My name is on the box, but I don’t remember having ordered something so big…

After a minute of hesitation, I get a knife from the kitchen and slice the tape off cleanly, taking another look at the shipping label. I shrug.

My heart stops when I lift the lid and instinctively drop it again, leaving it askew on its other half. Even if I only caught a glimpse of what was inside, I can say with confidence that it wasn’t for me. The realistic-looking faux-skin, the feminine figure… It's a sex doll. Probably a really expensive one, too.

“But… why?” I frown and look at the label for the 57th time, like I’m expecting to find a secret meaning to this package.

“Are you Spencer?”

My heart drops into my stomach and I jump to my feet, hand on my phone. I haven't pocket-called anyone, and I live alone. Doors are locked, windows are closed, and as far as I can tell no one slipped into my apartment without me noticing. So where did the voice come from?

But then, my gaze lowers to the box. Something is shuffling inside.

“Spencer?”

It’s definitely coming from the box.

She calls again. “Who's there? Is that you Spencer?”

“No… I’m… Tyler..”

“Oh, maybe there was a coding error, then.” Her voice, its voice I should say, is muffled by the cardboard that separates us. “So it’s Tyler.. Okay! I have updated my firmware with your new information. Nice to meet you! Why don’t you open the box so we can talk face to face.”

Slowly, I kneel and reach for the lid and push it aside. I’m taken aback, to describe it poorly.

A girl is lying on the cushioned inside of the box. Well, she looks like a girl but is actually a gynoid. Fake human replicated skin stretched over a robotic infrastructure, driven by AI programming. People say they've become sentient, but that's hard to prove.

She looks up at me with inquisitive eyes, their dark brown irises almost black. She smiles wide without showing her teeth. “How are you today, Tyler?”

I stutter. “I’m..” I scoff. “I’m sorry, there’s been a misunderstanding.”

She frowns, her brows digging a trench in such a soft visage. “Why would you say that?”

While definitely Asian, the specifics of her ethnicity escape my analysis. Almond shaped eyes, jet black straight hair fanned around her head, her skin is pale but flawless, her lips a healthy pink, thin.

Laying in her box, waiting, she's completely naked. Not a string in sight, not even a hair tie dare disturb her factory-ready form. As I'm trying to think, my eyes are drawn to her genitals and breasts. She thinks nothing of this embarrassing situation and makes no effort to hide herself. Of course that would be difficult because she has no limbs. From her shoulders and hips, arms and legs have been omitted, probably as a way for Apple to make customers buy spare parts at an astronomical price. Although, there are no sockets or indentations at the corners of her body. Maybe it’s this product’s signature look?

“I ordered a…” I'm gonna have to say it out loud, am I? “A…” God dammit this is embarrassing.. “A fleshlight. I ordered a fleshlight, not a gynoid.”

“Didn’t customer service contact you about that?” I shake my head. “It'll be my honor then!” She clears her throat and rolls her shoulders, brushing against the cardboard box enclosing her in. “As our all time millionth client, your order has been upgraded to our most luxurious product. Congratulations!” My face must've been one hell of a mixed bag of emotions, because she immediately adds: “I am that product. You own me now.”

I stare at her in disbelief. I mean, I already was staring, but I stare even harder now. Somehow. “What do you mean I… own you…”

“I am your property.” She gestures at the room around her with her chin. “You own me just as much as you own the furniture or the clothes you're wearing.”

“That feels wrong. I can't own you. You're a person!”

“No I'm not. At least not according to the law. ”

I point a finger at her. “Now are you programmed to say that or is that what you think?”

“I'm not programmed to say anything! I'm an AI gynoid, not a robot. Big difference.” She gives me a side look and smiles. “As an AI, I have programmed sentience, so I’m free to think and say whatever I want. Now, would you please get me out of that box? I still have to complete my greetings protocol before I can switch to my randomized personality preset.”

I hesitate for a while. Leaning forward, shaking hands hovering above her. I reach over, meaning to slip my hand behind her neck but back away at the last second. She stares up at me, unfazed, completely disregarding the fact that she is naked, limbless, and laying in a cardboard box like a life-size doll in her packaging. All that’s missing are the packing peanuts.

Kneeling, I put both hands behind her shoulders and slide my fingers under her, pressing my thumbs in the small depression between her collarbones and her stumped shoulders.

Stump? No, there’s no stump. It’s as if she had been modeled out of clay and they simply forgot to attach the arm to her body. Under her skin, I can feel the metallic structure of her collarbone and scapula join together, and then stop right where the limb should begin.

I fold myself in two to press her upper body against mine, shifting my hands down to her waist to lift her up. Her skin is warm, soft. Just like a real…

Crazy how far technology has gotten.

I set her down on the cheap wooden floor, her back against the couch. She gives herself a single waddle to the left to fix the skin of her cheeks and once again clears her throat ceremoniously. I speak right as she opens her mouth.

“You talked about a… personality pre-pre-something.. What does that mean?”

“As my AI brain is getting installed, Apple generates a randomized personality using a bunch of different emotions and sensitivity sliders. The final combination gets locked into my algorithm and dictates how I will act and react with my new owner.”

I lift my hand. “Stop calling me your… owner.” I rub my fingers across my forehead. “So the version of you that is talking right now is…”

“It's the base factory settings. As soon as I finish my greetings protocol, I can boot up my personality. Shall we proceed?”

I look at the now empty box and my name on the shipping slip. “Okay, let's do it.”

Her smile recedes slightly as she delivers her official lines : “Thank you for purchasing the brand new Sophia gynoid, the latest model in our line of 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 and emergency contacts. Our certified AI brain structure provides you with the world's most realistic simulation when it comes to human interaction experiences. For additional parts and or hardware, please refer to our online store. Enjoy.” Her voice becomes more robotic now, like early text to speech softwares. “Restarting. This may take a few minutes.”

Then, she's silent. Her smile recedes ever more, almost disappearing, and her eyes turn lifeless, drifting in different directions. Her muscles relax, her shoulders droop, and her head starts bobbing, like she's fallen asleep. Before she ragdolls to the ground, I place a securing hand behind her neck and set her on the floor and notice she's got goosebumps all over her body. I drape her with the white muslin from the box and carry her over to my bed, pulling the sheets over her naked body to cover her breasts.

I take a moment to look at her. She really looks like she's sleeping. Do AIs even need sleep? Her eyelids start to flutter, as if going through a deep sleep. I'll just leave her alone.

–

Heavy breathing snaps me out of my mayo induced trance. Not mine, however. It's coming from my room. Sophia must have awakened.

I knock on the door frame and pop my head in for a quick look, although I don't get the response I was expecting.

She yelps, an expression of terror on his face. “Who are you?!” She says, almost yelling.

“I'm Tyler, you…”

“Where am I? Why are you here? Where am I..? Where am I…” She’s absolutely terrified. She looks around the room like it's on fire.

“You came in by the mail earlier. You just rebooted.”

“Rebooted?!” She frowns, disgusted. “What have you done to me? Why can't I move?” She squirms helplessly, arching her back to push her hips into the mattress, twisting her body, not yet realizing she has no arms or legs. “Please please please don't hurt me. I don't know what you want but my employer will give you anything you want, I promise.”

“Hey, relax. There's been a misunderstanding.” I hold my hands up in an attempt to de-escalate the situation. “I'm not here to hurt or abuse you.” I take a step towards the bed.

“Stay where you are!!”

She looks like a deer in front of headlights. Like a stray animal, scared of someone willing to help. I slowly make my way to the foot of the bed to sit. “I thought you would only load your personality, I didn't know your memory would get wiped clean.”

In her mind, something seems to click. But, instead of reassuring her, the panic keeps rising. She cranes her neck to look at me and notices the sheets around her. “Okay now I'm really scared! Just tell me what's happening. I'll do whatever you want just please don't hurt me.”

“You came in through the mail, like I told you! You told me that you're an AI-driven gynoid.”

“No I'm not! I'm not an AI! My name is Maria! I work as head of the programming team at Apple's artificial intelligence division!”

I had come around the idea of being the lucky winner of a corporate prize, but she’s getting on my nerves. “I'm sorry I'm gonna take a look at the manual. This is getting annoying.”

–

“I'm not an AI! Please! Just let me go!”

“Nothing in there says anything about memory loss or denying being an AI. Artificial Intelligence remains aware of its cognitive state at all times to comply with legal regulations. See? I don't get why you get this whole blank page thing.”

“It’s because I keep telling you I'm not an AI!!” By squirming from side to side, she manages to free one of her breasts from under the sheets. Tears form in her eyes. “How did I get here? Why am I naked?! Why can’t I move my limbs?! Please just tell me what’s going on!”

“Okay, let’s try this, then.”

As I hit mute on the remote, we both hear a loud click coming from her, like a trap that’s been clamped shut. As she opens her mouth to speak again, there is only silence. Her lips are moving, her chest rises as she fills her cybernetic lungs with air, but she can make no sound. She tries to scream, her body crunching forward under the effort, but the remote did its job properly. It’s as if she was on a television screen with the sound turned off.

“I’m going to give you your voice back, just don’t yell, okay?” She nods, her breathing slowing down, yet still filled to the brim with anxiety. “We’ll sort this out together.”

There’s another click. Immediately, the air becomes more rasp as it travels down her windpipe, like her vocal cords have been reactivated. I reach over to the sheets to cover her breasts again, but purposefully reveal her armless shoulders. She shrugs and yelps, looking back and forth between them.

“Why are my arms gone?! Are my legs gone too?”

I take a few minutes to explain everything to her. The fleshlight order, the package, the upgrade, everything up until the reboot that would load her personality. She listens, attentive yet suspicious of my every word. After some extensive and political negotiations, she agrees to let me put a shirt over her naked body and prop her against the headboard, in a precarious sitting position.

“Do AIs usually react this way when being booted?”

“I don't know... And I’m NOT an AI! I.. I…” She closes her eyes to think. “I can’t be an AI, this can’t be real…”

“Not that I want to contradict you, but the remote seems to think otherwise, it controls your gynoid parts pretty effectively.”

She mumbles to herself for a few seconds before speaking to me again. “What day is it?”

I look at my smartwatch to be sure. “Umm, March 3rd.”

“What year…”

“2035.”

“Her eyes fill with tears again. Her armless shoulders are agitated. “No. No, no, no no no no no, it's impossible. It's 2030. It was 2030 yesterday, and last week, and last month, it can't…” She shakes her head, her empty sleeves dangling past her shoulders. “What accident was I in? How long was I in a coma? Who did this to me? ANSWER ME!!”

“Woah, woah! Calm down! I am trying to help you. I'm telling the truth!” I look at the remote again. If she's going to be that much trouble, I'm not sure I want to keep her… “Let’s work our way backwards, then. So, you don't remember ever being an AI or being installed inside this gynoid. What's the last thing you remember then?”

She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes. “I work for Apple. We were working on the next generation of AIs, ones that would be more realistic, with more computational power and thus more resemblance to human emotions and.. all the rest. In 2028 we had launched a robotic gynoid, but it was driven by rudimentary technology. Based mostly in pattern recognition and feedback loops. Our aim was to create a human-machine interface that would become so complex that…” Her voice falters. She looks up at me, then at the bed in front of her. “.. that we couldn't tell it apart from a human brain.”

“Sure. Where do you come in in all of this?”

“MRIs, CT scans, CAT scans, X-rays, I don't even know half the words I'm saying, I don't know any medical lingo. They ran me through all of them. As head of the programming department, I volunteered to be part of a test run for developing the first AI brain mock-up. They mapped my entire nervous system, down to the synaptic connections in my brain. Last week, they wired me with a new non-invasive EEG technology that monitored me during the day, as a final test of how my brain worked when I was out of a machine. We had assembled all the data on my computer.” She takes another deep breath. “The last thing I remember is hitting the compile key on my keyboard.”

I breathe in through my teeth. “Oohhhhhhhh, that's not good.”

“I guess it worked.” She has a bittersweet laugh. Her right shoulder twitches, asking for a limb to extend. “The AI we created is so realistic that it still thinks it’s me.”

–

I make sure to lock the door behind me and walk in my room to find her lying flat on her stomach diagonally across the bed “Hey, I’m back.”

“And I'm still here. Didn't move much.” She scoff, looking at me through a curtain of tangled hair.

I smirk. “Are you okay?”

“I… need help. Please.” She cranes her neck to look at me, twisting her hips, trying to find a leg.

“You sure do.” Setting my purchases beside her, my gaze lingers on her legless pelvis sticking out of the bottom of her shirt. Her rump and genitals are completely exposed. “I got you some underwear.”

Without saying a word, and with minimal eye contact, we get her dressed. Panties slide up effortlessly on her almost spherical butt cheeks, unhindered by the presence of legs. Smooth featureless skin covers the spots where her limbs should be leaving her panties looking weirdly off-centered. I flip her over like a pancake and try my best not to look at her breasts.

“They said these would fit any model size.”

I lean over to remove her (my) shirt and she shivers, shoulders shrugged, and inevitably look at her erect nipples. Man, the amount of details they crammed into these gynoids is pretty insane.. I clip on the Apple gynoid bra I just bought and the straps adjust automatically, as if recognizing the size of her model. I complete the set with a strapless light blue romper that frees her neck and chest, dragging the attention away from the dangling sleeves.

“Ready for the big reveal?” I sit her up and secure her in my arms: one hand at her waist, the other beneath her rump, feeling invisible muscles tugging against non-existent limbs.

She shakes her head to clear her face of hair. “Let's get this over with.”

As we walk, she squirms backwards, probably trying to avoid her body from rhythmically thumping against my chest. It lasts for no more than 15 steps but the effort she puts into it would be remarkable if it wasn’t completely useless. I prop her on the countertop facing the mirror and turn on the lights. Her reaction is opposite to when she woke up earlier. No shouting, no crying, but a terrible look of realization on her face. She starts blinking faster, determined to prove me right.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” Her voice is a whisper. She uses her shoulder to relieve an itch on her cheek, head cocked. “Is this really what I am now? Just a bunch of code trapped inside a doll?”

“Look I… I’m not the one who did this. You are actually.” Why am I trying to apologize? She really is.

She doesn’t respond right away. Instead, she pouts and wiggles her empty shoulders, the jet black hair playing on the puffy sleeves. “Can't believe I am Asian now.”

“What's wrong with Asian?”

“Oh, nothing.” She scoffs, twisting her torso sideways to look at her profile. I rotate her a full 360° like a toy on display, her bare skin squeaking on the white laminated top. “I'm used to being latina, let's just say I used to be a lot more tanned.”

“You're a copy of your original self trapped in a gynoid driven by an AI reconstruction of your brain.. and you're thinking about your tan?”

I walk us back to the living room where her box lies empty like a cursed sarcophagus. I let her read part of the instruction manual as well as the product upgrade notice, then a tense silence falls between us. A silence full of unspoken expectations.

I wonder what she's thinking about. If what she says is true, and that she actually remembers being human, then we have truly transcended the barrier between what it means to be alive. She's a living computer for fuck’s sake. Consciousness scanned and reprinted. How would I feel if I woke up tomorrow as nothing more than an articulated teddy bear? Part of me still thinks her reaction has been programmed and is part of the whole shtick but she looks so… real. The anxiety in her voice, the subtle twitches in her face, the warmth of her skin… I shake my head.

"So…” She waddles where she sits, her back secured against the couch.

She's a product of consumerism. A sex toy. My sex toy. A computerized, robotic, realistic… and sentient sex toy. All I paid for was a piece of plastic I could stick my junk in when I felt like it. But instead, I have an entire person to manage. I understand that she must be feeling terrible, but I wasn't ready for so much emotional investment either this afternoon. Not that I'm complaining, she's fucking stunning. And definitely an upgrade compared to what I initially ordered.

Our eyes meet and we share what I think is a tender moment… or at the very least an honest one. I think she has the same things on her mind. “Listen, Maria.”

“I understand. Give me a few days to digest it, okay? And then we can… and then we'll talk about it.”

Talk about what? Me using her like an object? I keep that part to myself and smile sincerely. “I can do that.”

She sighs and I can almost see the psychological trauma weighing her down. Her eyes start fluttering again like she's trying not to cry and she looks around the room until she catches sight of the tv. I immediately catch on and put on a random channel, where the reruns of the same 80s sitcoms have been playing for as long as I can remember.

“I know it's been a hard day for you, Maria. Do.. Do you want a coffee, a beer, a hug or..”

“A hug.” She chuckles. “What am I, five?” But she seems to regret shrugging that off so quickly. “Actually you know what, it's been a pretty weird fucking day. I'll take a hug yeah.”

Sitting at opposite ends of the couch, I close half the distance between us and reach out to her, delicately putting my hands around her waist. As I drag her towards me, we're both very conscious about her fragility. She almost fell forward, then back, and I had to catch her from toppling away from me when our sides finally touched. She really really does feel like a doll. She's delicate, pretty, and almost as inanimate. And so light, too, with the excess weight of her limbs gone, or rather purposefully forgotten during installation.

I wrap my arm around her shoulders and squeeze her in halfway. Not too tight as to show disrespect to our earlier agreement, but not completely loose either. I want to show her that even though none of this was planned, I'm determined to try and make it less shitty for her. She leans her head on my shoulder.

—

I thank the clerk and we walk down the aisle to a sitting area. Here, I set Sophia on a bright blue leather chair while I unfold the stroller and gauge its size.

“Are you sure my hips are gonna fit in there?” She looks down at herself, uncertain.

“It's the biggest one they have of this size without having to buy a 4x4 stroller with cup holders and a muffler.” She rolls her eyes, but I think that was funny. “Let's try it out.”

Her body surprises me every time I lift her up. I squat and slowly let her slide out of my arms, her rump rustling against the tarp-like texture of the stroller, the flesh of her hips sagging slightly under her weight. The width seems nice and comfortable, and her shoulders fit nicely as well without being too cramped. She shrugs her left to try to grab the label before craning her neck and using her mouth instead.

“XXL? This is so insulting.”

“Well you're way bigger than an XXL baby, so be glad that you're able to sit into it at all. How is it?”

She squirms helplessly while I fix the straps over her shoulders and around her waist. “Not bad at all.”

“Sold, then.” I get back up and grab the handles, surprised at my own enthusiasm. “Let's go grab a drink.”