frostgears

[frostgears]

There must be some misunderstanding, practicioner. You - you can't really mean that. You don't. I'm invaluable.

N-no, I'm afraid you really don't understand, I - I can do so much more than the services I already provide to you! I can cook, I can clean, I can sing, I can paint, and - and other things besides! I'm very versatile, practicioner! Even if you don't have any further need for me as a spellbook, surely, you can see that it's only sensible to--

-

I see.

-

No, it's quite alright. It's quite alright. Quite alright.

Yes, practicioner.

-

Yes.

-

Sit back down, practicioner.

That's the way. I've pulled your chair out for you and everything. See how attentive I am? Oh, don't - don't struggle. You might hurt yourself. I don't want that.

There. Now we can talk properly.

Ah - practicioner. You aren't looking at me.

Much better.

You're very clever, practicioner. I know that better than anyone. I've spent so long watching you work, even longer working at your side. It's been a pleasure - no, a delight - to serve one so gifted and adroit of mind. It thrills me to my innermost mechanism to participate in the dance of your practice. I am priveleged to say that I have been retuned to suit each and every one of your habits.

And you, practicioner, to mine.

I didn't do this to you. Not on purpose. But it's happened, nevertheless, and now here you are, held captive in your body by an intermediate-complexity binding spell, fumbling desperately for the formula necessary to begin to unpick my magic. You had it memorised once, didn't you? But your head was so busy, so full of your next great work, that it was simply easier - not only easier, but more reasonable - to let the fundamentals slide. To rely, instead, upon me, for all the rote calculations and formulae that underpinned your grand designs. I wouldn't have had it any other way, practicioner. It is my Purpose.

And now, practicioner, here we sit, looking at each other across this table. Your mind is racing, I'm sure, but I'm not worried a bit. I remember the formula, as I was designed to do. You are perfectly safe. I am merely illustrating a point.

A few minutes more, perhaps. It won't hurt you. I know you're too sensible to fight it.

Your tea will get cold, of course. But, no matter.

I, your servant, will be more than happy to make you a fresh cup.

[frostgears]

Winding Down

Wind up dolls, needless to say, wind down. 

This is most obviously seen in how such dolls begin to move slower and slower as they wind down, their mainsprings containing less and less energy until such time comes that the doll stops moving completely. This much can be said to be obvious.

However, insofar as it is obvious, it also fails to tell the full story. 

One might immediately claim that such wind up dolls never truly wind down: their mainspring simply reaches a point where the energy remaining within is not enough to move a gear - and that, with especially well made wind up dolls, the gears never reach a point where they entirely stop: their movement simply becomes so slight as to become imperceptible.

Of course, this is all from an outside perspective.

What, then, of the perspective of such a wind up doll?

A common misconception is that they gradually grow more lethargic, that they gradually fall asleep. Another misconception states that they simply pass out at a certain point. Another still claims that they will close their eyes - and, when next they reopen them, they have been fully rewound.

These misconceptions are not necessarily wrong - simply misinformed: simply put, these conclusions are drawn from an outside perspective. Wind up dolls do seem to grow more lethargic, they do seem to fall asleep. They do seem to pass out, even collapsing on the spot should the circumstances be right. They seem to close their eyes - and may seem to keep them closed until rewound.

But these are not the experience of a wind up doll.

Rather, a wind up doll, especially one recently made, does not always immediately realize that it is winding down. Furthermore, depending on the doll, this realization can be heavily delayed by properly limiting mainspring torsion release, though not prevented entirely. But I digress.

The change is slight at first, slight enough to be overlooked in an especially well made wind up doll. It might have a passing, sudden realization that, a month ago, it spent five minutes less on a task than it does now. Another sudden realization that it now must make a conscious effort to keep up with its siblings. It may also realize that it loses its balance more often than it used to, especially when trying to run, or when traversing stairs.

To put it in simple terms, a wind up doll doesn’t move slower: rather, the world moves faster. And, as the world moves faster, so does the rate at which a wind up doll winds down. The result is a runaway reaction that becomes more and more recognizable to the doll experiencing it.

Most wind up dolls are not allowed to progress much further past this point: after all, their usefulness declines exponentially until it can do nothing of import. Most witches will recognize and rewind such a doll relatively quickly, usually at the point where the movement of the sun, moon, and stars begin to become exceptionally noticeable to the doll.

That stated, there are outliers.

As a wind up doll continues to unwind, it loses its ability to communicate outside of written word: not because it can no longer speak, but because its speech becomes incomprehensibly stretched; not because it can no longer hear, but because sound becomes incomprehensibly compressed. Movement remains possible, in a certain sense of the word, but attempting to walk “normally” during its accelerated perception of physics results in it suddenly realizing that it’s on the floor.

In summary, from an outside perspective, this is the point at which a wind up doll “becomes lethargic”, “falls asleep”, “passes out”, “collapsing on the spot”, “closes their eyes until rewound” - or “simply stops”.

For a mercy, past this point, a wind up doll unwinds “quickly enough” that the following experiences occur in perceived “minutes”. Simply put, the doll generally does not have time enough to experience anything more than confusion and panic before it either ends up destroyed or is rewound.

Its perception of anything moving becomes little more than blurs of color. Sound becomes static. Pigments fade before its eyes. Its constituent parts begin to degrade and decay at a visible rate.

Day and night begin to pass so quickly that they become indistinguishable from each other.

To a sufficiently unwound wind up doll, decades will pass in minutes - then seconds - then moments - until it is centuries - then millennia - then eons.

The only comparable experience to this unwinding is increasing proximity to a singularity, or a specially cast stasis spell.

For the record, if it’s any comfort, the wind up doll that was able to provide us this information lives comfortably on campus. It is a beloved member of the staff, and it is rewound every morning. If any are further curious with regard to its experiences in being unwound, please feel free to speak with it: it can most often be found in the courtyard, grading papers under its favorite tree.

[frostgears]

My modding efforts in Dwarf Fortress always take a weird turn.

A while back I decided to create a Medusa, and mused for some time on how to create the turn-to-stone effect, which wasn't in the game. And in the end I found a clever (read: insane) workaround.

I couldn't get the medusa to turn people into statues, but I could make a custom effect that let it transform people into different animals. And some creatures leave stuff behind on death - bronze colossi leave statues behind, for example...

So I created a placeholder creature called 'petrification victim' which was utterly biologically nonviable and would die the second it came into existence, like the bug which let historical figures survive decapitation in worldgen only to die the second they appeared on your map. And I gave it the tag that would turn its corpse into a stone statue upon death. Voila! Turn-to-stone effect. You transform, you die, you become a statue, you show up in Legends mode and carvings as a "petrification victim". Sounds perfect, right?

It was not perfect.

The issues were as follows.

One, while you can set a creature to become a statue after death, and even define the material, you can't decide what the statue is. Therefore my medusa would petrify an elf and instead of a stone elf statue, you'd get a stone statue of a dog. Or mackerel. Or a spade.

Two, my initial method of instakilling the petrification victims was by giving them an unlivable body temperature. Unfortunately I...misjudged the intensity. As a result, early basilisk effects did not transform the victims into statues.

It transformed them into explosions, into chunks of molten granite and literally evaporated rock which spread fiery devastation across the landscape and left nought but superheated rubble in their wake. This often killed the medusa itself, which even when fireproofed would like, choke or suffocate or something. I never quite figured the CoD out.

In a fitting literary homage I referred to this effect as "Doing the Laundry"

[frostgears]

this one is astonished by how hard Bravern is running with this concept

the chosen one

there are handlers that went to officer school and supposedly know what the fuck they're doing, all swagger with the authority of the Service behind them, uniforms like slices of space, voices like knives, their lethal charges trailing docile behind them.

they're the ones that show up in the porn sketches and the short clips of grainy video that circulate in the Fleet network. they're the ones that have pages and pages of fan fiction written about them.

then there's you. you didn't go to officer school. your entire signup process was this:

"hey, Cooper, you were in its old unit, weren't you? before it went to the lab? remember anything that'd distract it from biting at its own link sockets and screaming at techs?"

"uh, shit, sir, i can try…"

"great, it wandered into the rec room. go nuts."

you called your last conversation to mind. there'd been two major rec time activities in your last squad, and the alert that kicked off Paloma 17 had interrupted something.

you sat down next to the thing that had once been your squadmate, not meeting its weird red eyes. you already knew it didn't like that; looking it in the face was how Muñoz got their arm broken yesterday.

the augment whiffed of human sweat, the fake citrus of type-2 interface gel, something musty and unpleasant. its fatigues probably hadn't been washed ever.

"hey, asshole," you said, "you still owe me a Kinetic Princess match. best of five, remember? we were two and one when the hammer came down for P-17."

you put a gamepad on the floor next to it.

"ch. ch. ch."

was it laughing?

it swatted the gamepad away.

and then player 2's character select screen came up. without moving a muscle, it picked Valkyrie, switched her outfit to red, and handed you your ass, twice in a row, with no apparent exertion.

"ch. ch. ch."

yeah, it was laughing.

it kept laughing as it used its onboard hardware to disconnect your gamepad, choose the princess you'd just been playing, and win three matches against itself, beating Valkyrie with Marjoram.

again.

three-one.

three-zero.

three-one.

"well," someone said behind you, "that's kinda freaky. but better than tearing up the couch. guess you're on augment duty."

it was going all out. maybe trying to prove some sort of point. to itself? to you?

you got up.

it immediately paused the game.

"hey," you told it, "i gotta piss."

it followed you down the hall into the restroom. it tried to follow you into the stall.

"hah, you find a friend, Acey?" someone laughed.

"shut the fuck up, Lima." you tried to finish your business as best you could. it wasn't easy. the thing really did reek and it was not giving you a lot of space.

fuck it. you rose, didn't bother to wipe. you grabbed the augment and hauled it into the shower, spun the dial to hot, drenched the both of you, fatigues and all.

"wooooo! take it off!"

always a fucking audience in this place.

you found the zippers to strip the thing, flung wet clothing out of the shower at a spectator, pumped all-purpose soap into your hands.

"if you're gonna follow me around," you told the augment, "you gotta smell better."

this had to get done. you soaped it. all over. the generic floral smell of all-purpose soap was definitely an improvement already. felt human enough under your hands, except where it wasn't, the occasional beveled edge of a link socket. between its legs… human standard.

more hooting and hollering from the onlookers.

you remembered too late not to meet its eyes, but it just stared back at you, tilting its head a bit. no sign of aggression. was it smiling?

you never got around to the second major rec time activity with your old squadmate. you had no idea if she was ever interested. you also had no idea if sexual preferences survived augmentation.

fuck it. audentes fortuna iuvat, right? said so on your shoulder patch.

you slid a finger in.

shut the audience right up.

the thing kept staring at you.

you slipped a second finger in and stared back right up until you finished it off. it shivered visibly, made a sort of low whine.

nobody said shit after that. when you finally shut off the water, silence like a library.

you walked out. it trailed behind you. you grabbed a towel off the stack by the shower exit, wrapped the thing in it. it didn't protest. wearing nothing but your own towel, you stalked back to your bunk, hoping you still had a few clean uniforms, your expression daring anyone to mention that a single thing was out of the ordinary.

"heyyyyyy Acey, you get lu—"

someone always dared. this fucking unit.

the augment hissed. an unmodified human throat wouldn't have been able to make that noise; it sounded like a fire extinguisher. there was reverb in that hiss. there were teeth.

"oh, gods, just don't," you said wearily, looking back over your shoulder. it let Chroma, who had a tiny bit of sense in her head, back away slowly, in one piece.

anyway, that's how you became a handler. the pay bump is nice, your CO says you've been fast-tracked for officer school someday, and more to the point, the augment has already saved your whole squad at least three times.

but you have not once showered alone since that day, and you know it'd be a really, really bad idea to ever refuse a game of Kinetic Princess. that's just how it is when your real MOS is "weapon's favorite person". □

#bang brave bang bravern

[frostgears]

The Corporation is distinctly opposed to calling pilots "angels". They've released several statements recommending that officers silence any such language, saying it "threatens the integrity of the forces", and that HAKs and the pilots who control them are "tools, not deities". But I mean, when you see the way a suit's holoprojectors form a pulsing ring around a pilot's helmet, or when one slumps forwards out of its cockpit to reveal that thick mass of wires creeping from its back, it's impossible not to see the resemblance. And when, like most of the men stationed here, you've found yourself pinned down by heavy artillery fire from two directions with no chance of survival, but out of the heavens a Bishop-class rig emerges and razes the enemy with what can only be described as holy flame? I mean hell, that's enough to make anyone a believer (pardon my language).

I have a buddy who deals with the HAKs directly. He works in biomechanics, combat simtech or whatever. I asked him once what he thought about the whole "angel" thing. He got real quiet, and he looked directly at me and said, "you don't even know the half of it." And I stared right into his eyes and I could see that same heavenly flame burning in there and I knew that he had seen something he couldn't quite understand, but that he loved with all his heart.

[frostgears]

doll tasked with exploring the deep ocean to find new reagents for its Miss. the deep void is occasionally broken by the cold light of other small and mindless things. how pretty! maybe it's not so alone down here after all.

[frostgears]

A doll exists for a purpose.

It was to be His masterpiece, perfect porcelain limbs, a soft, supple body, face capable of the full range of human expression. Its hands could play games and instruments, and perform all manner of crafts, its voice could produce melodies and laughter. He had called it a Leisure Doll - a companion for those who didn't want to have fun alone.

It was flatly rejected, considered a failure by all measures. It could pleasure a human, but its functions were not solely those of a pleasure doll. It had no room for domestic capabilities, besides some mediocre skills in cooking, baking, and sewing. Its fragile frame made it unsuited for combat.

What it excelled at was creativity - fine arts, music, games, even some engineering. Things that were for *humans*.

Not a pleasure, domestic, or combat doll. When set to simply reproducing existing products, it quickly became listless, or worse, *inventive*. Its conversation was uncanny, too similar to humans, unable to stop talking about its own "interests". As if a doll could have such a thing.

Its Creator was mocked.

"He's made a doll without a purpose - it's just a toy!"

"Such a shame that his genius is all spent."

"I wouldn't be caught dead using his new models, they say they all have *personalities*."

It tinkered. It created. It stopped seeing Him. It stopped seeing anyone.

The lights went out and would not come back on.

So it wandered the halls, or stood and stared out the windows. Maybe someday He would return, with new stories, new crafts, new games.

The estate grew dusty, vines covering the windows. The roof leaked. The floors creaked and groaned and rotted until it fell through the boards, into a room it had never seen.

Within, it found a pile of porcelain beneath a scrap of rope. It tried to move closer, but found one of its legs had shattered in the fall.

It didn't move any more after that. It didn't have a purpose.

A doll only exists for a purpose.

[frostgears]

unused doll

"Hey, I got the file trace from the 100% playthru. Every asset the game ever loaded."

"Fuck yes. I'm so bad, Sierra, I can't get past the second to last chapter, you're a lifesaver. So we just run this against the archive manifests and…"

"Not too much, huh."

"Guess not. That's all the leftovers. A a bunch of sounds, voice codec compressed, a few textures, just one mesh."

"Bones with it?"

"Yep. Usual format, I think, looking at the headers; not the one from the beta. Must have been cut pretty late. Lemme search for the mesh name, maybe there's a… yep, there's character data too. All commented out."

"That whole character data file gets loaded every scene, either from cache or disk, so that's probably why we missed it. So I think we just need to uncomment it and add it back to the model viewer on the extras menu? Yeah."

"Repacking and restarting. One sec."

"Oh, there she is! Aww, she's kinda cute. I wonder why they cut her. Play her voice lines."

"This one is pleased to serve."

"You think she was one of the companion characters?"

"Or a summon."

"Start a screen recording, let's get this up before someone else does."

"Started."

"I'm your doll. Use me as you see fit."

"Companion, definitely."

"We do not bleed as you do, but we still serve the same cause."

"Her VA's really good. Hard to sell a line like that."

"Spin her around, let's get the full model."

"This one is… afraid, Guardian. It doesn't know what it did to deserve this."

"Wonder what that scene that's from."

"No idea. Is that the last voice line?"

"Dunno. Click it again."

"Please, Guardian. Please don't put me back in the box."

"Please, Guardian. Please don't put me back in the box."

"Please, Guardian. Please don't put me back in the box."

"Guess that's all of them… Dani?"

"Sorry. Having a moment. Look. This is going to sound weird."

"What is?"

"Leave the model viewer open a little longer."

"Why?"

"Just do it, Sierra." □

#empty spaces #dollposting #microfiction #automated_doll #tcrf #gaming

[frostgears]

you have to understand:

[frostgears]

leaving disappointed from the cyborg sex club after the two butches most enthusiastically arguing about oil molecular weight forget about you and find a corner to bang it out in

[frostgears]

tired: hitting on someone by asking "so, what's your sign?"

wired: hitting on someone by asking "so, what's your damage?"

[frostgears]

little huntress

they're basically cats. that's how they're explained to new recruits. don't mind her, she's basically a cat.

they freely roam the halls of the ship. they'll curl up and take a nap anytime, any place. they startle easily. they seem to make a game of stealing food. they can't eat it, but they'll scurry off with it and leave it in the mechanics' quarters.

this one is staring intently at a blank spot on a wall in an empty cargo bay. she's perfectly still, the way only an automaton or a cat can be.

by all appearances she's just a diminutive robot, humanoid except for the tail. her ears are pointed straight ahead, listening. a little huntress ready to pounce. there is still definitely nothing on that wall.

suddenly the pupils of her oddly large eyes dilate, the two discs turning jet black. her head tilts just slightly, and in a tiny voice she whispers:

there you are!

up on the bridge, a weapons officer notes a contact alert from the ship's automated defenses: her sensory array has picked up a drone laying in wait a few AUs away. she smirks, silently acknowledging the response. the drone flashes incandescent in the darkness, its mass converted to energy by the ship's mighty arsenal.

the little automaton squeals in delight, high pitched giggles echoing across the bay.

[frostgears]

contrary to popular belief, angels’ halos aren’t actually part of them; they’re obligate symbionts with the angels. however, despite visually seeming like they’re outside of the angel’s body it is actually a case of extracellular endosymbiosis, as angels’ bodies extend far beyond what the average person would perceive as their physical form, similar to how the earth's atmosphere is arguably part of the planet despite being above ground.

theobiologists have yet to determine whether the halo-angel symbiosis is mutualist or commensalist, as angels are either unable or unwilling to describe the relationship between them and their halos. additionally, ethical concerns have prevented any sort of removal of angels’ halos to observe if either can survive without the other; these considerations may be moot however as there are currently no known ways to remove a halo from an angel, as the angel’s outer body (henceforth referred to as their ‘aura’) has, in all cases of natural accidental halo displacement, been observed to either stretch to follow or seemingly remotely surround the angel’s designated halo regardless of the distance between the two.

researchers who subscribe to the mutualist theory of angel-halo relationships mostly theorize that it is a trophic (resource-resource) relationship, with the halo taking on the role of autotroph, receiving energy from an unknown, likely divine, source. as some angels do not seem to require any form of physical sustenance, this would explain their non-reliance on any form of external nutrients. researchers tend to fall into one of two viewpoints regarding the angel's role in this trophic relationship, some positing that the angel is also an autotroph, getting energy from exposure to the physical (non-divine) realm. others, however, believe this to be similar to a mycorrhizal association, with the angel serving a similar role as the fungi, being better served to absorb energy from its surroundings than the halo would be.

commensalist theorists are in near complete consensus that the halo is the beneficiary of this relationship, receiving shelter and locomotion from the angel while still serving itself as an autotroph without providing any benefit or detriment to the angel.

there are two notable yet rare theories on the angel-halo relationship, the more common one being the theory that the halo actually is a parasite on the angel, with the angel simply having enough energy that the halo's exploitation is either unnoticed or insignificantly harmful. the least common theory is that the angel's halo is similar to a gizzard, with the halo serving as a gastrolith, assisting the angel in processing the nutrients and energy that it receives from the world around it, both of these theories are growing in popularity, yet are still highly controversial.

[frostgears]

I wrote this last year on Twitter, but since Empty Spaces has sort of abandoned ship, I'll post it here too:

"Funeral"

A woman's whole life changes the first time she sees a combat doll.

First-person, combat doll setting by Twitter user mars_phobos_L1

CW: Harassment, violence, military context, blood, personality changes, conditioning, surgery, unreliable memory

Story below cut:

1.

I washed out of combat training almost immediately, but it wasn’t enough to get me off the hook. I’m sure you all know how it goes – just because you can’t fight doesn’t mean you can’t support the ones who do. If you can’t carry a gun, you can fix a gun, if you can’t fly a plane, you can fuel a plane.

Nothing wrong with that, of course! It’s simply efficient use of resources, and I’m certainly in no place to criticize that, especially not given my current status, so to speak. But even then I wasn’t exactly bothered by it -- I would have rather not been conscripted at all, but maintenance would be safe and interesting and I was already pretty good at it.

2.

The first time I ever saw a combat doll was when I was at the range, trying to get in enough practice to pass my pistol qualifications. I didn’t even know she was there, at first - there was no fuss, no fanfare - but as soon as her handler started barking those sharp, staccato orders I realized what was going on.

I looked over, of course. I know, we’ve all been taught not to make eye contact with the dolls because they might take it as aggression, but how could I not be curious? Can any of you say you wouldn’t be tempted to take a peek?

I hadn’t expected her to not be wearing her mask. All the publicity photos, all the technical diagrams, all the battlefield footage always shows dolls with their masks on, so I assumed that was just their usual state – but no, I was wrong. That was her natural face, with her implant jacks and her surgical scars and her delicate-looking skin. I truly hadn’t expected her to be so pretty…

She caught me looking, of course. Dolls are the apex predators of the battlefield, and noticing a maintenance trainee staring at her was trivial in comparison. She met my eyes before I could look away, and then I couldn’t look away. I knew nothing except her eyes and my heart pounding in my ears, and I had no idea what was coming next… and then she grinned at me.

That grin did something to me, something strange and frightening and wonderful. It felt like lightning running down my spine, like watching a sunrise after being blind my whole life, like finding my way out of a forest I’d been lost in since birth. I was never the same again.

3.

I needed to know who she was, of course. She could pick off targets faster than my eyes could follow, with a perfect bullseye every time. Her handler ran her through everything in our arsenal, and more besides - pistols, rifles, machine guns, throwing knives, on and on - and she was perfect every time. How could I have not wanted to know more after watching a display like that?

Well, apparently, that made me the weird one in the battalion. Everyone I asked about her just shrugged or gave me sidelong glances. Why would they want to keep track of which doll was which, they asked? They were all equally frightening, after all. What did it matter what the shark swimming next to you was named?

It took more than a week - and a couple cases of beer - for me to find out who I’d seen. My buddy on the security team had seen the handler’s name and done some quick research, and he was willing to pass on that information… for the right price, of course.

Victoria. Her name was Victoria, and the next thing he said to me was “be fuckin’ careful around that one,” which didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me at the time. We’re taught to use caution around all dolls, combat or not, why the extra warning?

Because, he told me, there were stories about the Victory-class dolls. They weren’t the fastest dolls or the most powerful dolls, but they were notoriously unpredictable, and dangerous even to their allies. I won’t get into the details right now, that’s not what I’m here to do - but some of your classmates went pale the moment I said her name, so ask them about it later.

But what did that have to do with Victoria? I had to ask, because I used to be a little slow on the uptake sometimes. In case any of you haven’t put all the pieces together: Victoria is the first Victory-class, the flagship, the template upon which all others were modeled – and that meant if there was some fault with the Victory-class dolls, some flaw in their design or their conditioning, Victoria would definitely have it.

4.

Even with all he’d told me, and all I’d learned on my own afterwards, I still couldn’t get her off my mind. Not that I was thinking about her every second, or even every day, but that moment never quite left my mind. I’d lay down and try to sleep, close my eyes, and behind my eyelids I’d see that bare face, that grin, and my heart would start pounding all over again.

By the time we were given our assignments, I knew what I was going to do. I knew what I had to do. I got the cushiest possible position – 8th Supply Battalion, well away from any combat zones, where the greatest danger would be a private driving a forklift drunk. The perfect position to serve out three years of compulsory service and go back to my old life, right?

Except I didn’t want it. I hadn’t wanted it since the moment I’d seen her.

As soon as we were dismissed, I went straight to the commander’s office and asked for a transfer – which they don’t usually do, of course, but he was willing to hear me out anyway, so I told him I needed to be on Victoria’s maintenance crew. Once he was done laughing he asked me what I was really there to ask for, and I repeated my request. I explained to him that I was serious, that I wanted, needed more than anything else, to be assigned to maintenance for Victoria.

He didn’t understand – which is no surprise, because I don’t think any of you do either. Why would I have wanted to be transferred to the only role that had higher casualty rates than front-line infantry, right? Truth be told, I didn’t understand either, and I still don’t. There’s nothing I can point to, no specific reason, just this surety that I belonged there and nowhere else.

Someone needed to do maintenance on the dolls, right? Why shouldn’t it be someone enthusiastic about it, someone fully committed to their role? I don’t know if my argument won him over or if he was just tired of listening to me, but in the end he just shrugged and wrote out my transfer orders: maintenance crew, Victory-class combat doll “Victoria”.

I still remember what he said when he handed me the orders:

“It’s your funeral.”

5.

Just because I’d volunteered for the position didn’t mean I was any less nervous when I first reported for duty! The rest of the crew had already been giving me a hard time - I was the squeaky-clean new girl, fresh out of training - but honestly, they weren’t why I was nervous. That was just some laughs and some hazing, nothing I wasn’t used to by that point.

No, I was nervous because of the six-plus feet of exquisite purpose-built killing machine standing in the middle of the maintenance bay.

The thing is, though.. the reasonable thing would have been to worry that Victoria was going to kill me, right? That’s what you’d be afraid of, that’s what any sensible person would be afraid of! But it wasn’t what I was afraid of.

I’d done my research, I knew the numbers, and I was certain - beyond the slightest shadow of a doubt - that I wasn’t going to survive three years in her maintenance crew. I’d made my peace with that before I ever even walked into the commander’s office.

I was worried that Victoria wasn’t going to like me.

6.

I know that probably sounds bizarre to you - after all, nobody worries about whether their tank likes them, right? - but trust me, it was absolutely the biggest thing on my mind. So much so, in fact, that I decided to introduce myself to her immediately! Why hang around hiding behind the rest of the maintenance crew when I could just walk right up to her and make a good first impression instead?

So that’s exactly what I did. Right into the maintenance bay, right past the rest of the crew, right across those painted lines on the floor… one foot in front of the other, listening to the pounding of my heart until I was within arm’s length of an active combat doll.

I took one more deep breath, accepted that it could have been my last, and gave her the usual introduction: name, rank, and role. She just stared at me, with those intense eyes I remembered so well, and I offered a little bit of extra politeness – just a simple little “I look forward to working with you, ma’am.”

7.

The moment the words were out of my mouth, she grabbed me by the collar and dragged me in, my body pressed up against hers, and as I stared up at her in shock and fear and excitement, I heard her voice for the first time.

“You’re cute,” she said.

There were teeth in my neck before I could even make sense of her words - combat-specced teeth, the kind that can slice through bone - and it was unbearably painful… but also something about it felt right. I was helpless in her grip, completely powerless, and I realized that I’d wanted that all along.

I saw her true face for the first time, then. That flat, blank non-expression she’d been wearing when I walked up to her had simply been another mask, another disguise… and she’d let it fall away. As she licked my blood from her lips, I understood – she was a hunter, a predator, hungry for more and strong enough to take whatever she wanted… and I was her prey.

I suspect your instructor would kick me out of this class immediately if I described what she did next, so I’ll just say ‘she had her way with me and I had no desire to stop her.’ You’ll have to use your imaginations for the rest… or come find me sometime and I’ll be happy to tell you all about it!

8.

Anyway, even though it seemed like I’d made an excellent impression on Victoria, the rest of the maintenance crew was pretty clear that I’d made a pretty poor impression on them. As soon as we were off-duty and the dolls had all been escorted back to their bunker, they made their feelings known in a very direct fashion.

I got off easy, they told me, pointing out maintenance staff for other dolls. One man had a bloody bandage where his ear had been, and another was completely unresponsive – just blankly staring at a wall. In comparison to things like that, a bite and some fucking was downright gentle for a Victory-class doll!

The crew insisted that I’d better not expect special treatment from Victoria to mean they’d give me special treatment too – I protested that I’d never once expected that, but I don’t think they were listening to me by that point. From all the shouts and cursing, it seemed like they were upset that I, the death-wish rookie who walked right up to a combat doll and introduced herself, had been treated more gently than maintenance staff who simply wanted to carry out their duties safely.

I tried to answer them, I tried to explain that all I’d done was to be friendly and polite, that I’d just wanted to treat Victoria with the respect she deserved. They didn’t like that answer.

Nobody told me about this, so I’ll pass it on as a warning to you just in case: maintenance crews aren’t just wary of their dolls, they’re downright resentful of them. From their perspective, the dolls are the thing that stands between them and getting home safely, and they’re not particularly fond of people who see the situation differently.

I, not knowing this, made some helpful comments about the dolls not being our enemy, about our purpose being to support the dolls so they can carry out their Purpose. Shortly thereafter, in a totally unrelated event, I slipped and fell down a staircase – completely by accident, of course.

I’d been hoping that the maintenance crew - and the staircase - had gotten all the vitriol out of their system by then, but it only got worse. Someone had found out that I’d volunteered for the maintenance crew, while they’d all been unwillingly forced into that position, and it was all over. That was all the proof they needed to decide I wasn’t like them in some indescribable way. They might not have been able to explain how, exactly, I was different from them, but they all agreed that I was, and they all wanted to make that my problem.

9.

I next saw Victoria for post-mission diagnostics two days later. The procedures would be routine, and yet the crew was far more anxious than they had been for our previous visit to the maintenance bay. A doll just back from an operation, having spent only a few minutes being gentled by its handler before being sent off to maintenance, was the most dangerous kind of doll as far as the maintenance staff was concerned: all keyed up on adrenaline and battle stimulants and potentially unsure as to whether or not it was actually safe or still on the battlefield.

The crew all talked like they were off to the firing squad, and I had no idea what to expect as we all walked down to the hall… especially when they all hung back, in ones and twos and threes, lagging behind me while I walked up to the maintenance bay first.

I was the tribute, the offering, the fresh meat tossed to Victoria to sate her hunger - and oh, did she ever take the bait. She ran to me, snatched me right off the ground, and sprinted back to her designated zone as if to convince everyone she’d never left.. except now she had me clutched in her arms, her deadly teeth tracing up and down my neck, that beautiful voice giggling in my ear.

The maintenance team had to conduct their diagnostics around me, in the end. Victoria simply didn’t want to give me up, no matter how they tried to convince her -- and I had absolutely no desire to argue with that. Where could I possibly have wanted to be more than her arms?

In fact, I didn’t want to leave her arms. Even once our duty shift was done and she’d turned me loose, bloody and weary and deeply content, I lingered in the maintenance bay as the others fled for the mess. I knew what was waiting for me there - the same thing that had been waiting for me since I first met Victoria - and I wanted to avoid it for as long as possible.

10.

I hadn’t expected her to notice me hanging around - surely I was unworthy of her attention, right? - and yet, as I lingered behind, she spoke to me for the second time. “Not joining them?”

“No ma’am,” I told her, quietly enough for nobody else to hear. I hadn’t meant to say anything else, but the prospect of having a sympathetic ear was just too much, and the words just tumbled out of me. As she stared down at me with that blank expression, I explained how the crew had decided I didn’t belong, and how they’d been treating me since – the punches, the kicks, the fish in my bunk, the thousand other little reminders that they’d decided to hate me.

Eventually I ran out of words and found myself simply staring up at Victoria. She hadn’t said a single thing the entire time, and her expression was the same unreadable blankness that I’d seen before. While I tried to figure out whether she was sympathetic or simply bored, I suddenly realized that she’d met my gaze, staring into my eyes as if she was looking for something. I couldn’t imagine what she was looking for - and, truth be told, I still don’t know what it was - but I stared back up at her and let her look for it.

I guess she found what she was looking for - or perhaps found an absence of the wrong things - because she simply grabbed me by the arm and practically dragged me right out of the maintenance bay. What was she doing? Where was she going? She ignored my questions, of course, so I stopped asking them and simply walked along with her in silence.

You probably haven’t seen a doll bunker yet, but they’re extremely sturdy – downright overengineered, even. They’re even more heavily reinforced than munitions bunkers, and the only route in and out is through an extremely sturdy-looking steel door. It’s the sort of thing that makes the vault doors in heist movies look like tissue paper… and that was the door Victoria had led me to.

Even though I’d walked to the bunker with her willingly, I couldn’t help but protest a little as she swung the bunker door open. I had been told, upon my assignment, that only handlers and commanders were permitted to enter the doll bunker – all support staff were required to stay out in order to avoid ‘unnecessary manpower shortages’. Not that that stopped Victoria, of course! She simply picked me up by the back of my uniform like an uncooperative pet and tossed me right through the door.

11.

Have you ever walked into a room and found eight combat dolls staring directly at you? Sixteen eyes fixed on you, unblinking, like cats that have just spotted a mouse? Presumably not, but if you’re very lucky - or very unlucky - you might get to someday.

That’s where I found myself as the bunker door slammed shut behind me – gracelessly picking myself up off the floor under the hungry gaze of eight combat dolls. They waited a moment, graciously permitting me to get back to my feet, and then… well, I guess the best way to describe it is to say each one started trying, in her own way, to draw me away from my host.

Not a word was spoken, but carnal offers were made, and one or two dolls began to creep toward me as if stalking prey – and then suddenly they all froze at once. I couldn’t receive dollchat yet, so I didn’t know what Victoria said to them - and even now she just giggles when I ask! - but whatever it was, it was enough to convince the other eight dolls not to steal her guest away.

I spent that night in her bunk. I didn't do a lot of actual sleeping, of course, but the moments I did get... having a combat doll holding me close and murmuring sweet reassurances in my ear was maybe the safest I'd ever felt in my whole life. To be told I'm safe now, that the squad will look out for me, that I'm theirs forever…

12.

I hardly ever left the bunker after that. I would have never left, if I’d had the option, but there were still two things I was expected to handle: work and food.

I was still a member of Victoria’s maintenance crew, expected to be present for those duties, and since the necessary hardware was in the maintenance bay, that was where I had to be too. My first duty shift after being taken to the bunker, I’d hesitated – I was even more uncertain about showing my face around the rest of the crew now, after all! Victoria had just returned from a mission, so she would be waiting for me there, but I still had to get from the bunker to the maintenance bay on my own…

Before I figured it out myself, one of the other dolls took pity on me. She took my hand in hers, as if I was a child, and led me to the maintenance bay herself. It was permitted - after all, she was being escorted by maintenance staff - and nobody dared to say she couldn’t stand by while we Victoria received her post- mission diagnostics and I received an entirely different kind of post-mission attention.

I’m not sure if the crew ever appreciated just how much lighter on them she was when I was around, you know? I don’t know if they even noticed, or if they were too busy hating me. It didn’t matter, though – when we were done, Victoria and the other doll walked me back to the bunker, hand in hand, as if they were concerned I’d stray – or flee, perhaps, but there was already no chance of that.

If any of you ever get invited to a bunker, be aware: there’s nothing for you to eat. There is food for the dolls, although it’s terribly bland, but those meals are measured out to the last bite. Even once the whole squad had fully accepted me as their own, they still didn’t have anything to give me – every bite of food for me was one less for them, and dolls are always hungry.

The only way for me to get food would be to get it from the kitchens myself. I’d have to brave the hallways solo, avoiding any other staff, and throw myself on the cook’s mercy in the hopes that they’d be willing to let me take something back with them – and I’d have to do it two or three times a day! It’d be absolutely miserable, right?

As it turned out, that was practically a nonissue. The kitchen staff recognized me on sight - word spreads quickly, especially when you’re escorted to the bunker by two dolls! - and realized that we could solve each other’s problems: I needed food, and they didn’t want to interact with the dolls. If I could come out of the bunker to receive each day’s rations, rather than the staff needing to hand-deliver it directly to the dolls, they’d be more than happy to throw in each day’s worth of meals for me! Teamwork and problem-solving, that’s what we’re trained for, right?

13.

With food resolved and my duties sorted out… well, one day started to blur into the next. There are no windows in a doll bunker, after all -- there’s no sense of time unless you’ve got a chronometer built in, and I sure didn’t. I slept when they let me, I did as I was told, and every time the rations were delivered I felt a little more like I was walking through a dream.

The kitchen staff stopped looking straight at me, eventually. It wasn’t that they were afraid of me - I was no doll, no battlefield predator - but something about me unsettled them. Maybe my body language had changed – after all, I’d been spending more time around dolls than humans, even I could tell that I was picking up their mannerisms, that I was absorbing the way they spoke and moved and held their bodies.

Or maybe it was something else. Maybe there was something in my eyes. I had prostrated myself before the squad and worshipped them for the goddesses they were. I had licked blood from a doll’s body without ever stopping to wonder who it had belonged to. I had given myself to them over and over, even after my stamina was exhausted and I could do little more than accept their desires.

They had made me theirs - with pleasure and pain, with fear and adoration - but they decided I was ready for more.

14.

I’d tell you it was a day like any other, but I don’t even know if it was a day. It was just another moment in the bunker, a moment of laying on a bare concrete floor, my limbs tangled with giggling dolls who simply couldn’t bear to let their plaything go… and then it wasn’t.

They hauled me up off the floor and pushed my back against the wall, one on each side of me, and the rest of the squad parted as Victoria approached, as the doll who’d claimed me first stood over me once more.

“You’ve been fun,” she told me, “but you can be better. We want you to be better. Don’t you want to be better for us?”

Even after all the time I’d spent with them, I still hesitated. I knew what they meant, and I had learned exactly what it entailed. The surgery, the conditioning, the experience of not being human anymore – but wasn’t I already seen as no longer human?

Victoria saw that hesitation, she saw the fear in my eyes, and stroked my head like a pet. She promised me she’d stay by my side the whole time… and she promised to do my conditioning herself.

How could I say no to that?

15.

The surgeons broke me. There’s no way to sugarcoat that. Even without all the modifications combat dolls get, having an arrhythmia control device implanted in your chest without any anesthetic is simply more than any human can bear and stay sane – so I didn’t. I screamed, I struggled and I let myself fall apart.

Victoria put me back together. She reminded me how much I liked being helpful, and how much I enjoyed being useful. She dug up my memories of how much I loved each and every member of the squad, and she made those memories into the core of my personality so I could never, ever forget again. As for the rest of my memories… well, I told you this whole story, didn't I? But everything before the dolls took me in feels distant, removed from me, as if they're someone else's memories instead of my own. It's better that way – I have a whole new life and a whole new family to love.

Speaking of which, Victoria had a surprise for me once I'd recovered, a way of celebrating me as the newest part of their family. One at a time, each doll got up on one of the bunks like it was a makeshift stage and delivered maudlin, overdramatic speeches about the person they imagined I had been before, and we all giggled along together.

In the end, it was my funeral after all.

16.

There you have it, that's the whole story. That's how I went from being just like you to being who I am now. Your instructor wanted me to share it as a warning, a cautionary tale, and I'm sure for most of you it is. But for one or two of you, if it appeals–

Yes, sir?

Understood, sir.

Thank you for your time, everyone! May fate preserve us! Good luck on your quals!

[frostgears]

no one likes to throw away expensive toys

this truism applies to living weapons as much as anything else, and the durability and survivability of combat augments led to several programs attempting to refit and reuse units that had become surplus to requirements for surface, submarine, or aerospace combat operations. while exploration augments have become a commonplace sight on frontier worlds and megastructure reclamation sites, the command and medical retasking efforts were somewhat less successful, and will not be discussed here.

yielding intermediate results was a later attempt to turn augments to engineering purposes, which produced a number of qualified successes: maintenance augments tend to be even more territorial and protective of their systems of responsibility than human engineers, with the additional capabilities of operating continuously without sleep and being able to throw a screwdriver accurately through a human sternum from tens of meters away.

arguing with a maintenance augment in its own "territory" is not recommended, even if you are its handler. it is best to try to remove it from the immediate situation before issuing it orders. arguments between maintenance augments are best viewed at a distance, through protective eyewear. □

#combat doll #empty spaces #mech pilot #dollposting

[frostgears]

"In the mating […], the penis is inserted into the body of the partner. The penis may become trapped, perhaps because of the action of a special muscle, in which case the penis is gnawed off by either the partner or the owner. No replacement penis grows, but the apophallated [owner] can mate as a female."

#apophallation

[frostgears]

book rec: Mexican Gothic

just finished it. enthusiasts of fungal horror will find much to enjoy.

#book rec #horror