Self-Assembled Girl

By Jon Jacks

Many people spend entire lives trying to work out why they’re here.
Unfortunately, I know precisely why I’m here.
See, I came with instructions.
In fact, I came in a box.
Trouble is, I’m faulty goods...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jon Jacks
• Release date: Dec 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370079520

Jon Jacks

While working in London as, first, an advertising Creative Director (the title in the U.S. is wildly different; the role involves both creating and overseeing all the creative work in an agency, meaning you’re second only to the Chairman/President) and then a screenwriter for Hollywood and TV, I moved out to an incredibly ancient house in the countryside.On the day we moved out, my then three-year-old daughter (my son was yet to be born) was entranced by the new house, but also upset that we had left behind all that was familiar to her.So, very quickly, my wife Julie and I laid out rugs and comfortable chairs around the huge fireplace so that it looked and felt more like our London home. We then left my daughter quietly reading a book while we went to the kitchen to prepare something to eat.Around fifteen minutes later, my daughter came into the kitchen, saying that she felt much better now ‘after talking to the boy’.‘Boy?’ we asked. ‘What boy?’‘The little boy; he’s been talking to me on the sofa while you were in here.’We rushed into the room, looking around.There wasn’t any boy there of course.‘There isn’t any little boy here,’ we said.‘Of course,’ my daughter replied. ‘He told me he wasn’t alive anymore. He lived here a long time ago.’A child’s wild imagination?Well, that’s what we thought at the time; but there were other strange things, other strange presences (but not really frightening ones) that happened over the years that made me think otherwise.And so I began to write the kind of stories that, well, are just a little unbelievable.

Book preview

Chapter 1

‘What the–’

I slapped the boy kneeling before me hard across his shocked face.

Trying to cover my naked body as best I could with my hands and arms, I dashed behind the nearest cover I could see; a traveling cupboard, full of hanging lingerie.

I thought of reaching over to take one of the garments to slip on, but they hardly gave me more cover than my hands provided.

‘My clothes – where are my clothes?’ I shrieked furiously at the startled boy.

I was confused, furious, wondering how I’d ended up here naked, fearing what this boy had already seen or done as I’d just stupidly stood before him.

Had I been drugged?

Had I been given a spiked drink?

I couldn’t remember – couldn’t even think – how I could have ended up in this dreadful situation.

Strangely, the boy seemed even more startled and embarrassed than I was. He rubbed his deeply reddened cheek as if he couldn’t believe I’d struck him.

Still, he stared directly at me as if he didn’t see why I should feel ashamed for presenting myself naked before him.

‘You…slapped me!’ he said with an affronted tone, a disbelieving, wide-eyed expression.

‘Of course I did!’ I protested. ‘What do you expect me to do, when I wake up with you fondling m–’

‘I wasn’t fondling you!’ he insisted innocently. ‘I was just–’

‘Well that’s what it seemed like to me! Why am I naked? Did you drug me?’

‘No, no: of course not! Why would I need to drug–’

‘Where are my clothes?’ I repeated anxiously, realising I was still naked, still vulnerable.

‘There: they’re all there!’ he said vehemently, pointing to the wardrobe of skimpy underwear I was hiding behind.

I frowned, more puzzled and furious than ever.

What did he mean – all these ridiculously useless things were mine?

Was he some pervert who’d abducted me, bringing me here to dress me up like some more realistic Barbie doll?

I glanced over at him; he certainly didn’t look like a pervert.

Then again, what’s a pervert supposed to look like?

He still seemed startled, however, like he was some little school kid who’d been falsely accused of running in the playground.

But he wasn’t a little school kid, was he?

He was around my age; which meant he must have known perfectly well what he was doing when I caught him kneeling close up to my naked body!

I now glanced down at the floor by him, expecting to see my clothes there, or at least somewhere close by.

Nothing; just bare floorboards, bar a few workman’s tools.

(What the heck had he been intending to do with those?)

What had I been wearing?

I couldn’t remember at all!

I must have been drugged!

‘I mean, where are my clothes; the ones I came in!’ I shrieked at the boy.

‘You didn’t come in any clothes, of course!’

‘Of course I came in some clothes! They’ve been taken from me; I’ve been stripped at some point!’

Second by second, my situation seemed to be evermore horrific.

If he really was telling the truth – if he really had come across me standing here without any clothes! – then that could only mean someone else had taken them off me!

‘That's all you came with; it’s all there, I swear!’ he said, like I’d been accusing him of pinching some of this underwear he was nervously pointing at.

‘What? All this tat is mine?’

What the heck would I need a traveling wardrobe full of lingerie for?

‘It’s not tat!’ he adamantly declared. ‘It’s the best–’

‘It’s not mine!’ I growled. ‘Even if I were some sort of travelling lingerie saleswoman, why would I be standing here naked?’

‘That’s the way you came!’ he insisted once more, but this time drawing my attention to a tall wooden crate leaning against the wall just behind me.

On its front, there was a life-size picture of me; me wearing the very skimpiest of lingerie.

‘I’m Iona,’ printed words said above my head, adding, ‘Please Please Me!’

*

I felt sick.

This couldn’t be happening to me!

Is this boy really saying I came in a box?

I looked down at myself, my body.

No way I came in a box!

I’m a girl! A living, breathing girl!

Not some sort of machine!

Everything’s there; all where it’s supposed to be!

Still, I run my hands quickly over everything, just checking, just reassuring myself I’m not going crazy!

My skin’s warm, pliable; supple.

It all moves the way it should, too!

‘This is…ridiculous!’ I spit back at the boy, wondering if I’m the victim of some cruel prank, some stupid TV programme.

‘The police: I want to call the police!’ I demand, looking quickly about the room in the hope that I can spot a telephone.

‘The police?’ The boy chuckles, like all this is some huge joke.

At last rising up from his knees, he strides over towards the wardrobe, apparently with the intention of stepping behind it to join me.

‘Look, I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘Let me take another look at you; I must have put you together wrong–’

‘You stay away from me!’ I snarl back at him. ‘Get me some decent clothes to wear now: or I call the police!’

‘The police!’ He laughs again.

‘What’s so funny? Are you telling me the police won’t want to know that I woke up standing naked before you, you pawing me like–’

‘I wasn't pawing you! I was turning you on–’

‘You weren’t turning me on at all! I was disgusted!’

‘I meant switching you on – I mean, I was setting you in motion: you know, making you aware of who you are–’

‘You’re talking like I’m some sort of machine!’ I snap at him. ‘But I’m real, I’m human…memories!’

My mind had been racing as I’d desperately searched for some proof that I had to be human, that I couldn’t be a machine.

‘I have memories of when I was child! Of my mother!’ I cry triumphantly.

He grins.

‘They’re false memories; built in to make you, you know, sort of more interesting when you’re having to make conversation.’

He reaches towards me over the top of the small wardrobe, handing me a thick booklet I realise he’s been holding all this time.

Just as on the crate, I’m featured on the cover, only this time wearing other pieces of lingerie, and in a different, more seductive pose. There are other, smaller photographs of me too; different positions, different pieces of underwear.

‘I came with instructions?’ I wail.

I swiftly skim through the booklet, groaning or gasping in increasing dismay as I come across detailed diagrams featuring my every ‘facility’.

‘I can’t be a machine!’ I wail once more.

‘Well, no; I wouldn’t say a machine,’ the boy declares, briefly raising my hopes before adding nonchalantly, even maybe with a touch of eagerness, ‘You’re more of a…a…well, a sex toy, I suppose.’

‘Sex toy? I’m no sex toy!’ I growl determinedly.

‘I mean, well,’ the boy says apologetically, backing away a little as he sees the fury in my eyes, ‘that’s what you were built for; only, I must have put something together wrong, as you’re not supposed to be acting like this!’

*

Chapter 2

Joel, the boy who’d put me together, was fired.

I wasn’t letting anyone near me to ‘put right’ whatever it was he’d put together wrong.

Naturally, they could have held me down, forced me to undergo the changes they wanted to make.

But no one was quite sure what changes to make.

This had never happened before.

Tampering with me once more might simply result in my complete shutting down, meaning I would be of absolutely no use to anyone.

Besides, when I say Joel had been ‘fired’, I mean he’d simply been moved on to another job within Nevaeh, the Floating Whale.

He was the Womb Master’s son, after all.

Thankfully, he’d also had the good grace to insist I wasn’t tampered with.

That, too, I should be given one of the more regular jobs, rather than being sent to the Rooms of Pleasure, which I quite obviously no longer had the correct aptitude to work within.

I was undoubtedly the most expensive ticket girl the Circus of The Soul had ever purchased.

I was a top-of-range model; absolutely perfect in every way.

Apart, of course, from the imperfections in what I prefer to call my mind, but the more technical minded insist on referring to as semi-biological circuits.

My extensive warranty had been declared void; this being Joel’s first full assemblage, unaided and with no supervision, there was no case to answer.

Joel had insisted he would more than capable of getting everything right.

Thankfully for me, he’d been wrong.

*

The Floating Whale’s arrival in any town always resulted in joyous celebration.

Nevaeh – that’s ‘heaven’ reversed, of course – is a travelling Garden of Delights, containing everything from the most elaborate fairground rides to shows or displays guaranteed to bring about a welcome metamorphosis in even the most staid person.

Our arrival was announced with a vast, airborne parade, one that no one could either miss or ignore. Shoals of fish drones swam on far ahead of us, creating vast, flowing patterns amongst the clouds as they swooped, split, and intertwined, their innumerable scales glittering with rainbow shades in the sunlight.

Next came the birds, again single, self-thinking droids programmed