a haunting

@"hyperhurricane"

Snow laughed cheerfully as she walked around the different rooms of the pizzeria, playing with children, singing or simply helping the employees to deliver food to the customers. Now, this last action should and was considered a major glitch on her system by the employees. She only was supposed to deliver cake to the children in extremely specific parties, but she delivered all kind of food to all kinds of customers all the time.

Yet, none in the pizzeria had event tried to fix this supposed glitch, as it allowed the employees to relax and take it easy as the animatronic did the work that they were supposed to be doing. It was a win-win situations, as the employees could keep up easily with the orders, even during the busiest days, and still have time to chill, and Snow had lots of fun delivering the food. The only downside was that at the end of each day the cleaning staff had to go and clean her fur before leaving, which one way or another always ended up stained with pizza sauce, soda or other kind of stuff like those.

Once she was sure that nobody else needed anything and that the children were busy with their own stuff she returned to her usual spot on the stage, being the goofy and friendly animatronic that she usually was at day. Her eyes caught someone coming in and she looked at him, she never had seen him before and consequently, her facial recognitions got triggered on the act, saving him on her files as well as an empty document to add further info, that way she would be able to recognize him again if they crossed paths on the future.

She noticed that the employee that was attending him had to go to the kitchen and for some reason still hadn’t come back, leaving the guy without a menu, oh well. She jumped off the stage and walked towards the counter, where the menus were placed for the employees to take. She grabbed one and walked towards the table with the newcomer, handing the menu at him with a mechanical smile “Welcome!” She felt some kind of odd fascination towards this boy, he felt…oddly familiar, but she wasn’t sure why. She knew by the triggering of her facial recognition systems that they had never seen each other before, but still…

Snow let out a small goofy mechanical laugh, this wasn’t the first guy that was surprised by her strange behavior, and she was sure that he wouldn’t be the last either. Since she came here she didn’t mind giving some hints to the ones around her, too bad that almost none noticed these or simply didn’t paid attention to them. She just wasn’t willing to go on and just expose herself as a haunted animatronic to the world though, enough trouble she had caused to the previous restaurants where she had worked without confirming the rumors of a ghost, she didn’t want to put this one in risk of closing if she could avoid it.

“I-I-I have some artificial inte-e-elligence if that’s what you mean-an. Not more than the-e-e others animatronics though” Hmm, she really needed to do something with her voice box. She knew that little kids liked her glitchy voice, for them it was funny, reason more than enough to keep it, but maybe, just maybe, she should upgrade herself to turn on and off these glitches to be able to talk normally with other customers “Would you mind to-o-o give me your name?” She needed info to link to his face in her face recognition database, she had learned that calling people just ‘Guy’ or ‘Girl’ soon became highly inefficient and confusing.

“If you do-o-on’t know what to order, I would suggest the bacon, pepperoni-ni-ni and sausage one, that’s my favorite” Or…well, at least it was, when she still could eat it. Now she simply couldn’t taste anything and trying to eat a slice of pizza would only make her greasy and would risk her internal mechanisms. She knew that she was supposed to suggest the pepperoni or queen ones, as these were the most popular, but she couldn’t help it.

@"hyperhurricane"

As the name was given a full file was written with everything she had learned from this guy for later use and easier approach to him, after all, it was part of both her programming and soul’s current personality to be friendly and want everyone to feel comfortable around her.

She nodded “Whole pizza o-o-or slices?” She pointed at the options, where you could read the options that you had, which were junior, personal, medium, familiar, extra-large and king-sized whole pizza as well as the individual slices. She was fairly surprised with his request, but after a second or two she just laughed a bit “Go ahead!” She was way too used to contact, children loved to play with her, climbing on her, hugging her…well, to make a long story short, when she was around the children the challenge was to not be touched by them.

By the way that he acted she could tell that he was a bit older than he was willing to show though. He wasn’t exactly the most mature boy around, but he obviously didn’t acted accordingly to the age that his system calculated for him, at all. The other animatronics would just label him as an overly mature child, but she wasn’t forced to act based completely on the programming and so she could enter, edit and save the files when she shouldn’t be able to, adding this bit of info immediately.

@"hyperhurricane"

After Hal pulled his hand away she went to the kitchen. Slices were usually ready to take and carry to the customers right then and there, but whole pizzas of any size had to be ordered to the chefs and consequently it would take a bit of waiting for it to be ready. Luckily the personal pizza wasn’t that big, so with fifteen minutes, give or take, it should be ready.

She went into sleep-mode, in which she almost deactivated herself. The people on the kitchen really didn’t mind, after all, she wasn’t getting in the way and they already had got used to this, it wasn’t unusual for her to just wait for her orders this way. It also made time pass by faster than usual for some reason and from getting bored while fully active to go into this sleep-mode, she went for the last. She was taken back the awaken world by the voice of the chef, her order was ready.

With a smile, she thanked the chef and took the pizza with her and went towards the table where Hal was sitting, placing it in front of him “There you go-o. You want a-a-anything else?” She asked politely. She noticed the look on his eyes though, a weird mix or interest, confusion and a bit of fear. She knew that she dropped hints here and there, but she wasn’t expecting anyone to actually caring enough to pick them up and start solving the puzzle, and even less to have anyone guessing so quickly “Are you ok?” She asked, tilting her bead a bit.

Snow grabbed Hal’s menu and opened it on the drinks section, it was easier to list all of the drinks and having to endure the glitches while she did so “These ones!” She chuckled a bit at the boy’s nervous behavior, his next words allowing her to know for sure that he had found out her little not-so-well-hidden secret and just let out a small mechanical laugh.

She nodded when he asked if they had Dr. Pepper “By the-e way, you got thi-i-ings wrong, there are no ghosts-osts. There is just o-o-one ghost” She said almost in a whisper before walking back to the kitchen to get the boy’s drink. She wasn’t sure of how he was going to react, usually people freaked out when they found out that there was a ghost on the pizzeria, from time to time they grew curious and started to shoot questions at her, others just shrugged it off.

Soon enough she returned to the boy’s table and placed his drink in front of him “If you ne-ne-need anything else just call me, ok-k?” She then walked towards the children area, and sooner than later the small children started to play with her, some even started to climb on her. She just chuckled a bit, helping the kids and keeping a close eye on them all so they wouldn’t hurt themselves.