(Women to Various Toys)



Harriet sighed, steepling her fingers and massaging her forehead with her thumbs. Of course today would be the day nothing went right. Figuratively-near literally-every machine she had touched since coming to work today had broken, or had some sort of error.

She groaned, planting her face on her keyboard and rolling it from side to side, letting the clacking of keys serve as the world’s least effective relaxant. Then she looked back to her notes, deleting her recent string of gibberish.

“Horizon Industries Technician Harriet Windmere, logging entry.” She spoke in a monotone, fingers racing along her keyboard. “No progress with replicator reversal. As it stands, there’s not enough data on human subjects… Which I’ve told my supervisor before.”

She deleted that last sentence, then looked to the stack of toys beside her with a groan. Apparently someone from the lab had wound up as a Jack-In-The-Box, which meant that now it was her responsibility to come up with a way to undo the change.

Her phone buzzed for the dozenth time, and the girl looked down irritatedly. She snatched the device from her desk, muting it and ignoring yet another invitation from her friends to go clubbing. They’d been pestering her all night, and honestly? She was a little sick of it.

She leaned back and stretched, combing her fingers through her curly hair. “Screw it. Another hour and I’m out of here.”

“Out of where?”

Harriet nearly jumped from her skin as her supervisor waltzed into the room. The woman, Kathy, beamed, a hand on her hips and her other hand dangerously waving about that damnable replicator. She brought the former to her face, adjusting her safety goggles, then lifted the latter in Harriet’s direction.

“H-hey! Watch it, you know what that thing does!” Harriet yelped, scooting back in her roller chair. Then she looked past Kathy’s shoulder, gawping as three familiar women entered the room: Paula, Gabby, and Kim Soong. Apparently they’d gotten sick of waiting for her.

“Your friends, I assume. Don’t worry, I’ve already told them what’s at stake, and they’ve agreed to tonight’s particular brand of fun.” Kathy smiled widely, dipping to a bow.

“Fun? What do you mean by that?” Trying to take the initiative, Harriet rounded on her boss. “And… Seriously, why are they even here? Forgetting about Gabby and Paula,”

“Rude.” Gabby muttered.

“Kim’s not an American Citizen, shouldn’t she need a tag?” Harriet finished, sending Gabby a dirty look.

“A tag… There’s an idea. I bet you’d look cute with one.” Kathy’s eyes twinkled with mischief, and before Harriet could reply, the replicator’s beam was turned upon her.

It was warm and tingly, the sensation of being lowered into a vat of warm massage oil flowing along her body. It would have been enjoyable, were it not for the fact that everything the oil touched went numb, like her limbs were falling asleep.

She opened her mouth to protest, only for her jaw to stitch itself shut. She pawed at her face in distress, then looked to her hands, realizing they looked more like mittens than anything human. Her fingers had merged together, and it looked like she was taking on a cloth texture.

Her hair wound into pigtails as her labcoat became a bright, frilly pink dress, and she sank to her knees. Harriet’s heart pounded in her chest for the few moments it remained a heart, soon evaporating into cotton. Of course Kathy would have changed the settings on the machine, choosing to turn Harriet into a doll.

Harriet watched as her friends and the lab itself loomed larger around her, and she realized that she was shrinking. She’d always been sensitive about her height, so this in particular was a particular level of humiliation she wasn’t prepared for.

Her eyes rounded into expressionless beads, and the doll limply flopped onto her back, limbs twitching weakly. She could still move herself, but everything was so warm and comfy that she almost didn’t want to… At least, not until her friends squealed.

“Oh my GOD she is just the cutest I’m totally gonna keep her if it’s permanent but I hope it isn’t permanent because she’s our friend and all but SO CUTE!”

That was Gabby, of course. Harriet cringed inwardly, humiliated to an extent that she deeply wished there was another, more shameful word for her embarrassment. A second later, she found herself wishing for a hole to crawl into, as Gabby scooped her up into her arms, squeezing the doll and giggling as Harriet audibly squeaked.

Of course she’d squeak. As if it wasn’t bad enough that she had to be made into a doll, she also had to be made into some kind of chew toy.

“Relax, we’re working hard on replicator technology, and through the data I collect tonight, I hope to be one step closer to a cure. Your friend did the right thing volunteering herself.” Kathy spoke solemnly, nodding her head with a quiet bow. “As did all of you.”

Harriet couldn’t believe what the woman was saying, nor could she believe that her friend seemed to be buying it. Had they really agreed to this? She tried to wave at them, but Gabby chose that moment to hug her tightly, eliciting another loud squeak from her belly.

Kim looked from the replicator to the woman holding it, then to the toy that was once her friend. “I do no longer think that I would like to be a part of this experi”

That was as far as she made it before the replicator was turned onto her.

The change was different to Harriet’s, and thus felt accordingly different. Kim shuddered and stiffened, her body locking up. A look of distress spread across her features, one that only grew more pronounced as they began to appear drawn-on, rather than sculpted.

Her friends stared at the Asian girl as she flattened, her form mashing from a 3-D body to a 2-D board. Al the while, her features and body alike began to look less and less realistic. Her breasts appeared larger, as did her eyes and mouth. Her hair clumped from strands to swathes.

Soon she was just an anime caricature of herself, one that clattered to the ground and broke along newly perforated edges. Now that the change had faded, the girl could realize that she was made into a jigsaw puzzle, now made of cardboard and printed laminate.

It was hardly the most dignified situation of her life, but she was saved some embarrassment from the knowledge that her friends wouldn’t be able to fully see the frozen look of mortified horror on her face until they assembled her pieces.

Speaking of, that was a confusing reality altogether. She was in so many places at once, parts of her brushing against other parts that shouldn’t be possible. Kim was moderately sure that her elbow was simultaneously touching her eye and her right… no, her left butt cheek.

“Hum, what a… Puzzling reaction.” Kathy paused, and when nobody laughed, her expression soured. “Fine, you two aren’t fun.”

“Because you weren’t funny.” Paula replied dryly, the brunette looking to the scattered pieces of her friend.

“Sorry, did you say something?” Gabby asked, giggling and shifting the doll in her arms from side to side.

Kim was able to watch this from two of the pieces that made up her eyes, though it gave her an odd perspective, as though she was looking through two different bodies. At least she could still hear, though that wasn’t as necessary as her ability to speak.

She wanted to warn her friends to run, because she had a sneaking suspicion that she was dead on about Harriet’s boss, that the woman wasn’t exactly honest with the terms of this experiment.

Of course, Paula was blissfully unaware of this, looking to the device in Kathy’s hands, watching as the woman stoked it in an eerily possessive manner.

Paula shuddered and asked her a question to try and distract herself from the woman’s motions. “Huh. That’s a hell of a tool. So, you said that you were planning to use it to solve world hunger?”

“Among other things. Imagine a world where anyone can become anything, all for a nominal fee.”

“Sounds dangerous.”

“And fun.”

Paula blinked at the curt, yet expected response. Then she nodded slowly, struggling for a way to rephrase her statement. “I mean… It sounds like something that could be used for a lot of wrongdoing. Because, you know… If you’re allowed to create anything, why not create money and destabilize the global economy?”

Kathy pursed her lips, looking to Paula. For a moment, Paula had worried that she’d said something wrong-until Kathy began to laugh. “You know, you’re a bright one! Of course, I’ve thought about that already. The device can only create things which it’s scanned already. For example… A pool toy!”

“Really?” Paula sighed. “Well, if it’s for the sake of science…” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, just in time for her body beginning to balloon up. This was the most drastic change thus far, in some ways worse than the changes to Kim. At least Kim retained some semblance of a human form.

Poor Paula had the privilege of watching her hands inflate, looking down to them in the scant seconds before her growing face obscured them. The sensation of her skull stretching out and hollowing with naught but air was enough to bring a tear to her eyes-though only one.

Before she could let a second fall, her eyes had become painted-on, blue twinkling cartoon eyes fit for the pool toy she was becoming. She huffed as her body barreled out, her torso swallowing her breasts and upsetting her balance, sending her to fall onto her stomach.

Rather than landing with any solid sound, she instead made a light patter against the ground, her belly softly tapping against it. She looked helplessly up to the scientist, her arms wiggling as they became little more than stubby fins unsuited for swimming. No, she was meant to float rather than propel herself through the water, something which became abundantly obvious from the union of her legs into a cartoony stubby tailfin.

The girl turned pool toy wriggled in place, her tail squeaking against the ground. A silly grin plastered itself onto her plastic face, and she shuddered as her shoulderblades stretched into handles. She quavered and thumped her mute body on the ground in horror, looking to the last of her friends.

Gabby was a ditz. She knew it, her friends knew it, most acquaintances soon realized it… Not that she minded. She knew fully well what she was, and she didn’t mind in the slightest. It let her be herself, without the need to put on a mask.

Now she was regretting that, clearly having been saved for last because she would be the last to notice Kathy’s intentions. “Um…” The girl lifted Harriet protectively, as though it would provide some sort of barrier to change.

“No second thoughts now.” Kathy didn’t wait for a response, instead bathing Gabby’s body in the device’s transformative light. The wind drove itself from Gabby’s lungs as she shrank horrendously, losing almost her entire height in an instant, feet flattening and lifting around her as they became a wooden box.

She wobbled in place dizzily, then wobbled as she struggled to get her bearings, and then wobbled even more. A look to her legs confirmed why: they were now a coiled spring, bouncing her to and fro. Her body lost to its toyish whims, Gaby could do little more than pout.

Then, slowly, the corners of her lips began to upturn. An invisible force was lifting them, forcing a smile onto her face. The girl pressed her hands to them feebly, eyes glossing over as they became a pair of inlaid beads.

Gabby couldn’t stop bouncing back and forth, her spring turning every motion she made into an exaggerated gesture. She would have gotten dizzy if she had a brain for it, but her new body didn’t comprehend the meaning of the word.

That was about the only upside to this, and she helplessly swayed in place, watching as the sole human in the room dropped the replicator she’d been holding.

Kathy quietly giggled as she sauntered over to Harriet’s prone body, lifting the doll and spinning her gently. “I love toys. It’s kind of obvious, but I figure it has to be said. You know, if I had my way with it, I’d change the whole world into toys…”

The woman sighed, dropping into a chair and removing her goggles. “But unfortunately, that’s not how the world works. This has been fun, but the extra data used changing you lot should exponentially speed up my search for a cure.”

The woman spoke loudly, ensuring that the lab’s cameras were picking up on this. She’d been rather indiscreet with Jennifer, which was what caused Harriet’s transfer to her department to begin with. At least now Harriet wouldn’t be able to so expeditiously work on a reversal process.

“Harriet’s sacrifice will be honored, and of course compensated as per the terms of our arrangement.” Kathy settled into the girl’s chair, idly deleting a few precious lines of data. Damn, Harriet had been close. Another day, and they might have had Jen back to human. “Her presence will be missed, but today’s revelatory research will supplant her departure.”

The engineer then pressed her face into her hands and smiled widely, where the lab’s monitoring suite couldn’t see her. Of course, that wasn’t entirely true. The extra data would help her research, but not in the way her new toys were hoping. Extra data meant more knowledge on the limits of her device’s power.

She could create forms both hollow and stuffed, which would remain animate. She could split someone into many forms in the shape of a puzzle, at potential cost to the person’s mobility. And, of course, she could create Jack-In-The-Boxes, which was just fine by her.

Of course, the media would be alerted that the volunteers had courageously sacrificed them in search of a cure, furthering science and replicator tech in the process. The security cameras had her on footage offering the girls a chance to do something for the greater good of science, and they’d all agreed to it.

A twisted smile spread across her features, and she contemplated what it might take to find another set of ‘volunteers’.

Forgotten for the moment and utterly still, the pigtailed doll watched her supervisor’s expression, and dreaded what was to come.