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harmonicsys · 1 year

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Training Hiccup

A Witch transforms a despairing human into a clockwork and wooden doll -- but problems crop up during its training.

CW: depersonalization, subservience, allusion to sex, mind programming, mention of nonconsent

The Witch surveyed her work area, covered in magical symbols written in enchanted ink and assorted tools covered in mechanical grease. The transformation was finally complete, after a very long night of spells and hydraulics work.

The robotic doll, a masterpiece of flesh transformed under incantations to wood, then filled with clockwork innards, lay on the workshop table, looking lifeless.

As the Witch clicked a recessed toggle switch hidden behind the doll's ear, it sat up.

"wh---what happened? When are you… When… Are you going to start the… The surgery?" tumbled haltingly from the doll's lips.

The Witch adjusted a few knobs on the doll's flank.

The doll suddenly shouted, "OH! GOODNESS! EVERYTHING'S SO BRIGHT AND---"

The Witch adjusted the knobs again.

The doll spoke again, more calmly, "Oh, hello. I feel funny. I want to ask about the transformation, but I have a feeling that…" and looked down to examine itself.

"Well, yes, I'm sure you can see that it's been completed successfully," the Witch replied, "but do let me know if that funny feeling doesn't pass within a few hours. I may need to do some further tuning."

The doll hesitated and said, "Certainly, … Miss. Should I call you that, now? We'd agreed that until the transform---"

"Hush, little one," interrupted the Witch, sternly, "you will need to learn to think less and defer to me more."

The doll's eyes widened.

"Actually," continued the Witch with a smirk, "I can go ahead and adjust that a bit. But there will still be some learning required from your end, doll." With the last word, the Witch leaned in close, her face mere inches from the doll's face, then she adjusted another knob ever so slightly, her expert touch becoming apparent to the new doll.

The Witch spoke in a firm voice, "When you're ready, you'll find your first list of tasks on a note on the kitchen table. Take no more than an hour to gather your wits," before departing the room promptly.

The doll gazed around, a mix of confusion and wonder flashing through its clockwork head. Everything seemed quite different now than it did last night, before the Witch had put her into a trance to start the process. "Her"? She---it---wasn't human anymore. That was the former incarnation, whose body had been named Christine, and whose body had been replaced by carved wood and gears.

The world seemed both gentler and brighter to the doll, compared to the harsh and dim sense of reality that Christine knew in her last moments as flesh.

The doll replayed the weeks leading up to those moments to itself: long, exhausting days of despair and depression that didn't respond to medicines or therapy; hearing rumors in support groups of a powerful woman who could permanently cure such things; packing up her things into a couple suitcases to make the long train journey to where this powerful woman supposedly lived; wandering through the town asking passersby if they could help Christine find the powerful woman; giving up on her search on a rainy day and sitting down in a teashop next to a woman with a strange aura…

The doll's clockwork mind segued from one reverie to another. Here she was, in the house of the woman with that strange aura, the woman who turned out to be the one she sought, in the house where she had pled on her knees for help, in the house where she'd been warned that this would be permanent, in the house where she'd signed the detailed paperwork agreeing to everything that was to happen. The paperwork, in fact, was very extensive, providing a loose blueprint for what Christine's future would look like, and containing a verbose consent waiver listing all the things might come to pass.

In fact, it had taken Christine an entire day to read the paperwork and ask the powerful woman no less than eighty-five carefully-worded questions. Christine always tried to be so careful, all the time, but that was the crux of it, wasn't it? Because no matter how careful she was, things would still never work out, and her mind would go spiralling. She had decided that she was willing to pursue whatever course necessary to make the spiraling stop, and if she couldn't… well… she didn't try to dwell on morbid thoughts, but she knew she couldn't go on like this.

The doll suddenly was filled with a strange sensation, reflecting on Christine's sense of personhood; this was something which was foreign, leaving a metaphorical sour taste in its mouth. The clockwork mind simply wasn't built for such things, all the entrappings of being a human.

The doll realized the hour was probably nearly up and climbed off the workshop table, a little inelegantly. Its clockwork mind was designed for its mechanical joints, different from the joints of Christine's body of flesh, but clearly needed to tune itself through experience.

Entering the kitchen, the doll found the Witch waiting at the table, eyeing the entryway expectantly. The note was lying on the table, but the doll was hesitant to approach the Witch in order to retrieve the note.

"Fifty eight minutes… I was beginning to think I would need to provide your first correction so soon. I hate having to do that, so it's lucky that I won't. Were you dwelling on thoughts of being Christine? I understand thoughts of the previous flesh form are one of the most common side effects as the transformation spells wear off," observed the Witch.

The doll looked abashedly at the floor and said quietly, "Sorry, … Miss? Would this one call you Miss now?"

"Yes," replied the Witch sharply, "you are never to call me Mira again unless I instruct you to do so for a specific situation. Is that clear?"

The doll gingerly made eye contact with the Witch for a brief moment to confirm, "Yes, Miss."

"Now, to keep your little gears from returning to thoughts of being Christine, I'm going to have to give you a sort of placeholder name. If you dwell on thoughts of personhood, your gears might seize up, so you'll use the placeholder name to remind yourself that you are not Christine. But you also must be mindful not to let the placeholder name become a sense of personhood either, lest your gears seize anyway! In time, you should find that you can abandon the placeholder name entirely, but for now… I'm assigning you the placeholder of Unit 73."

Unit 73? The doll pondered for a moment whether that meant seventy-two others had come through before her---ouch! Suddenly there was a weird ping in its clockwork, and it realized it had thought of itself briefly as "her," as Christine.

The Witch chuckled, observing the slight grimace on the doll's face and spoke, "Yes, there have been many others. And many of them experienced what you just did, making the mistake of thinking about being on the many humans who have taken this journey. One little thought won't seize your gears, just maybe cause discomfort, but heed my warning."

The doll nodded. The Witch handed it the prewritten note, which said, "1. Stop thinking about that, this is your life now. 2. Make me some tea."

* * *

After eight weeks of training and practicing, Unit 73 was nearing graduation day. The exciting thing about graduation day was that the doll would finally be used as the Witch's plaything; the task list would be expanded from just chores and required periods of being still, to also include whatever the Witch deemed would be good entertainment for herself.

The doll was looking forward to the ability to bring new forms of joy and satisfaction to its Witch. In only a few more days, the doll was going to find itself being put to use in many, many ways. The Witch did not lack an imagination when it came to things she wanted to do with obedient dolls.

Except there was one problem. Despite eight weeks of steady progress, these last lessons were abject failures for Unit 73.

"Doll! This was your fourth attempt, and it has gone no better than the last three. You've never needed more than three tries on previous forms of instruction. I think I'm going to have to see if a wayward bug has clogged your gears."

So up on the workshop table the doll went. The Witch began the incantations that would slow the clockwork mind enough to safely poke around inside of it to hunt down the cause of the malfunction.

As the spells started to take effect, Unit 73 went into a trance, aware but unable to respond. The Witch started unscrewing the plates protecting the intricate clockwork brain, setting to work on the complex task of a full diagnostic.

The Witch laid the plates aside, clamped a few flywheels in place to avoid injuring her hands, and began poking around among all of the tiny gearwork. The Witch surveyed the machinery at her finertips and commented, "I don't see anything gumming up the gears. In fact, everything looks perfect. I think I need to dig a little deeper."

Delicately removing several modules, the Witch whispered a few words of arcane magic. Deep inside the clockwork brain, several little boxes stopped buzzing and humming and started to glow. Carefully maneuvering her fingers toward the boxes, she exclaimed, "That isn't supposed to be here!" but nobody heard it, as the doll was no longer aware, lost in a dream.

The Witch removed the boxes and examined them carefully. Some of them had strange markings that she had only seen in books long ago. Most of the little boxes were supposed to be there, compact units of clockwork programming which would have been magically transformed from regular components of a human brain. The ones with the strange markings, however, did not seem to correspond to any neural circuits the Witch had ever studied.

She re-inserted the correct boxes, leaving out the strangely-marked ones, and substituting a couple spare unprogrammed boxes she had in a parts bin, setting them into learn mode as she clicked them into place. It would take some extra weeks of training and significant amount of spellwork for all the microgears in the new boxes to be programmed, but Unit 73 was beautiful and had done so well on all the assigned training tasks up until the last few. The Witch wanted to get this doll fixed properly.

Whispering more arcane words, the Witch saw the tiny boxes stop glowing and start humming and buzzing. The two new unprogrammed boxes made a faint screeching sound for a minute before blending in with the chorus of the other boxes. Satisfied that the microgear boxes were all operating, the Witch removed the flywheel clamps, causing many of the paused gears to come back to life, albeit at a slowed pace still.

Refastening the plates covering the clockwork brain, the Witch reversed the trance incantation. Inside the doll's head, the brain whirred into full speed. The doll blinked several times, then made a few little whimpering and squeaking sounds.

"Miss?" the doll uttered with trepidation, "This one can't remember the last few days."

"Ah, yes, so then that was the issue. I think you had some previous programming… and I suspect you weren't entirely flesh when you showed up at my doorstep," noted the Witch.

"Miss? What does that mean? Was this one not a human before?"

"Oh, by all external accounts you appeared to be, but there are all sorts of ways to do transformation spells, and not all of them are so obvious. In fact, maybe it's my fault for not checking for that beforehand," the Witch pondered, looking suddenly a bit perplexed.

The doll's eyes lit up. "Would you like some tea? This one would be happy to make you some!"

"Yes, sweet doll, that would be perfect right now. Thank you."

The Witch smiled as the doll got off the table and trotted off toward the kitchen. Unit 73 seemed to be already recovering from the delicate technique. Adjusting a clockwork brain does not always go smoothly, and the Witch had to decommission a doll before… but she didn't want to think about that pain right now. Right now, she had an obedient little plaything to train.

Having a previous spell-worker's programming in there would explain the problems with the recent training. The Witch suspected it was something creating for control, implemented without the former human's awareness or consent. Not all magic users were ethical enough to obtain consent. In the long discussions with Christine leading up to the transformation, the Witch had carefully discussed her history with her, and there were no signs that Christine was aware of having any sort of previous owner or anything similar.

The Witch followed the doll to the kitchen, hopeful that Unit 73 was finally ready to finish training to be her plaything.

* * *

Mira looked at herself in the mirror. Since her changed circumstances had forced her to give up being a full-time Witch, she had been unable to keep up with the beauty charms which had preserved her looks for so many years. It was now clear that she was a little older. The final doll she had trained, however, always looked upon her with the same amount of adoration as ever.

She sighed, as she got ready for her job as the teashop manager. She didn't mind it, at all, actually; she was able to pass along wisdom to newer Witches, giving them tips on how to maintain their dolls to keep them running efficiently. And a number of her dolls worked in the teashop, so it was always a pleasant place to work.

But it was still work, and she longed for the times when she was a full-time Witch. Managing a teashop wasn't her calling, but sometimes concessions have to be made in life.

Having a job was necessary, though, if she wanted to able to continue to maintain the one doll she had at home, the final one she had trained.

And she did. Because when Unit 73 cooed in delight, it was as if the skies themselves were speaking your name.

#microfiction #writing #empty spaces #mind programming #depersonalization #depression

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