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July 23rd, 1978
William Afton was not a happy man. He rarely was on the best of days, and that was only because one of his programs finally worked as they were supposed to. Would that everything in his life was as easily manipulated as them, he wouldn’t be in this situation.
Logically speaking, he knew Henry was right when he suggested that they make these tapes. Fredbear’s Family Diner was growing more popular than ever and the two of them couldn’t always be on hand to teach the new employees how to not get themselves killed on shift. Why it fell on him to make the tapes was beyond him. Did Henry doubt his competence?
With a sigh, he leaned over to his tape recorder and turned it on, “Uh, hello? Hello hello? Welcome to your new career as a performer…”
After finishing his recordings, he listened through them to make sure that they were clear enough. Satisfied, he marked them as complete and put them in a box for an employee to fetch later. With that tedious task out of the way, he could sort through his emails, finish the accounting he had been forced to pause and then get back to his latest creation. Hopefully, that would be the end of it, now and forever.
March 2nd, 1984
William had volunteered to record the instructions this time. The contents were, of course, pre-written and approved by him, but this was the only way to ensure that nobody, accidentally or otherwise, left damning evidence lying around in the instructional tapes. After all, he had convinced everyone involved that it was in the company’s best interest to cover up the deaths to the best of their ability. Naturally, though, they didn’t suspect the killer was somebody within the company.
The recordings themselves were fairly self-explanatory, warning against the use of the old Springlock Animatronics in favour of the new versions due to ‘safety’. Fortunately for him, some idiot managed to get himself killed by triggering the springlocks long before he had to come up with a reason to stop their use by people who would notice the bloodstains and probably report them, which made for quite the convenient excuse.
Finishing the last of the recordings, a notice about the safe rooms he had had installed, he listened back to them and, satisfied, put them aside. This was his only major task for the day, after which he would be free to experiment with remnant more. If he was right about its properties then he suspected there would be many more missing children incidents to come…
November, 1987
“Hey, Dave! Can I bother you for something?” William’s boss said as William walked through the door.
He resisted the urge to snap at the fool, settling instead for giving him a patient look and saying, “Sure, what is it?”
“Matthew asked to be moved to the day shift. He was complaining about the old animatronics again, so you should look at them in addition to the rest.”
William nodded, not particularly surprised. Honestly, he was just amazed and annoyed that Matthew had managed to not die.
However, as he turned to leave, his boss continued, “Actually, we’re going to have to have you call the new guy once he comes in, teach him the ropes you know. You know them better than anyone, after all.”
He knew his boss was trying to butter him up, but didn’t particularly care, “Sure thing.”
With that, he hurried away to work on the animatronics as his job actually entailed, feeling the eyes of both his boss and the Puppet on him. Sure, it was a risk to return to the scene of a crime he had narrowly evaded arrest for, but it was needed for his experiments. More data on how the spirits reacted to challenges could inform his next movements. If he could figure out how much the Puppet remembered of her past, he could work out the kinks in his plan.
As the week went on and William tweaked the new animatronics to be more and more aggressive, gradually and unnoticeably of course, to gauge how the old animatronics would react, he spoke with the new night guard on the phone, or more accurately spoke at them. He didn’t know and didn’t care who they were, but they were once again annoyingly good at their job. Aside from the amusing amount of reassurances that his manager had him read out about his past activities, it remained fairly simple, until Thursday.
On Thursday, the day shift guard was targeted by the animatronics, in an action he had not orchestrated. But he knew who had. And if she had, then it meant he was at least coming close. After all, the day shift guard had looked at least superficially like him, so she may well have been aiming for her killer. Alas, for poor little Charlie, she was wrong. Oh so wrong.
With that man’s life ruined and William planning to dump as many crimes of his on the man’s head as he could get away with, Friday was a simple affair, or at least it was for him, while Saturday surprised him by the nightguard actually showing up, despite the building being on lockdown due to an investigation into the day shift guard’s crimes.
After that Saturday he could confidently say that the restaurant wasn’t going to make it, and quit. He was tempted to taunt the Puppet for her mistake, but his rational side stopped him. After all, if she believed him to be dead, her next moves could prove enlightening indeed.
August 18th, 1994
William sat inside his office, speaking as calmly into the phone as he could manage given the circumstances. It had taken multiple identities working as guards for the spirits to finally begin to recognize him, which did not bode well for remnant as a form of eternal life. Now, however? They remembered him and were working to kill him. They wouldn’t succeed, of course, he had planned ahead, but it was amusing to see them try.
He heard the sound of Freddy’s music box as he spoke, “You know…”
He was cut off and the phone thrown to the floor by Fredbear as it teleported in, right before the power went out. It was fine, it was all according to his plan.
He gripped the axe and swung it at the first animatronic to enter, Chica. She screamed as the axe came close to severing her arm, and backed away cautiously. In fact, all of them seemed wary, aside from Fredbear. He had his information and his alibi, so he could afford to leave before things got more dangerous.
This meant dealing with Fredbear, so he swung his axe at it, which it was too slow and broken to intercept, allowing him to knock its head aside. Hallucinations flashed before his eyes, but he ignored them in favour of pushing past Foxy and Bonnie and making for the exit.
He could come back later, because there was still one more experiment to run, the most important in fact, even above the test of memory. After all, what good was immortality if someone could end it by smashing you to bits?