PHANTOM DOLL
"They found her, Miss Quinn. They found her," a gruff voice said, out of Rylie's vision.
"How is she? Will she be okay? Please tell me she'll be okay," Rylie asked, hopefully. "She's dead, Rylie," came the gruff voice again, and then, complete blackness.
Here in this neighbourhood of Glendale Falls, a new family has just moved in to the old Blackburn estate. The Quinns, surviving mostly on the pension left to them by Mr. Quinn after he was lost during a mission for the federal government, only consisted of thirty-five-year-old Sandra Quinn, here son Jeremy, and a Robot Youth LIfeform Experiement. A R.Y.L.I.E., in other words. She was left rather suddenly in the house right before Sandra's husband had gone on to his final mission. "This is Rylie. She'll help you take care of Kylie and do minor chores so you have lots of energy to deal with Jeremy," the hastily written note said. "Be very careful, too, because she's a very valuable robot. One-of-a-kind."
In this time, robots were common. Jeremy's first few days of school found him bumping into more than a few of them, brought by the rich kids as human-looking cassette recorders to take notes for them and other menial tasks. Sure, some of them were attractive, but they all usually had corporate sponsor stamps on them somewhere, and they were rather obviously noticed for robots by a small inset LED light right between their eyes. It made some of them look Indian, actually. A barcode somewhere on the body was almost always included as well. The Quinns could never have afforded a model like, that, though. Top of the line, they were. But when an apparently much more advanced robot landed on your doorstop, a gift from a late husband, what else would you do?
So, who was Kylie? Kylie was Jeremy's sister, nearly ten years older. She bonded fairly quickly with her new friend Rylie, and in the short time they knew each other, no more than three or four years, they were inseparable. But one day in early June after Kylie had gotten out of school for the summer, things turned tragic, and at some point during Rylie & Kylie's playing, Kylie ended up dead.
Miss Quinn, as she was now called, kept Rylie around after that terrible day, but never turned her on. She couldn't stand to look at her, to have her up and about, but, something prevented her from simply selling Rylie for the immense amount of money she must be worth. Sentimental value? No, she'd long since put the android out of her mind, storing it in a closet on the top floor across from her son's room. Duty to her husband? Probably not; her husband had been missing for over fifteen years now and she doubted he was ever coming back. If she ever sold Rylie, it'd be easy to tell him she just broke down and they had to junk her. Perhaps even an imagined use for Rylie one day in the future? Perhaps.
And so it began that on one beautiful spring day, Jeremy was awfully lonely. He was coming home from a school where everyone was nice to him, but he had no real friends. When he got home, it was empty as well. It was a rather large house, and Miss Quinn often worked long, hard hours to augment the family's pension income. She told Jeremy it was to support the nice house they lived in, though Jeremy had his doubts.
The door slammed behind him as he entered the house, as much as on purpose as the warm, blustery wind behind him. He opened a number of windows and then headed up to his room to check e-mail and the message boards online he checked out periodically. An hour or two later, out came the homework. Barely a page's worth done in his algebra homework and he fell into daydreaming again.
He dreamed of his sister, mainly, remembering when he had someone to talk to, to be with on a regular basis. For a few years before she died, he vaguely remembered there was another child in the neighbourhood that stayed over all the time and used to play with them, mainly with Kylie, since she was that much older. Jeremy wished she was around now, too, especially now that *he* was older, and could've played with her, too... What was her name again, he wondered... He knew it sounded similar to his sister's name....
"RYLIE!" he nearly shouted as the memory came flooding back, of his dad leaving and this five-and-a-half-foot tall girl with bright greenish-blue eyes, lustrous and thick chestnut brown hair, and a beautiful smile that, as he thought about it, made him sorely miss the girl. But then the last bit of information was realised by his brain. Rylie was an *android*. He could... No, he could never, not without his mother's permission...
Disregarding his internal warnings, he looked into the large walk-in closet near his room. Nearly buried in the back was a girl of about sixteen to twenty--depending on what mode she's in, Jeremy thought. He tried to lift her and carrier into his room. It didn't work, she was too heavy. Not much heavier than your average high school girl, but Jeremy was never in the best shape. The next task, then, was how to turn her on... If he remembered right, there was an on/off switch behind her left ear. He gingerly felt for it and found it just buried underneath the skin. He pressed it.
A whirring was heard, along with a few unexpected clicks and weird sounds that were like trying to play a DVD in a regular CD player, and the opened her eyes. In the dim light of the closet, she could see it was Jeremy that had turned her on. She smiled at him and then, in a soft, lilting and demure voice, asked politely, "Can you please help me up?"
To be continued...
