Mittens

Grace found it easy pretending to be a Holly Dolly. She just did anything and everything her “owner” told her to do, all with a sweet smile and cute curtsey. No one suspected she was human because she had come out of the right box, wore the right clothes, and acted the right way. The less suspicion she drew, the easier time she would have planning to get out of this mess. If this stupid child stopped playing with her.

“Holly, let’s have some tea.” The seven year old announced.

“I’d love to, Miss Erin!” Grace said in her pitch perfect doll voice, as she skipped to the little raven haired child. She had to skip because they played a skipping game a few hours ago, and Erin never told her Holly Dolly to stop.

The girl picked up a plastic teacup and clicked it into Grace’s mitten hand. The Holly Dolly design team decided to give the toys mittens rather than hands, and to achieve the look, had the dolls wear a cloth shirt with built in mittens. They additionally plushed them up, making it hard for Grace to use her real fingers, and added a clip mechanism so Holly Dolly’s could “hold” toy items, like teacups, hair brushes, and mirrors. All specially made accessories made by the company. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and Grace had been all for it. Now, she had a pink teacup stuck to her hand, and no way of taking it out herself.

“Oh, thank you for the cup, Miss Erin.”

“It looks a little big for you. Maybe try holding it with both hands so you don’t spill.”

“What a great idea, Miss Erin!”

Grace pushed her other hand into the other side of the cup until the clip clicked. It was such a small, simple sound, but still made her stomach tie into knots. When Erin turned to get something else from her never ending toy box, the toyed woman tried to pull her hands apart, but the mechanism to unlock the clip required fingers and thumbs. Despite helping to design the very doll she was pretending to be, Grace was left stuck holding the teacup just as much as she was stuck skipping.

Connected

Grace sat in the dim playroom after bedtime, enjoying the rest from the little girl who played with her all day. Sitting like an abandoned doll with knocked knees and her mittens still holding the teacup, she didn’t dare to move. The house, the mansion, whatever she was in, was still unknown to her. She didn’t know the schedules of her owners, or how thick the walls were. At any moment, the door could open and ruin her ruse.

To prove her point, Grace’s owner, the woman who first let her out of the Toy Box, came through the playroom door in a rush and a huff.

“Where have you been? I’ve been summoning you for ten minutes!” She came right to Grace, and the disguised doll had to keep her reaction smothered.

“I’m so sorry, Owner. Would you like me to run a self-checkup?” Grace had no idea how to do such a thing, only that it was what she programmed Holly Dolly’s to say. Panic started to rise in her, figuring that the woman had been using the remote command feature to call her. No matter how good she acted, Grace couldn’t mimic a purely digital feature.

The woman didn’t reply, but went around Grace and adjusted the control bow around the faux toy’s neck. These bows, big and cute, were the Holly Dolly control collars that included the wifi connection.

“Well, there’s the problem.” The woman said as she tightened the bow.

Electricity tingled on Grace’s skin and a buzzing connection shot like wire into her brain. Then, a voice joined Grace in her mind.

[Connecting Unit HD824 to MarksHome household Network...Connected]

Despite herself, Grace’s eyes went wide at the computer voice suddenly talking to her. More than that, she worried that she knew, somehow, the entire layout of the household. She knew there were five family members authorized to use and play with her. She knew there were four other synth units in the MarksHome network. She knew there was an omnipresent demi-AI that ran the house and all the bots inside it. And she knew she was classified as a toy, and therefore subordinate to all of them.

And she knew what to say because the new voice in her head told her. She did so without a waver in her voice, but a sinking pit in her stomach.

“Integration successful. Unit HD824 Holly Dolly now accepting Remote Commands.”