I had been waiting for my package to come in for the entire day. Delivered between 8am and 7pm, my ass. I was probably going to be the last one on the list like every other time. I was so eager to get it I didn't even risk going outside or taking a shower. I cleaned up the one bowl and plate I owned, broomed my one-room apartement at least three times, and watched a few tv-shows with the volume turned almost all the way down. I was thinking about getting diner started when the buzzer finally rang on the speakerphone. 

"Delivery for.. Uumh.. Anderson." The interface was getting old but still transmitted words pretty clearly.

"Y-yes, I'm letting you in."


Finger on the appropriate button, I heard the entrance door slide open from across the hall. A few moments later, I could hear footsteps and a low humming sound getting closer to my door. I waited for him to knock before opening. A thick beard covered over half of his face. I signed his form with the pen he handed me.


"Where do I put this?" He peeked inside my appartment, quickly looked around the room before setting his eyes on me.

I pointed my thumb backwards. "In front of the couch will do just fine."


The couch in question was also my bed, when unfolded that is, and sat in front of a widescreen TV monitor. He pushed his cart, which hovered a few inches off the ground, and dropped a large white box right on the floor. He didn't seem to strain himself, even with the size and apparent weight of the box. Before getting back up, he put a finger on the company name printed on the side of the package and stared up at me. 


"I wish you a lot of fun." He flipped a switch on his cart and it folded itself in four. He put it under his arm. "I was expecting someone else. You're not the uh... usual target audience for this product."

I stuttered, embarassed by his remark. "Well, I.. I, um... I.. That's bec..."

He laughed and winked at me. "Hey no hard feelings okay? I'm not judging, it is a very popular product. I hope you enjoy it." He walked out the door and closed it behind him.


Just like that, I was alone again. 

I grabbed a knife before walking back to the living area and sat in front of my package. The design was very slick. It was all the same matte white color except for the name of the company that manufactured and distributed it, printed in bold copper letters in the corner. I cut the single stripe of tape keeping the whole thing shut and opened it like a chest. First, I found some essentials, namely a thick instruction manual bearing the same finish as the box, a few spare parts and screws, and a control panel looking not entirely different from a large tv remote. The most obvious button on it read RESET in bright red letters. I took them out and opened the second layer of the box. My heart rate quickened.

In it laid a human person. A naked human person. Or, definitely something that looked like a naked human person. It had a face but no hair. Neither did it have breasts or genitals. Instead, it's crotch had been smoothed out. Eyes closed, it didn't breathe. The arms and legs were stored in a separate compartment, making the torso end abruptly on the shoulders and hips. Leaning forward, I lifted the head and body out of the box and set it beside me on the couch. It was surprisingly light. One at a time, I fixed the limbs onto their appropriate joints and stood up to admire my work. I had read a lot about them already, but still reached for the manual to be sure of the correct booting sequence. I leaned it forward and reached for a switch behind it's head, flipping it upwards towards female. Then, when the chip reader popped out of it's neck, I slid a custom one in place.

Still inanimate, the mannequin rapidly transformed using the data embedded in the chip. It's grey-ish skin took on a lively beige color that spread from the neck to the entire body. Then, the whole thing shrunk in height, it's spine compressed lengthwise along with its limbs, hands and feet, preventing the latter from reaching the floor. Its hips widened and the limbs got slim and slender, some more prominent muscles melting out of sight deeper within the body. From it's scalp, long dark hair sprouted and draped its shoulders and face, hiding the subtle readjustments that occurred in the bones of its face and the handful of freckles that had appeared around it's nose and cheeks. Finally, I reached in the box to grab the complimentary default clothes as a slit appeared between her legs when its genitals formed, slipping on a white pair of panties as well as a shirt to cover its growing breasts. Then, everything came to a stop. I pulled her head back and cleared the hair out of her face.

I put my own up in a loose bun and pushed firmly on the button in her back. It immediately dissolved in her skin along with the switch and her whole body started emitting a delicate whirring sound. She sunk slightly in the couch as she built up mass. I had read about the chemistry behind it but still couldn't understand how it worked so quickly. She straightened herself, putting her hands on her knees, opened her eyes and spoke.


"Friendship setting."


She waited. I stood there for a bit before realizing that she was expecting an answer. I picked up the manual again and quickly flipped to find a specific page.


"Friendship setting." She repeated.

"Seven."

"Intelligence setting."

"Four?" I said hesitantly. I had read lots of reviews saying that the lower this one was, the easier they were to deal with.

"General personality preset."

I pulled out a piece of paper from my pocket and read it out-loud: "B67-4C9-JK3"

"Knowledge of self-status."

"Partial." With this particular setting, she would know what she was and why she was here, but wouldn't notice on the fly changes I'd make to her personality or body.

"Vital signs."

"On."


Her rib cage started moving up and down in rhythm. I leaned forward and could see her shirt move ever so slightly along with the beats of her artificial heart.


"Restarting. One moment please."


She fell limp on her side, as if she had suddenly fallen asleep. Then, she slowly came to her senses. She stretched her arms, rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and swung her hair out of her way. She looked up at me, still standing, with a pair of green eyes.


"Hey", she said groggily, "are you Alexa?"

"Yes. It's me."

"Give me a minute would you." She yawned and stretched again, curling forward in a ball then stretching her back. She adjusted her shirt, took a quick look at her body and spoke again. "I am April, but you already knew that right?" I nodded. "Good! Then first I have to read this to you, it's protocol or something." She cleared her throat. "Thank you for purchasing the brand new April bot," She gestured towards herself, "the latest model in our line of semi-sentient personal companions. I am to be at whatever service you so desire. Enclosed in the box you may find an instruction booklet, a remote, emergency contacts, along with everything necessary to build and rebuild your own personalised product. For additional parts and or hardware, please refer to our online store. Enjoy."


We looked at each other for a bit. There was something gleaming in her eyes. A flame of intelligence and self-awareness that made looking at her feel different than staring into the glass beads of plushies, porcelain dolls or the simple recognition cameras of the first generation androids.


"I gotta say," She said, crossing her legs and bringing a hand to her chin, "you did a killer job on the settings. This is miles beyond the default personality presets we got to try in the factory. I pretty much assumed I was going to become a girl, but this is better than what I expected."

"Yeah, I read a lot of stuff about your model before purchasing y... Sorry, about you before you came along."

"Oh it's okay, you know. I don't mind you calling me for what I am, really. You own me and that's quite fine with me."

"Alright then. Let's shake hands."


I extended my hand and she shook it in return. A smile widened on her face. Still put on the couch, she looked up at me, perhaps waiting for a command, a desire, or simply what we were about to spend the rest of the day doing together. I stood there for a while before remembering I was the one that had purchased her.


"Okay!.. Um." I looked around nervously. "Now that that's out of the way, there are a few thing I would like to adjust now, and if I remember correctly, I need to turn you off before I do so."

"Sure!" She tucked her hair behind her ears and adjusted her position on the couch, straightening her legs. "I can't do it myself, though. Want me to lay down here? Or perhaps in another room?"

I kneeled in front of her. "This is the only room of my apartment, so that'll have to do. You should be fine sitting right here. It'll take just a moment." 

"See you soon! I have no notion of time when I'm off, for me it's as if everything occurred in the.."


Her lifeless body fell forward on my shoulder as I pinched the skin at the back of her neck, immediately shutting her down. I could see the switch and button phasing out of her skin when I laid her flat on her back on the couch. From there, I grabbed one of her thighs and squeezed it firmly between my two hands. With an audible plop, it detached above her knee. The exposed patch of grey skin was quickly covered up by her body, leaving behind a stump. The other leg quickly followed the same way, and I gave the same treatment to her arms, taking the entirety of her forearms beyond her elbows. I stashed the excess in the box where I had initially gotten them and stored it in the closet. Finally, I reached behind her head and she whirred back to life. 


"..blink of *yawn* an eye!"


She sounded like she was waking up once more, finishing her sentence as if following a complete night's sleep.


"So, what did you need to fix?" She looked up at me inquisitively. 

"You.. uh.." I stared back at her. Stared at the stump of her left arm as she yawned and covered her mouth with it. "You... don't remember?"

"Not with the settings you programmed." She flipped on her belly, slid her legs beneath her and pushed herself upwards, sitting. She swung her hair back into position and behind her ear, her head leaning to the side. "Partial self-knowledge means I'm aware that I'm an AI, but won't know of the modifications you make once I'm activated for the first time." She reached for her breasts to push them up, letting them bounce back under her shirt, and joined her stumps in front of her before circling her arms at her sides. "You could change absolutely everything about me, even switch me to being a man, and I'd never even notice! Or maybe I was a man and you switched me to a woman?" She reached for her breasts again.


I chuckled. Perfect. This way, she wouldn't be destabilised by the novelty of her body. For her, this was normal. One configuration out of the endless possibilities that her model offered me. They had so many different attachments for sale this was in no way strange or inappropriate for her. She slowly rubbed her thighs together.


"I mistakenly gave you brown eyes, so I turned them back to my favorite color," I lied.

"What is it?" She said naively.

"Take a look for yourself!"


I reached behind me on a low coffee table and handed the mirror I had set there beforehand. She grabbed it and held it between her arms a few inches away from her face.


"Green! I love it!" I took it from her again. She looked around the room and stopped on the closed shutters, pointing an arm their way. "Will we go outside today? I would really love to."

"Well as you can see," I showed her the dark and rainy evening that presented itself outside my only window, "It's pouring outside, and I'm not sure you can hold on to an umbrella."

She giggled. "Not like this, I don't think so. Did you order any spare parts for me? I've heard that the tentacle appendages provide an outstanding grip."

"We can talk about this later. For now, you should hold on to something."


I walked back to the couch and flipped a switch to turn it back into a flat bed. The seat extended forward, the backrest flattened, and the whole thing merged to form a nice and comfortable mattress. Surprised by the sudden movement, April fell forward on all four of her stumps, her nose brushing against the fabric of the bed. When the entire thing stabilised, she needed three tries to successfully push herself up again. She sat there, slightly out of breath.


"You know.. Even if this body is the only thing I can remember... inhabiting.." She paused to catch her breath. "I gotta say it's pretty gruelling." She cleared her face of hair, rubbing her stumps backwards over her ears. "Is it less straining to have more attachments on? I'm guessing my model can be bought with limbs just like yours?" She pointed towards me with one of her arms.

"It is, fortunately." I answered as I took off my pants and shirt. "I have spare parts for you, but I chose this form for a reason. It will make me feel less lonely."

"Hey, no worries." She stared at the pile of crumpled clothes and nodded. "That's usually the mean reason for purchasing us, you know. You're the owner, you decide. I'm literally yours."

I fidgeted with my fingers. "No, I mean... I know what it's like. What you're living."

She frowned. "Are you an AI, too?" 

I shook my head. "No but technology has saved me from trouble."

Using my right hand, I grabbed my left bicep and twisted sharply. Just like a light bulb from it's fixture, I unscrewed my arm from its socket, leaving behind a notch in my skin that quickly smoothed itself out. My shoulder receded slightly towards my neck to rest where it was naturally supposed to, narrowing my shoulders and altering my physique quite a lot. April's jaw dropped, her stumps raised to her mouth. I rolled my shoulder, relishing the absence of my articulated arm.


"Oh my god! What happened to you?!" Her voice breaking in disarray, she extended her arms towards my empty shoulder.

"They can fix even real people using robotics these days. But I wasn't in any accidents. I was born like this."


I poked my thumb in the spot where my arm articulated and chafed my underlying muscles. Throughout the course of the day, I get this buzzing sensation in my shoulder that keeps intensifying until I can finally remove it. I closed my eyes for a moment to enjoy my massage.


April was completely mesmerised. "I didn't think such things were possible! From the information stored in my hard drives, all humans are bioengineered now! How could they let something like this pass through?"

I answered simply. "For anything and everything these days, it's always 99,99% precise. Well, that 0,01% has got to end up somewhere."


I stood up and anchored my right foot on the bed before twisting my body to the side, giving my leg a very unnatural angle. Right before my bone would snap, my leg fell off me onto the bed next to my arm. Like my shoulder, my hip had no stump. I sat on the edge of the bed next to April and unscrewed my second leg, this time leaving behind a short limb, shorter than April's, that I briefly took time to stretch left and right. Using my single remaining limb, I pushed all the detached ones on the ground where they thumped heavily.

Finally, I bent my arm on itself to reach a socket hidden beneath the skin of my shoulder blade. I slid my thumb in, secured my grasp on it, and pressed firmly. My hand, along with most of my arm, fell off my body. While I could move it only a second ago, it now laid limp on the ground with the rest of my cybernetic limbs. 


"And now," I sighed and looked up at her, "there's someone just like me. Even if you're just an AI."

"Well in this state I even have more than you!" She lowered her head and moved her four short limbs one by one, as if counting them. "You only have two!"

I looked down at the abbreviated arm on the right side of my body. "I guess you're right."


I waddled away from the edge of the bed, the stump of my left leg pushing down on the mattress to boost me further with every hip rotation. Coming up on April, she waddled up to me and inspected my shoulders using her own stumps. The soft contact of her stumps against mine made me shudder. For a while, that's all we did. Touching and feeling each other. Imprecisely but delicately, our bodies only a few inches apart. And for the first time in forever, I didn't feel alone.