Outside
The world was bigger than Grace remembered it being. The trees beyond the porch were taller, their shadows deeper against the shining moonlight. She pulled her mittens close to her body and took short, wary steps away from the MarksHome household network and the AI that wanted to trap her as a toy.
The simple act of walking felt strange. The last time Grace walked, she had been under Vivienne’s complete control. For the rest of her time pretending, she skipped everywhere, all because Miss Erin started the skipping game that very first day. Everyone assumed that’s how Holly Dolly was supposed to move, including Grace. She made it not three steps before she started skipping again. It felt right for her yarn hair and skirts to bounce. And, it was what her owners told her to do.
Owners. That would be the top issue of her long, long therapy that she would need. Even now, as she skipped away from her prison, she thought of the Marks family as her owners. That she was theirs. Their property. Their robot. Their toy.
It felt wrong to leave her owners. But that, Grace knew, was a thought programmed into her.
She sighed and put those ridiculous thoughts aside as a golf cart turned onto the street. With her heart beginning to pound, Grace ignored it. She kept walking forward, and wondering how to get from here to home. She didn’t even know where here was, and her C+C Collar wasn’t helpful to its ‘doll.’
“HD824?” A man called from the golf cart as it pulled up beside her.
She set her jaw and refused to answer him.
“Grace? Grace Anderson?” He asked again.
The pretend toy stopped, and so did the cart. “How do you know my name?” She asked, her voice free of the silly high pitch cadence she had been forced to use.
“Well, because of your friends.” The man said
“Friends?”
The man got out of the cart. He was big, and tall, but also old and round. He had a rumbly voice that Grace associated with her husband. She shook her head and added that to her list of needed deprogramming. Grace had to remind herself she was not married to a six foot tall teddy bear.
“Jennifer and Teresa. They hired me to keep an eye on you, help you if you needed. They don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“They’re not my friends.” Grace said flatly.
“Oh, I’m...that’s what they said on the phone...”
“They work for me, and they got me into this mess. And if they hired you, then you work for me, too.”
The man scratched his head and furrowed his brow, like a bear trying to figure out a math problem.
“What?” Grace asked.
“It’s just, you look just like one of those toy robots. It’s weird to hear one of them talking like a person.”
She looked down at her clothes, and the contrast between her dolly costume, from her black buckle shoes, to her mittens, and yarn pigtailed hair, was only heightened against the backdrop of concrete sidewalk, and manicured lawns. They had designed Holly Dolly’s to be simple, bright, and fake. And that’s what Grace looked like right now.
“I guarantee you that, beneath all of this I am 100% human.”
“Well, that’s good.” But he kept being confused. “Were you just a doll for that family all this time?” He asked.
“I pretended. Look, are you going to help me, or not?”
“Oh, right, yes.” He said, walking over to her. “What do you need?”
“First things first,” Grace said, turning and revealing the C+C Collar around her neck, “get this crime against humanity off me.”
[WARNING: HD824 cannot operate without Command and Control Collar.]
[WARNING: HD824 cannot operate without Command and Control Collar.]
[WARNING: HD824 cannot operate without Command and Control Collar.]
This warning didn’t stop, hammering into Grace’s psyche, and only making her want the damn thing off more.
“Hurry up, it’s going crazy.”
The man gingerly took his large fingers to the lace and electronic bow, fiddling with it, and then a click. The collar came off.
Grace immediately fell asleep.