Frailty | Lally's Game | Under Construction
Just keep moving, and don't stop to question how this all started.
"Tragedies and miracles tend to go hand in hand."
Maya just wants one thing for her birthday at the brand-new Freddy Fazbear's Mega Pizzaplex: she wants to try the heavily-advertised AR booth. She likes the idea of a mixture of the real and virtual worlds, rather than VR's entirely virtual. She's especially excited for "The World Celebrates You!", and illusion that everyone at the Pizzaplex is celebrating her party with her. She loves her family, but they don't really do big shindigs, and she just wants a quick little night of fun.
Unfortunately, the AR booth is closed for opening, with a sign that only reads "Under Construction." Disappointed and angry that the only thing she wanted to do isn't even available to her, Maya ducks under the caution tape and slips on the AR headband, and finds out that the thing isn't broken at all– she has a great experience at her virtual party, and then goes home and has a great day with her loving family. Then, Gran gets a cancer diagnosis. Everything starts feeling wrong... and starts feeling more wrong when more and more people get the same diagnoses. Not only is every human dropping like flies, they're also giving birth to these... definitely not human babies. Maya seems to be the only one who sees what's going on, though these increasing headaches where the AR headband had gone on her head aren't helping... She... she is out of the AR booth, right?
The third Tales from the Pizzaplex story, and the last of the first book, Lally's Game. It will be adapted into the graphic novel collection in 2025 as the first short of the series. While the short itself has an Ambiguous Ending, book four's "Cleithrophobia" appears to give an answer as to what was happening in the story.
Tropes related to “Under Construction”:
- All Girls Like Ponies: Jossed; Maya states that she doesn't like horses.
- All Just a Dream: It's heavily implied that most of the story is just Maya's illusion as she dies in the AR booth.
- Ambiguously Christian: Pastor Ben is introduced as "Maya's minister."
- Ambiguous Situation: Maya realizes, two years after the fact, that everything began at the Mega Pizzaplex AR Booth. The increasing headaches she gets where the AR headband hooked up to her head imply that this may just be part of the simulation. For her part, she thinks that it's all too intense to be a computer-generated scenario, but wonders if the AR booth had leaked out into the real world, or if she'd somehow been pushed into an alternate world, like Jaxon had been talking about that day.
- It's entirely possible that the booth's malfunction gave her some form of cancer, reflecting with the rest of the AR world's cancer epidemic, and the jelly-creatures multiplying in the same way that cancer cells do.
- "Cleithrophobia" seemingly provides an answer for this story, as teenagers at the same opening see employees rushing towards a smoke-filled AR booth. It's heavily implied that when the booth started up, it malfunctioned due to it not being ready to be used, and the suffocation feeling Maya felt was from the smoke that encased her.
- And I Must Scream: Maya is consumed by the giant blobs, but she is seemingly unable to die and can only wonder if she ever will.
- Augmented Reality: Maya's main interest in the Mega Pizzaplex is the brand new AR booth that's meant to give her a huge faux birthday party.
- Babysitter Friendship: Maya babysits for a lot of the neighbor children, and has a special friendship with the Thompson kids, who make her little scrap-made birthday presents every year. She ends up taking care of them after their parents die of cancer. When Mr. Thompson asks, it's just for until social services arrive, but Maya knows that CPS won't have the time to ever come by.
- Big Sister Instinct: As the older child, Maya is very proud and protective of Elena, and takes care of both her and all of the neighborhood children as everyone else starts to fade away.
- Bizarre Baby Boom: Every infant being born in this strange world is a slimy blob with no face, but only Maya is able to process the strangeness of this. As more and more humans die, more and more blobs replace them, until they surround Maya and trap her in her garage.
- Brainy Brunette: Elena, who is incredibly academic and logical.
- The Caretaker: As the only one not affected by the cancer epidemic, Maya bikes around the neighborhood caring for literally everyone she can reach, overworking herself as more and more people start dying.
- Caring Gardener: Maya's main interest lies on botany and nature. She has her own garden out back that she unfortunately has to abandon as people get more and more sick.
- Cheerful Child: The Davis and Thompson kids are all described as being incredibly happy and excitable. Maya's favorite cousin, Axel, is "always smiling."
- Cool Teacher: Maya's favorite teacher is Mrs. Carpenter, who also ends up being the first person to give birth to one of the jelly-blobs.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Assuming Maya will die, it's gonna take a long, long while.
- Death of a Child: Donny Thompson and Axel's deaths are given particular attention and sadness.
- Delicate and Sickly: Everyone on the planet falls to this, sans Maya.
- Died on Their Birthday: Assuming Maya was killed in the AR booth. Also considering that, in the fake reality, Donny went out of his way to give Maya a birthday present on the last day, it's entirely possible that it was her "eighteenth birthday" that day and she had forgotten in her rush to care for everyone.
- Dissonant Serenity: Played for Horror. Cancer diagnoses and deaths skyrocket but no one is particularly bothered aside from Maya. The newscasters are even cheerful while reporting thousands of deaths. Additionally, no one seems to care that instead of human babies, people are giving birth to see-through blob creatures that mature to adulthood and multiply in days, quickly overtaking the planet. It's implied to be because Maya never actually left the AR booth and the people are actually just recreated versions incapable of feeling anything but joy.
- Downer Ending: After watching every single person around her die from cancer, Maya is attacked by the blob monsters and trapped in a state of suffocation, waiting to die and realizing slowly that death isn't coming for her.
- Dramatic Thunder: Occurs as Maya and Noelle meet the first blob creature, "Cecilia."
- Dying Dream: Implied; it seems that all of this is Maya's hallucination as she dies in the malfunctioning AR booth.
- Failed a Spot Check: At first, it seems everyone on the planet is failing to notice the strange blob-monsters and cancer epidemic. Then Maya realizes, two years after the fact, that she may not have left the AR booth at all.
- Fate Worse than Death: Maya can't breathe anymore, but is stuck in the moment before death, waiting for it to come.
- Fetus Terrible: People start giving birth to transparent, jelly-like blob creatures instead of regular babies. They grow, multiply, and spread across the planet in days, eventually surrounding and suffocating Maya.
- Foreshadowing:
- The literal first sentence, is Maya proclaiming, "This is unreal!"
- At the beginning of the story, Jaxon talks about the many-worlds theory and branching consciousnesses. Not only could this imply the alternate continuities of the Five Nights at Freddy's universe, but the parallel world Maya finds herself in during this story. Maya also mentions minor headaches from where the AR headband connected to her head, which increase as the years go on, implying that the headband is still on.
- As foreshadowing for later stories, the tube-maze in "HAPPS" and the role-player auditorium in "Pressure" are mentioned.
- Friend to All Children: Maya adores little kids, and is the most popular neighborhood babysitter.
- A Glitch in the Matrix: Starting with Maya's headaches, and escalating as the AR booth (seemingly) breaks farther, giving every human being cancer and turning every infant into a blob.
- Good Parents: Maya greatly appreciates both of her parents, who always take care of her and her sister.
- Good with Numbers: Elena is stated to be a "math whiz."
- Grade Skipper: Elena is supposed to be enrolled in a local college the following year, skipping ahead several grades.
- Gratuitous Spanish: In-story; Maya's maternal family are Puerto Rican, and bilingual. Recently, Aunt Sofia has become obsessed with the family's heritage, and was taking Spanish lessons. She insists that Maya join her, and often prompts her to speak Spanish rather than English.
- Hippie Parents: Grandparents, actually. Nana and Pappy are laid-back, hippie artists.
- Iconic Item: Maya's grandparents all join together to gift Maya a gold rose pendant for her birthday. With the revelation that everything after the AR booth wasn't real, the comfort Maya finds in the necklace for the rest of the story becomes pretty sad.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Are the horrific worldwide deaths and blob creatures all real, or is Maya still inside the AR machine in the Pizzaplex? Even she doesn't know, though a background event in "Cleithrophobia" implies it's the latter.
- Mind Prison: Implied to be happening with Maya, who's still in the AR booth during most of the story.
- No Antagonist: Unless you count the AR booth as the antagonist.
- Only Sane Man: Played for Horror as Maya is the only person who finds it strange and distressing that every single person on Earth is dying of cancer, and every baby born is a strange jelly-creature.
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Paranoia Fuel: Maya goes almost a full entire year without anything going wrong in the illusion. Meaning her world shifted literally overnight into a nightmare scenario, and now she doesn't know how much of her life has been real. - The Philosopher: Jaxon often goes on rambles about the state of existence, physics, and life itself. Sometimes badly timed, due to Noelle's trauma surrounding her uncle's death.
- Pink Means Feminine: For Maya's birthday, Noelle wears a hot pink blouse.
- Repeated for Emphasis: All around town, Maya sees the words "Under Construction" appear more and more frequently as the illusion shatters.
- Sole Survivor: Maya, of the cancer epidemic. Though it may be inverted, depending on your interpretation...
- This Is My Side: Elena and Maya's room is divided in half by their own decorations.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Coffee Cake for Maya.
- Tragic Mistake: Maya doesn't even hate her life, she greatly appreciates it, but she still wants just one little fantasy in Freddy's AR booth. Breaking in was a bad decision.
- Uncertain Doom: Assuming "Cleithrophobia" is telling us that Maya is suffocating inside the AR booth, there's still a possibility that she could be dragged out and saved before actually dying. Even in this slim chance, she's likely not going to recover mentally.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Jaxon, who told Maya they should spend her birthday at the Pizzaplex, and started up the AR booth for her.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Strangely, while Maya seems to be the only one to not get cancer, she sees that her mean old neighbor, Mr. Vance, is still in his house and watching her from his window. It's implied that something suspicious is going on with him, but this is never mentioned again.
- Year Inside, Hour Outside: In what was probably less than a few minutes of the AR booth malfunctioning, the employees reaching it, and the whole thing filling up with smoke, Maya lives for what seems to be two full years in a false reality. The entire first year, she doesn't realize anything is wrong.
- The Fridge Horror here is that it can take anywhere from 2-10 minutes in real life to die from smoke suffocation, which is what's implied to have happened to Maya in "Cleithrophobia." Meaning she could potentially be on the edge of death for years, unable to breathe yet still able to think.
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