Remember? How could he forget? That moment when the unremarkable had become remarkable, when nothing had become something. That precious little moment that was the source of so much pain and so much joy. It had been the beginning and the end of his world.

It sat drooped in the corner of the hidden room, left there by careless hands as it had been every night after the happy faces and warm bodies were chased away by the dark. A tool and a prop, it lay with other broken bits and pieces in the lonely space waiting to be either fixed or discarded.

There had been a time when its fur had once glistened a deep gold; its rabbit ears had stood pricked on its head and electric life had buzzed through copper veins. But time devours everything, somethings more greedily that others, and with each passing year a little bit more had been stolen from the mechanical mascot. Its once golden fur had dulled to a warm yellow hue, its ears flopped tiredly over its eyes and the electric buzz was little more than a soft hum.

As it sat hopeless and lifeless two figures moved through the silent, lonely room to hover over the yellow body with dull enthusiasm.

"Is there anything worth salvaging?"

"Don't think so. It's old technology anyway," the taller man whispered.

"Old and dangerous. I can't believe they let people get in these things. It was a disaster waiting to happen."

"Still, can't hurt to take a look, especially with the new guys on the way."

Toy eyes stared unseeing up at the bent figures that prodded and poked its metal guts with tentative fingers and strange implements. They fiddled and muttered softly as they laid into its innards, tweaking this and moving that, pushing buttons and flicking switches. Whatever they were looking for though they didn't find and so the fingers that tinkered stopped prodding and the unimpressed voices slowly muted and faded. They left the little room to the quiet of the night, unaware that something imperceptible and unknown had been changed in that moment.

A malfunction caused by unqualified hands had left instructions feeding back into themselves in an infinite loop. Basic routines and simple orders split and grouped like electric DNA that in turn was pored over and over in order to extract more information and more complete orders. Little by little pieces were broken, shared and reformed until something new emerged and spilled over circuitry like mercury.

Its faux fur bristled as ears that should have been deaf listened to the dead silence of its storage room and the restaurant beyond. The silence was wrong, something deep and fundamental to its being told it so. Receivers and sensors had stretched into the night seeking sounds of life. It heard crickets, the summer wind through trees, the barks of dogs and the occasional happy shout and cry from revelers. A world beyond the confines of the restaurant suddenly opened up and nurtured the stirring corner of its limited mind, the ebb and flow of life creeping through the night and into its gently clicking engine.

It sat in the corner, shaking and whirring very slightly. A relentless wash of simple on/off yes/no instructions melded together so complex and numerous that they had begun to form the bare bones of concepts. Its insufficient mind convulsed as the simple calculation machine had been assaulted with new purpose. Program loops dissolved into the haphazard sparks of thought which turned inward and then outward again. All the random, self-generated data condensed, collected and culminated until finally it exploded like a supernova and engulfed every inch of the mechanical mind in changes total and absolute. The toy eyes had lit up and the once simple machine found itself truly seeing through its own eyes for the first time.
With a strange alien consciousness it reflected on its own reflection and felt something akin to curiosity. It looked at its limp form without horror or pride and had known that it was in fact he and he was Spring Bonnie.

The glowing eyes looked around searching for the short people with happy faces that filled his memories. He knew he existed for them and that they were his everything, his purpose.

"Happiness and joy."

He made the words that he had thought and not understood but somehow understood. Those words somehow nourished him, drove him and compelled him.

He looked and listened but had been greeted with hollow nothingness; he was alone with his reflection and the cool darkness. He decided he didn't like the stillness or the darkness. Not being alone was better. He needed to find the happy shouts and squeals, the little voices.

The sound of footfalls on concrete made his ears prick slightly. Perhaps, he had thought, there were people through the window, in that other place I haven't been?

So he tried to move and find his way to the new other places, but no matter how hard he willed, wished or begged his body remained numb and limp.

The tall people could make him move but they were gone too, there was no one.

He thought long and hard, dredging through his insufficient memories for answers. He couldn't remember being alone before, the fragments of memory told him that much. Perhaps they hadn't meant to leave him here? Perhaps someone had made a mistake?

The sun rose and he heard the tall people arrive to do the things they did, the small people could be heard cheering and squealing, still he waited. The sun dipped and fell from the sky but no one ever came.

As endless time stretched on around him his metal shuddered and slumped under the unsympathetic, dark. Dull eyes once alive with electric life once again stared blankly at his reflection in the black and white checker tiles.

He did nothing, he couldn't. He didn't move, he just sat watched and waited. Sometimes he saw the cold stars through the tiny window and sometimes he saw the sun. Sometimes he found songs with happy words from somewhere within and sung them to himself and sometimes he remembered when there was colour and laughter. Strangers and shadowed faces sometimes punctuated the monotony. He wanted to announce himself, wanted to tell them what he was but he couldn't. His metal buckled with every passing day, sadder and older.

On that particular night though things had been different.

Voices! His eyes light up with what little life they have left, his nearly deaf ears twitching in the direction off the sounds.

"No. No. No! It's not possible! Y-you can't…"

It felt like an eternity since company. He watched the shadows move, saw a figure stumble back and fall. He remembered this person from some old memory; they had sometimes stood in the shadows with him. Yes, it was the smiling man only now there was no smile on his face. His eyes bulged and his mouth hung open like a gaping fish as he scurried into the dim light. There were other figures, five of them, but they were hard to make out. It was almost as if they were constantly shifting and changing. Some part of him registered the wrongness of the scene playing out before him, but the promise of companionship melted away all hesitation.

The smiling man spun around and saw him slumped in the corner, his look of fear turning to one of determination and mirth as he scrambled toward the aging animatronic.

Spring Bonnie suddenly felt himself moving through space. Finally, finally someone had remembered him, someone had come for him and his loneliness had come to an end. He settled around the feel of warmth and life and it was good, it had been so long. It touched the metal in a fine way and cauterizes the lonely dark.

He stood with a vigour and strength that wasn't his own. The heavy thump of life within made him happy beyond belief. He could hear the voices of little people, whispering like soft static and he was drawn to them, but there was something wrong.

As something wet and cold fell on his head and seeped into his joints they stood before him, little boys and girls of different heights and ages, their clothes rumpled and dirty, their posture skewed and unnatural. They weren't laughing or cheering, just standing silent and un-moving. The little girl with a pretty red bow suddenly stepped back, her staccato, broken movements unsettling Spring Bonnie. In the light he could see her pale, snow white face, and dead black eyes. She looked into him with inhuman desperation, waiting, expecting.

The death which seeped from their little bodies and into the room was almost suffocating. It was a growing pressure that threatened to crush him. He felt desperation and it was horrible. He wanted to know what to do to make them happy, he silently begged and pleaded but they all just stared back at him with the same hungry expectancy.

He turned his small mind searching for something that would make the little crying people happy; he wondered what they were waiting for. Suddenly his body pressed violently in all directions, his jaw descended and his bones snapped together from the skin of his suit. But there wasn't the usual click of latches seizing together, or the soothing flow of life giving power. Some viscous fluid sprayed across the floor and walls with a sickening splat, warmth slowly dripped and oozed through rivets and over circuits. He wiggled his parts together but the metal corkscrewed and cut through something soft and warm. Just as he gasped, frantic for that breath of electricity, a chilling guttural scream ripped from within and was suddenly cut short with a choked gurgle.

What-what happened?

A crimson pool spilled out over his feet and across the black and white tiles. He stared at the vision of red horror with numb shock. Such a rich colour, it had been so long since he had last seen something so bright. But why was it coming from him? He looked down at himself. The red bits that hung from his joints and fell from the holes in his faux fur looked like brutal and wrong, like bad consciences, and evil dreams. That horrid redness, the evil, dripping wet was so unfamiliar and so terrifying.

He fell to the ground into the rivers of red, twitching and convulsing as the life that filled him was violently sucked away.

The small people looked at him with their dead eyes. The expectation was gone, replaced with a sadness which he somehow knew was meant for him. Slowly they melted into the moonlight leaving only the little girl with the red bow. As he watched she shimmered, her skin seemed to warm and her eyes filled with colour, it was almost as if a dark shroud had been pulled away. She beamed almost as bright as the moon as she looked at him one last time and smiled a happy smile for him. Then like the others she disappeared into the night and he was left alone again.

His own light started to fade as he thought of the little person and her smiling face. His ears drooped and his body slumped but it wasn't so bad this time. That smile echoed across his mind like the ringing of a church bell, louder than all other memories and thoughts. There was so much relief and joy in that smile, and he had given that to her. He wasn't sure how, but that didn't matter, that deep part of him was pleased. Perhaps, perhaps after many more days and nights someone else could find him and he could make them as happy as he had made the little girl with the bow.

That cheerful hope was the last thought that crossed his metal mind as the last of the electricity and life sizzled away and the peaceful nothingness finally took him.