Welcome

Vacation Planet

The mountains of Luxor rose up like a hand to catch them, nestling the ship in the soft palm of its valley as a child might cup a firefly in the softness of its grasp.

Senetor Bahst remained unimpressed, professional scowl set firmly in place despite all efforts of the vista to ease it from his face.

In truth, he would love nothing more than to relax. It was, after all, the intended point of all this in the first place, this vacation.

All the meticulous planning and scheduling, met by rescheduling, with meetings put on hold even as the petty planet bound empires whined endlessly.

Petty one-planet represenitives and their over-bloated egos persistantly sucked at his precious time.

Then, when at long last everything was in order, Irim, of course, had to intervene.

He was watching Bahst right now, openly preffering the planes of his rival's face even to the sweeping vista now taking the ship into its lush green grasp.

Bahst, however, was better than that. Not for nothing had he climbed the ranks of galactic power, and he kept his face inscrutably pleasant all throughout their long descent.

"It is, of course, still a work in progress." Irim, evidently unwilling or unable to endure his companion's silence, opted to begin the conversation himself.

"So I see." Bahst hummed, taking some small pleasure in the sour look that passed across his companion's face. Rich scion of an ancient line Irim may be, but in terms of raw experience, the boy was quite simply outmatched.

The two stepped out of the ship, afterburners still smoking great, iron-scented plumes behind them as their feet whispered through the unburnt lines of imitation meadow, patches of biological grass made obvious by the flashfire started from their craft.

The field itself was obviously a work in progress, it's natural verdance yet to be completelt replaced with materials suited to handling metal super-heated from atmospheric entry.

"It's still a work in progress, of course." Irim said, his face still searching Brahm's face, and Brahm's face still inscrutable as he took in the defects of the young scion's plaything world.

The rest of the field is up next." Irim continued, still keeping the full of his attention on Bahst's expression, wholly unaware of this inspection's inevitable end, or, if he was aware, pretending not to know.

"We would have had it done before now, but the mountains -" he waved a fine-boned hand, artistically sculpted by the galaxy's finest geneticists into something that was, in Bahst's opinion, a touch too effeminate.

"- Took more work than we thought. The damn Hriquilari -" He uttered the name of the planet's original owners with the practiced ease of a well worn curse. "Had an entire civilization buried under those. Claimed they had no idea there!"

Irim Scoffed. "And they call themselves honest traders."

"You forget the technological capacities of savages." Bahst replied, "If the Hriquilari are to the level I have heard them to be -" As detailed by master Irim's exalted matron, extensively. "I do not doubt they could have simply forgotten it was there."

"Well, they should very well have written it down then, shouldn't they!" Irim snapped, before abruptly remembering who he was talking to. "--Sir. But anyways, it's caused me quite a bit of trouble. It's too good to simply demolish, but renovating it up to proper standards has put the primary landing feild almost two weeks behind."

The two strolled across the charred remains of grass, making their way across the blackened waste onto the moving walkway already installed into the dirt.

Bahst gave a sigh of relief at the sight. It seemed the boy's priorities were not completely hopeless, after all.

As soon as he stepped into the path of the rolling metallic streamers, Bahst felt himself swept up into the rolling walkway's motion, each step turning the landscape into a new blur of color from the speed of his traversal.

Dollface

 A girl goes missing in the woods, and her parents find only a decrepit and scary doll left behind. They soon learn that the doll is actually their daughter. And she's alive.

When Mrs. Springer announced the return of her daughter, the whole town was appalled.

Certainly, the initial loss had been tragic, loosing children to the woods always was. But such children, once lost, were meant to stay gone. Any kind and loving parent would make sure of it.

But it was well known that Mrs. Springer was no such thing.

She had never been quite right since she lost her husband, unfortunate as she was to have witnessed him impaled during his off-duty hours by a shadow he had failed to notice looked nothing like his own. Once exposed, a shadow was easy enough to kill, but not so easy that Mister Springer was gotten to in time. He was gone before the last of its mouths had finished screaming.

"Damn you! God damn you!" The tears that had streamed down her cheeks had been heartbreaking. "You let him die!"

Her parents went not long after. Genevieve and Theodore Springer, both honorable members of the town, turned themselves in.

"It's okay, dear, it's okay." Genevieve had tried to comfort her daughter before she was lead away.

"No." Mrs. Springer had wept, reaching for their infected fingers between cold iron bars. "It's not."

So when the woods took her daughter, perhaps it should have been expected that Mrs. Springer would pretend she wasn't truly gone.

Mipsy was frankly surprised when she opened the door. Both she and Earnest had done so more from a sense of obligation than any expectation that she would reply. Mrs. Helga Springer had been such a good townswoman for such a long time, going straight to the break in just wasn't the neighborly thing to do.

"Oh! Welcome, welcome!" Helga threw open the door and angled for a hug, her smile only fading when Earnest dodged out of her attempted hug. She didn't look infected, but one could never be too sure.

"Is something wrong?"

"Just here for a check in, Helga." Mipsy said. "We know you're daughter is...unwell, so the council sent us over to make sure nothing spread."

"The council." Helga scoffed.

"They protect the town." Earnest reminded her.

"by killing good people and spreading dirty lies!"

Earnest grimaced. He had never been one for blasphemy.

"I know it's been hard, Helga." Mipsy cut in. She would have put a reassuring hand on her shoulder, but the risk of infection was still very real. Unable to emphasize through touch, Mipsy focused on channeling everything she had into her voice. "That's why we're here. We're neighboors, we take care of each other, and all we want to do is make sure you're well. You can show us that, can't you? That you and your daughter are alright?"

Helga's lips thinned, raking the couple over with narrowed eyes. Mipsy, tastefully dressed and affable in a way that she could only hope read as sincere rather than professional, and Earnest, true to his name, with hands clasped in front of him to stop the reflex to fiddle.

They had both gone with hidden weapons only, on her suggestion. It made it easier to gain a target's trust.

She watched the subtle interplay of wants and choices dance across the woman's face: Loneliness, joy, suspicion, and desire passed over her expression as she made her choice.

"Fine." The woman snapped. "But don't hurt her. Promise me that."

"I promise." Mipsy lied.

Helga nodded, and swung the door open to let them in.

The house appeared largely unchanged, if a little more dusty, since the last time Mipsy had seen it. Pictures of Mister and Mrs. Springer lined the walls in happy poses, drapery and curtains hung sun faded and only slightly dry rotted over dark wood paneling.

The dolls, however, were new.

"It is nice to have some adult company." Helga said, quite oblivious to the strange decor. "Little Bethany has been thriving - so much more than she was before, but she's quite the handful. I've been afraid to ask for help, with those dirty council members poisoning the minds of every Jane, Dick and Sally against her, but with you -" She took a deep breath, a satisfied sigh from lungs too long constricted, "I could convince all the rest, and we could be happy again."

Made to Order

"and I tell ya." Charlie answered impatiently, his customer service voice now well and truly slipped. "Tits that big don't just happen. You want boobs the size of watermelons, that's an extra 89.95 plus overtime fees for the specialty installation."

He did not mention the extra cartilage that would need to be built into the whole thing to prevent the enhanced assets from sagging, nor the somewhat delicate work of ensuring the end result looked natural - for a given value of natural, that was, considering what was being ordered.

Many years of customer service had trained him well, however, and as a veteran sells rep, he knew full well what customers actually cared about, and God knew, it was't the details.

"And I'm telling you I know when' a scam's a scam." The customer shot back, his voice a deep bassy baritone that would be authoritative, were it not for the whinging content of his actual speech.

Hell, he could be using a voice changer, for all Charlie knew.

Hell, he could even be a she, though that he rather doubted.

Being a life-long aficionado of the real thing, Charlie had in fact had the opportunity to talk to women, real ones, and thus knew that even the most virulently depraved of lesbian meatdoll lovers were more apt to wince in sympathy at the sort of over-engorged tankers his customer was currently trying to order than they were to drool.

"It's just one mod off the base." The customer repeated for the half-dozenth time. "No other changes, you can leave off the face even, if it'll ease up the price. There's just no damn reason - No damn reason you assholes are jacking up the costs 150% like that."

Charlie also knew the futility of pointing out that it was the customer's absolute determination that the chest, and only the chest be in any way enhanced was in fact part of the problem. Hiding all those extra anchor points such that nothing could be seen or felt outside the model was delicate work, not something you could toss one of the newbie crafters at and call it a day.

He would have to try, though, if only because the customer was getting dangerously close to threatening to leave a bad review, and if there was one thing guaranteed to bring middle management down on his head like a bag of bricks, it was a bad review.

That said bad review might be misspelled, childish, or otherwise full of lies meant nothing at all.

Charlie didn't love his job, but with the market as it was, he most certainly didn't love his prospects without it, either.

"SweetMeats is an honest and reputable dealer, sir." Charlie's customer service voice flipped back on as he spoke. "And if you care to read the contract, you will see that any modification of sufficient complexity no matter how outwardly superficial-"

"Sufficient complexity my ass!" The customer snapped. "It's a pair of tits!"

"Yes sir." Charlie responded. "I'm so sorry to hear you're unhappy. While I can't grant you a discount on my own, if you were to sign up with our loyalty program, you may become eligible to receive discounts such that even a heavily modified model might be more within your preferred range of price."

But God, Charlie hated the customer loyalty program. Not because getting people to sign up to it was frightfully hard, but because it hooked customers into an exclusivity contract that nearly guaranteed the grubby, entitled perverts he was forced to serve would just keep coming back.

"See? I knew it. Always a game with you bastards, ain't it." The words themselves remained nasty, but the tone had turned smugly satisfied, pleased to have seen through his supposed ploy.

Charlie was now entirely certain he was using a voice changer.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" The customer barked. "Sign me up."

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The production side of SweetMeats was always hot. Steamy and thick, the scent of hot flesh and nearly-rot lingering in the air like a sick perfume.

Red stains ruled this backside kingdom, smeared over every surface like a murder scene, and in the center of it all, planted like a pillar among the thick fog and crimson doll-juice splatters that was almost, but not quite, blood, stood Granny.

Imbued with the unwavering confidence of one who knew herself to be irreplaceable, Granny was the head dollmaker of the entire operation, overseeing all the lesser cutters and fleshmolders with an iron fist. Famous for her stoic manner and utter intolerance of fools, even the slimiest and most corporate of the creatures inhabiting the managerial levels avoided her as best they could.

With this immunity to the bureaucratic perils that so defined the sells section of the floor, the production side rapidly became the staffs favorite place to take their lunch, the canopy of her red-crusted apron a safe place for staff to talk and gossip among themselves, just so long as they kept out of her way.

"I can put up with every bit of this damn business," Charlie griped, "But the goddamn customers!"

He slammed his cup down for emphasis, nearly knocking askew an arm being fitted with a fine set of feathers along its bicep.

This earned him a warning glare from Granny, whose gaze cut through the muggy air to cow the senior salesman back into a more restrained pitch.

He had almost jostled the needle-boards, he realized, rather delicate instruments used to anchor fine growths into a subject's pores.

Granny's space might be a haven, but one that lasted only at the lady's leisure, a leisure which evaporated quickly when fools dared to jostle her work.

"sounds to me like you hate every bit of the business to me, mate." Liam said.

Another senior salesman and Charlie's close friend, so long as neither of them were placed on the same sales grid together, in which case they were bitter rivals everywhere but Granny's, in whose territory all became neutral, picked idly at his own lunch as he spoke.

"And maybe every other business alongside that. What the hell's any job, anyway, without customers shelling out to keep it afloat?"

Each grid of sales floor was divided in competition with each other, just as every member inside the grid were each expected to compete among themselves, in turn. While it was theoretically more important for grids to out compete other squares as a group, in practice, all the most bitter feuds lived and died inside ones own cell.

Monthly bonuses were determined based primarily off how well one placed on the internal board of their cell, and that bonus often made the difference between solvency and debt for one month more.

"It's not the selling, it's the who." Charlie shot back, leaning out of the way as a worker doll came passing through.

Its arms dripped with adipose, white mounds melting into a slick shine across its skinless arms, as though wrapped in cellophane.

"Every single ones a pervert, and spoiled about it too, whining about how their newest, latest doll's gotta look."

"That's Sweetmeat's whole specialty, you ass." Liam said. "What, you sign up to this joint thinking this was a thew factory or something? Get outta town."

"yeah, yeah, I know." Charlie polished off his sandwich, keeping a leery eye on Granny, who had finished feathering the arm and set about the delicate work of preparing the musculature for attachment to some greater whole.

He spared an idle thought to wonder what it might be like in a thew factory, a real, serious production plant where experts like Granny were thick on the ground like ants, hundreds of them set to weaving sinews across bones a full mile long.

Maybe Granny liked being top dog in a smaller joint like SweetMeats, but Charlie had always harbored secret dreams of working with the thew. It was a wish born from another, even more secret dream to actually ride a thewbeast, to be one of those few placed inside the all-encompassing cranium of flesh and bone to control the towering mass of muscle directly, riding them off to battle against the machine-plague ever threatening to consume humanity whole.

But Charlie had long since given up on being a greymatter guide, and, deep down, he had given up on earning a place in a thew factory, too.

In this age of free labor, where dolls could be cheaply and safely deployed for all manner of tasks, the only jobs left were the ones that required a brain, and if that brain didn't have the right education, the right connections, or even just found itself to be unlucky enough to be attached to the wrong kind of face, then that brain would quickly find itself tossed in the streets.

Back in the day, dying in the gutter like that would have at least have ensured the poor unfortunate soul in question would have been picked up for doll parts, if nothing else, but in this more modern era, most flesh was preferentially cooked up from its raw components, as the need to break down the substance of a man into his most basic parts before tediously reconstituting him into something more useful had proved so staggeringly inefficient that even the most miserly of operations usually just left the bodies to rot.

Frankly, if it were up to the businessmen and bosses, Charlie harbored no doubt that everything, everywhere would have dolls working in place of humans, but there was one thing, and only one thing, that every fortress city, every outpost, and every rogue freemanstead had universally banned, and that was any attempt, for any reason, to imbue a doll with brains.

Charlie was a passable, perhaps even talented, salesman, but with the mechanical menece pressing ever closer to the city walls, pushing ever more refugees to seek shelter within its protective boundaries, there was just no guarantee he could find another job, should he choose to walk out on this one.

Truthfully, there was no guarantee he would keep his job if he didn't walk out, either. Too many bad reviews, a dip in his statistics, and with the price of a body down below the dirt, he'd be out.

He knew it, they all did, which was why they all congregated by Granny's side during lunch break. For there, in the foul steam and meat caked rattle of machinery, all and sundry could speak without fear.

"I guess I just thought they's care more. Or less, I dunno. These guys drop thousands on specialty dolls, more then you or me will ever see on a whole years worth of paychecks. They love 'em, they marry 'em, they sell themselves soul and all into loyalty programs to get 'em, but still don't know dip about 'em."

"It's not about knowing." Liam said. "It's about the having."

"Something to take the edge off, something to make it not hurt, or just hurt less, if you gotta. To hell with the details, and the money and all. You get what you want, you're happy, or at least close enough to pay. Everyone wants like that, to have something, and don't look me in the eyes and tell me you're any different, either, Charlie, I know you ain't a saint."

Charlie was, indeed, no saint, but even still, he did not understand why SweetMeat's endless line of customers never seemed to want to know about their dolls.

Perhaps it was the same thing that kept him chasing after real-life girls, despite having neither prospects nor a breeding licence to his name. Perhaps it was the boy in him, , still fascinated by the thewbeasts and their heroic greymatter guides, who still believed, despite it all, he had some kind of chance to walk among them.

Perhaps, despite having attained and even exceeded at the most soulless profession a man might have, Charlie just cared.

"Could do without their bitching, though." He said, deciding to keep his wondering thoughts to himself. "Big, titty sucking freaks just can't shut up."

"Ain't that the truth." Liam agreed, polishing off the last of his sandwich just as the bell rang to signal the end of break.

To stay any longer was to risk not only the wrath of their supervisors, but Granny's, too. The stoic old woman was willing to tolerate intruders into her domain for a time, but any idle hand that lingered overlong would soon find their collars fisted and themselves dragged roughly to wherever Granny decided they ought to go.

Charlie followed Liam out, passing by Granny's work station, then those of her underlings, directing machines on the warp and weave of flesh, trying not to slip on bits of gristle as they dodged across the floor.

Where Liam left immediately, however, Charlie found himself at a pause. His last precious moments of break snared in sudden fascination over an almost-finished doll.

It was shaped like a woman, lain resplendent on its finishing rack as a well rested beauty might linger in her waking across the stretch of her divan. Milky white skin, taught in its artificial youth, stretched over curves soft curves and long fine neck in that poreless sort of beauty only dolls could ever seem to grasp.

What truly arrested Charlie was not its body, however, but its face.

Dark eyes, opal bright even beneath heavy lids half masted in their decommissioned state, inset between a long and slender nose placed above a pair of lips wine red and richly plush, canted upwards at their edges in a subtle kind of smile, as though it knew something, deep in the cavern of her hollow doll-brain, a secret imbued, or kept hidden, that her maker had forgotten in the long process of her creation to properly scoop out.

Charlie stared into the unblinking depths of its eyes, wondering, as he often did, who would order such a thing, and why.

Would they make it talk, perhaps? Would they puppet its arms around them? Would they talk to it, in the dead of night, all their most treasured soul and secrets, just to pretend there was someone there to listen, when they did?

Charlie thought of the empty cubical waiting for him, and the empty apartment he was set to return to, after that.

Would having a doll there to greet him truly make a man happy like that, or just less alone?

Charlie turned his head away from the thing, striding through the last steps between himself and the door which separated the steamy thickness of the production facility from the cool air and grey cubicles of the call center floor.

He tried not to think about the customers he'd be talking to as he did, nor their wants, nor what empty spaces he and they and everybody might be trying to fill up inside them, as he did.

Even so, the depths of those black-jeweled eyes lingered in his mind, and for the rest of the day, no matter how hard he tried, Charlie just couldn't shake the feeling of being watched.