It’s been a couple days since Victoria and Alice got back, and both of their recoveries seem to be progressing well. Victoria’s already as active as she ever was, and Alice is at least on her feet again. Penny's hard at work seeing what she can get out of those files Victoria brought back and I've been keeping myself busy, fiddling with some of her spare doll parts. I've helped with a few more repair jobs in the time I’ve been holed up in her home, and I feel like I'm starting to get a sense of how the mechanisms work.
Of course, I’m nowhere near Penny’s level of expertise. That’s why I’m messing around with spare parts, it’s easier to learn more when I can test stuff out and see what happens. Penny left her test core with me. It’s not exactly an ensouled core, what’s inside it is more of a… spark. There’s no sentience there, no will. If you put this thing in a full doll body, the internals would start working, but it’d just sit there. However, if you connect it up directly to a particular part’s signal receptor, it’ll respond in much the same way it would respond to a command from an ensouled core. So, by taking a limb apart and seeing how each component responds to the test core, I can start to get a sense of how the whole mechanism fits together and makes a working whole.
Of course it’s not as fast or as simple as that sounds. First of all, I don’t really have the confidence to fully disassemble something as complicated as a hand just yet. I can’t say for sure that I’d be able to put it all back together, and I don’t want to have to bother Penny with it when she’s working on more important things. For the moment I’m focusing on more manageable tasks, removing individual components, testing their function, and putting them back in placing. Relying on what I learned from working with Penny, gradually building a sense of how it all fits together. I’m confident that if I keep at this for long enough, I’ll eventually get to know doll bodies better than my own. It’s a slow process, especially when I’m being so careful not to break anything I can’t fix myself, but I’m getting there.
Right now I’ve just finished testing and taking notes on the components in the third pinkie knuckle, and it’s time to put it back together. The parts slide into position with a satisfying click, everything interlocking to form a solid whole. Once it’s back in one piece, I decide to take a break and go see how Penny's getting along.
She's still sitting at her computer when I reach her room. I approach her from behind and look over her shoulder. As usual, nothing on her monitor makes any sense to me. “How's it looking?”
She glances over at me, then turns back toward the screen. “Well, I'm making progress, at least,” she replies tepidly.
“You don't sound thrilled about it.”
She lets out a heavy sigh. “I was right to be worried about this. I don't have the full picture yet, but what I do have does not look good.”
“What have you got so far?”
“Well… they don't seem to be making souls for these cores.”
I blink a couple times.“They aren't? Then what do they want them for, what good are a bunch of empty cores?”
“They're not keeping them empty either. They seem to be working more on… transfer, than creation.”
“What? What does that mean?”
She moves back from the desk slightly, turning to face me. “So, transferring a soul from one core to another once it's been created is pretty common practice. Sometimes a core gets damaged, they wear out over time, any number of reasons. That's normal stuff, I've done it myself on more than one occasion.”
It had never occurred to me that moving the soul after creating it could be possible, but in retrospect it seems a bit obvious. Cores have plenty of enchantments on them to let them carry and interface with souls, but in terms of material they're basically just large glass marbles, it makes sense that they could get damaged. If that happens, you don't want to have to make a whole new soul.
“Everything I'm seeing here in terms of process looks pretty similar to what you'd do to transfer a soul from one core to another,” Penny continues. “Except I can't find any reference to a source core.”
“So where are they transferring the souls from?”
“I can’t say for sure, I haven’t found any full accounts of the process yet. Just bits and pieces being referenced in other places. But… I think they might be using humans.”
“... Turning people into dolls?”
“Well combat dolls, technically. There are some schematics in here saying as much, which show much higher mobility and armament capabilities than a doll would usually have. But yes, I think they're turning people into them. I can't think of any other way they could be animating those cores without making new souls. Dolls aren't exactly uncommon, but they're not mass produced either, and these combat dolls definitely are. There simply wouldn't be enough dolls to animate all of them if they were just reusing souls from existing doll cores. Not to mention that the cores Victoria stole don't seem significantly different from a normal core in the first place, so I don't know why they'd need to perform a transfer if they were using existing dolls. And that's without even getting into the fact that a regular doll’s soul probably wouldn't even be capable of controlling a body like this.”
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“It wouldn't?”
“No, it wasn't made for that. Not its purpose. Humans, on the other hand… we're malleable. We can adapt. Hell, Alice ripped her halo apart with her bare hands getting this information for us. I didn't think that was possible, and it took its toll to be sure, but it's a testament to the wide range of human potential.”
I sit with that for a moment. It's true that I've seen people pull off a lot of shocking shit that I never would've expected. Hell, just look at me. I've managed to find a niche wherever I am that lets me stay alive, no matter how small. If I wasn't adaptable I'd be dead a dozen times over by now. Even so, being put in a core set in a doll frame sounds… nightmarish. “You were right. This stuff does need taken care of.”
She nods solemnly, turning back toward the monitor. “I know you don’t like having Victoria around, and honestly I can’t say I do either, but in this instance I really think she’s a necessary evil.”
“Where is she, anyway?”
“Out on business. With Alice currently infirmed, she’s not as worried about keeping an eye on her at all times. She checks in pretty regularly for updates on what I’ve learned from the data she brought me.”
“Hmm. Well, I’ll leave you to it I guess. I’m gonna go grab a bite to eat and then get back to the workshop.”
“Taken a liking to it, have you?” She asks with a smirk.
“Yeah, I think so. It feels good, learning to fix things.”
Penny beams back at me. “I know exactly what you mean.”
Her wide smile sticks with me as I walk down the hall. She’s seemed very pleased with how involved I’ve gotten around her house over the past week, and while I’m sure part of it is just that she’s glad I’m no longer putting myself in danger working for the mob, I don’t think that’s all there is to it. She’s always delighted to answer my questions about the mechanisms I’m working with.
As I ponder this on the way to the kitchen, I run into Alice. She seems… pretty out of it. She's leaning against the wall for support. “Hey, you doin’ alright? You look a little unsteady.”
She jumps slightly at the sound of my voice, but calms down pretty quickly. “I… yeah, I'm fine.”
“Want something to eat? I was about to make a sandwich, I can throw one together for you, too.”
“Yeah, that's probably a good idea.”
I stick next to her until we reach the kitchen, and make sure she's seated while I make our sandwiches. She's still in pretty rough condition. Her eyes have dark bags under them, and the rest of her face looks pale and gaunt. She sits in silence for a moment while I focus on preparing the food.
“What have you been doing, anyway?” I almost drop the butter knife when she suddenly speaks up.
“What?”
“Since Victoria and I got here, I mean. I kinda lost track of you, between training and… everything else. What've you been up to for the past week?”
“Oh, working on dolls, mostly. Penny was having me help her out with repair jobs, and now that she’s busy I’ve just been messing around with the mechanisms myself, figuring out how they work.”
“Oh? Have you been making progress?”
I finish assembling the sandwiches and carry them over to the table. “Yeah, absolutely! I can show you after we eat, if you’d like.” She nods, mouth already too full to reply out loud. She must’ve been pretty fuckin hungry, she’s eating the way I do. We both finish in short order and I lead her down to the workbench where I’ve been playing around with spare parts.
“So, I don’t know the configuration well enough to take the whole thing apart yet, but I can remove bits of it and work them individually,” I explain, removing the thumb from a mechanical hand. “Take a look.” I select one of the relays from the bundle at the bottom, and touch it to the test core, causing the second knuckle to flex. “The actuator responds to the core’s signal, and activates the servo in the knuckle. There’s one here for each moving part.”
“It looks like there are a hell of a lot of them,” she replies, examining the bundle I selected the relay from.
“Yeah, these things are almost as articulated as a human hand. It's kind of a lot of complexity to wrap my head around, honestly.”
“Well, I’m sure you’ll get there,” Alice says with a soft smile. “I mean, you’ve got more of a handle on this stuff than I’d have been able to manage left to my own devices.”
I blush slightly and rub the back of my head. “I haven’t exactly been left to my own devices, I’m working off of what I learned from helping Penny out.”
“Sure, but you seem to have taken off running from there. It’s impressive.”
“I guess so, yeah. I’m just… motivated, I think. I’ve spent so much time out on the streets, seeing how broken this city truly is. For a lot of the time I’ve been working for the people breaking it. It feels good to learn how to fix things instead.”
She nods, watching silently as I reassemble the hand. After a moment, she says, “I think it’s good that you’ve got a sense of what you want to be in the world. I… can’t really say that I do. You should hold on to it.” I don’t really know what to say to that, so I just nod and continue my work. After a moment she stands up and gives a tired smile. “I’m gonna go lay back down for a while. Thanks for the sandwich, it helped.” With that, she disappears back into the ground floor hallway.