Chapter 38: A Strange Gadget/ R 4

William turned the update memo over in his hands, then reread it again. The words stood out from the creased yellow paper, a dry note written in fine black ink: "Maintenance Invoices, Maintenance Schedules, and Manager's notes received. Would recommend gathering more evidence. Suggest copyright and patent material." He glanced at the phone sitting on his desk. He had just gotten off the line with the patent attorney, having requested that they submit the patent to the defense case. It was now up to the firm to approve his request and send the papers to the court. Getting out of his chair and stretching, William asked himself, "What else can we use?", as he started to pace around his own office, racking his brains for possibilities.

"Perhaps we could submit the security footage of Chica." William stopped mid pace, his gaze fixing itself on the door. Jeremy leaned against the door frame, a strange looking gadget in one hand and a key in the other. He handed the gadget to William, explaining, "Edwin left this in my office by mistake. He called it a "Data Diver"- he figured it might come in handy should you ever need access to his data." William examined the device- it looked vaguely like an alien wrench connected to a wearable battery pack by a wire. A small digital display on the front of the wrench flashed through a series of displays: The MCM logo, his initials, a clearance level indicated by a bowtie- and then displayed a blank screen. William pressed a small green button to the side of the screen- his initials reappeared, with the clearance level displayed underneath. The clearance level read, "Executive.", and was paired with a bowtie icon. William shrugged and turned the Data Diver off, hooking the battery pack to his belt and stuffing the "wrench" into his pocket. He turned his attention to Jeremy, asking, "So, where is the footage stored?" Jeremy flipped his key as if it were a coin, caught it, and said, "The computer terminal's right this way.", leading William out of Parts and Services.

They stopped in front of a plain gray door in the back wall of one of the backrooms. As Jeremy fiddled with the lock, William looked around. It was an odd looking backroom- the wall behind them was dominated by a single, large window- with drab gray tiling decorating the rest. There was only a single open doorway- the one which they had entered through- on the left, and an open ventilation shaft on the right hand side of the room. William couldn't help but think of the observation rooms in his brother's secret animatronic laboratory... he walked towards the ventilation shaft and peered in, noticing that it was big enough for an animatronic to crawl through. A sharp click grabbed William's attention- Jeremy pulled the door open, revealing a seemingly empty space- and flipped on the light switch. A bulb flickered on, revealing a spiral staircase descending into the darkness.

William and Jeremy descended the stairs, Jeremy explaining, "The storage system's so big and heavy that we had to have it installed below ground... it makes up for it by having enough storage space to handle decade's worth of information, and processors capable of working with data from multiple information channels at once." Intrigued, William asked, "An overarching computer system? Here? Where on earth did George find the money for... never mind. How often do you come down here?" Jeremy shrugged and replied, "Not often. Last time I came down here I had to manually archive some footage." They reached the bottom of the staircase, and were met with a massive terminal- a wall of drawers, buttons, and blank screens. Jeremy hunted through the maze of buttons and pressed one. With a mechanical whir, R 4 sprang to life.

A mechanical voice announced, "Reboot complete. Artificial Foreman is now standing by." Jeremy grabbed a blank cassette tape from a box of similar tapes, and William followed suit. Jeremy remarked, "The system should have all of the maintenance footage of Chica archived in the Parts and Service subsection...", loading a blank tape into one of the slots in a central port just above his head. William loaded his blank in, then retrieved two more blank tapes and placed them in the remaining slots. Jeremy pressed a button just below the port, and the four tapes slid into the interior of the machine with a click. The system confirmed, "Tapes accepted. Waiting for command." Jeremy hunted for another button in the central panel, straining to reach it. R 4 boomed, "Data Retrieval Requested. Which subsystem are you trying to access?" Another poke. "Security Archives open." A map appeared on screen, showing Fredbear's Family Diner in a simplified format. William took a step back, doing a double take. "Select one or more folders." Jeremy sighed and started entering a command into one of the side panels instead. "Parts and Service Archive Selected. Show Stage Archives Selected. Identifying footage including: Faz Ent. Model 03- Chica."

As the machine hummed in the background, William admitted, "I feel kind of nervous. Even with the defense we have, I worry we won't have enough to keep Chica out of Sherman and Sherman's hands..." Jeremy flinched, and commented, "Yeah... at least you didn't have to fight to change your name... or the sex on your birth certificate." William stared at Jeremy, repeating, "Wait... you had to fight to change your name and the sex on your birth certificate?" Jeremy nodded and added, "I was living in a very... liberal state... and I barely won my case. Even the hospital nearly misgendered me and... used my deadname... when Cassidy was born. And the rest of my family... they still misgender me and use my deadname. I moved out here to get away from them." It was William's turn to flinch. "I... don't know what to say." Jeremy simply shook his head. "I try not to talk about it if I don't have to. What I wanted to say was... I think we have more of an airtight defense with all of the evidence we've submitted. I think Fazbear Entertainment has a better shot to win this case than Sherman and Sherman do." William relaxed a little, and remarked, "All I'm waiting on is for George to get the copyright in. We should be good to go once he submits that..." With another click, R 4 dropped the tapes into slot that sat around Jeremy's shoulder height. William and Jeremy unloaded the tapes from the machine, and William remarked, "I'll run these over to the attorney's office. Hopefully, Sherman and Sherman haven't decided to pull some legal shenanigans on us..." Jeremy nodded in agreement as he switched the terminal off. "Agreed. Now that I think about it, your brother seems like the type to pull some shenanigans of his own..." William agreed, "I've noticed that. In fact, I'd make the case that a countersuit is the most legal thing he'd do to Sherman and Sherman." As they clambered back up the metal staircase, Jeremy remarked, "...Which leaves us between a rock and a hard place."