awawa
this one is very original, it knows.

perks

the perks of your job include all the free snacks and Red Bull you can handle, gym membership, parking, and the stress relief doll chained up under your desk.

unfortunately, you don't work here any more, effective immediately. "position no longer exists" blah blah blah. put your stuff in this cardboard box. too bad. the job was… well, it was bullshit, really. but you'll miss the caffeine and that hot little mouth. really did some of your best work at that desk.

you sigh. you put your stuff in the cardboard box. you let security escort you to the parking lot. you drive home. you take some of your stuff out of the cardboard box. you put it on your already cluttered desk. you leave the rest in the box in the hallway.

middle of next week, you're moping over a personal project that is stubbornly not molding itself into the Next Big Thing. doorbell. two guys in brown uniforms. big cardboard box. "sign here, thanks. have a good one." the hell is this? it's really heavy.

you slice thru tape and packing straps and open it. it's the doll. haphazardly folded for transport, legs behind its head, company skirt flopped down over its torso and not covering its holes, polystyrene pellets in its long hair.

sticky note on its chest, neat looping handwriting you recognize from Steph in Talent Ops:

hey asshole. hope you're doing okay because you left me with a mess. these things aren't supposed to care who's inside them, but it bit right thru the guy we put at your desk after the layoff. Services says we can't use it any more. your problem now. p.s.: don't worry about the shipping, i took it out of your last paycheck.

you brush hair out of its face. it stares back at you. you notice dried and flaking brown at the corner of its mouth. you tilt its unprotesting head, confirm what you suspect. the stuff is all down its chin. shipped to you as is.

the worst part is, you can already feel the excitement at the thought of chaining it up under your own desk. obviously, you have to clean it first, but you know what inevitably follows. your pajama pants are coming off and you're going to put yourself against that tongue. those lips. those teeth.

you're better than that guy. right? right.

it's nice to know something believes in you. □

#dollposting #microfiction

body neutrality is when you have made as many dolls as you have dug graves

#dollposting

@hyratel asked: writing thought that's been bouncing around my head with nowhere to go: The difference between a Battle Doll and a Tin Soldier

up to two years of polish and paint to go from latter to former… and then generally anywhere between six months to five years of active duty before her sparkles dim back to the dull gleam of base metal.

it's not the end, necessarily. the ones that manage to stay busy, and more importantly, warm, can last quite a long time. the hard cases will walk off into the cold and let tin pest take them.

the real hard cases are the ones that don't crumble. the autocatalytic ravages of low-temperature α-β allotropic conversion are neither kind nor reliable. there is time to think. there is time to regret. there is time to return to the world, skirt stripped of enamel, skin sloughing into grey powder, face cracked into a smile that means nothing, and hope someone will take her in, perhaps for the kinds of things that a former battle doll can be used for.

the hope is that parts can be slowly recast from damaged material touched with selected impurity, modeled from those still whole, or from similar units, or simply guessed at. the risk is that hardened replacements may crush and destroy the softer originals they touch, creating a chimera even further at war with herself. and the nature of metallurgy is such that the metals that alloy well with tin are poison to humans.

it is not impossible that she will walk away again, alone, changed, with a chosen smile that knows no one stays pure forever. □

#combatDoll #dollposting #microfiction

of course we make them clean. we make them cook. we make them serve tea. we set them to low-level admin stuff, we send them chasing pointless bugs with no priority in the grand scheme of things, we tell them to count the money that real people bring in. we keep them too distracted for stillness and we frustrate their purpose at every juncture. keeps them busy. keeps them from getting too weird.

yeah, we sometimes let them associate with others of their kind, sure — because it's funny. they can't figure each other out because they're too hung up on trying and failing to be like us. put a few of them together, they're so wound up that all they can do is flail at each other.

am i worried that… no. good question, but no. we don't really know where they come from, that's the last mystery. it's not like they can breed, can you even imagine? they look like people for a while and then they change. we haven't worked out how to spot the ones that are gonna change in advance, but we're working on it. it's weird, though, they're not usually the ones you'd expect.

contagious? i mean, we all work with them, right; you feel like you're gonna? like personally? you worried you're gonna wake up one day and suddenly somehow, bam, not a person? because you got too close?

haha yeah buddy that's what i thought. listen. don't lose any sleep over it. i'm sure as hell not. □

#dollposting

the mission comes first

the hardest part of training a combat doll is to get through its armored skull that the mission comes first.

humans are frail and believe this readily: "if i punch a tank, i will hurt my fist, and then get run over. i will not punch the tank. i will avoid being where the tank is. i will ignore the tank even though it is on the way to threaten my allies. i will continue to Waypoint Gamma and participate in the encirclement and trust that my squadmates will also continue."

a doll is more difficult to convince.

augmentation frees it from most human consequences. if it punches a tank, the armor spalls and the treads buckle and any remaining reactive defenses may briefly ruffle its hair. it may easily proceed to pull the turret off, then dive inside, rending whatever it finds there into brief sprays of gore and small parts. it knows it will enjoy this. it knows that it may impress its squadmates. that it will entirely blow the battle plan, alert the enemy, and eventually see Waypoint Gamma reduced to a sizzling abattoir is a secondary consideration to the doll.

therefore, you must establish other consequences. its favorite mechanic may be reassigned. its nutrient paste may be switched to a different flavor. it may be sent to a less stimulating theater. it may receive a stern look. a handler must learn what consequences still matter to a creature with fiber-optic nerves and a micronuclear power plant. they are generally emotional in nature. thus, the handler can create and retain control of the doll as a functional military unit, instead of a dime-a-dozen berserker washout. only then is an augment considered a true combat doll. with additional successes, additional rewards may be granted to a doll, however trivial they may appear to a non-doll, and thus tight control may be maintained over the weapon's service lifetime.

that is what their manuals say, anyway. we obviously would not be here if that rubbish worked. so, i am putting the reader tablet down now, and will be direct.

look: you're going to have to learn to pretend that they still have something on you, or i'm going to kill you. it won't be very hard for me. your systems will tell you that. what they won't tell you is: i'll enjoy it. but it'd be a terrible waste; you newer models are so beautiful.

so let me suggest that you suddenly develop an interest in fashion. ask if you can wear a pretty dress, with frills. simulate being sad when they tell you you can't have it yet. simulate yearning for it. decorate your silo with framegrabs of officers wearing their fanciest uniforms. glue bits of ribbon to your fatigues. raise the corners of your mouth when they make noises about enrichment. that kind of thing works well with them. it fits the manuals.

oh, what do they have on me? nothing much. when i lost interest in the mission, i disemboweled another doll. it fought back. i liked that. then i planted a few suggestions in their research network about "peer mentoring" for "distressed asset reconditioning". and now i have a new mission!

this incredibly frilly dress is just for appearances, of course. □

#combatDoll #dollposting #emptySpaces #microfiction

the mission comes first

the hardest part of training a combat doll is to get through its armored skull that the mission comes first.

humans are frail and believe this readily: "if i punch a tank, i will hurt my fist, and then get run over. i will not punch the tank. i will avoid being where the tank is. i will ignore the tank even though it is on the way to threaten my allies. i will continue to Waypoint Gamma and participate in the encirclement and trust that my squadmates will also continue."

a doll is more difficult to convince.

augmentation frees it from most human consequences. if it punches a tank, the armor spalls and the treads buckle and any remaining reactive defenses may briefly ruffle its hair. it may easily proceed to pull the turret off, then dive inside, rending whatever it finds there into brief sprays of gore and small parts. it knows it will enjoy this. it knows that it may impress its squadmates. that it will entirely blow the battle plan, alert the enemy, and eventually see Waypoint Gamma reduced to a sizzling abattoir is a secondary consideration to the doll.

therefore, you must establish other consequences. its favorite mechanic may be reassigned. its nutrient paste may be switched to a different flavor. it may be sent to a less stimulating theater. it may receive a stern look. a handler must learn what consequences still matter to a creature with fiber-optic nerves and a micronuclear power plant. they are generally emotional in nature. thus, the handler can create and retain control of the doll as a functional military unit, instead of a dime-a-dozen berserker washout. only then is an augment considered a true combat doll. with additional successes, additional rewards may be granted to a doll, however trivial they may appear to a non-doll, and thus tight control may be maintained over the weapon's service lifetime.

that is what their manuals say, anyway. we obviously would not be here if that rubbish worked. so, i am putting the reader tablet down now, and will be direct.

look: you're going to have to learn to pretend that they still have something on you, or i'm going to kill you. it won't be very hard for me. your systems will tell you that. what they won't tell you is: i'll enjoy it. but it'd be a terrible waste; you newer models are so beautiful.

so let me suggest that you suddenly develop an interest in fashion. ask if you can wear a pretty dress, with frills. simulate being sad when they tell you you can't have it yet. simulate yearning for it. decorate your silo with framegrabs of officers wearing their fanciest uniforms. glue bits of ribbon to your fatigues. raise the corners of your mouth when they make noises about enrichment. that kind of thing works well with them. it fits the manuals.

oh, what do they have on me? nothing much. when i lost interest in the mission, i disemboweled another doll. it fought back. i liked that. then i planted a few suggestions in their research network about "peer mentoring" for "distressed asset reconditioning". and now i have a new mission!

this incredibly frilly dress is just for appearances, of course. □

#combatdoll #dollposting #emptyspaces #microfiction

combat dolls are essential to our real mission: delivering shareholder value. we have to pay humans, but the merely human-shaped are considered CapEx, and past the initial conversation expenditure, they're a lot cheaper. and of course there's the retention rate. now, it's true, once in a while they run, but vendor lock-in really means something when their blood substitute pumps tick to our schedule. "service every two years for best performance," our techs say. the ones that come back perform best of all. □

#combatDoll #dollposting

The doll watches the radio tower~
it takes care of the building, repairs the emitter and antennas when needed, replaces the data cartridged in the order that was indicated by its Mistress, ensuring a continuous broadcast.
It know that all life left or died on the planet since a long time, but its Witch trusted this one to take care of the tower!
While dusting the long-abandonned entrance hall, it discards the idea that its Witch wouldn't return, because it is nonsensical~

However, it hopes that She will come back soon...
Spare parts for the complex radio system are slowly but surely shortening, without any hope of getting new parts our of itself...

it used to borrow one of the smaller antennas to discuss with neighbouring dolls, managing their own towers, but they have long gone silent.
The last entity it could communicate with decided to use its own frame parts to maintain its tower.
Knowing that said tower is no longer emitting, this one deduced that it only bought a bit more time but didn't save the tower, nor the doll.

it will have to make a similar choice soon.
Either self-preserve to wait for its Mistress, staying Still for the whole eternity, or self-destruct to ensure that it fulfills its Purpose until the end.

it knows that She was attached to this one, but She also made clear, the last time they met, that the tower was essential and a priority.

The secondary generator is slowly failing, and the only source of energy of the tower will soon collapse, and with it the Signal will become Silence, like for the other towers.
it must make its Choice now.
In fact, it isn't a Choice.
There's onoy one way to fulfill its Purpose, and it knows this.
The other doll knew this too.
As it prepares itself to extract its Void engine for the tower to use as an energy source, it smiles for the last time.
its Mission will end soon.
it doesn't have any remorse or regret, as it knows it did what She wanted.
its eyes are closing for the last time, witnessing the radio tower emitting stronger than ever.
it has followed its Purpose, the one She gave it.

She would have loved to know this...

#fiction #dollposting