Conspiracy

The engineers read their private investigator’s report again, taking in every detail as best they could. They kept silent, standing in disbelief.

“She’s just--pretending to be a Holly Dolly?” Teresa asked, trying her best to wrap her head around the situation.

“That’s what it says,” Jennifer said.

“Wh--what does that mean?” Teresa asked. “How is that possible! How could she fall unconscious as soon as he took the Collar off her?”

Jennifer leaned back, more thoughtfully considering. “I wonder if the Control Collars can interface with spinal neurons. We use some of the same tech in prosthetics.”

“This isn’t an engineering problem, Jenn. We need to get Grace home.” Teresa paced. She had been the most worried these past five days, in part because she had taken some of Grace’s workload to help cover for the VP’s sudden disappearance.

“Do we?”

“We...” Teresa looked around and lowered her voice, as if the two engineers weren’t the only ones in the office. “We put her in a shipping box.”

“Did we? Who knows how she got into that box?” Jennifer said while giving her partner in crime a stern look.

“But we...”

“Left Grace safe and sound in the warehouse that night. What happened after we left isn’t our problem.”

“Not our problem.” Teresa said, slowly testing the line on her lips. “And...we don’t know where she went after that. She always talked about going Cottagecore. Maybe she finally did. But...what if Grace comes back? She knows what really happened.”

“It’ll be her word versus ours, and we didn’t spend at least five days successfully pretending to be a doll.” Jennifer said. While she didn’t say it, the engineer did wonder if it was all pretend, or if Grace had been encouraged to behave like a doll. If a C+C Collar’s removal could result in immediate unconsciousness, what else could it do?

After some reflection, Teresa nodded in agreement. “You know, it kind of serves her right,” The normally demure assistant said.

“She always was bossy.”

Jennifer didn’t try to hide the happiness she started to feel, imaging her former boss stuck in a house being played with like a toy. “Grace has been a very good doll so far. She should stay that way.”

Epilogue

Holly Dolly lay face first on the ground, right where her Owners had left her. A mini-robot vacuum hummed beside and around the doll, eventually initiating a Subordination command.

[Request Approved. Unit HD824 Subordinated to DustBuster 9027]

The toy inwardly groaned, but did as she was the little robot told her, so it could hoover up the carpet where she had been laying.

“Query: How long has HD824 been in operation?” Holly Dolly thought to her C+C Collar.

[Unit HD824 has been in service for 64 days, 3 hours, and 45 minutes]

And still there had been no sign of Jennifer or Teresa. No messages. No maintenance work. No replacements. They were either unwilling or unable to retrieve Holly Dolly. The toy processed that and thought back to marketing data she had from before her service. Other androids designed by her inventors remained in service for years, with high resale levels if they did change hands. Holly Dolly had no doubt she would remain a toy for a long, long time unless she was discovered. And she couldn’t be discovered, or it would risk so much.

Grace wanted to scream. She graduated two years early, got two degrees in robotics and artificial intelligence programming. She helped startup one of the leading companies in android development, and had sacrificed her personal life to do it. And now she couldn’t even help Miss Violet with algebra because “Holly Dollys don’t understand math.” The kids made her wear bear ears so she would match her teddy husband. She had to obey everything down to the vacuum cleaner. Speaking of, the robot chirped and released Grace from its control.

Holly Dolly laid on the carpet once again, exactly like she had been left. So her Owners could come back and play with her once again. The robots she lived with didn’t care that there was a human woman trapped beneath this dress, these mittens, and all the layers of programming. It was a cute prison she lived in, but it was a prison nonetheless.

It was in times like these that her C+C Collar played soothing wave sounds and flooded Grace with memories it knew she enjoyed. Reading bedtime stories to Miss Erin. Being rescued from an army of Lego men by Mister Aiden. Being drawn by Miss Violet. And more. So many more, happy, enjoyable memories she had as Holly Dolly. Memories of carefree toy life.

So Grace let go. She accepted, as she always had, and she always would, her Holly Dolly programming.