I was fully intending to bring a friend with me to check out this 'Dream factory' but in order to do that I would actually have to have a friend.
Sooo....
Here I am.
Alone.
I have packed a personal alarm and some body spray (to spray in potential attackers eyes), just in case it's all an elaborate plot to kidnap me.
Finding it is easy, it's a huge factory, but it takes me a good 10 minutes to locate the glass front door and a few more minutes to push fruitlessly at it despite the large sign next to my hand saying "PULL".
The girl who greets me at the desk of the dream factory is so sickeningly beautiful that I actually stare at her in awe. She doesn't seem to see anything amiss in my reaction as she greets me warmly and tells me to come and meet her husband, Dr Henderson.
The corridor is black. Even the walls are tiled and I'm sure I saw some shit like this in horror film once.
We seem to have been walking for ages and I'm just giving up hope of ever seeing daylight again when Miss barbie doll opens a door that was hidden within the tiles. How she could tell one corridor from the other is beyond me.
"Please come this way Miss Davis." She smiles politely. She leads me into a large office, smilingly sweetly at the man who is stood waiting to greet me.
Dr Henderson is hot in an older dude kinda way but I can't help but wonder how the hell he managed to snare a woman like her.
"Thank you so much for coming Miss Davis. May I call you Hendrix?" He waits for me to nod warily. "I'm going to get straight to the point. Let's get down to business."
"To defeat the Huns." I mutter to myself.
"Pardon?"
"Nothing... Sorry. Carry on."
"It's hard to know where to even begin explaining something like this when you're as deeply involved as I am. Almost impossible." He shakes his head with an easy smile. "Let's start with what you already know. I'm assuming you've googled us and as you will know, the site that appears shows as being incomplete. This is because out product is incomplete, although, after almost 20 years since the initial idea, we're finally in the last stages. We are so very close to having the end stage ready. We just need volunteers for trials."
"Volunteers for...?"
"Look at my wife." He turns to the perfect woman next to him. "What would you say if I told you she was never born? She was created at a later stage?"
"I'd say you need to cut back on the LSD bro." I say, raising my eyebrows.
The doctors wife leans forwards with a smile. "I think you would be better showing her, Peter. As you planned." She smiles firmly and he nods.
"I'm sorry, I get carried away. I'm going to take you on a tour of the factory Hendrix. Before we go, I need to tell you a few fundamental things about what we are doing here. We don't match you to partner, or seek one out for you. We create one. An entirely new one, using new biological technology that you're going to see very shortly. We don't find you a partner that already exists... We make them."
I stare at him for a moment.
"Like a sex doll?"
"No not at all." He laughs, "does my wife look like a sex doll to you?"
I stare at the barbie-like woman and decide not to answer.
"Before I take you on a tour of the factory you need to sign some confidentiality forms. You are not allowed to tell anyone about our work here, the penalties for doing so are very severe. After you've seen what we do here we can talk in depth. You won't understand until you have seen for yourself."
It's 25 minutes before I find myself donning a blue plastic jumpsuit and face mask in a small room.
I hope they're not taking me to meet my new boyfriend dressed like a crime scene medic.
"It's essential that we don't alter the certain areas via the bacteria on our skin." Doctor P smiles as the door behind us locks tightly. There's a pause before the other door opens and we step into a dark room. It's boiling and within seconds sweat begins to pour from me.
"Ah. You'll have to excuse the temperature. It's essential for the pods you see." He points and I follow the direction of his finger. Circling the room are what appears to be metal beds with strange thick purple glass covers. I make to step over to to look inside one but the Doctor pulls me back.
"What's in them?"
"Embryos."
"What? Like, babies?"
"Not quite." He laughs and takes me by the arm. "We've really started in the wrong place. Come with me."
The next room he guides me into is lighter and I breath an odd sigh of relief at being away from the creepy pod room. As he leads me down a long corridor he begins to talk.
"20 years ago I came across some incomplete research by a leading biological scientist who had recently passed away. Within it, I found guideline for creating human form robots-"
"Um, what?" I raise my eyebrows at his causal little speech.
"It's not so strange when you think about it. You see, we all know that one day in the future robots in society will become the norm. The way we live now, without robots to clean our homes, drive for us etc, will be seen as primitive. The problem for those developing the robotic future is that people are still afraid of robots.
Something which simulates humanity with none of the emotion and compassion terrifies them. The doctor whose research I found was involved in a very murky level of research. His ideas included making robots in human form-"
"Slaves." I say distastefully.
"No, not quite. Although my first reaction was exactly that too. With the same level of distaste." The doctor smiles. "He was undoubtedly less morally aware than I, but his ideas were sound. He found a way to grow and develop humans from a fertilised egg to a fully grown adult in a matter of weeks, rather than years."
"Why the hell-"
"Exactly what I thought." The doctor smiles. "What's the use of growing humans when it already happens? But the more interesting part of his study came later. The human brain needs stimulation. Development, interaction, love. Without these things, the mind cannot develop fully. So how to train the mind of a human that develops in just a matter of 8 weeks? The answer? Show them. Project into their pod everything you need them to know. Everything you need them to believe and understand."
"That wouldn't work." I scoff. "People need years of training and learning to understand-"
"No. Humans believe what they are taught to believe." He opens a small door and turns to me with a sad smile. "Isn't it terrible how our first thought is how we can use scientific advances to harm other humans? The doctor whose notes I have used was planning to approach the government with a blueprint for growing an army of bred soldiers with no emotion, but..."
"But..." I squint suspiciously.
"The embryos don't respond at all to being taught hate or war." He shrugs, scratching the back of his neck. "It doesn't matter what you do, you can't teach them aggression. If you try projecting anything like that into the pod, the finished human is just listless and depressed. They are only born wanting to love. You can't make them hate before they are born."
"That's kinda sweet."
"Sweet isn't what the government are looking for." He grins. "So they gave me the go ahead for my plans although I think they still experiment using what knowledge they have."
"But where do these man-baby things come from? They must have a parent."
"No they don't. We have the technology to physically build them-"
"But the DNA-"
"Is artificial." He smiles. "I could go all nerd and explain it?"
I shake my head, trying to understand. For the first time I notice that we are in a room filled with large printing presses. Instead of paper they are printing out an odd material in every shade from lily white to deep ebony and everything in between.
"What's this stuff?"
"This?" He smiles. "It's boyfriend material."
"So it's..."
"Skin, if you like. But there's more in it the stuff than that."
I want to question this but he opens the next door and gestures me to follow him further.
This room contains odd flowers and in the centre petals I would swear I could see an fetus but again, I'm hurried along. In fact, I'm whisked through several other rooms then back through the boiling hot pod room before we're back in his office.
"Hang on. I'm really not following."
"What do you want me to answer?" He temples his fingers and smile over at me.
"First, why the frick would you get the idea to make weird love robots-"
"Hendrix. Tell me, when you first realised that you could manipulate people?"
"What?"
"I'll bet you were very young. You learnt that you could manipulate and lie. As you grew, you perhaps learnt that being spiteful can make you feel better. Lying can stop you getting in trouble. Blackmail can get you what you want. All humans do it. It makes our romantic relationships toxic. Our creations here don't have that. They are what you would be, what we all would be, if we weren't conditioned to have negative social traits."
"So they're like.. Babies. They can't defend themselves."
"That's where you come in. You protect them."
"I want a boyfriend, not a pet." I shake my head. This just doesn't feel right. "I want someone who loves me because I'm me, not because I've bought and programmed them to do it."
"That's the thing!" The doctor says suddenly. "You don't understand the marvel of them. We can't train them, they're all so different. That's the last mystery for us. We expose them all to exactly the same program in the pod... But they are all so different. Some are moody and intense. Some are funny and outgoing, some shy, some cheeky. The personality is their own, this is why siblings can have the same upbringing but utterly different personalities. We can't control it."
"So you just sell them off as partners to whoever wants buy them? That's trafficking man-"
"Ah. You've misunderstood. Let me explain. We knew you were coming today. Last week we fed your image into all the male pods that suited your biological and social personality. The embryos match to you, you see. They can connect to you before they are even birthed. Two pods matched to you almost perfectly. A 98% match with both. But only one of the embryos kept calling up your image repeatedly to look at and focus on as part of his development."
"What does that mean?" I ask faintly.
"It means that the embryo, although he is still growing, had attached himself to you. You have become part of his learning, part of his understanding of the world, there can be no stronger bond on his behalf.
Of the two that matched with you, only he has chosen you. You see Miss Davis... What we do here is not so much create the perfect match for you... We allow you to find him."
I stare at him dumbly.
There's a dude growing in a glass pod who has made me the centre of his weird little world. That's scary af.
I feel like I kinda owe the guy something.
"Perhaps I could show you a picture of what he will most likely look like?"
I nod slowly.
"He's from batch H2839z." He doctor smiles.
"We've named him Harry."
*
Would you take your matched pod guy home with you?
Dedicated to Jasminelovesyou2 thanks so much for reading 😘