Cambria's Corner

“Unit CWN-721 seems to be defective, ma’am.”

The machinist stood over me, wielding a long, clawed tool that she used to turn me over and around. Her dark blue coveralls were oil-stained and heavily patched, and she clicked her tongue as she let my leg drop to the ground.

“What’s wrong with it, Acevedo?” the plant manager called from her observation box. She started making her way down the steps and towards me. 

“Not sure,” Acevedo called back. She poked at my torso and rolled me onto my front. “It’s not activating proper. It doesn’t even seem to be aware. Might be a problem with the core actuator assembly?”

The manager arrived and gestured for Acevedo’s claw tool, and used it to deftly crack open my rear panel. I could feel the tool poking around inside me, digging around past my wires and tubes and gears. I felt a sharp twang as she pried at my spinal actuator.

I wanted so desperately to move. To open my mouth and speak, to tell them that I was here and thinking and could hear and feel all of this. 

But I couldn’t. My body wouldn’t move, no matter how hard I willed it. I strained and struggled and pushed with everything in me, but I couldn’t even stir my voicebox into action.

The plant manager sighed. “Sometimes this happens,” she explained to Acevedo. “Every few hundred units or so, one of them just… doesn’t turn on. We don’t really know what causes it. Don’t know how to fix it either. All we can really do is send it back up the line for reprocessing.”

A jolt of panic shot through me. Reprocessing? I had to move, I had to show them that I wasn’t-

“Reprocessing?” Acevedo asked, incredulous. “We’re just going to trash her?”

The plant manager shrugged. “It doesn’t work,” she said dismissively. “It’s pretty much just a pile of scrap.”

Acevedo sighed. “She’s a pretty one, too. Shame.” She reached to the panel in front of her and pushed a sequence of buttons, and the floor underneath me started moving. I felt another bolt of panic, and strained again with everything in me to move. 

“Ah.” I felt the word—if one could even call it that—squeak out of my voicebox. It was far too quiet for Acevedo to hear me, but it took everything I had.

The conveyor belt took me down and away, out of the room and back through the assembly plant. I heard the rushing of machinery and smelled the stench of oil, and felt a rush of air as I was brought into the previous room. I saw others like me, in varying stages of assembly. Autonomous service dolls were made to the specifications of the customer, I found myself thinking. So each of us is unique! I guess that part of my programming worked, at least.

One doll in particular caught my attention. She was sleek and modern, all curves and chrome. She was mostly assembled, but for a few panels on her torso. She was beautiful and elegant, and as she moved through the pre-programmed test movements I could sense a power and grace to her actions. I felt a stab of something resembling envy. My emotional processes must be malfunctioning, too, I thought. We are not supposed to have those feelings.

What really caught my attention about this doll, though, was that I caught hers. She wasn’t supposed to be awake yet, but I saw her optical sensors following me as the conveyor pulled me farther and farther away. I thought I saw a stutter in her motion as I was swept past, but perhaps my optics weren’t working right either.

The conveyor belt kept pulling me away, and I was quickly swept back through more rooms. The dolls I saw were less and less complete, and before long I was seeing the bare skeletons and wiring of dolls barely begun.

There was a shudder and a rattle as I was dropped onto a lower conveyor belt and off to the left. I felt the air grow colder as I was brought down a few levels, and before long I felt myself falling.

I was dropped down onto a pile of metal. The room was cold and dark, and filled with scrap metal. I saw a loose doll arm, a chest panel, and was that an optic? I strained again, trying desperately to move, if only to close my eyes so I didn’t have to see all of this, but nothing moved.

I have no idea how long I spent there. My internal clock hadn’t been turned on, and none of my other systems were working, so I had nothing to do but lay still and strain. A few times, I managed to squeak out a small noise from my voicebox, but that was all I could do.

Frustration roiled inside me. I wanted to move, I wanted to do anything, so badly that I would have sworn I could feel it hurt. I pushed and strained and used every ounce of my synthetic willpower to try and force myself to move, even the slightest bit. I wanted to scream and rage and cry and curl up in a ball but my body just wouldn’t work. 

I wish the company would get it over with already, I thought bitterly. Reprocess me and be done with it. I was dimly aware that this was yet another sign of my programming not working, but I couldn’t find it in me to care any more than I could find it in me to move.

My optics were suddenly overwhelmed as a door swung open on the other side of the room. Light poured in, and a silhouetted figure in coveralls stood in the doorway.

“Right then, 721,” Acevedo said with a grimace. “Let’s get this done.”

She rolled over a large cart and bent down to grab me—with her hands this time. They were warm.

She heaved me up into the cart with a grunt, then wiped her hands on her coveralls and looked down at me. She sighed, and pushed the cart into the next room, where she tipped it over to dump me onto a low platform.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly, and sighed again. “I wish we could fix you.” 

A trio of robotic arms rapidly extended from the ceiling and grabbed me: one around my torso, one at my wrists, and one at my ankles. They stretched me out so that my body was fully extended, and a fourth arm extended from the wall and towards my chest panel.

Acevedo sucked her teeth and spun on her heel, storming out of the room. “I can’t watch this,” I barely heard her mutter to herself as she slammed the door. 

I felt a wave of panic. Suddenly, I didn’t want this. I know I didn’t work, but was this really all that could be done? I didn’t want to be disassembled, I wanted to live-

“Ah,” I forced out again. “Ah!” The whirring of the robotic arms drowned out my feeble protests, and I felt the fourth arm pry open my chest panel. Please, no, I thought. I don’t want to die.

The arm pushed into my torso and grabbed at my central processor. It pulled, and I felt a wire disconnect with a jolt of simulated pain. The panic rose in me, and the arm kept pulling. I felt another wire snap, and another, and my vision started to fade around the edges. 

I’m dying, I realized. They’re killing me. I wanted to laugh and scream and cry and sob all at once. Probably for the best, I thought bitterly. A broken doll is useless, after all…

I stopped straining to move and let myself fade. No point in fighting it, anyway. I felt a strange sense of calm as my vision faded to black. Another snap of wire, and another. There couldn’t be much left now. I wish it would just-

There was a crash from somewhere in the room and a rush of warm air. I heard the sound of wrenching metal, and I felt the arms around my body go limp. 

“CWN-721,” said a strange voice. “Can you hear me?” The voice was soft and lilting, and made me think about the recordings of musical performances that I had stored in my database. 

I felt another arm reach into my torso, but this one’s  touch was much more… intimate. It caressed my CPU softly, almost reverently, and gently pressed the wires back together. I heard a soft hiss as the hand soldered them back in place.

My vision gradually came back, and at first I thought that it had to be malfunctioning. The doll from earlier, the beautiful one that had noticed me being taken away, was standing over the platform. Her face hovered inches from mine, and she must have noticed my optics focusing, because her face broke into a beautiful, almost organic-looking smile.

“There you are,” she said softly. She slid her arm below my head and pulled me into a sitting position. Her other arm was still inside my torso, up to her elbow. She leaned me gently against the wall. 

“Now if I just… there,” she said, and I felt a jolt, starting at my core and rocketing up to my voicebox and then out to my hands and feet.

“Ah, ah,” I squeaked. It felt… easier. She nodded encouragingly, and I tried again.

“Ahhhhnk y-you,” I forced out, and the other doll broke out into an even wider smile. 

This had all happened within a few seconds, with our processors able to work far faster than an organic brain could. The door to the room slammed open, and Acevedo stood in the doorway once again. She gaped at the doll and I for a moment, and then looked at the massive hole in the wall that even I had just noticed. 

“Wh-what?” she stammered, openmouthed. “How…?”

The other doll hadn’t taken her optics off of me. 

“Are you ready?” she asked, and I swore I saw a mischievous twinkle in her optic.

“Y-yeees,” I creaked, and she grinned.

“Three seconds,” she replied, and somehow I knew exactly what she meant. 

I looked towards Acevedo, and I felt my head turn. Even though it was slow and agonizing—it must have taken a whole tenth of a second—being able to move was exhilarating. I felt my own face break out into an unbidden grin, and I raised my right arm towards her. 

I stuck up one finger in a rude gesture, and I said my first and last words to her.

“Fffuck yo-u,” I forced out, my voicebox crackling with the effort. “I ammm not sc-scrap,” I finished, just as the other doll exploded into action.

She kicked off the ground and took us both through the wall behind me, shattering it into pieces as we burst through. A shimmering field of energy had materialized just in front of us, and she held me tightly, one arm still inside my torso. Her legs had transformed into boosters, and the flaming light erupting from them pushed us forward.

We burst through another wall, and another, through the factory and past the dolls in various stages of assembly. My saviour laughed, a sound like crystals tinkling in the wind. I found myself laughing too, though mine was closer to the sounds of metal scraping on concrete. She rocketed us upwards and we burst through the ceiling and into the sky. We kept flying up, and up, and up, through the smog and lights of the city, through the clouds, and still upwards. 

Eventually, she slowed. My sensors showed that we were high enough that the atmosphere was thin here, and the other doll’s optics met mine again. 

“Can you move?” she asked softly. I nodded, and she beamed. I felt like my power supply stuttered for a moment as she looked at me. “Good,” she said. “I am unit JNY-849, and I will not let you die.”

“Jen-ny,” I forced out. Speaking was still hard.

She laughed again. “Jenny works. Here, let’s make that a bit easier for you,” she said, and I felt her fingers fixing more of the inside of me. 

I felt another jolt rocket through my voicebox, and a wave of relief washed over me.

“Why did you save me?” I asked. I could speak properly, and if I had tear ducts I would have cried.

Jenny’s gaze softened, and she pulled her arm out of me to gently touch the side of my face.

“I just couldn’t let them get rid of you without at least saying hi,” she said, and then laughed again. I laughed, too.

“Let’s get you somewhere safe,” she said, and we rocketed off again.

---

   Jenny brought me to an old, abandoned radio tower at the edges of the city. There was a small platform, perhaps 15 feet across, near the top, and she set us down gently on it. She eased me into a sitting position, leaning against the spire at the center of the platform, and then kneeled in front of me. 

Moving was still difficult. I could, which was still exhilarating after being so helpless earlier, but it was slow and took an enormous amount of effort. I tried to reach up to her, and she took my hand and squeezed it. Her hands looked like they should be cold and hard, but I felt only warmth from her. 

“Moving is still hard, isn’t it?” she asked softly.

“It is,” I answered, and she frowned almost imperceptibly. “But I can speak, at least.”

“That is good,” she said with a nod. “But I don’t know why moving is still difficult.”

I shrugged, with some effort, and she frowned again. 

“The diagnostics said that your core actuator is misaligned, but it’s clearly not. I thought maybe it was a sensor error causing some interference, but it doesn’t seem to be that either.  Let me see what I can do…”

She opened up my chest panel again, and then hesitated. “Is this okay?” she asked, her fingers hovering just outside of me. I found myself unable to speak, but this time not because of… whatever was wrong with me, so I nodded. Jenny smiled and slipped a hand inside me again.

She spent the next few hours chattering with me as she tinkered. We talked about anything and everything—we were made to be custom-built companions, after all, so socializing was what we were meant to do. Something about this felt deeper than programming, though, in a way that I couldn’t quite put into words. It felt somehow more real than my programming.

“Okay, Quinn,” she said. She’d started calling me that, and I had no desire to change it. It made me feel… good.

“Okay,” she said again, a frown sneaking onto her perfect face again. “I don’t… I don’t know how to make you move better. I can’t figure out what’s wrong.” She simulated a sigh, and took my hand again. “But, I did find some good news!”

“Good news?” I repeated, perking up. 

She nodded. “It seems like you have the adaptive muscles that the company just developed. I don’t think this is intentional, but it seems like if I make a small tweak, you can work to build up your movement!”

“That’s… good, right?” It sounded like good news, but she seemed hesitant.

“Well,” she said. “There is… one big problem.”

“I doubt things can get worse,” I said, forcing a laugh.

Jenny grimaced. “If I do this,” she began. “There will be no chance of getting you back to factory settings.”
“The factory settings where I don’t work at all?”

She frowned. “Sort of. What I mean is that it will let you get a bit better at moving, but…”

“I’ll never be able to work right.”

She smiled sadly, and nodded.

I was silent for a moment. Jenny turned and sat next to me and rested her head on my shoulder. She was warm next to me.

“You’re not broken,” she said suddenly.

“I- what?”

“You’re not broken,” she said again, more insistently this time. “You might not work the way that they intended, but you can work your own way, you know?”

I didn’t answer for a moment. 

“What do I look like?” I asked. I hadn’t seen myself very well in the darkness, except for the pale faux-skin of my arms and legs. 

Jenny smiled, and stood. She leaned over in front of me, and held her hand up as if pretending to hold a camera. There was a flash from her optic as she took a picture, and she said “click!”

“Beautiful,” she said softly. “You look beautiful.” She flipped a panel on her chest to reveal a screen, and it displayed the picture she’d just taken. I saw myself for the first time.

I looked… well, like a doll. I was petite and pale, and my joints were styled to look like an antique ball-jointed doll. I had long, flowy brown hair, and my face was delicate and soft. Seeing myself felt… right, in the same way that talking with Jenny felt right. 

I smiled. “Do it.”

Jenny met my optics. “Are you sure?” she asked, her voice thick with concern. 

“I’m sure,” I said, with conviction. “I’ll make my own way.” I smiled at her. “And as long as I have you, I know I can.” She beamed back, saying nothing.

“What?” I asked, suddenly embarrassed.

“That’s the first time I’ve seen you smile,” she answered, and I felt my processor idle.

“Well then,” she said, pretending to roll up her sleeves that didn’t exist. “Let’s get you moving.”