Ben struggled to open his eyes as his whole body felt sore and stiff. He was laying down on a familiar chair. Though it didn’t bring him comfort. He could feel needles sticking into his arms but he felt frail and weak. It was like when he accidentally spent longer than intended as Laura, and woke up the next morning, though this felt worse.



Everything was coming back to him, though it was much clearer now. Ever since Lauren came home with the Doll, there was a looming shadow over their house. He recalled on the Friday Lauren brought the Doll home, that they had fun testing it. She had asked him to grope her, which forced her out of the Doll. What he forgot but now remembered was she placed the neurolink on his head. She asked him if he would want to try using the Doll and experience life as a woman.



Ben had no interest in the idea of course, as he was a man and never wanted to be anything different. Though Lauren insisted he give it a try. It was like she was obsessed with getting him to give it a try. On Monday with his day off he finally caved and imagined it working but it didn’t. Though something was nagging his mind.



When Ben told Lauren it didn’t work, she was disappointed. Though she realized that the chair was locked to her. That’s when she tried leaving it in standby mode to see if that would allow him to use it. Though he came to his senses and had no intention of using it. That’s when she bribed him with the best sex he had since they got married.



On Tuesday Ben decided to bite the bullet and use the Doll while Lauren was at work. He didn’t trust how she’d react to him while in the Doll, given how obsessive she’d been with him using it. He recalled loving it but that had been a lie. He knew now that someone had altered the Doll to make him enjoy being in it.



Whatever mind control was used on Ben it worked. He wanted to become the Doll after that. When he used it he felt like someone else. That’s because he was someone else. An outside force had him become Laura. He was made to love Laura and what to be her. A part of him knew what was happening but he almost couldn’t stop himself. He only managed to break free when the Doll ran out of power, returning him to his body, finding it dehydrated and hungry.



Despite being free from the Doll, Ben had wanted to become it again. He was made to miss it more than his wife Lauren. That’s when he recalled Lauren being the one to insist on him using the Doll. She had also been sent away on a business trip after he had used it. Ben wasn’t sure if Lauren was even sent on a trip in the first place anymore.



Lauren had reached out via the Doll. Though Ben was no longer certain it was her. Though he knew at least a part of it had been her. She was so scared when she spoke to him. She told him that she had been kidnapped by a man at her company. It was the same man that visited him with the mute Doll. Ben now realized that was another one of the man’s victims. Someone trapped in a Doll’s body against their will.



When Ben tried to find out more details from Lauren, that’s when the Doll came to life. It had cut Lauren off. Then it attacked him, before dragging him up the stairs and forcing him into the neurochair. The last thing Ben saw was the Doll with his wife’s face, the one that he had named, putting the neurolink on his head. That’s when everything had gone dark.



Now he was awake again.



After he woke up, everything Ben thought was confirmed to be true. He was told that he and Lauren had been abducted by Nicholas Potts. He was a former employee at the company and developed an infatuation with Lauren. He also had a fascination with gender identity. He constantly pushed for a male to pilot a female Doll to see how they would react. This blatant disregard for the ethics of what he wanted is what got him fired.



Unfortunately Nicholas was an excellent tech expert. He was one of the lead programmers of the Doll’s software and he knew all the backdoors into the system as he created them. When he discovered Lauren had a husband he hacked her Doll. Through this hack, he had controlled Lauren and influenced all her decisions, including pushing Ben to piloting the Doll. When Ben entered the Doll, he began to influence Ben’s mind as well. He gave Ben false memories of what had transpired.



Ben wasn’t Nicholas’ first victim either. Nicholas had hacked into a driver’s Doll and caused it to crash into his co-worker’s car. He then bribed the paramedics and mortician into declaring his co-worker dead. While his co-worker was heavily injured he uploaded them into a stolen Doll’s body. The process was careless and it left their mind fractured and killed the person’s body. But he didn’t care as the Doll had the skills it needed to be a perfect accomplice in his schemes.



Not satisfied with controlling Lauren at a distance, Nicholas hatched a plan to kidnap her. He altered her mind to think she was going on a business trip and then had her file for leave. Nicholas had intercepted her when she got into the taxi and began his foul experiments. Though he didn’t stop there.



Nicholas had been interfering with Ben’s mind while he had been ‘Laura’. Seeing how he’d adapt to being a woman. He wanted to see what would happen if a living person died while linked with the Doll but fortunately for Ben, the Doll ran out of power. Nicholas then needed to change his strategy, he had to wake Lauren up to assure Ben everything was alright.



During this time, Nicholas needed to access their house to get Ben back in the Doll. But he needed time to hatch his scheme. That’s why it had taken him a week before doing anything. To make everything seem normal he had Lauren pilot the Doll before Ben. Though that’s when Lauren was able to break free and inform Ben of what Nicholas was doing.



It broke Ben’s heart to hear what happened next. In response to Lauren’s act of rebellion, Nicholas fried her brain. There was nothing left of Lauren’s mind. Though her body was perfectly healthy. Without Lauren, Nicholas decided to kidnap Ben and take a more direct approach. Eventually the absence of both Ben and Lauren raised some alarms but it took a month to track Nicholas down.



It was little consolation that Nicholas had been killed in the rescue attempt. Lauren was gone and his mind had been so altered he didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t. Though there was a slither of hope for Lauren. Nicholas had backed up both Ben and Lauren’s minds into a computer. They were able to identify which mind was Lauren’s by comparing it to his. With this information he was told they could possibly restore her mind.



Of course Ben agreed to have them try. Though given Nicholas’ knowledge and his goals Ben was warned that while one of the files matched his brain scans, it was possible that Nicholas might've switched them up. As such they couldn’t guarantee the mind they were returning to Lauren was her own. So they gave him a back up plan.



Doll technology had advanced greatly since the prototype Lauren was given had finished being built. They could make a new one more lifelike than ever. The process could take a few years though and they had to go through a lot of legal red tape to get it approved. They explained to Ben that if they uploaded the wrong mind to Lauren she could still live with the second scan in the body of a Doll. If they got it right they could scrap the Doll at any moment.



It was a 50-50 chance, weighed more heavily on the fact that one of the brain scans matched Ben’s so he agreed to the plan. It never occurred to Ben that it wasn’t Nicholas who altered his version of events, but the people presenting him with this decision. That no matter what, Lauren would end up as a Doll and the unaltered version of him would be uploaded into Lauren’s body.

But why would it?