Matt cursed, tore off his goggles, and threw them down on his desk. He should probably have been more careful with the expensive equipment, but he didn’t care. Why did he keep losing to Springtrap? Why couldn’t he win a game he had largely designed? He paced and cursed, then picked up a coffee mug and threw it. The mug smashed into tiny pieces and left a brown splatter on the clean white wall. Good, Matt thought. All of his thoughts were destructive.
There was a gentle knocking on the door, accompanied by the spoken words “Knock, knock.” Why did people do that? Wasn’t just knocking on the door enough?
“Yeah?” Matt snapped, not wanting to be bothered.
The door cracked and Jamie from the cubicle closest to his office peeked in. She was one of those women who looked like she hadn’t changed her hair or clothing style since third grade. Her bangs were cut straight across her forehead, and she appeared to be wearing a jumper. “I heard noises and wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“I’m fine. At least I was before you interrupted me,” Matt snapped. Everybody in the office seemed to love Jamie. They raved about the homemade banana bread she’d leave in the break room and about how she was always willing to help out with a problem, whether professional or personal. But she didn’t fool Matt. He knew Jamie was a busybody. It was like she was a vampire who fed on office drama.
“Sorry. I guess those were just the sounds of the creative process I was hearing?” Jamie quipped, crinkling her nose as she smiled. It was a cowering, ingratiating smile, like a dog wagging its tail when you had caught it peeing on the carpet.
“That’s right,” Matt said, not smiling back. What was he supposed to say—that he got mad because the big bunny had killed him twice in a row? That he had thrown his coffee mug against the wall because he couldn’t handle the fact that he was losing to his own creation? Matt was starting to feel like the video game developer version of Dr. Frankenstein.
“Well, good luck. See you later,” Jamie said, giving a little wave with just her fingers. “You want me to close the door back?”
“I never wanted you to open it in the first place.”
He was going to go in again. This time he would make better choices. He would get past the murderous rabbit. He would lay to rest the nagging suspicion that this was a game he couldn’t win.
Sometimes Matt felt like life was a game he couldn’t win. Sure, he had all the trappings of a happy existence. He had graduated from a good school and married Hannah, his college sweetheart. He had gotten his dream job, and he and Hannah had bought a pretty four-bedroom house with ample room for her home office, his massive video game collection, and, Hannah had hoped, a growing family.
Back in college, Matt had enjoyed the excitement of pursuing and eventually winning Hannah. He had met her in a killer chemistry class freshman year, where she had an A average and he was struggling. He asked her to be his tutor, and they met twice a week. They worked on chemistry, but they also talked and laughed a lot. Finally, he had asked her, “Would you be willing to go out on a date with somebody who is way worse at chemistry than you?”
She said yes, and they soon were inseparable. Once they were really dating, she didn’t even mind letting him copy down her problem sets. It gave them extra time to spend together doing other, more fun things. Their “meet cute” story was a big hit whenever people asked how they got together. They always said, “We had chemistry.”
After graduation, Matt had loved going after and getting his dream job, hunting for and acquiring the right house. But once you won the prize, there was nothing to do but maintain it. And maintenance wasn’t as interesting. The dream house had extensive plumbing problems, so many that it seemed like they should just ask a plumber to move into one of the extra bedrooms. The job was great sometimes, but there were also countless boring meetings during which people who knew much less than he did talked on and on about insignificant details, and he was expected to listen to them respectfully, which wasn’t always possible. How could it be, when he clearly had the best ideas in the room?
And then there was the problem of maintaining a marriage. When they were dating, Matt had been so preoccupied with winning Hannah’s love that he never thought about the cost of that prize, namely that he was committing to spending the rest of his life with one person and one person only. It had gotten boring quickly. The endless nights in, the same conversations about their days, the same chicken breasts and green salad for dinner and the same TV shows afterward. Hannah was still pretty and smart and nice, but the novelty had worn off her, like when you buy a new car and it’s exciting at first but then it just settles in to being your car, reliable and useful but no longer a source of excitement.
There had been other problems as well. Hannah had wanted to start a family right away, and Matt hadn’t. In fact, the more tedious the day-to-day grind of marriage had become, the less he had wanted to add kids to the equation. The whole prospect of parenting yawned before him as a string of unpleasant responsibilities stretching out for decades: the feedings and diaper changes and sleepless nights of infancy, the endless ferrying of school-age children to school and lessons and practices, the drama and rebellion of the teen years. All that, plus the stress of having to pay for college. Who needed it?
Apparently, Hannah had needed it. Or anyway, she had thought she did. Every Friday night when they would go out to the Neapolitan, their favorite Italian restaurant, she would wait until Matt had been softened up by a couple of glasses of wine and say, “I think it’s time.”
Matt would always say, “Time for dessert?” even though he knew good and well that tiramisu wasn’t what she was talking about.
“Time to start a family,” she would inevitably say.
He had tried to put her off in a variety of ways. He had said they still needed a few years to focus on their careers, but Hannah had said that since she ran her graphic design business from home, she could balance it with parenting now.
Once, Matt had suggested that, if she wanted something to take care of, they should get a dog instead of having a baby. That tactic hadn’t gone over well.
The worst, though, was when he tried to argue that pregnancy and motherhood would ruin Hannah’s petite, attractive figure. That time, she had called him shallow, thrown the contents of her water glass in his face, and stormed out of the restaurant.
The fact that Hannah wasn’t willing to listen to reason about having a baby had definitely put a damper on their marriage. And then there was the matter of the harmless little friendship Matt had struck up with Brianna, a server at the restaurant where he frequently had lunch. It wasn’t anything serious and it certainly wasn’t any of Hannah’s business, but she had gotten all upset when Matt had left his computer open and she saw that Brianna had sent him a picture of herself in a bikini. He had no idea why Hannah had been so unreasonable. Friends did that kind of thing all the time.
Hannah had suggested that the two of them get marriage counseling, but Matt had refused, and their marriage had ended in divorce shortly after their one-year anniversary. Since then, Matt had had a string of girlfriends, the first one being Brianna from the restaurant. None of these relationships had lasted over three months, and Matt was always the one who got dumped. This string of breakups was a major contributor to the rage Matt was able to summon in creating Springtrap.
Women were crazy, Matt had decided. And not worth the effort.
To combat his loneliness and frustration, Matt had thrown himself into the design of the VR game even more obsessively than usual. It was the cruelest of ironies that the game—much like his relationships—seemed to have turned against him.
But this time, he was going to outsmart the rabbit and get out of the maze alive.
Matt ran down the dark hallway and turned right into the room with the doors. He looked around and chose the door behind him. When he turned the knob and opened the door, the entrance was clear.
He walked down another dark hallway. There was no sign of Spring
trap. He made a left into the hallway that led to a hall of mirrors. He knew his way through, of course. The trick was making sure he wasn’t being followed. He moved his way past the panels of glass, each one identical. He was maybe twelve steps from the exit when he felt the presence of something behind him. In a mirror, he saw the reflection of the big green rabbit standing behind him. The rabbit grabbed him by the hair and raised a gleaming knife to Matt’s throat.
Matt could almost feel the swift, sure slash.
Once again, Matt saw his avatar lying facedown, this time in a spreading puddle of his own blood. The rabbit licked the blood from the knife’s blade and laughed, its shoulders shaking.
But it didn’t feel like the rabbit was just laughing at Matt’s mortally wounded avatar.
It felt like the rabbit was laughing at Matt himself.
So the rabbit wanted to play dirty, did it? Matt yanked off his headpiece. He reached out his arms and cleared his desk, sending all its contents clattering to the floor. He would show that rabbit who was in charge; he just needed some room to spread out. He was in control of the game, so he was in control of the rabbit. He got to say what it could and could not do, where it could and could not go. He would show it who was boss. When Matt went home later, he wouldn’t have that much control over his life, but here, inside the game, he was the absolute ruler, and all of the decisions were his to make.
He programmed the game such that Springtrap was doomed to wander the maze alone all night, with no victims to stalk and no way out. He also sped up the game’s time frame by one thousand, so that for each minute that passed in real time, one thousand minutes passed for Springtrap. Matt found himself laughing louder and harder than he had laughed in a long time. Sure, the rabbit might be able to kill his avatar, but that was nothing compared to the way that Matt could alter Springtrap’s reality, could control time and space and mete out a cosmic punishment like some kind of ancient, vengeful god.
Matt left the office and laughed some more on the drive home.
Hannah had gotten the house in the divorce, so Matt had moved into one of those apartment complexes with a pool and tennis courts, which advertised itself as offering “affordable luxury.” He had furnished the apartment with simple, functional pieces and lots of shelving for his video game collection. When his friend Jason from college had gotten kicked to the curb by his girlfriend at the same time one of Matt’s three-month relationships had split up, Matt had invited him to move into the extra bedroom and split the rent.
When Matt walked into the apartment, Jason was sitting on the couch in front of the big-screen TV with a video game controller in hand. It wasn’t even six o’clock, and he had already changed into his pajamas. A two-liter bottle of soda and an open bag of cheese puffs decorated the coffee table. “Hey,” he said, not looking away from the zombies he was blasting on the screen.
“Hey,” Matt said.
“And how is Springtrap?” Jason asked, like one might ask about a friend’s sick aunt.
Matt smiled. “Springtrap is going to have an interesting evening.”
“Wait, what?” Jason said.
“Nothing.” Matt tossed his bag on the couch. “The game is going great. Kids are going to love it.”
“Big kids, too,” Jason said. “I can’t wait to play it myself. Hey, what do you want for dinner tonight? Pizza? Thai? Chinese?” He nodded toward the stack of takeout menus on the coffee table.
Matt shrugged. “Whatever. You pick. I’m going to take a quick shower.” He had gotten all sweaty and agitated during his battle with the rabbit earlier, but now he could relax and have his revenge at the same time, knowing that the helpless creature was doomed to wander aimlessly through the maze all night.
Matt and Jason ate their Thai takeout straight from the containers while sitting on the couch and watching an episode of Reign of Stones Jason had recorded on the DVR. Living with Jason felt like being in college all over again. At first it had been fun—no complicated female emotions, no home repairs, no yard to mow. After work, it was all takeout and TV and video games unless one of them had a date.
But lately the carefree college vibe had started to wear thin, and Matt had begun to feel like he was regressing, losing ground at a time in life when he should be gaining. Plus, Jason had started to get on his nerves. He was so unambitious, working at a dead-end call center job and never looking for anything more lucrative or challenging. How could a person be so chill all the time? Before long, Matt was going to have to make some decisions about how to move forward with his life.
As the episode of Reign of Stones grew more violent, Matt’s thoughts turned to Springtrap in the VR game, wandering endlessly, aimlessly, with nowhere to go and no one to kill. Matt smiled. It served the psychotic bunny right for killing him all those times.
It was strange that thinking about the trapped Springtrap made Matt feel a little better. Maybe he couldn’t control the people around him, but he was in charge when it came to the game. If he didn’t like the way things were going, he just had to do a little bit of programming to change the outcome.
After a mostly sleepless night, Matt was happy to be back at work, where at least things were interesting some of the time. In the break area, he helped himself to a cup of coffee he knew would be bad, then made his way to his office to see how Springtrap’s night had been. At least Matt knew that there was somebody who had had a worse night than his.
Matt put on his headset and entered the game. He walked down the dim hallway and turned right to arrive at the room with the doors. He chose the door on the right. Thankfully, Springtrap wasn’t there, so he was granted access to the rest of the maze. Matt walked around the maze for a long time, but there was no sign of Springtrap. No jump scares, no sneaking up behind him, no quick glimpses of the rabbit at the end of a hall.
It was strange. The way the game was programmed, he should have seen Springtrap by now.
Matt took off his headset and opened the game’s data log. For several in-game days, Springtrap had wandered around the perimeters of the maze, looking for someone to kill. This was what Matt had expected.
But he hadn’t expected what he saw next.
After all those days with no one to kill when killing was his life’s only purpose, Springtrap seemed to spawn a new version of himself. Immediately, the new version killed the old version. And then the current Springtrap would somehow produce a newer version, which would then kill it.
The cycle went on and on: creation of a new AI, followed by the newly created one destroying the creator. The killings got faster and faster, one right after another, seemingly as soon as the newest Springtrap was able to spawn an even newer model. The murders grew in violence just as they grew in speed. Stabbings, slashings, decapitations. When Matt saw the word disembowelment in the data log, he felt the coffee lurch in his stomach.
While bizarre, the log did at least answer the question of how Springtrap had spent the night. What it didn’t answer was where Springtrap was now.
The rabbit was programmed into the game’s code. He didn’t have the ability to truly, permanently kill himself. He would always respawn. He had to be in there somewhere.
Matt searched the game’s VR for Springtrap. He searched parts of the game where Springtrap wasn’t even programmed to be. After having spawned and killed half a million versions of himself over the course of the night, the rabbit seemed to have disappeared.
Except that he couldn’t really disappear. It wasn’t possible.
The code. The answer had to be in the code.
Matt could be absentminded sometimes. Hannah used to tease him about his endless ability to lose his car keys or his cell phone, but he had an amazing memory when it came to programming. As a result, it was shocking when he looked at the program for Springtrap and saw that it now bore absolutely no resemblance to the program he had created. Springtrap’s programming was fractured, splintered, unrecognizable. He had no choice but to remove it and start over.
He went through the usual steps to remove it, but the damaged program remained.
He figured that, since he was tired, he might have entered something incorrectly. He tried again, but the results were the same. He tried again and again for an hour. Two hours. Three. But the results never varied. The damaged program could not be removed.
It was as if Springtrap, in one last spectacular suicide, had blown himself to smithereens, and now all those tiny bits of him were scattered throughout the game’s code, as impossible to retrieve as individual specks of dust.
Matt started to sweat. All over the internet and in every game store, ads for the new Five Nights at Freddy’s virtual reality game abounded, announcing a release date that was all too soon. And now the game’s program was defective in a way that apparently could not be fixed? Matt’s revenge on Springtrap seemed ridiculously small compared to Springtrap’s revenge on him.
Maybe if he went into the game one more time, he could figure out some way to reverse the damage.
Matt’s avatar ran around the periphery of the maze looking for signs of Springtrap. He turned a corner and caught sight of something green up ahead.
Springtrap’s lifeless body lay around the maze’s next bend. It was splayed on its back with its torso split wide open. Matt kneeled for a closer look. Springs and gears protruded from the edge of the gaping wound. How could something so mechanical manage to look so dead? Springtrap’s blank, sightless stare was horrible to behold. Matt reached up to the rabbit’s eyelids to close them.
As soon as he made physical contact, Matt felt a sharp sting combined with a mild electrical jolt that reminded him of the pain of getting his fraternity letters tattooed on his ankle in college. He pulled the avatar’s hand away.
Bunny Call Page 7