So far...

"Are you sure it's gonna be done in time?" Andrew asked nervously as he watched Madison scrape and chisel away at the professor's right collarbone. The light from the window was growing dim as Sunday twilight approached. The golem's face was still completely blank.

"No," she said curtly. "And whatever other preparations you need to make, I'd start on them now."

"I, uh, kinda need Erica for that."

She looked at him incredulously. "You harangue me about deadlines and then you want me to give up my model? Did you bind me just to screw with me?"

"Can you work while she writes? I can paralyze different parts of her, I think."

Madison sighed and stood. "Fine. I don't need breaks, but I might as well take one anyway. I've been working constantly for almost 48 hours." She put aside her tools and left the room.

Ross quickly unbound the default script they used to keep Erica upright, then rebound her to her usual script. She looked over the golem next to her approvingly.

"It's looking good. I must admit, I'll miss this body." She crouched to look at the perfectly molded vulva. "It looks bigger from this perspective."

"Listen, Madison's on a bit of a time crunch, so I'm gonna need you to be a face model while you write out all the stuff that the new golem needs to know to fill in for you."

Erica smiled with amusement. "Is that what she told you? That's she's on a time crunch?"

"I mean, not really," Andrew said. "I noticed that she's behind on her work and when I asked, she said she might not meet the deadline."

"They really captured the resculptor personality with that one," Erica smirked. "She's not behind at all. She'll be done in a few hours."

"Then why tell me-"

"To get you to leave her alone," she interrupted. "Resculptors are notoriously prickly and they hate distractions. When you asked if she'd be done in time she saw it as an opportunity to get some breathing room. Looks like it backfired, though, since I'm activated now and she's nowhere to be seen."

"Shit," Andrew said. "I'm getting sick of her."

"The feeling's mutual!" came an unexpected rejoinder from the bedroom.

"And why is her fucking hearing so good?" Andrew complained. Erica walked behind him and began to massage his shoulders.

"You'll have to be patient," she said. "This time tomorrow you and I will be making plans for my body. I suspect that will be more fun for you."

"Are you gonna miss talking to me like I'm a little kid?" Andrew muttered. Erica laughed.

"A little. I'm excited to be your peer, though. I took great pains to make as much of my memories transferrable through all of the changes. It's very strange; I can remember everything we did with the student script quite clearly, but it was like-"

"Like you were a different person?"

She shook her head. "Not at all! It was like I was the same person but thinking differently. I suppose it's not really something I can explain, but it's an odd feeling to be sure."

Madison reappeared in the bedroom doorway. "It's been ten minutes. Do you need to keep babbling to each other or can I do my job again?"

Erica sat at the dining table and opened a ream of printer paper. She grabbed a pen and started rapidly tapping it against the paper to create a series of tiny lines and dots. Andrew asked if she needed a paralyzer script for her face and she shook her head.

"Madison and I will be fine," she said. "Why don't you go home and get some sleep? We'll call you when she's done."