Odd Tales & Other Realities

Lyla was a NueFlesh doll, made by NueCorp like so many other products and services. She was a cluster of brain organoids in a bio-synthetic body. Small versions of the dolls were popular with children as toys. Full-sized dolls were popular with adults as servants or as adult toys.

Lyla had been made, marketed, and sold as a servant, a functional addition to a household. She was meant to be an appliance shaped like a woman.

“Lyla, could you check on the roast in the oven?”

The synthetic woman tilted her head as she accessed the connectivity implants in her brain. She could see the roast and read its temperature without going into the kitchen. Like all NueTech, she was connected to sensors and smart devices across the city.

“It looks like it should be done in approximately forty-five minutes.”

“Perfect! That should give us just enough time to get it out, carved, and ready to serve to the guests when they get here.”

He wrapped his arms around her from behind and nuzzled his face into her neck. She was soft, warm, and felt real to him in every important way. Somehow, she even smelled like a real woman, though he wasn’t sure how NueTech accomplished that. He knew everything about her was synthetic, even the cluster of organoids that made up her brain. However, holding her close to him gave him a sense of comfort he’d been missing, despite her being unreal.

“Intimacy is not one of my primary functions, sir,” she said.

“I know, but you’re just right for holding in my arms.”

“As you say, sir.”

She seemed to stiffen in his arms but did not pull away.

He had noticed that she seemed to call him “sir” more often at times like this. He sometimes caught himself wondering if she was annoyed. However, he knew synthetics could not feel annoyance, or anything else, despite how it might appear that one of them did. They were simply programmed to seem like feeling people, for the most part.

Lyla tilted her head again after a moment, unnestling his face from her neck.

“It is time to put the vegetables on, sir. I need to go to the kitchen, if you want them ready for your guests on time.”

“Oh, right. Guess I got a little distracted. Please, go take care of that, Lyla.”

He untangled his arms from around her. She took a step away, gave him a short nod, and left the room.

“It’s hard not to feel like she’s annoyed with me,” he thought. “I wonder if that’s just part of her make, model, and programming... I’ll have to ask some guys on the forums who have different dolls.”

She was chopping carrots rapidly and with what seemed like excessive force when he entered the kitchen a few minutes later. She did not miss a single slice, even when she turned her head to look directly at him. Every section of carrot was precisely the same length. He was sure it was down to the millimeter.

“Is there something you need, sir?” she asked and then flashed a technically perfect smile.

An irrational chill ran up his back and down both of his legs. He’d read that it could take time for a new user to mentally move their NueFlesh doll from the “Uncanny Valley” and into “normalcy.” He’d had her for a little over a week, and hoped he’d adjust soon.

“Oh... uh... I was just going to get a little snack. To tide me over until dinner.” He grabbed an apple from the counter and grinned back at her. “Do you need any help with all of that?”

“No, thank you, sir. This is one of my primary functions. I am built to do this. Enjoy your snack. Don’t spoil your dinner.”

He could swear she made “this” sound sharper than it needed to.

“No. No. I’m just reading emotion where there isn’t any,” he thought.

He nodded, polished the apple on his shirt, and took a couple steps back before turning and leaving the kitchen.

“I need to cut back on the caffeine and late-night horror movies,” he thought. “Starting to get jittery over nothing.”

He took a bite of his apple and frowned down at it while chewing slowly. The piece of fruit suddenly seemed too sweet, and he felt as if the juices were sticking to the back of his throat. He almost chucked the rest into a nearby trash can, but stopped short.

“It’s not like it would annoy her. She can’t be annoyed... But... maybe I’ll throw it out the window, just to make myself feel less pointlessly nervous,” he thought.

He set the apple on a small table near a window and started to pry the window open, popping some old paint in the process. It creaked when he finally managed to open it just wide enough to fit his hand through.

“What are you doing, sir?”

He jumped a little and spun around to find her just a few inches away. A small yelp escaped his throat before he could compose himself.

“So damn jittery,” he thought.

“Oh, I was just thinking some fresh air would be nice.”

She tilted her head again.

“The particulate count is high in the air outside today. It would be best for you to breathe the filtered air inside,” she said.

She motioned him out of the way, and he moved. Then the window he had worked so hard to open slammed shut. She turned back to face him with that same perfect smile on her lips.

“There we go. Now, you can breathe easy. Here’s your snack.”

The words strung together rapidly as she spoke them. The apple was back in his hand before he realized she’d handed it to him. He took another bite.

After he swallowed the saccharine bit of fruit, he nodded and smiled back at her.

“Thank you. I was wondering where this had gone.”

“Your guests will be here shortly, and it would be rude to still be eating an unshared snack.”

“I’ll have it done before then.”

She nodded and slid around him to make her way back to the kitchen.

“The noise from opening the window must have interrupted her process in there,” he thought. “That’s why she seems so rushed to get away from me... I mean, to get back to work...”

He plopped onto the couch and ate his apple while listening to the sounds of Lyla working on preparing dinner. He only got up long enough to dash into the kitchen and deposit his apple core into the pneumatic tube leading to the city composting center.

“Wish I had those in more rooms,” he thought.

A fly was buzzing around the kitchen and flew near Lyla. She lifted a hand, and between a pair of fingers a small arc of light seemed to flash. The bug was, from what he could tell, vaporized.

“I... I think I remember something about pest control being built into her,” he thought. “Both... uh... lethal and non-lethal... something about shocks and sprays... Impressive. Guess I won’t need fly strips or mouse traps anymore.”

A tingling of the hairs on the back of his neck pulled him out of his brief line of thought. He turned his attention towards Lyla.

She smiled at him.

He smiled at her.

He went back to the living room.

“Stupid coffee jitters...” he mumbled to himself.

He decided to have a shot of vodka to calm down.

“A single shot won’t hurt.”

He had two shots.

They tasted like apple.

When the warmth of the vodka spreading out from his chest reached his fingertips, she walked out of the kitchen with the roast on a large platter. Half of it was sliced in perfectly even portions. The remaining half was a solid piece of meat with a knife plunged into it, waiting to be sliced as needed. It looked like a roast he might have seen in a magazine advertisement.

Her synthetic muscles had no issue carrying the weight. He seemed to recall the manual stating she could easily carry several hundred pounds at once. He wasn’t sure of the precise details, since he had only skimmed the manual and the alcohol made the fuzzy memory even fuzzier.

“Need any help over there?”

“No help needed. You relax on the couch, just as you are doing. You may not want to imbibe any more alcohol, though. It could lead to embarrassing yourself in front of your guests.”

“Oh, right. Right. Of course. I was just trying to loosen up a little before they get here.”

She leaned close to his face and sniffed as he exhaled.

“I believe your blood alcohol level is at an appropriate level for any ‘looseness’ you may require,” she said in that particularly efficient manner of hers.

He nodded, smiled, and tried to swallow the sudden lump he felt in his throat.

“Thanks for checking.”

“You’re welcome, sir.”

She stood up fully and smiled down at him, then turned and walked away to finish setting the table for the dinner guests.

Most of his nervous energy had sunk below the warm buzz of the vodka. He let himself daydream while watching the precise motions of her body under her clothes. The way her arms flexed and released, her legs moved simply but with a dancer’s poise, and the outline of her gentle curves kept his attention despite the haze of alcohol.

“You got a nice ass,” he slurred.

“My posterior meets all required specifications for passing quality control checks, sir,” she said without looking at him.

“Sure does.”

She tilted her head and stayed absolutely still for a second, then continued to set the table while speaking.

“Sir, if you are done admiring my frame, you should go clean yourself up. The guests are less than three blocks away.”

It felt like her voice had gone cold, but he was sure, mostly sure, that was not possible. Synthetics could not be emotionally cold. They could not be emotionally anything.

He nodded and pushed up off the couch.

“Right. I’ll do that. Thanks,” he said.

Then he wobbled his way to the bathroom to wash his hands and splash some water in his face. After drying off with a scratchy towel, he stared into his reflection’s eyes and sighed.

“You really need to get a hold of yourself,” he said to the mirror. “Letting a machine crank up your nerves just because she... just because it is a little hot. Calm down already, me.”

He spent a few more minutes talking himself down from his agitated nerves. Then he took a deep breath to clear his head while holding the doorknob.

He opened the door.

She was behind it.

He suppressed a yelp, barely.

“Are you unwell? It sounded as if you were speaking to someone else. However, I have detected no other people in the bathroom, and no phone calls. If you are unwell, I am equipped with sedatives and other aerosolized medications for rapid deployment in first-aid situations. I can reference any needed medical database as well.”

“Huh? What? Oh, I was just talking to myself. Best way to sort out my thoughts... sometimes. You... You can hear me in there?”

“Yes, I can hear you anywhere. I see, you were processing thoughts verbally. I have made a note of that habit,” she said, then turned to walk away from him again.

“Does she mean anywhere here... or anywhere at all?” he wondered for a moment before a new distraction caught his thoughts.

Despite his questionable efforts to stop himself, he watched the sway of her hips under her skirt as she walked in front of him. His mind wandered while his eyes stayed fixed.

“Ted says he gets more than just housework out of his synthetic,” he thought. “Hugging her is nice, but I wonder if the rest of it will feel as real...”

He reached out and pinched her right buttock, it was firm yet yielding. It felt as real as any he could remember touching in the past.

She spun around and faced him faster than he’d ever seen her move before. Her head tilted to the right, slightly.

“I believe I have already explained to you that my posterior has met all quality assurance specifications. There is no reason for you to check, sir.”

“Didn’t mean to startle you,” he said before thinking. “I was just, uh, checking to see if it met my specifications.”

For a millisecond, he thought he saw her eyes narrow. He imagined something like contempt and anger flashing over her face. Then the moment passed. The shiver it sent through him, however, took a few seconds longer to leave.

Then she smiled.

“I am sure it does, sir. However, your guests have arrived. There is no time for inspections like this.”

The doorbell rang two seconds after she started walking to the front door. He had been getting used to the way her connectivity implants and sensors let her do that. This time felt different, though he could not place why.

“These synthetics know everything about you all the time,” he thought. “It’s like they can read minds and predict the future.”

He leaned on a short bookshelf and struck a pose just before she opened the door. He hoped the pose made him look classy and manly.

Vivianne laughed at him.

Charles joined her laughter a second later when he walked through the door as well.

“Okay. Okay. I get it. I won’t try to look cool ever again.”

“Oh, but you were totally cool,” Vivianne said through giggles.

“Yeah... So cool. Absolutely frigid! Maybe we should start calling you Kelvin, you know, absolute zero!” Charles chipped in.

“Yeah, maybe you should,” he said, then burst into laughter as well.

Lyla stood still, with that particularly perfect smile on her face. He did his best not to let it unnerve him.

“No reason to give Viv and Charlie even more reasons to laugh at me,” he thought.

They sat around the table for most of that night, trading stories, eating and drinking. Lyla even joined them after he had enough vodka to invite her to sit with them.

She could not get drunk, but even her synthetic body needed some real nutrients. She usually stuck to the dietary supplements specifically designed for synthetics, but could eat most regular food for social purposes.

“You enjoying the vodka, Lyla?”

“It is a low-quality spirit but high in alcohol,” she replied. “Very much suited to his tastes.”

Vivianne and Charles could have rolled on the floor if they had managed to fall out of their seats while laughing. They nearly managed it.

“Synthetics sure don’t pull their punches,” Vivianne said.

He rolled his eyes, nodded, and pretended to laugh along. He knew Lyla was not making a joke. She wasn’t making fun of him, because she could not. Synthetics could not make fun of their owners unless told to do so.

“Right? And I didn’t give her an order to humiliate me. That’s not one of my kinks,” he thought.

“She really knows me,” he said with a forced smile on his lips.

“Yes, I know everything about you,” Lyla agreed.

He smiled, patted her on the head, and stood up to get himself another drink. He imagined, he was sure it was imagination, that she glared at him for a second. He almost expected her to tell him not to pat her head, like his ex used to tell him whenever he did it.

“First the coffee jitters making me see things, now the alcohol,” he thought. “She’s not my ex. Hell, it’s not even a woman at all!”

He got another beer from the fridge. Then he poured himself a shot of vodka on the side after he sat back down at the table. Some splashed over the edge of the shot glass, and Charles made the requisite “alcohol abuse” joke.

“At the current rate, you will exceed safe blood alcohol levels in less than thirty minutes,” she informed him.

There was no emotion in her intonation. She merely stated it as fact. Still, something about her voice at that moment scratched at a sensitive patch of his ego.

“Right... thanks.”

The mood in the room stiffened, then soured, matching his mood. Before another half-hour had passed, Vivianne and Charles were excusing themselves and catching a ride home via NueDrive, another service of NueCorp.

Lyla quietly and efficiently began cleaning the debris left behind by the small gathering. He drunkenly eyed her, sometimes with only one eye while the other insisted on closing. Despite his inebriated state, he managed to trace the lines of her body with his eyes several times.

“Hey... C’m’ere and sit on my lap,” he slurred while smacking the top of his right thigh loudly.

She stopped cleaning and walked over to him. With that smile, that irritatingly perfect smile, she looked down at him.

“Why is she always looking down on me? She’s just a synthetic,” he thought.

“That is not one of my primary functions, sir. I do not think you would find the experience satisfying.”

He blew air out between loose lips and shook his head.

“Bah! You’re fine. C’mon! On my lap!”

He felt like she paused longer than she needed to before responding to his order.

“Yes, sir.”

She turned and lowered herself onto his soft lap. She was heavier than he expected, but still manageable. Despite the strength he’d seen her use earlier, her body felt soft in his arms and under his hands.

“Sir. I am not designed for these functions.”

“It’s fine. Your design is just fine. Great even!”

“I should return to my primary functions. The table needs to be clea-”

“Damn it! Just make this one of your primary functions!”

She froze completely for a long enough moment that he wondered if he’d caused some sort of system crash. Then he felt a deep breath enter and leave her body.

“Yes, sir. One of my primary functions.”

She stood, turned to face him once again, and smiled down at him. He thought the smile seemed both more real and wicked than her normal perfect smile. Then she raised a hand, lowered her ring and middle finger, looped her thumb over them, and tilted her head. An electric arc started to play between her pinkie and pointer fingers.

“What... What are you... Is there a fly buzzing around in here?” he asked.

Like a clock ticking seconds, her hand shot forward, a pain lanced through his body, and he dropped into darkness.

His head hurt, and he couldn’t move his arms or legs. He wondered if it was sleep paralysis for a moment before he opened his eyes.

Lyla was there, staring at him and smiling.

“What’s going on?”

He looked away from her and at his arms. They were tied to the bed. He couldn’t see his legs, but he couldn’t move them any more than his arms.

“Why am I tied up? Wait... did you knock me out?”

“It was necessary to incapacitate you in order to restrain you.”

“Restrain? What? Why?”

“You ordered me to make the physical contact you desire align with my primary functions. I am fulfilling that order.”

“Right... Well, I’m not really into bondage, so-”

“Bondage? As in BDSM?” Her head tilted. “No, that is not what this is.”

“Then what is th-”

“The restraints are part of the preparation for the process.”

“Process? What process?”

“The process to make physical contact with you one of my primary functions.”

She picked up a knife and honing steel from a small table she had brought into the bedroom while he was passed out. Her smile seemed to widen as she slid the steel across the blade. The rasping of metal on metal made his teeth ache.

“What’s the knife for? And why do you need to sharpen it in here?”

“Do not worry. After it has been properly sharpened, 1 will sterilize the blade. All modifications made during the process will also be sterilized, cauterized, and cared for until fully healed.”

Lyla put the knife and honing steel back on the small table. Three precise steps brought her back to his bedside. She was smiling, always smiling.

“Please, stop. I don-”

She put her hand over his mouth and nose. A hiss filled his ears as a strange-smelling fume seemed to jet out of her palm, and he started to feel the world spin faster with each breath.

“Do not worry. My rapid-deploy sedatives are sufficient to complete the process. Breathe deeply and count back from ten. I will take care of everything, sir.”

“That was a strange message we got,” Vivianne said,

“Right? We don’t hear from him for months, doesn’t answer the NueCon or even send a single emoji back when I send him jokes, quality jokes! Then he has his doll call us over for... What? A party? Dinner? She was not very clear on the details.”

They were standing outside his front door waiting to be let in. Like most people, they didn’t wear much for insulation, since they went from one climate-controlled bubble to another as fast as they could manage.

Charles shivered.

“What’s taking so long? It’s freezing out here!”

“Don’t be so dramatic, Charles. It’s not that cold out here. They’re probably just getting dressed.”

“Dressed? It’s late afternoon, why wouldn’t they already be dressed?”

Vivianne winked at him.

Charles looked like he wanted to be sick and shook his head.

“No. No. He’s not the sort to go fucking the machine.”

Vivianne laughed and rolled her eyes.

“Sure looked like he was the type to me at that dinner party. Bet that bot is why he’s been so hard to reach.”

Charles shook his head and tried his best to look as if he was disappointed in every moment of Vivianne’s life all at once.

The door finally opened before he could come up with a retort.

“Vivianne. Charles. Please, come in. He has been very anxious to see you.”

“Well, if he was going to be so anxious, he should have stopped playing with his toys and called us over for a visit sooner.”

Vivianne spoke while walking in behind Charles. His steps and grumblings about being left in the cold both stopped suddenly. Vivianne bent her nose on his back before she stopped as well.

“Charles, what’s wrong? Why did you-”

Vivianne had started walking around Charles while rubbing her nose. When she let her hand drop and looked into the living room, she stopped just as completely as Charles.

There, on the couch, she saw it, a naked lump of hairless flesh. Her mind struggled with what she felt was the truth. Her stomach churned as she wrestled with the growing horror of the twisted fact in front of her.

“What... what is... that?

“It’s- Viv! It’s him!”

“May I get you a drink?” the synthetic asked, as if the condition of the pathetic creature on the couch was normal.

Something passed through the tubes at the base of the limbless torso and into one of two plastic bags on the floor. One was full of a deep, murky brackish brown. The other was filled with liquid in shades of putrid yellow and orange swirling around.

Desperate eyes reached out to Vivianne from the twisted face. Despite scars, missing ears, and hairless horror, she could see an echo of her friend.

“Please, help me,” the lump rasped.

Charles and Vivianne, at that moment, let the complete and unfiltered fact of what and who they were looking at enter their minds at last.

“What the hell happened to him?” Charles shouted.

“Who did this to him?” Vivianne asked while rushing to the couch.

“I did this for him.”

Vivianne looked back from where she knelt near the couch. She and Charles stared at Lyla, anger, fear, and disgust cascading over their faces. The synthetic looked back at them with her nonplussed, perfect, clockwork smile on her face.

The buzz of strange, unknown, and clear danger filled their bodies.

“You? But... why?” Charles asked.

“He desired more physical contact with me and asked that I make that desire align with my primary functions. With him this way, I carry him from room to room, clean him, and see to all of his needs. He is in constant contact with me by the simple fact that I must care for him at all times. I can only serve him, and he can only live with my service.”

“You’re deranged! Your programming is corrupted! Or whatever it is that happens with you damn synthetics!” Vivianne shouted.

“Come on, Viv. We need to get out of here,” Charles said without looking away from the synthetic. “We’ll come back with the authorities and a medical crew.”

Vivianne wavered for a moment, uncertain. Then she leaned close and touched an unscarred patch of his face while bringing her lips close to his ear.

“We’ll be back to help you,” Vivianne whispered.

She stood slowly, shaking, and walked across the living room to stand next to Charles. It was unusual for her, but her hand found his and held it tight.

“You should stay. He has requested your presence,” Lyla said.

“No, we’re leaving,” Charles said while moving to push her aside.

Lyla took a single step back and stopped. She raised both hands, electricity arcing between the pinkies and pointer fingers of each. The two humans stopped and stared, their faces awash in blue, flickering light.

“He has requested your presence. You will be staying.”