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I was afraid of this.
Jenny’s words echoed in his head. Their last conversation before he set out on this journey. From when he finally made his feelings for her clear.
Sheldon… I don’t look at you like that. I never did.
The words that spurred him to do what he was doing now, as he finished soldering the last wires together.
You’re an annoying creep! You’re always stalking and harassing me!
He picked up the silicon and copper board he had just finished and carried it over to his project.
I don’t know why Brad makes all those excuses for you… I only tolerated you because of him.
He gently nestled the board into the chest cavity of the humanoid, feminine-shaped chassis he’d studied for years to finally craft.
I can’t wait until graduation is over. So I don’t have to deal with you ever again.
Sheldon closed the cavity with a gentle click before reaching for his welding torch.
Thank you, Jenny, Sheldon pulled the welding mask over his freckled, acne-scarred face with his thick-gloved hands. Thank you for setting me free.
The blinding light of his welding filled the fluorescent-lit garage, illuminating piles of electronics, papers torn, crumpled, and stepped upon, and various dehumidifiers that had kept his nose and throat tortuously dry for the months he’d been working.
Because even though it hurt, Sheldon finished his weld and pulled up his mask, it forced me to realize something. Dry skin cracked and stung on his thin lips as he grinned.
Just as Sheldon was setting down his equipment and pulling off the welding mask, his doorbell went off. He arched a brow.
Who could that be? Sheldon pulled the gloves off his pasty, sweaty hands and set them beside a tattered notebook on the workbench he left behind as he left the basement. He was thankful to live alone, though the circumstances left a lot to be desired.
He missed his parents.
His momentary melancholy was shooed away by another ring of the doorbell he drifted towards, his lanky frame moving in an uncoordinated fashion from being seated too long. He passed through the kitchen that the basement led to, into the hallway, and up to the front door where a silhouette greeted him. One so familiar that not even the refraction of the glass could hide who it was.
Of course, Sheldon’s grin returned, this time impish. My guest is here.
With excitement thrumming, Sheldon swept up to the door and threw it open, grinning wide at the figure beyond that was looking at him with concern and confusion.
“Thanks for coming, Brad,” Sheldon’s grin turned to a smirk as he stepped aside and gestured for his old highschool best friend to enter.
“Yeah…” Brad furrowed his dark brows that didn’t match his vibrant, red hair at him, scrutinizing. “So… what’s up? I haven’t heard from you in years and you just… call me out of the blue? How’d you even get my number?”
“You haven’t changed it.” Sheldon chuckled as he shut the door.
“Right…” Brad sighed before turning to face Sheldon, stern. “Well… I’ve worried about you the whole time, just so you know.”
That sternness faded to warmth in an instant.
“I missed you, dude.” Brad opened his arms, just missing the faint grimace and wince from Sheldon’s before hugging him.
“I missed you, too.” Sheldon’s voice was as a contented hum as he hugged back, not reciprocating the “no homo” pats on his back as he clung to Brad.
“So,” Brad pulled back, keeping his hands on Sheldon’s shoulders as he smirked, “what have you been up to?”
Sheldon mirrored his smirk again.
“Come and see,” Sheldon broke from Brad and motioned for him to follow.
“Mind the step,” Sheldon pointed to a particularly cracked step as they descended the creaking, aged stairs to the basement.
Brad prematurely wrinkled his nose before he realized there was no pungent scent that he’d braced for. Only an acrid one of hot metal and fresh plastics. The dryness of the space did already start to burn, though. He scanned the harshly-lit room before they were, of course, drawn to the… thing that was impossible to ignore.
Brad’s eyes widened as he stopped dead in his tracks.
“Uh…” A creeping sense of disgust choked Brad’s words.
“So you see?” Sheldon whipped back to grin up at Brad, his long, greasy locks swaying with the sudden movement. He fully stepped off the stairs and, with a naked, visible pride, dramatically gestured to his creation. “You see now why I called you here?”
Brad kept trying and failing to find words as he looked at what was some kind of carbon copy of Jenny.
No.
It was… similar. But different.
This one, instead of highlights of turquoise, was more black. And various shades of dark grey that were close to black. With soulless, empty, reflective voids where the eyes would be that stared forward from the table it was strapped to. Black twintails sprouted from the round head that reached far past the waist and swayed ever so slightly with what little movement was in the air. More defined hands with more articulate fingers, tipped in black like painted nails. The legs looked as though they were covered up to the calf in “boots” with a mesh that looked to be imitating fishnets leading up to the black “skirt” that stopped at the same length as Jenny’s.
And that was where Brad tapped out. He met his old friend’s naked pride with an equally naked, cherry-faced disgust.
“This is gross, dude. I know you’ve always loved Jenny, but-”
Sheldon frowned and held up a finger.
“This has nothing to do with Jenny.”
Brad’s frown intensified from disbelief.
Sheldon sighed and rolled his eyes as he stepped up to his creation and placed a hand on its white face.
“It both does and it doesn’t,” Sheldon caressed the face, with a longing both visible and audible, “I realized something. After she gave me that final rejection.”
“The one that made you disappear for years while we worried after you?”
Sheldon merely kept caressing the round face.
“I studied,” Sheldon went and grabbed his notebook from the workbench, “for years. Learning neuroscience, robotics science, physics, chemistry. Hell, I even speedran being a mathematician for this.”
Sheldon furiously flipped through his notebook while Brad cautiously stepped down the stairs to get a better look at this thing that he was desperately hoping was not a sex doll.
“I didn’t get any degrees, though.”
Brad shot him a raised-brow look.
“I just learned what I needed from the professors and books and whatever ‘peers’ were on hand to do this and dropped out when I felt I knew enough.”
Sheldon closed his notebook with an approving nod before he tossed it back on the bench. He walked over to a desk with monitors on it. One that was just behind his lifeless, feminine metallic husk was strapped to.
“Of course, I never really planned to come back,” Sheldon took a seat at the desk and turned on the monitors. “Didn’t exactly plan for my folks dying while I was out there, but…” Sheldon paused to shoot Brad another confident smirk, “…looks like it all worked out even better than I thought!”
He chuckled before turning back to the monitors, furiously typing away at the keyboard beneath them.
“So how is this not supposed to be something creepy? Please tell me it’s not a-”
“It’s not a sex doll,” Sheldon snorted. “Though it IS capable of such things.”
Sheldon barked out a laugh at Brad’s immediate, visible embarrassment.
“Relax, I’m not building some slave to fulfill my teenage crush fantasies. I’m over her,” Sheldon scoffed as he went back to his furious typing.
Brad scrutinized the lifeless robot before he turned that scrutiny on Sheldon.
“This doesn’t look like the work of someone who’s ‘over it’, dude,” Brad again missed the faint twitch of a wince from Sheldon.
“Trust me,” Sheldon pounded the ENTER key and shot another smirk at his friend, “I had a very… eye-opening revelation while I was gone.”
“Oh yeah?” Brad smirked back, crossing his arms. “And what is it you learned, o enlightened one?”
Sheldon’s smirk stretched to be toothy.
“It wasn’t about Jenny,” Sheldon leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. “Rather, it was never about wanting to be with her.”
Brad quirked an eyebrow.
Sheldon glanced at the back of the table where his creation was before his smirk turned to a grin.
“It was that I wanted to BE her!” Sheldon snatched something above his head, Brad just now noticing it was some kind of spike attached to a long, thick cable that… wound its way to the lifeless robot.
“Wait! Wha-?!”
A cackling Sheldon drove the spike into his temple. The lights nearly dimmed to going out as the basement thrummed with a discordant buzzing. Brad remained frozen as Sheldon’s body convulsed, even as he kept laughing while the buzzing and humming grew deafening. The lights exploded, errant sparks missing all the papers.
Then it was quiet.
And dark.
The sickening smell of burnt flesh and hair turned Brad’s stomach. He fought a spurt of bile as he stumbled toward where he remembered Sheldon was.
“S-Sheldon? Buddy?” The smell grew stronger with each step and passing moment.
Finally, his knee bumped against something. He stopped and reached out, his heart leaping to pound in his throat as he felt what was unmistakably the still form of his now former friend.
“Sheldon…” Brad sank to his hands and knees. “I’m… I’m so sorry. I should have checked in on you. I should have worked harder to find you. I’m such a terrible friend.”
He closed his eyes and leaned against Sheldon’s body’s knee, sniffing in silent sobs.
He nearly jumped out of his skin when something touched his shoulder.
His eyes flew open to faint light in the basement. From a new light source. Right behind him. As well as a firm hand gripping his shoulder.
“You really cared that much?”
The voice was unfamiliar. Feminine. With an edge of artificiality to it. He whipped around, his tear-filled eyes becoming saucers as he looked up at what was the dead husk of the robot from before, its “eyes” now populated by two circles of LEDs “breathing” through different colors as they focused down on him. The lights didn’t stop there, though. Everywhere that was black before was now filled, streaked, or outlined with the same “breathing” RGB lighting that was subtly shifting colors from a pastel blue, to white, to a pastel pink over and over again. It was especially prominent on the twin-tail styled “hair” that absently moved as though they were limbs of their own.
This unknown, new robot giggled and held a hand out to Brad.
“C’mon. You weren’t exactly a valedictorian but even you can figure out what happened, right, Brad?” Its voice was so teasing and coy as a smirk formed on its ruby-red, glowing lips.
Brad blinked in disbelief. His head whipped from Sheldon’s body to-
“Sheldon?!”
This time he didn’t miss the wince on the robot’s face, white lights serving as “eyelids” twitching around the dots of light that were the pupils. He reached up to take the hand offered to him, noticing it was warm and plasticky.
“I don’t think that’s appropriate, anymore,” “Sheldon” sighed as he-no-she helped Brad to his feet, now looking down on him.
“B-But it’s you, right? Buddy?”
“Sheldon” giggled and nodded.
“It sure is!” She began stretching, giving satisfied grunts. “God, this feels SO MUCH BETTER!”
Brad looked over her with slack-jawed awe and confusion. She also looked herself over, constantly smiling.
“But… why?” Brad had to swallow dryness from his throat as he watched “Sheldon” delight in her new form.
“You remember growing up? Never quite feeling right? Like you just wanted to…” “Sheldon” dragged her fingers across her face and shuddered, “…crawl out of your skin?”
Brad arched a brow before he frowned and shook his head.
“No… I think that was just a ‘you’ thing, dude,” Brad rolled his eyes, once more missing the wince from “Sheldon”.
She opened her mouth to say something before she closed it and averted her gaze.
“Well…” She awkwardly continued, “…I’ve felt like it as long as I can remember back. And it was only when I met Jenny that I felt some sense of… rightness.”
Brad gave her an imploring look.
“Like, when I saw her? Things started to make sense. And I thought, at the time, she was the missing piece. To me being happy.” She paused and shook her head. “That wasn’t the case.”
“Sheldon” wandered back over to her notebook on the workbench, this time leaving it there as she flipped through it, looking wistful.
“Like I said. I realized I didn’t want HER. I wanted to BE her,” “Sheldon” turned her wistful look on Brad. “Do you understand, now?” Her face fell with a wry smile. “I hope she’ll understand. And forgive me for how… creepy I was.”
Brad took one step towards “Sheldon”, a worry born of his warmth for his friend etching his face.
“I think she was just overreacting,” Brad scoffed.
“Sheldon” frowned at him.
“No, I know I was… weird. I may know why, now, but that doesn’t excuse anything,” “Sheldon” looked back at her notebook. “I just hope we can all start over.”
She gave Brad a sly look. “I hear you two have been going steady for a good bit now.”
Brad jerked into a too-straight stance.
“W-Well, you see, uh….” Brad tried and failed to respond, provoking a chuckle from “Sheldon”.
“You don’t need to be shy about it,” She leaned against the workbench, crossing her arms and legs with now-glowing fishnet patterns upon it. “I should have picked up on it a long time ago that you two were just… right for each other.”
Her face fell resigned even as she kept smiling. “She’s very lucky to have you.”
Brad looked at her, head going into a tilt.
She shook her head and smiled back at him.
“Now,” “Sheldon” clapped her hands. “There’s the matter of…” She gestured to her old body.
Brad followed her gesture and once again fought against a punch of nausea.
“Sorry, I didn’t think about this part,” “Sheldon” awkwardly chuckled before she pushed off the workbench and swept up to her old self. She eyed her old body with a flash of disgust before she shook her head.
“Why don’t we go upstairs,” “Sheldon” stepped between a nearly doubled-over Brad and the corpse. “We can order some pizza? Hang out like old times?”
Brad was broken from his nausea just enough to give “Sheldon” a questioning look.
“Wait, you can eat?”
“If I did my math right,” “Sheldon” rolled her eyes up and counted on her fingers, “yeah. I better. What’s a life worth living without pizza?”
Brad chuckled as he straightened out.
“Amen to that, brother,” Brad held out a hand, once again catching that wince “Sheldon” kept doing, not understanding what that was about. After a moment, she clasped his hand and met him in an elaborate handshake they used to do when they were kids. More of Brad’s tensions melted away as they hit the final pose in perfect sync. This really was still his friend.
Yup, she could taste it. Calculations were completely on point. “Sheldon” savored both the taste and the generous cheese pull of her slice with a satisfied hum while Brad just kept staring at her from his place on the other side of the messy table.
“I’m still amazed that you can eat. Jenny’s still stuck with cans of oil,” Brad half-smiled and chuckled.
She paused in her eating to give him a thoughtful look.
“Well, technically I still need the oil. But I can get it from greasy sources like,” “Sheldon” gestured to the pizza before taking another bite. “I have something akin to a regular stomach that dissolves what I consume and uses the reaction to fuel me.”
She pointed to her exposed, porcelain-white belly that had a dull sheen to it. “Remember Mister Fusion from Back to the Future?”
Brad’s eyes rolled up for a moment.
“Oh!” He snapped and pointed at her. “So… I guess you can use any compostable material?”
She smiled and nodded as she chewed.
“Yeah,” she swallowed, “I just made it a real thing. Getting nuclear-level energy from even scraps. I’m not sure how it compares to Jenny’s ‘eternal heart’ in a one-to-one comparison but it should keep me going for a while with only a little sustenance.”
She was voracious in finishing the slice in her hand, leaving only the crust that she left on her plate as she sat back and closed her eyes to savor it.
“Hmm,” “Sheldon” rolled her eyes up as she just started on another slice of plain cheese pizza. “They might be a little…” Her ceramic teeth crunched against something. She grimaced before she removed an errant piece of red onion from her mouth. She scowled and dropped it on the plate.
“They might be a little too sensitive,” “Sheldon” inspected the pizza, her eyes doing a subtle flicker. It was supposed to have no onions.
“The taste buds and other sensors, I mean,” she took another bite of the piece she was holding, content it had no more undesirable textures upon it, “everything tastes so…”
“Sheldon” smiled and shivered, the LED screens that were her “eyes” going fully white.
“Strong!”
“Doesn’t look like it’s a bad thing, though,” Brad smirked as he finally grabbed a piece from his half of the pizza. Triple meat combination.
“The issue,” “Sheldon” held up a finger as she swallowed, “is that while it makes things taste really good. It also makes things I don’t like taste really bad.” She frowned down at that errant piece of half-chewed. She would have wrinkled her nose, too, if she had one.
“Plus,” She took another bite of her pizza, chewing it thoughtfully as she shivered again, “it’s a bit overstimulating.”
“Oh! Like how when Jenny had those pain sensors but they were a little too sensitive?”
“Yeah, that!” She swallowed. “I worked really hard to calibrate things so they’d feel… natural.”
She looked down at her now-greasy left hand, flexing it and rubbing the fingers against her acrylic palm before she shrugged. “But that’s science, for ya! Trial and error!”
She set her next crust down on the plate, her eyes darting around. She hummed, tapping her fingers on the table before standing.
Brad grimaced.
“Please don’t tell me you’re gonna-”
“Oh you know it!” She marched over to the kitchen area and grabbed a glass from the dish strainer.
Brad gave a groaning sigh as he watched her go about her, to him, disgusting ritual once she came back to the table with a glass full of ice. The sharp crack and hiss of freshly opened soda filled the air, with Brad catching a faint whiff of the orange scent before she very carefully poured herself some.
There he goes again… Brad cringed as she took her pizza crust and dipped it in the soda before shoving the whole thing in her mouth and giving a happy hum.
“That’s still so gross, dude,” Brad shook his head with a shiver of disgust before he turned his attention back to his own pizza.
The humming stopped.
“Sheldon” cast her gaze to the table.
Brad glanced at her before fully giving his attention. “Something wrong?”
“Sheldon” clasped her hands in her lap, absently fidgeting her thumbs.
“Could you not say that?”
Brad made a confused hum.
“Calling me ‘dude’ and ‘bro’ and all that?” She looked up at him, hunched and bashful. “I’m not… that.”
Brad furrowed his brow a moment before he set his unfinished slice of pizza down.
“I mean, you’re still Sheldon, right?”
She winced again.
“Yes and no. I mean… I’m the same person you knew in high school. But also… that’s not me. It kinda… never was.”
Brad continued looking confused.
“It’s hard to explain,” her bottom lip tucked into her mouth as she chewed it.
Brad recognized the habit as unmistakably that of his best friend’s.
“Just… I’m a girl. So… I’d like it if you called me as such.” She gave a pre-emptive flinch.
Brad blinked in his confusion, cocking his head as he tried to make sense of it.
“But… you’re Sheldon.”
“That was my name,” She nodded, “but… it’s not right. It never really felt right.”
Brad furrowed his brow, still confused, not judgmental.
“Should I… call you something else?”
She nodded before bashfully meeting his gaze.
“I’ve been thinking about it a while,” a faint smile crept on her lips. Her eyes closed again. She took a breath before opening them, her pupils now vibrant like blacklights. “Nyx!”
Brad’s eyebrows went up before he chuckled.
“Well, alright.” Brad smirked as he picked up his cold slice of pizza and “toasted” her with it. “Alright, Nyx.”
Nyx rolled her eyes and smirked back at him, her pupils back to their normal color as she grabbed another piece of pizza and returned the toast.
Brad’s chair creaked as he leaned back and gave a satisfied groan. “God, I haven’t eaten like that since I was a teenager.”
“Me neither,” Nyx returned the chuckle as she rubbed her own belly under her top that glowed with a Mezmer’s logo. She looked over at Brad, a warm smile growing on her lips while she felt a similar warmth within her.
“I’m really glad that I got to see you again.”
Brad arched a brow before he leaned forward on the table and returned her smile.
“Hey, I missed you. We all did.”
Nyx’s face fell uncertain.
“Even… Jenny?”
Brad’s own face fell solemn before he nodded.
“She blamed herself. Said she could have been nicer about letting you down. She wanted to look for you, but Ms. Wakeman said no. Saying she needed to focus on her work here. And college.”
Nyx didn’t so much as twitch in response as she kept eyeing the table.
“I understand,” Nyx nodded. “She’s got a lotta responsibility.”
A solemn, regretful silence draped over them.
“We’ll get together,” Brad grinned. “We’ll hang out like old times!” His eyes flicked to Nyx’s chest. “It’s still here, you know.”
Nyx nearly covered her chest before she realized what he was really looking at and made a silent “oh” of understanding.
“I can’t wait.” Nyx smiled. It turned sly.
“Anything else catch your eye there, Brad?” Nyx pumped her digitally-displayed eyebrows.
Brad arched a brow before he startled, snapped back, and looked anywhere but her.
“Dude, your chest is LITERALLY glowing! How can I NOT look?” Just after the words left his mouth his eyes widened. He snapped his gaze back to Nyx. “Sorry! I’m still getting used to it…”
Nyx gave him a warm smile as she propped her elbows on the table and rested her head in her hands.
“It’s okay, I know you’re trying.”
Brad chuckled through his discomfort, rubbing the back of his head as he still refused to look at her.
“Y-You know… Tuck’s graduating soon. You wanna… plan something around that?”
Nyx beamed. Brad smiled back. They spent the rest of the night catching up, both happy. Brad happy that his friend was safe and they could be together again. Nyx happy that Brad accepted her as easy as he did. The more they fall back into that old, casual friendship of theirs, the more she wondered what she was ever worried about.