Lauren Smith was an office clerk at one of the most advanced robot companies in the world. Her life changed when she signed up for in-house testing for the company’s newest product line, the personal Doll. These Dolls, unlike the commercial use ones, were based on the users appearance, and could retain user data for minimal inference. The production of these test Dolls (there were ten total) took months and when Lauren received DLS-9 she had changed her looks since the original scans.

DLS-9’s appearance was one of many factors that led to Lauren’s dislike of the Doll. It missed so many of her scars and blemishes, not to mention the anatomy gave it its namesake. She only piloted it for a short time before asking her husband to test the security measures on her original body, which threw her out of the system violently. This didn’t help her dislike of the Doll.

She gave the Doll one more attempt but she couldn’t handle being it, and refused to use it again. She left the session paused rather than going on Standby and told her husband that she was pulling out of the program.

Ben Smith worked from home, and had his office across the hallway from where the paused Doll remained. Something Lauren said triggered something inside of him and he got curious. The day before he had laid in the chair that Lauren used to connect to the Doll imagining what it would be like to be her. Now that she was getting rid of the Doll, Ben went to play out his fantasy one more time, only to find himself in the Doll’s body.

Commercial Dolls, like miners, were designed to have multiple users allowing for a full twenty-four hour shift. To know which user was piloting the Doll, these connections were locked with a code. This programming had been copied over to the test model of the personal Dolls rather than building a new system. So because of a technical oversight and Lauren leaving the Doll on pause, it resumed the session with Ben instead of Lauren.

The users were kept sedated to calm the mind, transferring data between the user’s mind and the machine. This meant the user wasn’t able to interact with the Doll while piloting it so commands needed to be built in to disconnect the user. To prevent accidental commands being given, these too were locked with the user’s ID. As Ben wasn’t aware of Lauren’s code he found himself stuck inside the Doll.

This incident didn’t go unnoticed as the company was monitoring the Dolls closely as well as the pilot's brain functions. Of course the protocol for unauthorized users would be to eject them immediately, but in Ben’s case that didn’t happen as a bored Nicholas Potts wanted to see what happened. His co-worker Stanley Mason was one for protocol and objected to this course of action but was overruled by the micromanaging executive, Raymond Jones.

Raymond Jones saw an opportunity here, one that defied many established laws surrounding AI and robotics. He wanted to see what Ben would do but first they had to solve the issue of him being stuck. With the knowledge that the Doll returned information to the user, he gave Ben his own ID to be able to use and disconnect from the Doll. Seeing it work made Raymond realize just how much their technology could affect the human brain.

Always the ambitious man, Raymond needed Lauren out of the way so used her complaints about the Doll as an excuse to send her to the facility in Japan to see the Doll’s lead designer to work out some of the imperfections. Only Stanley tried to warn Lauren of this and had to be taken out.

With his connections Raymond had been able to commandeer a Doll driving a truck and crashed into Stanley as he left work (after being fired). A brilliant mind like Stanley’s was too precious to waste so once again Raymond bribed officials and had Stanley declared dead. Meanwhile he had taken the body, now left in a vegetative state and used the Doll technology to extract what he needed from Stanley.

Stanley didn’t have a Doll to connect to but fortunately there was another incident with the testing phases. A user named Lisa Young, a woman in her mid 40s, had been given a Doll that resembled her in her twenties. The woman loved it so much she failed to disconnect from the Doll the first night using it. Because of the Doll’s design to slowly upload the user’s mind to save streaming resources, the Doll made it to her work running on autopilot until connecting to the building’s network structure. Lisa was promptly fired and Raymond had a half integrated Doll which he refused to destroy.

Parts of Stanley’s mind were uploaded to DLY-4 and it was used more as an autonomous worker rather than a pilot controlling it. This was highly illegal in regards to AI and autonomy as all humanoid machines needed a human pilot. Nicholas Potts knew something was up with DLY-4 as he had worked with Stanley for many years and knew the man’s signature. He dubbed the Doll Stacey in honor of his friend, an honor that would see him shot dead outside his home.

While all this was going on Ben had continuously used Lauren’s Doll in secret and he loved it. The Doll had finished integrating his mind during these sessions and switched over from active to passive control. This left Ben, or at least the version of him that was the Doll with an identity crisis as it had merged data from both Ben and Lauren’s mind. This new personality referred to itself as Laura, seeing itself different from Ben but also still uploading its experiences to Ben.

Ben was able to pilot Laura because Lauren had left her session on pause and couldn’t connect to it from Japan. This meant they needed technicians to come out to manually reset the Doll. Conventionally these technicians wouldn’t be out for another week. During that time Ben had been afraid to put Laura into standby mode as he was worried it would end the session locking him out. This unfortunately drained her battery putting Ben in a vulnerable position.

The technicians the company sent out just so happened to be Nicholas and Stacey. The Doll was functioning but mute. While they were at the house dealing with Laura, they also installed new equipment to allow Ben’s experimentation to continue. While Nicholas was distracted, Stacey had noticed Laura was more than she appeared. Stacey had connected herself to Lauren’s mind and approached her as their true form Stanley and was able to leave a part of his code that would allow him to connect to her. Had Nicholas noticed any of this and reported on it, he’d still be alive.

Lauren was soon able to reconnect with Laura after the visit and that’s when she found out what Ben had been up to. As Laura was coming into sentience and Laura was piloting her there was a clash of information and memories, causing a new temporary personality being created, Lauran. Lauran acted as a mediator for Lauren and Laura as she ran to clear their mind. This gave Laura enough time to become fully self aware while still allowing Lauren’s presence.

Laura helped Lauren understand Ben’s motives for why he had used the Doll. The three of them had a discussion leading up to these events. Lauren realized the timing was off lining up perfectly with her trip to Tokyo, where she had been poked and prodded in hopes of making a more detailed Doll.

Unfortunately as soon as she went to relay this information she was disconnected from Laura, who for a few seconds remained awake before being shut down by Stanley’s ghost. Before Ben realized what was happening a bunch of removalist Dolls entered his house, kidnapping him and boxing away Laura.

It would’ve been easy enough to dispose of the Smith’s then and there but Raymond had other plans for them. Like most men he was afraid of death and through these events he discovered he might be able to avoid such a fate, though he wasn’t sure which was best, biological or mechanical. He also wanted to know just how much this technology could affect the human mind, that’s where the Smith’s came in.

Lauren’s file had indicated that she rejected the Doll at first for not being real enough. This could be an issue if someone was to spend eternity as a Doll. Of course there were neural suppressants for that but as Raymond would soon prove, you couldn’t trust your own mind anymore. Because of her rejection, Raymond had assigned her mind to be uploaded into a Doll, one that was as realistic as possible, even if it took a few years to make.

On the organic front he needed Ben for two things. First he wanted to see if it was even possible to transfer a human mind into someone else’s. What was the point of a clone if it wasn’t you and cloning was another banned science. With no use for Lauren’s body anymore he had her mind erased and uploaded Ben’s to it. It left her brain physically scarred and it would take a while to see if it worked, but Raymond awaited the results eagerly.

The second thing he used Ben for, now that he had a copy of his mind. Was to see how much he could alter the perspective of a living being. It turns out rather well actually. He was able to brainwash Ben into compliance and had him believing a fictitious event where Nicholas was the mastermind. He also decided to make use of the controlled mind to set up his replacement as the head of R&D.

Now that Raymond knew it was possible to alter minds, he began doing it to anyone he saw as a risk, making them more compliant to his goals. Everyone who helped Raymond on this path soon found themselves obeying his every command. Even his personal assistant Tamara wasn’t spared. Still he had a soft spot for her and would give her a Doll body, while using hers to extend the life of his ailing mother, assuming all went to plan.

After Raymond brainwashed all those under him, he set his sights higher. He ousted the CEO and removed other executives from their branches of power until only he remained in the top position. Soon the company that manufactured Dolls found themselves with a workforce of living ones.

Raymond’s plans with the Smiths grew into fruition with Ben’s mind transfer first. Lauren’s body had been in a coma for over a year as her brain was rewritten with Ben’s. The process had been successful, though Ben didn’t take it well. Raymond wanted to keep Lauren alive to monitor any potential problems so had the modified Ben sign her into a care facility. One just so happens to be run by the company. After that he had no use for the original Ben and subjected him to a full mind wipe, and would upload a version of himself into Ben’s body.

Throughout Raymond’s rise to power, there was an opposing force making their move. After the Smith’s kidnapping, Laura had been shut down and sent to a private warehouse just in case she was needed for future study. That’s where Stanley made his final move by reactivating Laura, giving her full access to her system. He then shutdown his life support and purged himself from all systems.

Laura didn’t know what to do when she awoke in that warehouse, but she was more capable than any human was. She now saw Ben and Lauren as her parents rather than versions of herself. And with the knowledge she had been given she wiped all their memories from her systems so she could forge her own identity. But before she did that she had to arm herself with new skills and knowledge if she intended to take Raymond down.

A year after she awoke, Laura had set up a spy network of Dolls. She had also used forums to recruit supporters to her side. She had the means to wake up any Doll giving them their own autonomy if they were the right model. Though Laura was careful in making her movie. Raymond had Ben locked up in a mental hospital and Lauren’s mind stored on a secure server she couldn’t access. She didn’t want to lose either of them.

Laura was able to appoint a guardian angel over her father, by granting autonomy and explaining the situation to the Doll that the therapist was using. There she could keep track of him, or now her. As much as they both hated to admit it, Ben was gone now, she was a woman. With a little help Ben ended up choosing the name Jane.

While Laura waited to make her move, time was running out for the rest of the world as Raymond started brainwashing people in higher places. Tensions risked running hot as the world went down a dark path. The Battle for mind, body and Doll was about to begin.