"Would you mind trying it again for me?" 

There had been a pause on the recording, the fuzzy glare of the colorless screen casting a pale light from its CRT panel. The TV sat in the loneliness of a dark room. One behind the dark glass of a window. A one sided affair for an often one manned station as it was now whose makeup was a thing of the dim red lights of switchboards and camera lenses braced to the glass from multiple angels. The fail safe for those beyond the other side of the glass should they fail or even, as it remained a possibility, become damaged. The shelves of the monitoring station were a library of black VHS tapes and white stickered ends. Signed and dated one after the other in their uniform rows of ever circulating order. A plastic ashtray sat concernedly towards the edge of a table, its contents the collective minutes and hours, days and nights of men and women who had found its use habitual. It really needed a cleaning something fierce, its once vibrant blue color now faded beneath a film of yellowed ash and varied finishes of a smoke. What had it all been for? What indeed. Tired eyes continued to watch the screen, taking in the tests in all their fullness. 

"Again? You sure like watching me do that that, huh. This is rather silly, but alright." 

The voice had been feminine, giggly and compressed through the speakers of the screen. The uncomfortable folded metal of the chair filled squeaked with shifting weight, whoever watching that day seeing into the oddly rainbow-esque colors of the room on the other side of the glass and the two figures who casually chatted under the cameras, taking down every word and pause as they had done for some months now. One of them had been human and the other had been...human as well in a way, at least in how it spoke...but everything else about it was anything but. Samuel Buttons sat rather comfortably in a chair on his side of the table; casually even, with the black pants of his legs crossed and his green eyes staring intently towards the other end of things. It had been a rather long table, wooden and varnished a deep, dark brown. Perhaps ten, maybe twelve feet wide in length. And infront of him, not far from Sam's grasp was an empty ceramic cup, half a smiling unicorn visible to his side of things. Both  an addition so recent to the room that you could smell the freshness of wood's cut alone. A lot of things were made down where they were. Very, very deep down where the lights of the overhead were like a sun, and the recycled air flowed like the wind through the rattling vein work of ducts within the ceilings and walls. The one in the far corner of the bright, cheerful room had been ever so gently ratling with the flow of the cold air coming out.

It was always rather cold in that room and the many halls outside it. If you could tear away the plaster and paint, crack and drag out the concrete floors, you would find the reality of the cavernous stone and rock you were in the belly of. Yes, a lot of things were made down here where prying eyes could not pry so well in the cold and dark. Plastics were made, metals were moulded, wood was hammered and glued. Monitors glowed with the countless lines of software and coding, and the rubber insulation of wires aplenty were taken along the journey behind the many closed doors towards their destination culminating among many other mechanical components and parts in something like...

The motion had been far quicker than the first time around. A blur of a hand that did not belong to him reaching the cup, thin, long gloved fingers just as quickly yet gingerly grasping it by the handle and whipping it away far back enough that the man would have to get up on the table and sprint for it. Now it sat in the dark pink plastic palm of a hand whose owner stared back at him with a pair of eyes the color of green apples, and the size of literal saucers. Unblinking, mechanical, unnatural, yet ever so highly expressive. And what could they say now, sitting upon the shining, bubblegum pink face of a machine who answered to the name of Mommy? Amusement. Her lips, drawn out in a great line of a smile, the print of artificial red lipstick upon them, practically yelled of absolute cockiness now. She was a marvel, albeit a rather spindly, long armed marvel of machinery, housed within the form of an exaggerated character, a cartoon as if invading reality itself. And she was big. The handful of hairs along her head were as thick, darkened pink tubes, a singular lone one curled atop as a cinnamon roll not far above her face. Though she had been sitting, the length of her legs had forced them to bend and contort like arches along both sides of the table's edges. If she were to stand at that moment, Mommy long legs, as her name suggested, would tower over Sam like a spider might a fruit fly.

But those arms and legs of hers were still deceptive even then. There was an elasticity to them, a resilient tension that they could go further, so much further than you could guess. But guessing was not why either of them were in that room at the moment. Answers were; and they came in the form of a pretty little, black eyed unicorn printed upon a cup in her hand. It was impressive how quickly, how easily she had taken it again, and even with the light rattling of the vent, he could hear the beginning stretching, the pulling material as it further expanded outward once again to set the cup back in front of him. She even gave it a turn so that the handle was facing him. 

"And how was that?" 

Her voice had been softer then, laced with a sense of pride at her own abilities. Her head had lowered, the long, rope of a neck it sat upon giving her enough length that she could rest it upon the table, but instead found it on the back of her hands, her elbows pressing into the table with a decent creak. She was scanning him, those eyes ever so slightly moving, inching off almost somewhere else in ways that always made Samuel wonder just how much she saw of everything, every moment. 

"That was...very good! Incredible! Granted I'm no scientist but..."

Sam had trailed off with a chuckle. No, he was not a scientist. Nor an engineer, or a software analyst, a coder, and not at all up there on the great food chain you called a corporation. Samuel was a janitor. Had been for six years then, and those first couple were becoming rather hazy to him when it came to the operations of the upper levels of the facility where he'd began. Maybe it's something about the lack of sun, maybe it's about how things are handled different down below, but being a janitor in the depths of the place was an experience that wiped away any thought you would have of the position. The constant radio alarms, the office rundowns, the hazards. People had no damn idea the kinds of hazards maintenance and janitorial worked with. When he'd began, Sam saw himself waxing and polishing laminate floors and emptying recycle bins or mopping up the occasional puddle of vomit. It happened in public spaces. He still did that on occasion even. He just could not have imagined himself stuffing every part he could into a hazmat along with twenty or more people in a cramped room like their lives depended on it. Because the truth was, sometimes it did.                

All far below a building where, as far as the general public was concerned, was the happiest place on this Earth. Yet beneath the floorings of the gift shops and visitor center, the assembly lines and boxes whose inhabitants stared out with plastic eyes and silent smiles...Playtime Co. was anything but happy when it came to its underbelly. That was not to say it was all bad, at least not the way that Sam saw it. But it was far from good either when alert drills were being done in the sector you were in that day. It was rather an abrupt change of scenery so to speak when he was urged into the role. An uncomfortable urge even as he was pressured into acceptance. He liked the job then and didn't want to lose it. He still liked the job; and were you not certain if being where he was had been a promotion or demotion, the Thirty two an hour bump in pay gave a rather straight forward answer. The kind of money to die for. All that being said, the question was becoming more glaring as to why Sam, a janitor, was sitting with a giant cartoon equivalent of a toy spider. Something that was relatively new on his schedule. It began months ago with a single mistake and a bit of curiosity in the form of the turning of a doorknob.

When it came to the every day life of working in such a place, no matter what line of work you were in or where you were going, you would see things. Pictures, paintings, vending machines even all with the faces and illustrations of many characters that proliferated and made the place. The Poppy Playtime friends came in many shapes and forms. Mommy was one of them, however this Mommy was a secret. A more and more unnatural secret that Sam would come to learn and never be able to find answer for when it came to the question of her being. A secret he intruded upon in the perfect storm of laxed guard and untimely neglect. The doors hadn't been guarded. The keypad had been on the frits coming and going when it came to its power. And when he'd turned the knob to open the door, his alarm at what he walked into, staring upon the colorful horror, was only shadowed by the absolute confusion and curiosity of the thing as it did indeed quickly shadow him beneath its tall, pink form. The door had closed, the lock having came on again, and his screams would never get past the reflective glass of the windows. Certainly he had pounded his fists against the door, and certainly its arms had coiled around him before lifting him effortlessly off the floor like a cotton stuffed doll that would never stop screaming but...that screaming had eventually turned to fearful whispers and shaken murmurings. It was rather quite the scene, a grown man cradled in the arms of a wide eyed monster that stared with an unnervingly intense smile upon its bright pink face.  

"Who are you?" The voice had been bright and cheerful, smooth like honey, and to Sam's surprise, coming from it.

He had been like a deer in headlights, as if he had grown unsure he could even speak a single word from his now strained throat. But the words had eventually come, as timid and uncertain as they were. 

"I-I'm Sam..." 

As the adrenaline began to settle and his mind calm down, he had recognized her finally. How could he not when he'd seen those large eyes on the many posters or behind the plastic cover of a toy box staring back at him? Playtime Co. had a history as far back as the 1950's; a history that flourished its namesake with the Poppy real girl doll. A doll which had released to mass attention and the popularity that came with it that would cement Playtime's foot in American culture's door. Since then the many toys and characters, mascots and product lines had built a plethora, an army even of the strange and colorful toys inherent to its name. Huggy Wuggy, Kissy Missy, Bunzo Bunny and many more packed every nook and cranny a toy store's shelf could offer, one after the next. Plastic Lunch boxes shined with the smile of Bron the dinosaur, yellowed, flowery cotton blankets showed the happy buzzing of Cat-Bee. Then there were the smiling critters, one of so, so many stuffed animals vying for the arms of children from factory to register counter. Then there was Mommy long legs. She had been a more recent entry in the plastic doll series of the 90's, at least as far as Sam had been aware. Even working every day in such a place, it wasn't like Sam kept up with these kinds of things. He wasn't a collector and he certainly wasn't a father. But the one thing he had been at least for the moment, was a mixture of slowly diminishing fear and further rising confusion. She was real? Actually real? Had the other toys been too? This and so many more questions were bubbling up. 

"You're...Mommy long legs. Right?" It had been an earnest and timid question. One that she had met with a small laugh.

"Of course I am! There's no other Mommy like me!" The wide eyed smile on her face was slowly becoming less unnerving to him with every soft word that passed her lips.

"What are you doing here, Mommy? Why are you here?"

The smile had begun to fade, her gaze drawing away, and it looked to Sam as if she too was trying to find an answer at the same time as he was. 

"Questions." The answer had been as short from her as it had been helpful which wasn't very much at all. "I don't like this room. I don't like the questions, or the people. But I must. I have to! The children, all those boys and girls...they need a guardian, a protector. A mother."

Though he had never seen it, Sam had known what Mommy had been referring to. The orphanage initiative that had been a part of the factory as well. If you weren't to question it, you would imagine such a thing to be innocently sincere enough. If you were more on the cynical side you might even say it was nothing more than a PR grab and tax write-off to pad the stock exchange another dollar or two. But you didn't see any children playing around on the upper floors of the factory, and you certainly never saw the floors plans of the facility. The entire facility. Because if you did then you might know what Sam did which was that even further down from where they had been, there was indeed an orphanage marked somewhere in the place. Up until then, Sam had been one of those cynics, believing it was nothing more than a hoax, some shady means to hiding the secret that there was no orphanage, no underground home for parentless children. Why? Why would anyone deprive children of the sky and actual sun? Why would they bury them so far down into the Earth like the human equivalent of seeds waiting to root and bloom? But it wasn't fake, was it? People had actually done this. Someone signed off on all of this; someone saw to its construction, and the only reasons Sam could come to understand were eccentricity or bat shit insanity. This all was quickly becoming a fever dream. But he wasn't going to get a better answer because just like him, Mommy was just as in the dark. She had a job to do, and that was as far as it went. 

"Um...Mommy? Could I ask you one other thing?" Her head had turned back to him, tilting so unnaturally that for a moment Sam believed it could turn entirely upside down.

"Could you please put me back down?" She had laughed much louder that time, unwinding her arms from around him and setting his shaking feet back down to the white tiled floor.

He could better appreciate her form and just how tall she truly had been from his angle now. How exaggerated her features were, simplistic as they were. The way her chest appeared to squeeze tightly into the large, bright pink and round ball that was her abdomen. She couldn't quite remain still, readjusting her posture as she too took him in. He hadn't quite dressed professional, not that a white suit and tie would last long under the conditions he worked in. She eyed the yellow rubber of his overalls, poking at him even with a finger as she felt the material.

"I'd be careful. It's not exactly clean from where I just was." And he was right of course. There had been darkened smudges all about its surface from accumulated dust to oil stains and other things that found there way getting caught on it. 

Mommy had looked at him in confusion that slowly melted into a jovial smile.

"I won't tell if you won't." It was nice not feeling that fear anymore, not feeling his pulse racing. Odd beyond belief, all that this was, Sam had finally let out a chuckle in yielding relief. In a strange way they were hitting it off.

Then he heard it, the sound behind the door, the beeping and clicks of a keypad being pressed into by fingers. And when the door had finally open, Samuel locked eyes with another man whose expression had been not all that dissimilar to how Mommy's had been. But that confusion quickly rose to anger.

"What the hell are you doing in here? Who let you in here?!"            

The sheer anger and sharpness in his yelling was enough to send Sam reeling, and there was no time for answers because that same man in his long white coat and black pants yelled out the doors before they could close, and that was when security came. It was all rather a curiously dissonant moment being grabbed among the vividly bright and pastel coloured walls. It certainly didn't match the decor as he was forced roughly against one of them and had his arms yanked behind his back before the cuffs went on and he was forcefully walked out. He'd managed one last look at her, both in terror of what might happen to him, and burning into his mind that she was real. That as she stared confusedly and sadly back towards Sam, her expressions were real. Seeing was believing. And as he sat in a security cell for the next eight hours, Sam believed that he was in deep shit. Remarkable, isn't it? The way how life, its quality, and how you view it can change as easy enough as turning a doorknob. There were no doorknobs where he sat now. Nor windows, or answers to anything. Only the dim light of a bulb and four grey brick walls surrounding a hard plastic bench. In such a setting you come to realize that your sense of freedom and agency are rather tenuous at best when you're nearly a mile or more beneath the ground. What would they do to him? If they didn't want to answer questions, did they even want questions answered? His head was pounding as hard as his heart was and his ass hurt on that bench. He couldn't pace the room for long though, not only for how small it was but because it didn't help settle him any better. He'd ran his hands through his brown hair and tried to take deep breaths aplenty. If a man couldn't have his freedom, couldn't have questions, couldn't even have a toilet when he was just about to piss himself, then was he even allowed to walk out of a place alive if he had seen something he wasn't meant to?

"Probably not."

The voice had repeated over and over in his head nervously enough times to make him sick. 

-----------------------------------

The recording had been played back multiple times. Wound and rewound, every word picked apart piece by piece. Every expression, every tone scrutinized by narrowed eyes that took it all in like a hawk would a small rodent scurrying among some under brush. Paula Maswell was both humored and incensed by the seventh viewing as just as much as the first. The sheer incompetence, the naked failure of judgement of the team tasked with overseeing Mommy's continued experimentation and results she would bring. It all tasted worse than the smoke in her mouth as she took one long drag from her cigarette. What the fuck had everyone been doing? How long had this failure of protocol been going on in her department. Heads were going to roll and Paula's was not going to be the one on a pike. But there was something else beginning to take shape in the glazed eyes behind her glasses and inside her head. There was an opportunity here. and if there was anything Paula was certain of that day, it was that one way or another she was going to get results out of this. She had taken one last drag, pressed out the cigarette into her ashtray and reached for the phone on her desk. A single press of a button marked for security and four words.

"Bring him to me."