Weird Science

It was a Friday night like any other in the Great Dead Middle of Suburbia—clean, quiet, and excruciatingly sexless.

Wyatt Donnelly sat slouched in his dad's armchair, wearing the same sweatpants he'd had on for two days. On the TV, a rerun of Wheel of Fortune limped along. The letters flipped, the audience clapped on cue, and Pat Sajak made a joke so dry it could have been a cracker. The whole scene felt like the soundtrack to Wyatt's life.

On the couch, Gary Wallace had his feet on the cushions and his head hanging off the edge like a bored bat. He sighed dramatically.

"You ever notice," he said, voice slightly nasal from being upside down, "that our lives suck in three dimensions?"

Wyatt didn't look over. "No, Gary. I hadn't noticed."

"Not just school," Gary went on, waving a leg. "Not just girls ignoring us. It's a whole immersive failure experience. Like a virtual reality game where the objective is to never touch a boob."

Wyatt sighed. "This again?"

"Yes, this again!" Gary sat up, his hair standing out in wild tufts. "Dude, we're seventeen. We're seniors. You know what seniors are supposed to be doing on Friday night?"

"Finishing their AP Chem homework?"

Gary pointed a dramatic finger. "Getting laid, Wyatt. Or at least doing something that might eventually lead to getting laid. You know what we're doing?"

Wyatt stared.

"We're watching your grandma's favourite game show and drinking diet root beer."

He flopped backward, limbs splayed. "If we died right now, St. Peter wouldn't even check the list. He'd just laugh and send us to heaven out of pity."

There was a pause.

Wyatt cracked open another root beer and said, "You have a real gift for optimism."

Gary stared at the ceiling.

"I just think," he said slowly, "if girls aren't going to give us a chance, maybe we should give ourselves one."

Wyatt glanced over. "That sentence sounded like the start of a crime."

Gary's eyes lit up. "No. Better. Science."

Wyatt raised an eyebrow.

Gary leapt up, pacing now. "I'm serious. We build one."

"One what?"

"A girl! The girl. Smart, sexy, not above hanging out with us. Not cruel. Maybe a little cruel—if we want that."

Wyatt laughed. "You're talking about making a sex doll."

"No!" Gary looked genuinely offended. "Okay. Yes. But one that can talk. And think. And flirt. And do that thing where she bites her lip like she knows you can't handle it—except we can. Because we made her."

"You're insane."

"We already have the tech!" Gary waved his hands like a prophet. "Your brother's rig in the basement? That compiler is basically a war crime. And I have those neural net templates from that AI summer camp. All we need is some processing power, a few thousand personality inputs, and an obscene amount of horniness."

"You're serious."

"I'm horny and ****, Wyatt. I've never been more serious."

Wyatt blinked. He looked around the room like it might save him. His eyes drifted toward the door to the basement.

"...My parents are in Palm Springs until Monday."

Gary grinned.

The basement looked like a RadioShack had exploded.

Wires ran across the carpet in chaotic bundles. Monitors glowed with scrolling code. The main computer tower pulsed faintly, fans humming like a living thing. Gary had set up a whiteboard labelled "GIRL ENGINE v1.0" covered in question marks and crude sketches.

In the centre of the room stood a mannequin from the art room, naked except for a feather boa and a tiara. It had no eyes, but somehow managed to look disapproving.

Gary adjusted a setting on one of the monitors.

"So, what do we want?" he asked. "Redhead? Blonde? Jet black hair that makes you question your morals?"

Wyatt hovered near the keyboard. "This feels wrong."

Gary clicked through a lineup of 3D models on the screen. "We're artists, Wyatt. We're not objectifying women—we're creating the idea of a woman. It's very philosophical."

"That sounds like something a future lawsuit will quote."

Gary grinned. "Trust me. The world isn't ready for the kind of girl we're about to unleash."

They spent the next hour feeding data into the system: facial scans, voice samples, movie clips, runway footage, yoga tutorials, vintage pin-ups, French poetry, and a Buzzfeed listicle titled 'Ten Kinks You Didn't Know You Had.'

Wyatt nervously clicked on a folder labelled "Lisa."

"Why Lisa?" he asked.

Gary shrugged. "I don't know. It just feels like the kind of name that could ruin your life."

Wyatt hesitated.

Then he dragged the folder in.

The system purred.

Compiling: LISA.SYS

Inputs detected: Physical | Behavioural | Erotic | Uncanny

Processing essence...

On screen, a silhouette began to form—smooth curves, shifting colours, a whisper of something divine and dangerous. The mannequin's tiara sparked. The lights flickered. There was a strange vibration in the air, like the moment before thunder.

Gary stepped back. "Wyatt. This is it."

Wyatt's hand hovered over the ENTER key.

"You sure about this?"

Gary nodded solemnly. "Let's get weird."

Wyatt pressed it.

LISA.SYS — ESSENCE DIVIDED. INITIALIZING...

And then—

Darkness.

AUTHOR NOTE

This story is set to Public, and I left this first chapter open-ended. I've always thought that the movie Weird Science might be fun to mine for content for a site like this, so I've written this first chapter and now I'm releasing it to the world! I'll write a thread or two, but have fun yourselves!