Dollhouse

The chip in my brain weighs heavy on my mind. I can’t actually feel it, of course. The little piece of metal only juts into me metaphorically. From what others have claimed, the whole process was quick and painless. I had barely breathed the thick air of the delivery room by the time they carted me away to my first surgery. My freshly-born skull was shaven open so that my brain and all its signals could be easily operated on. I suppose it was like fixing a piece of machinery. They calibrated me before I had the opportunity to develop imperfections. That would be the first of many additions and alterations made to my form. At the very least, I’m comforted by the idea that I was, indeed, born and not made.  

Realistically, the chip is actually quite small, compared to the other string of surgeries I’ve had to undergo. That is, it’s smaller in the space it occupies. Its mass, the particles it takes up in my cerebral tissue, is virtually insignificant. Its intent, its purpose, is anything but.  

These operations are all standard, of course. I’m not some lab rat being toyed with by doctors playing God. At least, I think I’m not. Everyone’s like this. Everyone’s happy, with their false skin and fabricated lives. I’ve tried to convince myself to be happy as well, to little avail. It becomes harder and harder to believe these pretty lies with each passing year.  

My class, exactly 20 students in total, resides between the bland walls of our classroom. My classmates are my siblings by choice. It wasn’t my choice, but nonetheless, I’m grateful for this small gift of companionship. And yet, I feel no real love for my siblings. I’ve heard of love, of its enveloping warmth, like something called a hug. I’ve never felt such a feeling. There’s not much there for me to love. They do not think for themselves. They do not speak unless spoken to. They are infuriatingly quiet. I pity them, but that doesn’t mean I see myself as better. Someone who can see the bars of their cage is just as trapped as the blind. 

Our teachers, our sole legal guardians, are the ones tasked with raising us until we reach an adequate mental age. Aging physically is, after all, centuries out of date. Once we graduate, we’re expected to toil for the sake of supposed societal improvement. Our purpose is productivity, with brief intervals of rest and relaxation. Whenever I hear this, I imagine a zoo animal, with periods of feeding, salivating for a break.  

Graduation brings the hollow promise of worth, but for the time being, we endure the task of learning about our perfect world. We’re like a family here in our plain little house, sitting upon cold, brittle foundations.  

In the past, I’ve wondered why I don’t have parents like the people in the old stories. I wondered why we forge sibling bonds purely by proximity, never by blood. My teachers’ response is always the same, like programming:  

Unnecessarily strong bonds, like that of the archaic version of a family, have become obsolete. What “love,” what simple chemical reaction, could a parent provide that we could not somehow improve upon?  

But then, where did I come from?  

Babies come from unchanged mothers. After the newborn’s rebirth, they’re placed in a classroom, just like you were. The young develop and become content members of society in the perfected classroom structure.  

I feel anything but content here. This little classroom is disturbingly sterile. There’s no room to grow outside of the premade mold. Sometimes, this place gives me phantom chills, clawing up what’s meant to resemble a spine. It’s strange, feeling a sensation you aren’t capable of anymore. Not since I was born, when the doctors allowed me to cry for a few precious moments.  

Supposedly, the woman that pushed me out of her flesh body is living happily now. I was unfamiliar with the concept of a woman before this discovery. This world has never offered me this choice of categorization, this bygone binary of language and expression. I often wonder where I would fall on this alien spectrum, but the fate of the last women always makes me hesitate.  

After extensive updates to our bodies, we can no longer create life “the old-fashioned way,” as sex is often referred to. We gave that up, among other things. Thus, we force those who cannot be reborn to continue the cycle of reproduction. The memory of this class lesson is a scar:  

The last remaining women can find purpose in this simple act of compliance. Not everyone is that lucky. Natural humans have so many useless variations in their systems. We’re lucky to live without such errors. Your mothers have been rewarded for their noble sacrifice with a peaceful life, albeit short, far, far away.  

I don’t believe them. How can I? If our manufactured lives are so ideal, everyone would reap the rewards of progress. Those charged with something as prized as life itself wouldn’t be treated like cattle. I’ve asked my teachers about her again and again, but the answer remains the same. Many inputs, only one output.  

I’ve developed an undesirable habit of asking questions, if that wasn’t obvious enough. More questions than necessary, I know, but I just can’t help it. None of my classmates’ question anything for themselves, so I am compelled to do it myself. It’s human to be curious, I think.  

To give yet another example, I once asked why we don’t look like the ancient pictures of humans. Why our skin isn’t as soft, frail, and full of warmth as poems describe. My teachers claim that it was one of the greatest innovations in the history of human evolution. I can live and work forever, past the limits of the flesh. Geniuses of days long past modeled this impenetrable skin off of dolls. It’s a gift, they say, of which I can encase my being within. An attempt to replicate something beautiful, although the methods may seem monstrous. Figures in white coats took me apart, separated brain from skull, flesh from bone, and made me perfect. To preserve the most desirable parts, they tore into me like fresh meat in a slaughterhouse. The original humans used to have those, I’ve heard. Massive facilities meant to mass-produce meat, plants, water, and grain. It was like fuel, a source of power. We have more modern means of satisfying ourselves, but the principle stays the same. Through machines I was processed, ripped apart at the sinews and tendons, until I was packaged in plastic. They shipped me away, my organs still rotting in the trash.  

My teachers tell me that I should be grateful to live in such a time. We can avoid things like pain and suffering with simple procedures. They say:  

People used to die, after all, and you, you curious little thing, can’t. You’re a living work of art.  

I don’t feel like I’m art. I feel like a poor imitation, molded in the vague shape of something beautiful. A bad replica of a sacred relic.  

Occasionally, we’re allowed to see remnants of the old world as a part of our history class. They’re works of art, ranging from prehistoric paintings to old films. Books have always been my favorite of these carefully curated options. They’re like little portals, using something as ordinary as words to whisk me away to a long-lost fantasy. Things like names, sickness, marriage; they seem so unearthly to me. I’ve read our little library hundreds of times over, as if I meant to carve out each letter on my eyelids. Then these stories will be a part of me forever, like meat clinging to bone.  

It’s a shame I can never truly express my love for these stories. History class’s sole purpose is painfully simple. We dissect everything wrong with our predecessors, like some perverted autopsy. The only reason these works haven’t burned is to make sure the wheel of history turns forward. It turn and turns, towards the direction of alleged progress and over the bodies we left behind. We’re meant to study these words like warning signs. We treat old pictures as symptoms of an ancient disease. My class picks at the carcass of our past, poking and prodding at every bump and blemish in its decayed flesh. It’s revolting, sticking in a knife and cutting away at something that once oozed with life. My imaginary guts churn at the thought, like gears grinding towards my core. This cruel procedure is a desperate explaining-away of all that we’ve done. That despite everything, we’re still good. Still human, but better. We’ve learned from our mistakes, our fatal flaws. I disagree, although I know better now than to raise my voice. 

I wasn’t allowed to read for a year, the last time I made my questions known. I’m not even entirely sure what the question was, the one that got me in trouble. I don’t think it matters. I think it was simply that I asked too many of them.  

They told me I was sick, but never gave a name to my ailment. Naming is acknowledging, and acknowledging a flaw in their system was too much. They’d overload at the mention of our perfect classroom cracking. I wasn’t sick. I’ve never felt ill in my entire life. Although, I imagine sickness is something like what I felt after my false diagnosis. I had to sit to the side and watch as my classmates desecrated everything I cherished. They made those pages bleed, while I was made a bystander. It was maddening. But I’d rather feel mad than feel nothing at all.  

From then on, I learned to keep my mouth shut. I can only pray that my teachers believe I am better now. I fear what they’d do if I proved to be too difficult.  

When I was younger, my doll-like appearance confused me to no end. I’ve learned much since then. I see the ways we are made to be dolls in my siblings. In my teachers, especially. Sometimes even in myself, although I can feel tears in my stitching. In this pursuit of perfection, I have become a mockery of mortality.  

Despite all my fears, I like to think that I’m still human. But then I begin to worry that even these thoughts aren’t my own. Maybe the chip feeds these words into my brain to keep me satiated, like throwing a piece of meat to a rabid animal in its enclosure. I know it’s there to turn off my pain receptors, along with other old-fashioned functions I still retain. Dopamine, serotonin, estrogen, testosterone, adrenaline. They’re all switches I can turn off, just like that. I never mess with my switches, but I know that someone else can. I’ve seen my teacher’s computers, with multicolored pixels chained to my brainwaves. Seeing my buttons pushed for me makes me want to puke. Physically, it’s impossible for me to do so without a stomach or tubes, but I want to. I want to externalize this vile feeling and make a beautiful display of my bloody innards. This might seem strange, but by all previous standards of humanity, this may be the least strange piece of me. I want this loathsome feeling expelled from my system, if I can even call it mine.   

I don’t like being crafted, even if I was created to begin with. I don’t like seeing the puppet strings that suspend me, protruding from artificial arms. If I had skin, it would be crawling. I wish I could cry. I wish I could die. Not now, of course. If I was to die, I would want to leave this life behind peacefully, surrounded by the people I love. I can’t even name the people I tolerate, so that would certainly be an ideal upgrade. But before I die, I want to experience all the things in the books. Adventure, love, tragedy, identity. I want it so badly that I’d give up my doll skin in a heartbeat. At least I can still feel that soft thrum of life, deep down in my chest. It feels so fragile compared to the rest of me, dreadfully unbreakable.  

My heart is an antique, and I wish to decorate myself in similar ornaments. I want to paint myself in blood and marrow, until I am reborn once again, fully human. To me, that is what it means to be a living work of art. To be human, with all my imperfections still intact. To breathe, eat, feel, and think. To be capable of an ending.