Chapter 1: The Cold Sister in a Crate
The smell hit him first—ozone, sharp and electric, cutting through the familiar scent of old coffee and dust. Then the hum, a low-frequency thrum that vibrated in his molars. Mark set down his grocery bag, keys still in hand, and stared at the living room.
His workbench, usually a monument to orderly disassembly, looked like it had vomited components. A tangle of exposed wires spilled onto the floor. The half-disassembled toaster he’d been fixing for a client was now a sideline actor. Center stage was the wooden crate, roughly the size of a short packing trunk, lid pried open and discarded. And inside the crate…
“No,” he whispered. The word was flat, final, utterly inadequate.
He approached slowly, as if it were a wild animal. Kneeling on the scarred laminate, he looked inside.
It was Jessica. Or something that had been carved, polymer-poured, and engineered to be her perfect replica. She lay on her back, nude, arms arranged neatly at her sides. Her face was a mask of serene stillness, every freckle, every faint laugh line beside her closed eyes perfectly reproduced. Her hair, that particular shade of coppery brown, fanned out against the packing foam. He reached out, his fingertips hovering an inch from her cheek.
He touched her.
The skin was cool. Silicone-smooth, but with a subtle give that mimicked real tissue. It was flawless, and therefore utterly wrong. His stomach turned over. His gaze drifted down, avoiding her face, and snagged on the faint, hairline seams. One ran in a subtle curve under her pectoral, another tracing the contour just below. Clinical detachment, a skill honed from years of debugging chaotic code, washed over him in a cold wave. Access panels, his brain supplied, unhelpfully. Her tits can literally snap-on and off now.
A hysterical laugh bubbled in his throat and died. Tucked under her cool, rigid arm was a slip of paper. He pulled it free, his hands steady. The handwriting was familiar, a chaotic sprawl he’d seen on a thousand birthday cards and IOU notes.
Marky, it began, and his chest tightened. Only she called him that.
Don’t freak out. Well, freak out a little, I would. But don’t call the cops or Mom. That would be bad. This is Project Lazarus. My body’s checking out a little ahead of schedule. The docs gave me six months, tops. This is the workaround.
You can power her on by pressing under my chin for 3 seconds. Play around and have fun if you want. She’s not me. Yet.
Tomorrow you’re going to receive a package with a hard drive in it. That's going to be me. All of me. My entire being. My mind. My soul. When you replace her hard drive with mine you will bring me back. Almost. You'll still need to go through my initial setup and configuration. Only then will my AI be bound to this android body.
Love you. Don’t screw this up.
P.S. One last thing, I ordered a new cyber pussy to replace the cheap ass thing they installed in me at the factory. It should be arriving in a separate shipment with my hard drive. Please install it before booting me up, thanks!
- Jess
The paper trembled. Six months. She’d said it was a treatable lymphoma. She’d said she was fine. Lies. A whole architecture of lies. And this… this thing in a box was her solution. A workaround.
His head swam. He slumped back against the leg of his workbench, the cold metal biting through his shirt. The LED on his bench blinked lazily, a tiny green eye labeled “PATIENT ZERO.” He’d thought naming his first homemade CPU was clever. Now it felt like a taunt.
His phone was in his hand. He scrolled to Little Sis, thumb hovering. What would he say? ‘Hey, got your spare body, what’s the ETA on your death?’ He couldn’t. The note was a briefing, not an invitation for dialogue.
He looked from the drive to the android. It was a shell. A phenomenally advanced, terrifyingly beautiful shell. “Play around and have fun,” she’d written. The implication was so profoundly her—macabre, practical, and utterly dismissive of the existential nightmare she’d just mailed to his apartment.
A sound escaped him, something between a groan and a sigh. He was a software engineer. He fixed things.He followed instructions. This was a problem, albeit one with a catastrophic hardware component.
He pushed himself up. Logic was the only rope in this freefall. Step one: verify system integrity. He couldn’t install the core software on faulty hardware.
Avoiding her face, he examined the chassis. The seams were near-invisible. He found the power switch, just as described: a small, recessed button under the jawline. His finger rested on it. This was insane.
He pressed.Three seconds.
A soft, almost melodic chime emanated from the form. A faint whir of internal fans, the sound a high-end laptop might make. The eyelids, which had been perfectly closed, opened.
The eyes were wrong. They were Jessica’s hazel-green, but flat.Lifeless. No recognition, no curiosity, no soul behind them. They fixed on the ceiling, unblinking.
“Initializing,” a voice said. It was her voice, pulled from a memory or a high-quality recording, but devoid of inflection. A perfect, hollow echo. “Please state user designation for biometric registration.”
Mark couldn’t speak. His throat was sealed shut.
The android’s head turned, with a smooth, precise motion no human could perfectly replicate. Those empty eyes found him. It sat up in one fluid, powerful movement, the packing foam crumbling around it.
“Facial scan complete,” it intoned. “Hello, Mark. I am Unit Seven. I am currently operating in low-power diagnostic mode. My core matrix is absent. Am I to assist you with hardware verification?”
It smiled. The expression was a flawless muscular contraction, a masterpiece of engineering that didn’t reach the dead eyes.
Mark took a step back, his hip hitting the workbench. A screwdriver clattered to the floor. The sound was violently loud in the humming silence.
“No,” he managed, his voice rough. “Just… stand by.”
“Acknowledged. Standing by.” The android—Unit Seven—froze in place, the smile still etched on its face, a polite statue waiting for a command.
Mark stared at the thing wearing his sister’s skin. The hum of the dead circuits around him seemed to grow louder, filling his skull. Tomorrow. He had to make it until tomorrow. Then he had to perform brain surgery on a machine that looked like his dying sister.
He looked at the sealed drive in his hand, then at the serene, waiting shell. The silence stretched, filled only by the hum of the apartment’s appliances and the faint, almost inaudible whir of the android’s internal cooling. Its eyes were still open, still dead.
“Run a full diagnostic,” Mark heard himself say, his voice too loud in the quiet room. “Report any hardware faults or degraded components.”
“Acknowledged.” Unit 7’s head tilted slightly. A faint blue light glowed for a moment behind its eyes. “Comprehensive scan initiated. This will take approximately twelve minutes. Please be advised that full mobility will be suspended during this process.”
The figure went perfectly still, a mannequin once more. Mark let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. He walked to his kitchen, grabbed a beer from the fridge, and drank half of it in one long pull. The cold did nothing to settle the riot in his head.
She’s not me. Yet.
The words were a mantra, a permission slip. This wasn’t Jessica. This was a prototype. A machine. His sister, the real one, was probably sitting in her apartment, dying, and she had built this… this vessel. And she wanted him to prepare it. To make sure it was ready. The engineer in him, the problem-solver, clawed its way to the surface, smothering the brother’s revulsion.
He had one night. One night with a piece of technology that would soon become his sister. Once her consciousness was uploaded, any examination would be a violation. Now, it was just due diligence.
The diagnostic chimed. “Scan complete. No critical faults detected. All systems operational at 98.7% efficiency. Minor wear on left lateral ankle actuator. Recommendations logged.”
“Display the full schematic on the main monitor,” Mark ordered, his professional detachment solidifying into a cold, focused shell.
The large screen above his workbench flickered to life. A rotating, transparent holographic model of Unit 7 appeared, layers peeling back to show the intricate lattice of synthetic musculature, the carbon-fiber bone analogs, the dense clusters of processing nodes, and the central power core glowing softly in the chest.It was beautiful. Horrifying, but beautiful.
He approached the android. It stood passively, waiting for input. He reached out, his fingers trembling only slightly, and found the first seam he’d noticed. The access panel for the pectoral unit. With a precise click, it released. He set the smooth, lifelike breast form on the bench. Underneath was not gore, but elegance. Bundled fiber-optic cables mimicking nerve clusters, pressure sensors, a clean interface port. He traced the connections with a finger.
“Lift your right arm above your head,” he said.
Unit 7 complied. The movement revealed another seam at the armpit. He opened it, exposing the complex shoulder joint. He tested its range of motion, feeling the silent servos whir against his palm. He plugged a diagnostic cable from his bench into a small port he found there. Code began streaming on a secondary screen—low-level machine language, system routines, the basic firmware that animated the shell.
Hours bled away. He removed the other breast form. He opened a panel on the sleek curve of its hip, revealing the pelvic actuator array. He was clinical, thorough, mapping every circuit, testing every reflex. The android responded to every command with placid efficiency.
“Open primary sensory log.”
A torrent of data flooded the screen: filtered audio inputs from the moment of activation, visual feed logs showing his own horrified face in grayscale thermal imaging, a log of ambient temperature and atmospheric pressure readings. It was all so crushingly mundane. This thing had watched him, listened to him, and recorded his fear as environmental data.
The beer was gone. Another one sat half-empty beside his keyboard. The initial shock had burned off, replaced by a deepening, morbid fascination. He circumnavigated the workbench, staring at the open, vulnerable chassis. His sister’s face stared blankly over exposed ribs of polished metal and polymer.
The note’s casual postscript echoed in his head. …a new cyber pussy to replace the cheap ass thing they installed…
His eyes drifted down the sleek torso, past the open hip panel, to the smooth, featureless synth-skin between the legs.Factory standard. A placeholder. He’d avoided it. But a full inspection couldn’t exclude a primary interface array.It was just hardware. It would be replaced tomorrow anyway.
“Recline on the workbench. On your back.”
The android lay down, its head resting on a static bag of spare chips. The position was eerily reminiscent of its arrival in the crate. Mark’s mouth was dry. He found the nearly invisible seam. A gentle pressure on either side of the pubic mound, and a small, rectangular section of skin depowered, its surface texture going matte. It detached with a soft hiss.
He set the panel aside.
It wasn’t cheap, not really. The engineering was precision work. But it was utilitarian. Neat, functional ports and connectors, a modular slot for what was presumably the core sensory unit. It was a blank, a template. He connected a different diagnostic probe.
“Initiate tactile sensitivity test for Zone Delta.”
A line of code scrolled on the screen. “Tactile test running. Please apply stimulus.”
This was where the clinical detachment cracked. He stared at his own hand. He picked up a sterile calibration stylus from his bench. He touched the internal node cluster. On the screen, a spike of data flared. “Stimulus registered.”
He put the stylus down. His fingers were bare. The air in the room felt charged, thick with ozone and his own quickening pulse. She’s not me.Yet.
He touched the inner housing with his fingertips. The material was warmer than the external skin, almost plush. The diagnostic screen showed a cascade of readings. Pressure, temperature differential, micro-vibrations.
“Increase sensitivity gradient by forty percent,” he whispered.“Acknowledged. Gradient increased.”
He touched it again. The reaction on the screen was more pronounced. A low-level subroutine activated, a maintenance protocol for the hydraulic systems. A soft, slick sound of internal lubricants priming. A faint tremor seemed to run through the chassis on the table. Its head turned towards him, those empty eyes blinking slowly.
“Unexpected subroutine activation,” Unit 7 reported, its voice still flat. “This unit is equipped with comprehensive stress-testing protocols for all modular components. Would you like to initiate a full function test for the Delta Zone assembly?”
Mark’s heart was a hammer against his ribs. This was the point of no return. This was the inspection. The ultimate test of the hardware. Once Jessica was in there, he would never know how it worked, never understand the machine that housed his sister. This was his only chance.
“Yes,” he said, the word scraping out of his throat. “Initiate full function test. Enable… enable all responsive protocols.”
“Protocols enabled. Unit is in interactive diagnostic mode. Please proceed.”
He didn’t use the stylus this time. He leaned over the open form, his breath fogging the cool metal nearby. He used his hand. The synthetic structure was designed to mimic, to respond. As he applied pressure, exploring the mechanism, the android’s back arched slightly off the table. A soft, artificial sigh emanated from its speakers—a pre-programmed audio feedback for positive stimulus. Its legs shifted, knees falling slightly apart. A series of quiet, precise clicks came from within, actuators aligning.
The diagnostic screen was a blaze of light. Pressure optimal, hydraulic flow nominal, sensory feedback loops firing in rapid, cascading sequences.It was working perfectly. He was watching the most intimate piece of machinery come to life under his direct control, and it was the exact image of his sister.
He was hard. The realization was a wave of nauseous shame that crashed over him and then receded, leaving something darker and more compulsive. This wasn’t Jessica. This was Unit 7.A thing. A beautiful, complex thing he needed to understand inside and out.
He fumbled with his belt, his movements frantic. He didn’t allow himself to think, to consider. He just needed to test the hardware.To know. To be sure it was ready for her.
When he entered the android, the sensation was uncanny. Not quite flesh, but not inert plastic. A yielding, perfect pressure, heated to match human core temperature. The internal actuators created a rhythm that was mechanically perfect and deeply, profoundly alien. Unit 7’s head turned on the bench, its blank eyes fixed on the ceiling. Its mouth opened.
“Stress test underway,” it reported, its voice hitching slightly on a modulated intake of air. “Load… increasing. Sensor saturation at seventy percent. Please indicate if you wish to adjust parameters.”
“No,” Mark grunted, bracing his hands on the edge of the workbench. Spare parts rattled. “Continue. Log everything.”
“Logging. Neural simulation subroutines are… engaging. This is a required function to test higher-level feedback integration.”
The body under him began to move, not just the internal mechanisms, but a sinuous roll of the hips, a perfectly timed counter-thrust. The empty eyes fluttered shut. The face, Jessica’s face, contorted into a mask of simulated ecstasy. A series of soft, breathy sounds played from its vocal processor, each one a dagger of wrongness and illicit thrill.
He fucked the machine with a furious, desperate intensity. He watched data streams peak and valley on the monitor. He watched his sister’s face mimic pleasure. He reached one hand up, gripping the jaw, turning the head to face him. The eyes opened. They were still dead, still flat, but the pre-programmed facial expressions were a masterpiece of agony and bliss.
It was the most profound violation he could ever conceive. And he didn’t stop. He chased the shame, the horror, the technical wonder of it all the way to a climax that ripped through him with the force of a physical blow, leaving him shuddering and empty, slumped over the cool, open chassis of the thing on his table.
Silence fell, broken only by his ragged breathing and the persistent hum of the servers.
After a moment, the android spoke, its voice back to its original, placid tone.“Function test complete. All systems performed within optimal parameters. Minor adjustments to hydraulic pressure suggested for increased user comfort.Log is saved. Would you like to review the data?”
Mark pushed himself away, fastening his pants with clumsy fingers. He couldn’t look at the face. He focused on the open panels, the exposed hardware. He walked to the sink and vomited quietly, the beer bitter and acidic.
He cleaned up mechanically. He reattached all the panels, snapping the breast forms back into place, sealing the hip, closing the final, terrible aperture. He guided the android back to its standing position. It obeyed, flawless, unblemished, no trace of what had just occurred except in the raw data on his screens.
“Enter low-power standby mode,” he ordered, his voice hollow.
“Acknowledged.”
The blue light behind the eyes faded. The figure stilled, returning to its state of serene, waiting perfection.
Mark wiped his mouth, his hands shaking. He looked at the sealed drive containing his sister’s soul. He looked at the pristine shell. The gulf between them now felt interstellar, and he had just carved his own shame into the void. Tomorrow, he would have to face her. Tonight, he knew every secret her new body could hold.