You took a deep breath as you stared at the box in front of you. It had taken a great deal of expense and effort to acquire the box in front of you, and you weren’t going to back out now. Sure, this was incredibly risky, but you had to know. You had to find out what was happening in there. Grabbing your keys from the table, you ripped the tape open until finally the cardboard box lay open, revealing gleaming pieces of porcelain like shell, carefully disassembled into a multitude of parts, each decorated with delicate filigree.

Worth every penny you think as you carefully lay out the pieces on your floor, until the entire shell is laid out on the floor. It had been made to fit your body exactly, each piece snug and tight against your skin. It needed to be if you had any hope of this working. You stripped down until you were completely naked and took inventory. Hair, buzzed and then shaved. Ocular recording device, working and streaming data to your server, check. GPS beacon, active and pinging no less than 3 different servers being monitored by people you trust. One use, one shot Personal Defense Weapon in arm, armed and ready, although using it would do a large amount of damage to your arm, so hopefully it wouldn’t come to that. You were ready.

The first piece of the suit was a skin tight black spandex bodysuit, leaving only your hands, feet, and head free. Wriggling into it took several minutes, but by the end, it was hugging you tight, compressing every inch of you slightly into a slightly more…abstract shape. Next came the codpiece, designed to allow the pieces above and below maximum freedom of movement with as little gaps showing as possible. Looking in the mirror, it looked like you were wearing tight porcelain underwear, no sign of anything beneath showing through.

Then came the leg pieces, front and back thigh, front and back calf. As you press the halves together over your spandex clad leg, they click together, the seam between them all but invisible. For your knee, a hinged rounded ball, fitting snugly beneath. You tested it, swinging your leg back and forth. A bit tight, it restricted you a bit, but that was to be expected. It would only help really. 

You frowned for a moment, trying to puzzle out just how the feet were supposed to work. First came the sole, on the bottom of a black spandex sock, with intricately carved tiny pieces of porcelain for each of your toes. A bit strange, how you could still wiggle your toes, but your foot was held rigidly in place, but ah well. Unnoticed to you, the black spandex of the suit and sock merged together, fusing into one.

After you click the top of the foot pieces on, once again being held together with barely a sign of a seam in between, you look at yourself in the mirror. From the top up, you were still you, albeit in a tight long sleeved shirt, but from the bottom down, you looked like, well, a doll. Simple white porcelain, jointed to allow some degree of poseability, decorated in pretty filigree, abstract designs scattered across the porcelain.

Taking a deep breath you start on the upper half. Your torso was enclosed in two half parts, clicking together on your sides and shoulders. Your neck, held stiff by the porcelain covering it, your front having a gentle suggestion of a curve, enhanced by the filigree swirling around and all over you. Your arms and hands, following much the same design of your legs, held together, movement gently restricted. The hands were intricate works of art, multiple small pieces of porcelain allowing you to freely move while showing no trace of the spandex below.

The backplate of your head was a struggle to get on, arms no longer having the freedom of movement to reach behind you that they used to have, but you eventually managed, clicking it onto the neck piece, some clever mechanism allowing you to still move your head even with it secured on. You picked up the last piece and stared at it. A beautiful, neutral face stared back at you. Red lips, serene eyes, a calm expression, filigree dancing on the edges. Steeling yourself, you placed the mask over your face. Click. 

Staring at you from the mirror was a doll. Blue filigree decorated it, an impassive face staring calmly, no expression, no sign of the person beneath. As you moved to start getting dressed, your movements were constrained, held back to what the joints of the suit allowed you to have. You dressed quickly, covering up your already covered body. Wrapped up so none of the porcelain was showing, you left your apartment and started heading across the city. 

Walking was strange. It wasn’t the quick and hurried steps that you normally used, but more deliberate. At first, you had to think through each step, but more quickly than you imagined, it became natural. Lift your leg, swing forward, plant your foot. Lift your other leg as your body pivoted over your foot. Repeat.

There were a few strange glances, people looking at you oddly, but the advantage of living in a big city is that no one really paid attention to anyone else. You couldn’t take the bus, you had no cash or ID on you, since that would ruin everything rather quickly, so you walked. And walked. And walked. It was a grey, sunless day, and you had no watch, so there was no real sense of time, but eventually, you reached it. A large nondescript warehouse at the edge of an industrial district. There was no one else around. Stepping into an alley next to the warehouse, you slip out of your clothes, down to just your porcelain shell, stuffing the clothes into a plastic bag and hiding them next to a dumpster. You’d be back for them soon, you reassured yourself.

Naked, or at least, wearing nothing but your doll shell, you quickly snuck up to a door in the alleyway, propped open by a piece of brick, a trick to let workers sneak out for a smoke break without worrying about keys, but for you, a handy entrance. You step into the warehouse, relieved to see no one in the hallway. Getting caught here and now would be disastrous. As you take your first several cautious steps into the hallway, unnoticed by you, your ocular recording device froze, streaming a short loop of the hallway over and over. Your GPS beacon blinked off for a second, as new instructions poured into it, before calmly turning back on and beginning to execute its new subroutine. It would show you in the factory for several hours, before showing you leaving and returning home to your apartment, and then shutting down.

Calling up the blueprint for the factory that you had memorized, you quickly pass the first several doors. Office, janitor’s closet, washroom, break room. You were almost at your destination when you heard it, the sound of people’s voices, workers headed towards the hallway, towards you. You quickly slip into the next room, pausing to take a breath as you ease the door shut, plunging you into a dim twilight.

Turning, you jump for a moment, all your self control going into preventing yourself from yelping. A doll stared back at you. Blank, inert. Looking around, you realized that you were in a storage room of sorts. Row after row of dolls stood there, calm and Still. Hearing the voices again, you quickly went and joined a row, adopting the same position as all the other dolls. Hands dangled down at your side, body held in a neutral upright position, you stood there, trying to take shallow breaths as the lights clicked on, and a moment later, several workers walked in. Shit. Inventory.

There was nothing you could do. You stood there, Still and quiet, not daring to even move your eyes as the workers started moving up and down the rows, checking each doll. As you stand there, you find your thoughts growing hazy. Nothing to do but wait, to be Still, to be patient. It was nice. Normally your thoughts were always racing, always trying to get ahead, but now your mind was calm. Nothing to do but wait, nowhere to go.

After a time, a minute, an hour, a day, who could say, the workers reached you. They checked you over, moving your limbs, inspecting you for cracks. None of their words seemed to be able to reach you, lost in a void of Stillness, until one of them told you to follow them. A small part of your mind screamed, told you to run, to shoot and take off and escape, but it was overwhelmed by the rest of you. Follow. 

And so you did. Out of the storage room, down the hallway, into the main space of the warehouse, and up onto a table. Secured into place, straps holding you down. Not tight, as to prevent a human from struggling and escaping, but snug, as to prevent a piece of merchandise from getting damaged. Rolled around, the ceiling passing before your impassive, calm eyes. The table tilted upright, until you were held vertically, and then slot into place in a machine. A small voice whimpered in the back of your brain. A bright light flashed. Your eyes, dilated and wide, didn’t blink. It flashed again, and again. Stillness. Purpose. Calmness. Slowly you began to feel the straps holding you tight, the cold metal of the table. No more flesh, no more thoughts. Just porcelain, through and through. The joints tightened, the cleverly designed pieces disguising your joints turning into simple balls, the seams vanishing as the shell, the clever porcelain shell that you paid oh so much for, became you. As you became it.

And finally, the workers came, and they unstrapped you, and you stood there, calm and Still. And they gave you a Purpose, and your Purpose was to wait. And so you went, and you Waited. One more doll, in a factory filled with hundreds.

And one day, someone came to buy you. And as your new Owner handed over the cash and took you into their Possession, they chuckled. “Worth every penny.”