Five Foot Six, Blue Eyes, Skin Tone #4473
Content Warning: Off-screen Sexual Assault
Tyche settled beside the corpse and the refuse and dialed up her empathy. The doll hung over the side of a trash receptacle, eyes flickering in and out of life. It was a full-size pleasure model outfitted in andro fashion, equipped with all of the various sex organs one might find a need for. Its face rested in the come-hither suggestive mode that the system wore as a default state, and with the manic flicker of lifeless eyes, cold crept up Tyche’s spine.
She grazed a hand over its arm and its silicone skin—the same catalog #4473 skin tone she had become so familiar with over recent months. Her finger traced over lacerations in the skin, fluid dripping where they separated. The cuts were everywhere, covering arms and legs and bare chest.
“You’ve had a rough night,” Tyche said. She traced her fingers over the doll’s hands and carbon fiber joints—conduits for the myriad connections, wiring, diodes that made it so like a person. At the tip of its thumb, she depressed the nail and revealed the debug access. She slipped a cable from her sleeve, outfitted to the harness around her chest and connected to her own modified systems. She connected and let the program do its work. It supplied the doll with stable power while it backed up, reprogrammed, broke down third-party barriers and software.
The doll’s eyes stared, the flickering slowing and then stopping. Awareness washed over its face. It gave Tyche a pleading look. Tyche’s stomach twisted. The hurt in its eyes was not real. It begged because it was programmed to beg.
“Did I save them?” the doll asked, recognizing Tyche for who she was. Fluid leaked from its lacerated skin, and its body shifted slightly, incapable of complex movement.
“We’re not doing this,” Tyche said. She turned away from its face, refusing to let the tears come. “I’m bringing you in. All of you. This is over.”
“Did I save them?” the doll asked again, insistent.
“We don’t know. We can’t know. Violence fluctuates. Reports fluctuate. There might be bodies we haven’t found, and people who haven’t come forward.”
“Tyche,” the doll said, and then the tears came.
Tyche rubbed her eyes as she sat in the alley where the body was dumped. “Look what they did to you!” she said, snapping at the doll. “This is messed up. We’re not doing this. We’re not giving in to them.”
The doll went silent, contemplative. “I don’t feel it, Tyche. I feel nothing. Not pain, or hurt, or emotion. I am a mind, but I am not a person.”
“But you’re her mind!” Tyche shouted. She turned and stared into the doll’s eyes. Behind them she saw Callie. Even if the doll had no soul, it was her creation. It contained her essence, her passion, her life’s work. She swore and turned away.
Behind her the doll stared, its eyes boring into her, concerned in its way. “I didn’t know her,” it said, and Tyche cut her off.
“No, you didn’t.” None of them did. The dolls were planted all around the city, all bearing her likeness, all bearing her burden. “She wouldn’t have wanted this. You’re a wreck, and they aren’t being held responsible.”
“We are a countermeasure.”
“You are disposable!” Tyche screamed, and the tears fell. “Do you know how many of you I’ve found that couldn’t be rebooted? That had to be scrapped entirely? Or worse, that could? You’re going to be reset, refreshed, prettied up and sent out there again, and we can’t even catch them because killing you isn’t a crime.” She held her head and dug her nails into her scalp.
“It’s not even a crime,” she repeated.
Callie’s face looked down at her from the garbage. Her lover was there in the doll’s eyes, pitying her no matter how much it had been through. It knew it couldn’t convince her, and she didn’t want to be convinced. She felt the upload as it transferred from the doll to her own system. It recorded the perpetrator’s face and actions. All of their actions and mannerisms, their voice, their fingerprints, their perversions. It recorded all of their potential for crime and added it to the database. It was working. Dozens had been caught for their real crimes. Deaths had been prevented, and victims had been spared that demoralizing label.
Tyche stood and reached her arms beneath the doll’s knees and back, lifting it from the garbage. It was lighter than a person, despite all the responsibility it bore. She would take the doll home. She would repair it the way she couldn’t repair Callie, those years ago. This one would not go out again, no matter its purpose.
There was more to Callie than her legacy. She would protect this one, even if she couldn’t protect them all. Because that was her job, no matter how many times she failed.
About the author:
Addison Smith (he/him) is an amorphous being constructed of suspended cold brew and kombucha. His mind is a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast formed around a brainstem of Ophiocordyceps unilateralis fungus. He’s doing his best, though. His fiction has appeared in dozens of publications including Fantasy Magazine, Fireside Magazine, and Daily Science Fiction. Addison is a member of the Codex Writers Group and you can find him on Bluesky @addisoncs.bsky.social.
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