Mel didn’t think she’d go to the hospital. For a while she had been overweighing whether or not it was worth going there. She wasn’t close to her father, but she still was crybaby. And family was family, even though she didn’t really know him. That one time, before he left to go to France, he had bought a caramel for her. It was a lovely dark caramel. She still remembered it clear as day.
Mel sat by the dinner table. Nicolai sat at the other side of the table. He smiled at her as he twiddled his thumbs. He was extremely good at imitating human behaviour. His playful demeanour was just a façade. Behind it, there was coldness. An icy coldness. Mel didn’t know many dolls. Most of her friends were humans. Eric, Ivy, Trevor and Elsie. All of them humans. Nicolai was one of the few dolls she knew of. Of course she could distinguish a doll from a human, but she didn’t really care about her kin. She felt much closer to the humans.
In a crowd of humans, Mel would stick out like a sore thumb. The fact that she wore frilly, pink dresses and pink shoes didn’t help her case. Her pink hair was tied up in pigtails. She had creamy porcelain skin and freckles across the bridge of her nose. She looked synthetic.
Maybe that’s why I’ve never had a boyfriend, Mel thought to herself. And that might as well be the reason. She didn’t look natural, and that put people off.
“You are a thinker, aren’t you?” Nicolai asked. Mel nodded. “While you might be a malfunctioning doll, you sure are a great human,” Nicolai smiled.
“Thank you.”1023Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcIZKhxnt6I
“I mean it. If human didn’t have such prejudice against us, you could be one of them.” But I am one of them, Mel thought. I have to be, or else I don’t belong anywhere.
“You should be careful though.” It was Mel’s mother talking. She was done talking to the human paramedics. Now she was making her way towards the dolls.
“Why should I be more careful than others?”
“You are naïve, programmed to be so. That’s your main malfunction.”
“I will try to be careful,” Mel said. Paula nodded.
“It was nice talking to you again, Melody,” Nicolai said.
“Thank you for coming.”
Nicolai bowed formally before Paula and left the apartment. Paula had calmed down a lot. She often got these sudden outbursts. When they were over, Paula was back to her old self. She was pure dynamite with a very short fuse. Paula and drama was like TNT and fire. Not a good combination in other words.
It went around and around in eternal cycles. Paula would explode and calm down. It was an evil circle.
“Do you remember when I divorced your dad?” Paula asked. Mel looked at her with her big glass eyes. They were purple, with big, dilated pupils. They would shine in the light from the sun and make them seem even more unrealistic. Mel hated them. She felt like a one-woman-freakshow. A sideshow act by her self.
“I remember it pretty well,” Mel admitted.
“It was mainly because of his job. I know you never really understood what he worked as. He was an archaeologist, searching for different artefacts of the past. Different relics. He was so consumed by his work, that he wouldn’t spend time with us.”
“Is that why you divorced him?”
“Yes. You can’t understand how hard it was for me.”
“I think I understand,” Mel said.
“You’re a doll, how can you?” She was starting again. Mel swallowed away her sadness and decided to be strong for once. Her mousy demeanour changed into something a lot stronger.
“I’m not going to sit her and feel sorry for you, mother. My dad just died, and I need to go to the hospital to see him.”
“Don’t you dare leave me!” Paula screamed. Mel slammed the door behind her as she exited the room. As she entered her hovercar she fell apart. She couldn’t believe she had been rude to her own mother. She didn’t deserve to live. She didn’t deserve anything. She truly was a freakshow. She looked at the panel on her wrist. She had seen how the panels were supposed to work. They weren’t supposed to say malfunction. They were supposed to give the reader all kind of information. Everything from date of manufacture to the latest update. She had never been brought to the update central. Not once in her life had her mother bothered taking her there to see if there were any available updates for her model. Any spare parts that could make her look better. She didn’t carry any hatred. Either she wasn’t advanced enough to feel that kind of emotion, or she wasn’t a hateful person. She hoped for the latter.
The lightways were busy as she drove on her way to the hospital. There were so many different hovercrafts, it was hard to count them all. The black ones drove the bigger hovercrafts. They were dolls with pale faces and black bodies. They weren’t made from porcelain like the other dolls. Mel didn’t know exactly what the black ones were made from, but she had touched one, and he had felt spongy, soft almost. She didn’t want to offend him by touching him for a prolonged period, but there was something enthralling about touching a black one. It was forbidding almost.
Mel stopped at Caterpillar’s Milk Station. She found her favourite pump, number four, and started filling the tank. She found some cookies in the car, and dipped them in the hot milk. One of the great things about being a doll was the fact that you didn’t get fat. She could eat however much she wanted without fearing weight gain.
“That’ll be ten dollars fifty,” a monotone voice said. It was Dominic. He was the operator of this pump, and not nearly as a good an actor as Nicolai. Dominic had dark hair, dark porcelain skin and chocolate eyes.
“You don’t sound happy to see me?” Dominic shrugged.
“I don’t get happy, Mel. Do you forget that?”
“I’m sorry, I kind of forgot,” Mel confessed. He shrugged again and took the money.
“Have a nice day.” It sounded programmed, and it probably was.
Mel waved as she drove off. Dominic didn’t even bother waving in return. She didn’t like Dominic, but he always operated her pump, so it was hard to avoid him. Now, you might think that Mel could avoid that pump, but it wasn’t that easy. Mel really liked that pump. It was easier to press the pressing thingy that made the milk come out. The other ones were really firm. If she could save herself the embarrassment of not being able to press the pump, she was quite happy. Even if it meant talking to Dominic.
When she finally arrived at the hospital, her tummy was aching from eating so many cookies. She wondered if she should tell a doctor that she had eaten too many cookies and that she probably needed some good purging. Then she remembered that it was a human hospital and that they probably didn’t know what to do with dolls.
The segregation between humans and dolls was a real problem. Because of it she would have to live with the ache. Now, that she finally was here, she could go up to the morgue. That’s where they kept dead humans, right? She thought so. She had learned that in school. Humans in morgues, dolls in workshops. They weren’t so different after all. When a human died you could use the spare parts to help another human. You could do the same with dolls. That’s how black ones came to be. Mixing and matching of different parts.
Mel thought it was quite funny that two entities that were so similar could be so different at the same time. As she entered the morgue she gently laughed because of this. The nurses looked at her with funny expressions. It was understandable. She was smiling in such a gloomy place. She found a nurse she liked the look of and asked her where Samuel Halley was.
“He’s got visitors right now,” she spoke as if he was still alive.
“I’m his daughter.”
“Melody?” the nurse lit up. “He spoke of you constantly. Happy almost birthday!” The nurse started walking down the hallway. Mel followed.
“Why did he die?”
“Radiation from a dig site. At least that’s what the doctors think.” Mel nodded. “Actually the doctors aren’t sure, but that’s what they think. But it doesn’t matter. What’s dead is dead,” Mel looked down to see the nurse’s wrist-panel. So she was a doll. She almost had Mel fooled for a couple of minutes.
“So you’re a doll working at a human hospital? How does that work?”
“It’s quite common, actually,” the nurse said.
“I wouldn’t have imagined.”
“Well that’s how it is,” the nurse sternly said. They found the right room. It was weird to think that Mel’s father’s body occupied the room.
“There are some co-workers in there,” the nurse said. “Are you fine with that?” It didn’t sound like she cared about what she would answer.
Mel nodded and the nurse opened the door. Two men dressed in suits were standing in the middle of the room. In the far end of the room was the body of Samuel Halley. He looked a lot older than the last time Mel had seen him.
The men turned to look at Mel as she entered the room. They didn’t say anything at first. They just stared. Both of their gazes were cold. Almost like a doll’s. Only Mel couldn’t see any panel on their exposed wrists.
“Hi, Melody,” the oldest man said. His voice was faux sweet. There was a strength in it she didn’t like. It was almost authoritarian. The other man stood there quietly and looked at the exchange. Mel’s blood ran cold, but she didn’t know why. Well, it would have if she had blood.
“Took you long enough.”
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