him out or find his innocents.

"Do you have the floor plans?" James asked. "Not for this particular version, no. I do have my 1987 editions though, which don't exactly match." Frank replied.

"What about the animatronics? Any blue prints?"

"Yeah, there in the back."

"Lead the way!"

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Frank suddenly stopped in front of the animatronic control system, and activated it. "What are you doing?" James asked, concerned. "I'm showing you something." Frank replied, stepping towards a table near the stage. Murphy had not be moved since the accident, and his position was locked in place, except for his jaw which was open. Mr. Squirrel and Mr. Rock begin singing the opening, but without any sound, since Frank hadn't turned on the external sound system. "This is how the show opens every night, except with music." Suddenly, a loud clicking sound is heard, and Frank runs to turn off the animatronics. "What is that?" James asked, confused. "That's the safety system I put in place. I call it the 'Spring Lock System', and it's rather simple to understand, but complicated to explain." "Oh, there's nothing that's to complicated for Detective James Harriet! ...except, of course, some physics...I'm horrible when it comes Quantum."

Frank chuckled a bit, "No Quantum required. Basically, I have a system that will lock up the animatronic, called a Spring Lock." "Does it contain a spring?" "Yes, it does! The first actually detaches a wire from the battery, and Murphy goes into a sleep state, where he will tell the audience he needs to take a quick nap, while the employee who looks at the computer, attempts a reboot. If the computer is chugging through the code and finds no errors the second time, it will override the spring lock, connecting the wire back to the battery.

"From there, if another error or the same error persists, then the system will go into an irreversible second spring lock, in which the joints of the animatronic will suddenly lock up, and we'll hear a loud clicking sound. Employees are trained to hear this clicking sound and immediately shut down the show, including closing the curtain as quickly as possible. And this spring lock state cannot be undone, except by a licensed professional."

"Is it possible then," James ponders, placing his index finger on his cheek and resting his chin on his thumb, "That Murphy's mouth may have chomped on the child's hand as it was spring locking? I mean, it is clear his head is not supposed to go that far back. The employee confirmed that."

"Mm, no. Murphy's head is only designed to go just about 45° above his normal resting position, and the position needed to chomp the boy's hand is well above that threshold, meaning, that as long as the first spring lock activated and was overridden, which it had that night, then the Murphy animatronic would have no ability to move afterwards, due to the second spring lock being activated through another error. Basically, the chomping could've only occur if the second spring lock had failed around his mouth and head area."

"And based on the clicking we just heard," James realized, "Neither could've moved that night, since no one was here to deactivate the spring lock. The only one that was broken was the one at the bottom jaw, which was done by the employee to free the boy's hand. This means something was happening in the system that caused Murphy to chomp down on his hand. I think we'll need to know exactly how long it takes for the spring lock to activate, and when it activated in this case!" "That would require a reset and bringing them to a safe testing facility." Frank explained. "Then let's do it!"