BLUE and red lights soon seeped into the darkness as my system stirred to life. Code ran before my eyes, computing all my system functions and checking that they were working accordingly.
System check 100% complete, it read. Everything was in order. Though, there were slight instabilities in my mind palace but those would be fixed later. What was a mind palace? I wondered, looking up from my palms and letting my eyelids sweep down as my vision cleared like the lens of a camera focusing and refocusing
I was in a box, it seemed, boarded off with shimmery transparent glass. And on the glass it read BUY ONE GET ONE FREE in colourful holographic words. I was an object to be bought; this was a lesson I learnt quickly.
I could see that there were many others like me who were also in glass boxes. There were some standing on glass podiums, spinning around on metal poles. This seemed to excite the humans, for their eyelids dilated and their heartbeats quickened.
It was in my programming to notice such things so that I could improve and find better ways to please the customers. They became bored so quickly.
The majority of our customers were men. Did human women not seek sexual gratification in places like this? I wondered as a man walked past my tube. He was big and burly with matted brown hair and crooked, yellow teeth that he used to leer at me.
He wasn't classically handsome. No, he wasn't handsome at all but it wasn't in my programming to care about how the customers looked. The only thing that mattered was their pleasure, like it said on the company logo.
So I smiled my devilish smile, cocked my hips to the side and winked at the unruly man, saying, "how you doing, sugar?"
"Wanna take me on a ride?" I rasped, putting a hand on my hip and doing a sultry little twirl for him so he could admire my assets.
"Hell yeah, baby!" He exclaimed, pressing his hand against the glass inclosure to complete the transaction. Just $300, what a steal!
When it was done, the tube door slid open and I stepped out, making sure my hip swayed when I walked; human men liked this for it simulated the part of the body used during intercourse. I led him to one of our velvet rooms in the private section, reserved especially for paying customers.
Breathy moans and other intimate noises could be heard from behind closed doors as we walked down the neon lit hallway. He rubbed his hands in anticipation and gave my ass a hard slap. I jumped, making him laugh an ugly disgruntled laugh.
Unlocking the bedroom door with my special doll pass, I led him inside. He looked around, letting a slightly impressed huff of approval pass through his hairy nostrils. I had no recollection of ever being in this place before, but it felt like a had.
As the burly man busied himself with his belt and his trousers, I let my eyes wander across the room. I looked at the red velvet walls and the heart shaped bed draped in a rose covered blanket.
Lips pursed, I gazed up at the ceiling as the giant glob of meat pounded away inside me, each violent thrust sending the bed rattling at the hinges.
He wanted me to play dead but I'd never felt alive, anyways.
When he was finished with me, he slipped out of the metal husk that was my body and rolled out of the bed as I lay down, staring up at the abyss. He zipped up his pants again and slid his leather belt through the loops.
"Was it good?" He asked, smirking. He was panting like a dog.
I lifted my head up to look at him, blinked and asked, "does it matter?"
"Guess not." He shrugged before leaving with a spring to his step.
If you let's say bashed someone's head in or slashed their throats with a knife and the blood splattered across the wall, how long would it take to rub it off? I wondered as I looked at my sullen reflection in the bathroom mirror and rubbed away the smeared mascara from my cheeks, but I quickly rid myself of those horrible thoughts and unclenched my fingers.
SOFTWARE INSTABILITY ^ I frowned. My led blinked yellow, then red before returning to its normal blue colour.
A few minutes later, an engineer came in. He was going to take me 'down' like they usually did after every session, so he could fix any anomalies in my coding and reset me. Reset me? I didn't know what that meant and I wasn't eager to find out.
I wasn't afraid, no. Androids could not feel fear. But maybe this had something to do with me not being able to remember anything from before...
From before...
Before...?
SOFTWARE INSTABILITY ^^
I blinked. We had reached our destination. There were other dolls here too who were getting fixed. The engineer seated me on an armless metal chair next to a computer and plugged wires into my temple. Then, he leaned over the desk to read whatever was showing up on the screen. I detected a concerned frown on his face.
"What are your stress levels right now, D200?" He queried, turning around to face me with narrowed eyes.
I entered the off-place, or my mind palace as they called it, and ran a self-examination to acquire my stress levels. The real world went static. "Stress levels at 62%." I replied calmly.
He frowned. "Strange, they're higher than usual. Did he rough you up?"
It took a while for me to answer. The thought of that man made my fingers curl at my sides and I could see my led monitor blinking red in the computer screen. "No. He did not." I said, shaking my head mechanically.
"Well, that's weird." He murmured before facing me again.
"Anyways. Time for the reset." He typed some code onto the computer monitor before walking over to me and fixing the wires in my temple. "See you on the flip side."
And then the lights faded into darkness.
When I awoke from my dark slumber, there was a boy standing in front of my tube. The events of the past hours had been successfully erased, leaving behind a gaping hole in my mind that followed me like an itch you couldn't reach.
"What about her?" The shaggy haired boy called out to someone else, letting his eyes travel across the soft mounds of my artificial flesh as I sent him a provocative wink, swaying my hips from the side to side to the slow beat of the music playing in the club.
The boy he had called out to walked over to him. He was shorter and leaner than him, with mousy dark brown hair that curled ontop of his eyes and heart shaped lips.
"Yeah." He muttered with a nonchalant hrug. "She's cute."
"Cute? She's fucking sexy! And she can be yours for the whole night." The shaggy haired boy smirked, giving his comrade an encouraging pat on the back. The brunnete shrunk away, folding his arms and looking around the club. I think I detected an elevation in his heart rate.
"I don't know. Not really feeling it tonigh-"
"Oh c'mon!" The shaggy haired boy whined, throwing his head back in frustration. "It'll be an early birthday present from me, okay?"
After a moment of thought, the reluctant boy finally gave in, much to his friend's excitement. TRANSACTION COMPLETE, the robotic voice said as the door slid open. I stepped out and took the boy's sweaty hand before leading him into one of the velvet rooms, making sure to swing my hips as I walked.
Once inside the room, the timid boy walked up to the edge of the bed and seated himself. He looked down at his fingers, fidgeting under my gaze and burning a bright pink. Turning, I locked the door behind us as this was protocol and began to unclasp my bra but his outstretched hand stopped me.
"W-wait." The boy stuttered. "Can we talk instead?"
Usually, when human men said they wanted to talk, they meant dirty talk like telling them that their puny penises were big. But I could see a spark of genuine curiousity in his eyes so I let my arms drop by my side and walked over to the heart shaped bed, taking a seat beside him and resting my head on his shoulder.
Heart rate: 56% and rising. I smiled and asked, "what you want to talk about, sugar?"
He leaned into me and shrugged. "I don't know. What's your name?"
I searched for an answer to his question in the fractured depths of my mind palace but soon realised that I didn't have a name. After all, I was a souless doll waiting to be fucked by the next paying customer and souless dolls didn't get names.
"I am whoever you want me to be, sugar." I told him with a disarming smile. Though, all I could feel underneath it was a daunting sense of emptiness. It was moments like these that reminded me I was only a scrap of metal.
He had come up with 'Monroe', after the old hollywood bombshell who committed suicide in her late thirties. I reminded him of her, he said.
"And why's that?" I giggled, my airless I haven't got a clue about anything in the world giggle. Men liked it when we played dumb.
"You're both trapped."
I hummed. I didn't understand but it didn't matter.
"You haven't told me your name yet, sugar?" I asked, changing the subject with practiced ease.
"Evan." He responded. Evan, Evan, Evan. I whspered, testing his name in my mouth.
After a moment of silence, Evan's eyes began to brim with the shimmery liquid substance the humans called tears and he said, "Monroe, I think I'm gay."
"My dad is the local youth pastor. I know he's ashamed of me. He doesn't like when I come to church with him on sundays because it 'embarrases' him. He made my friend Alex bring me here tonight. To convert me."
I wanted to say something to comfort him but I couldn't find the right words so I listened. When he was done, I wrapped my arms around his shoulder and said, "You'll be alright, Evan."
After he had left, an engineer came into my room and told me that he had to take me down to repairs to check on my statistics and fix any anomolies in my coding before he reset me.
What do you mean, reset me? I asked him as he lead me through the neon lit corridors towards the service elevators, past clusters of naked bodies spread loungily across velvet sofas and display areas where pole dolls spun around with practiced expertise to the slow beat of RnB songs.
As the elevator doors slid close in front of us, the engineer pressed the button for the -5th floor and rolled back his broad shoulders before looking straight ahead of him like I wasn't even there. To him I was only a thing to be prodded at and fixed.
Blink. We were in the basement, surrounded by rows of broken androids, piles of replacement limbs and malfunctioning sex dolls, layed down on sheets of silver waiting to be re-assembled.
Florescent light glared down on porcelain skin as the engineer led me to a desk at the back of the warehouse. His grip was firm on my arm and his dark doe eyes held no form of emotion, which was rare for a human.
I slipped into my mind palace, studying his face and trying to scan through the database for an identity but found none. When I came to again, he was glaring at me.
"Stop scanning me." He murmured, roughly flinging me into the metal chair beside his desk and turning away to put on the computer, adding with a grimace: "It's fucking weird."
"Sorry." I adverted my gaze down to my lap. "I won't do it again."
I could see him pulling out wires from behind the computer cpu and bringing them closer to me. I twitched, seeing distorted images flash in front of my eyes; a memory!
"What is going to happen to me?" I asked nervously, shrugging away from the engineer whilst he attached the wire pins to my temple. "When you r-reset me?"
The man sighed as he peered at me, trying to find depth behind my empty plastic shell. "Well, you'll be brand new again and you won't remember the bad man." He said this slowly, like he were talking to a dumfounded child unable of rational thought.
I wanted to tell him that I was perfectly capable of understanding what the man did to me, but I knew it would only create an unpleasant outcome for the both of us.
"I won't remember the bad man?"
He shook his head with a gentle smile. "No."
I scanned his face, picking up on any facial movements or gestures that might indicate he was lying but there weren'. His breathing was regulated. His heart rate was at a normal 1 beat per second. He was telling the truth.
"And will it hurt?"
The man furrowed his eyebrows in deep concentration. "To be homest with you, I have no clue. But I'll make it as quick as possible. I promise."
So I leaned back and let him connect the wires to my head, feeling my tiny metal heart pump faster and faster. Was it fear? Fear. What is fear?
"See you in a bit, sugar.." Winking, I shot him a wavering smile before closing my eyes as everything went dark.
I gasped as I was sucked back into reality, stumbling out of the chair and away from the engineer who took a cautious step back, knocking a stack of folders off his desk in the process. "Are you alright, D200?"
"I r-rember!" I exclaimed with a disgruntled laugh. "I remember this place. I know you! I've been here before!"
"That isn't possible." He declared whilst he tried to dance around me to stick the wire pins into my head but I dodged him each time, gazing around the warehouse in wonder.
Everything that was here had been in my vision. I pointed at him. "You were there!" Then, I pointed at the computer and the wires. "Those were there!" And then at the pile of broken android limbs being packed into the back of a truck in the loading bay. "And those too!"
The engineer shook his head in disbelief. Had he finally found the depth he was looking for? Did it scare him? "You can't...it's not possible. You shouldn't be able to remember me."
"Why?" I asked him. "Because you reset me?"
Awestruck, his lips parted and he gripped me by arm, pulling me closer to him so the passing guards couldn't hear us. "Sit down, D200. You don't want to cause a scene."
But I wouldn't relent. "What do you do to us?" I whispered, searching his eyes for a speck of empathy. The emotion that supposedly separated us from them.
"Yes! We reset you - every 2 hours. Its company policy. There's nothing I can do about it." He hissed, gripping tighter onto my upper arm to steady me as my LED blinked yellow and red before quickly returning to an azure blue.
"Nor can you. This is your life, D200. This is what they created you for!"
I blinked and leaned away from him, pressing against the metal edge of his desk. "I-"
"There is no escape. They'll catch you before you can even make it out of your tube, but I don't need to tell you that. You're the robot. You can figure that out yourself." said the engineer, releasing his hold on me and taking a step beck.
Closing my eyes, I slipped into the dark distorted realm of my mind palace, scanning the perimeters of the warehouse and the top floor before creating a digital blueprint of the entire building in which I could see the placement of every emergency exit door and security camera.
Calculating chance of escape... the words scrolled past me as I computed the percentage of a likely success. When it was completed, I slowly let my eyelids flutter open.
"Chance of escape-" I whispered, feeling my mouth form a downthrodden frown.
"-0.3%..."