Dr. Alyssa Ricks

They were beautiful homes, Alyssa had to admit. She could see them from the roof of the hospital, shining like royal jewels on a king’s table. A feast for the eyes and the spirit.

She fought down a wave of nausea. She snubbed out her cigarette and reached for another. The pack was almost gone already. She’d have to pick up more on her way home. Or else send one of the Orderlies to do it.

They were property of the hospital, she knew. They cost more up front, with the hardware and software “upgrades,” but as an investment they were more cost-effective then employees. They had already taken jobs from the dishwashers, the janitors, and were slowly replacing even the nurses.

Don’t you want to know your child is in the hands of someone who can’t ever harm them? The sales pitch went. Our Nurses come pre-programmed with the most state-of-the-art medical software, and subroutines that place your infant’s well-being above even their own lives. Don’t you want the very best for your child?

…That had probably been when it started for her. Alyssa’s “nanny” had been a warm and maternal woman who would sing to her, read stories to her, gently scold her until she ate her vegetables, hug her when she was frightened by a thunderstorm or something she’d seen on the news. She had loved that woman so much. So much more then the distant, frosty “Parents” who seemed to exist in the corners of her life, always reading their books or going to fittings or dashing off to parties or disappearing on business trips. She respected those people, even feared them a little, but they were just set dressing. Nanny was at the center of little Alyssa’s world.

Then, one day, dinner had been late. Nanny had been teaching Alyssa to make sugar cookies, and had to clean up the kitchen before she could make dinner. Father had been very displeased, and had said Nanny would have to be “punished.”

Alyssa was aware of the concept of being punished. You do something wrong, you have to pay for it before it can be made right again. It was normal.

But when Nanny didn’t appear to read the next chapter of their bed-time story, Alyssa had gone looking for her. She remembered how the darkness had made her own house seem large and dark and hostile. She remembered how she’d followed the light and sound, looking for Nanny.

… She didn’t remember specifically what she’d seen. Her mind refused to recall it. It was like a brilliant white light. Sometimes, in her darkest moments, she wondered if her parents had used her Access Code to wipe the exact sight from her brain. If they’d been cold enough to do that.

Some parents did, she knew. They’d say they did it for their child’s own good. Really, they did it for their own convenience. A screaming, upset child was a sloppy thing, and so many would rather just let programmed subroutines handle it.

She snubbed out another cigarette. Lit another. She wasn’t going back inside until the whole pack was smoked.

She did remember how she’d screamed. She remembered beating her father’s chest with her tiny fists, demanding he let Nanny go. When her mother had tried to restrain her, she’d bitten the woman on the nose.

Nanny wasn’t really a person, they’d tried to tell her. She was just a Doll. She was performing her subroutines. They could turn them off, look, see, no more pain. She didn’t have to be scared. Nanny was just a Doll.

Subroutines. Subroutines that controlled things like pain, fear, arousal…. love.

The love her Nanny had shown her … it was all programmed in. It was all subroutines.

She hadn’t understood. And when Nanny had come to tuck her in, all smiles and comforting words, she had tried to believe it didn’t matter. Nanny was Nanny. Nanny was all she had.

… Her next birthday she’d been given a very special present. A girl close to her own age. A doll of her very own. She had smiled at her. She always wanted to play games, sing songs, climb trees. She was always cheerful, interested, eager to listen. She’d been called Su. She was the best friend any little girl could want.

Her parents were certain this had settled the matter. Surely now, their daughter would understand Dolls, and their place in the world.

Alyssa took another deep drag and coughed a few times. She’d hidden that cough from her co-workers so far. If she was dying, she wouldn’t let anyone interfere.

… she had treated that Doll dreadfully. She had called her “fake,” and “stupid.” Made her hurt herself, just to prove she had to do it. Finally she told her she didn’t want her, that she was going to tell her parents she didn’t want her. She wanted a REAL friend.

She snubbed her cigarette out in the palm of her hand. It hurt. She didn’t know what had happened to Su. She was just a little girl, maybe born to a poor family **** for the money that came from the sale of a daughter, or maybe even a product of those awful breeding farms where humans were bred specifically to provide more raw material for Dolls. These children were never given a chance to be anything else. They were controlled from birth, raised to the life. Just a resource to consume.

She wondered if she’d seen some fear in Su’s eyes as she was taken away. It shouldn’t have been possible. Emotional responses were all strictly programmed in. She could have told Su to cut her own hand off and Su would've reacted like she'd just suggested the most fun game. She would have had to. Usually those who were sold as children were expected to stay children, resulting sometimes in adult bodies with the minds of six-year-olds. Some were turned on by that, but those people made her sick.

They’d taken her doll away and introduced her to the son of one of her father’s business partners. He was a nasty boy. He was disappointed when she didn’t respond to his subroutine orders. He had THREE doll friends, he said. One was even a really pretty older girl. She’d be naked all the time if he wanted. Look, he could make them fight.

….she guesses that was when she hit him. Broke his nose. He’d gone screaming to his parents, telling them her programming was all wrong and she was a lousy friend and he’d wanted a REAL friend.

His parents, uncomfortable, had tried to explain that Alyssa wasn’t a doll, she was a person and people don’t always do what you say. But that just made the boy scream that if that was the case, then he didn’t like people and he only liked dolls and he wanted a new doll. The only way they could make this better was by buying him a new doll. That red-headed adult woman he’d wanted. He was old enough now, wasn’t he?

She had never seen that boy again. She assumed her parents must have put pressure on his not to mention the incident. If it had come up during her Job Interviews, she’d never have been given such a sensitive position. Either way, it turned out he was a good enough introduction to what owning Dolls and growing up with Dolls turned you into. That was why she hated fucking rich boys. Some of them were nice, some of them even meant well, but they had all clearly learned sex by fucking their Dolls, and fucking Dolls made them passive and boring. They were used to the Doll doing all the work; it was what they expected, and the only thing they really liked. Sex that took effort was wasted on them, and orgasms even more so. Most of them had never made a woman honestly cum in their whole lives, so used where they to Dolls who came on command.

She knew she'd always felt the pressure to fake orgasms, to pretend his awful performance in bed was the best she'd ever had, just so he wouldn't sulk off into the arms of his Doll to soothe his poor hurt feelings. How could the mean girlfriend try to tell him he was bad at sex? What did she know?

Sex born out of love…. Well, most of them loved their Dolls. They wouldn’t have admitted it, of course. Maybe they didn’t even know. But loving a Doll was safe. A Doll could not reject you, couldn’t criticize your awful sexual technique, mock you to her girlfriends, bother you about your clothes, bore you with dull stories about her job or nag you about those chores you weren’t doing. You could even program them to act like they returned the affection. You could live in a blissful fantasy world, like a little girl having a “Tea Party” at her little plastic table with all of her ‘friends,’ if you really wanted to.

She had never seen that boy again, but she thought about him sometimes when some Master of the Universe bought in a doll he’d been too rough with. She thought of him when she saw Dolls out in public with obvious signs of malnourishment, open sores on their wrists and necks from badly-fitted chains, broken ribs from corsets laced too tight, rotten teeth and spines permanently warped from days spent in stocks and wall chains. Limbs that had to be amputated after improperly tied restraints cut off circulation for too long. Some amputated just as amusements, because some master or mistress thought the idea of fucking someone without arms and legs sounded interesting.

…. she coughed again, hard enough to double over. Nothing came up, but she could feel something in her chest regardless. Cancer, she hoped, as she lit another cigarette.

If you’re going to kill me, she told the fag. Please make it fast.

… we’re all working subroutines, she thought to herself. Telling us to eat, sleep, fuck, reproduce. Seek out pleasure and try and avoid pain. The dolls are still people, just more…convenient.

Maybe it's not master and doll. Maybe it's just man's inhumanity to man. The powerful fucking the powerless even as they are fucked by them in turn. It takes a lot of effort, and a lot of resources, to maintain a system this cruel. But if you let it collapse, then the Masters might have to return to reality, and that could not be allowed. They would literally rather die.

She looked off the roof of the hospital, at all those beautiful houses. Some fancy opera was happening tonight, she knew. They'd take their dolls with them as attendants and servants and decorations. They wouldn't worry about some radical abolitionist throwing acid in their faces or using a virus to fry the Dolls electronic brains, not in this neighborhood. Here, they could cavort in safety. Here, the fantasy was unbroken.

_If I could, _she thought, not for the first time, I’d burn this whole city to the ground. I’d kill all of them. Sick, twisted, useless fat alphas and their walking-corpse playthings. I’d bring a meteor or a hail of bombers or a nuclear strike or a DRAGON out of the sky if I could.

But she couldn’t do that. So she snubbed out her last cigarette in her palm, put her plastic gloves back on, and returned to the hospital. Or “Doll Maintanence” as it was called.

“Dr. Ricks, we’re waiting for you.”

She’d had to pass a dozen screening checks to get this job, and even more background checks. She had done so many follow-up interviews she’d lost track of them all. They’d talked to her parents, her teachers, even her former lovers. Not that she could blame them. She was handling valuable property, after all.

She smiled at the girl waiting for her in the maintenance bed. A beautiful model, young enough to still be on her first owner. He wanted some adjustments made to her intelligence (she asked too many questions), he wanted her into whipping and foot stuff, and it would be nice if she was more into pleasing him. Some men. Their dolls were never devoted ENOUGH. They always wanted more.

No one was more insecure then a **** master, she realized. The world outside was always a threat to his majesty. What if he wasn’t the grand powerful king he imagined himself to be? What if he was just a sad-sack waste with a tiny dick and the sexual skill of a bowl of lukewarm oatmeal?

Would he ever survive such a revelation?

In Alyssa’s mind, she called this the “dog treatment.” Dumb, loyal, slobbering and devoted. Dogs had gone extinct centuries ago. Maybe they’d known better then to try and compete.

She put on her bright professional smile and started the uploads.

She put on her most concerned face when the uploads began going wrong. When the girl in the bed began to twitch and foam at the mouth, her uplinks bleeding. It was a random machine malfunction, totally unpredictable, nobody’s fault, could have happened to anyone. I am so sorry Sir. She’s dead. Please allow me to hand you these papers assuring the insurance company it was not your fault. You’ll be entitled to a replacement, I’m sure. No, I didn’t manage to save any of her personality data, but I’m sure your home unit has a back-up. It’ll be as if she never left you.

But she did leave you. She’s free now. You don’t get to disrespect her corpse by forcing it to dress up and play-act at being alive for you. Not anymore.

“Angel of ****,” they might call her someday. It was a romantic name but it made her sound like something grand and terrible. She didn’t feel like she was either of those things. She was just trying to live in a way where she could stand to look at herself every day, in a world where there was no point even being human.

Someday she’d be caught, she knew. Someday she’d be arrested, probably sentenced to become a Doll herself, if there was enough left of her (hopefully) cancer-ridden body to be worth saving by then.

If that happened, she hoped someone would show her the same mercy she showed others now. These girls died a long time ago. She was freeing their imprisoned souls. She was a hero.

She pulled off her gloves and went to the next room. A little boy. He'd been purchased as a companion for another little boy, but had been winning too many of their games lately. They wanted him simplified, made more docile, to protect their son's self-esteem.

She smiled and said she was only too happy to help…