THE PROMETHEAN DOLL, Chapter 1 (read previous prologues though)

“Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

   I scowled a tiny furrow into my eyebrows, noting in the daily paper that one of my employees  from The Hypnotic Shoppe would not be coming to work.  It is so difficult to get humans to come in, especially on weekends, and dolls do not typically have the ability to answer questions  with the skill and technical  experience that customers deserve and require. I huffed, blowing a wisp of hair from my eyes as I read.
   Candi was a friend, one which I had earlier had to save from a horrible jungle (see previous post), and we had become close. Even a doll can grasp that when someone goes to the Place of Forever Broken, it is a sad thing. But several things I had recently read had given me some questions, and I calmly brought them up to the ladies at the Cafe' that very early morning.

Miss Ellori  and Library seen, from Goatwood Roleplay Sim, A truly gifted roleplayer! Miss Dymin from Bloodlines RP, is in fact a Hybrid Vampire...hence her quick departure at the dawn.

Dame Cogsworth said, "Blood drainers! Is nothing sacred?"
   "Well they say that the life is in  the blood; though, I would tend to disagree." I poured a refill of the most charming tea for the ladies as they all took turns noting the smoothly rotating key in my back, and nodded to each other.
   Lady Ellori  glanced up from her newspaper. "Will you be attending the funeral? Seems only right, she was a Caledonian, a Cape girl it says here."
   Duchess Dymin looked to the sky, noting the carnelian hue. "Well it is just dawn now,  much to prepare if I am to be catching the train to New Babbage Cemetary, I might want to get a few of these watercress sandwiches for the journey."
   Lady Ellori was still staring at my key. I get that often, and am proud of the highly engineered craftsmanship, perhaps puffing up in the chest just a bit from pride in my creator.
   "Duchess Charisma, you don't have blood, do you? You have eh, oil? Water?"
   I smiled, gently correcting the well dressed woman and washing Duchess Dymin's cup as she got into her huge 4-horse carriage.
   "Spring propulsion, steam pressurized piston actuation and ionic and anionic electric power for data storage, on a soluble medium."
   "Don't encourage it, Lady Ellori," stated Dame Cogsworth. It is right to forgive her the choice in pronouns, since her company makes clocks, and dolls, none of which could correct her grammar like myself. Her completion of only the eighth grade not withstanding.
   "And I am not a Duchess, 'Lady' is generously used by the locals here, but just Miss Wendy is fine."
   "But,, your many land parcels, your business, your winning Gold Medals in the Caledon Olympics," Lady Ellori continued, as I interrupted.
   "You saw that? It was a fine event and I was very pleased to bring the Cape a Gold Medal. But, the law states the Noble title of Duchess is conferred only to humans, lest there be  a Duchess Fifi, the queen's prize poodle!" I laughed.
   Dame Cogsworth, threw down the paper and straightened her beautiful dress over each fold of skin on her belly, as she stood to leave. "Well I shall not attend; It says this woman was an unfortunate, a street urchin, a prostitute. We cannot be seen condoning such behavior. Surely this was how she met her end!"
   Lady Ellori waited for the Dame to waddle off, then spoke softly. "How do you make dolls? Wouldn't the electricity or springs or whatever run out? How does a living soul reside in you, as it clearly does,, and oh,, please do not take offense to the," I patted her shoulder as I cleaned up the Dame's table.
   "None taken. Do you understand galvanization? the lining of pipes or wire through the use of electricity? This is perhaps over-simplification, but that's generally how. But humans are not human because of their blood, so it must be in the electricity, which would be why they are irretrievable when they shuffle off their mortal coil."
   "You seem so calm with it all, so,, so happy." I had upset Miss Ellori, though I did not know how.
   "Am I?"
   "You wouldn't understand, you aren't HUMAN, " her last word forced, sizzling as it escaped her lips.

The Goatswood homes are nice, and not too expensive. Je Suis Jewelry. Hair by DrLife

 I pondered in my small room just before attending the funeral.
   How often I was told this. How many times I was given the placating glance. How many imagined social crimes were excused at the diminuting exclamation,, "You wouldn't understand, you aren't human."
   I can certainly understand she failed to hold her hand properly, while sipping her tea, and there was no mistake in my stated perceptions of humans, what was I missing?  I read and re-read my notes as I put on my funeral dress for the train ride.

Victorian Funeral gown by Montagne as well as the writer's desk!

   "Humans are the electricity... it escapes,,, they are forever broken. They sleep and wake and are not broken,,, they lose all blood,,, " my slurry of solution within my head nearly doubled in temperature as vast and impossible conclusions rolled into the realm of the plausible.
   Bloodless, and reblooded, and the body could still live,, but the individual would be gone,,,".
    I had missed the train and had to fire up the Copper Dream  to be on time for the funeral.

 It was a beautiful day, The impending storm's harbinger bent over the trees though; not cold yet, though I was chilled slightly to see that nobody had attended, except Dwight, the gravedigger. Something about the silence, the whispering wind through the ancient trees, begged me, commanded me to speak on her behalf. It is done by humans at the ceremonies often, for those that are thought of well in their life.  I am just a doll, but I can do this logic. I thought of her well, I simply had to speak it.
   "Earth, and Sky, and all between. This was Candi, and she was my friend. She had been a dancer, yes, but was that wrong, to use the gifts she had been given by her genetic creation  to benefit others and make them happy? Were she gifted with the mind that can envision a cure for Cancer,, perhaps,, but she was who she was,, and benefited all she met,,, sh, she loved. She promised anyone anything to help others, and tried  hard to live that promise, every day."

There's a sound, an audible sound you make, the moment you conceive an idea gifted by Higher Powers. I cannot describe it, but you will make it, and when you do, you will recall perhaps this doll's comment, and understand.
   I made that sound. Miss Shelly's words came to me then, as the utmost truth, and also the most fallible half told lie.
   “I need not describe the feelings of those whose dearest ties are rent by that most irreparable evil, the void that presents itself to the soul, and the despair that is exhibited on the countenance. It is so long before the mind can persuade itself that she whom we saw every day and whose very existence appeared a part of our own can have departed forever—that the brightness of a beloved eye can have been extinguished and the sound of a voice so familiar and dear to the ear can be hushed, never more to be heard",,, BUT, the body can return! and,, and she offered to help me in any way,,, and I cannot understand, I am not human..."

      The flight back was difficult, the thunderstorms mentioned in the newspaper had converged, anvil headed monsters  blinked and growled in the distance, hurrying upon the Cape in dramatic fashion. It took no time to actuate the machinery in the basement, more time really to extend the lightning rods and uncap and fill the anionic and ionic storage mediums.  I would get perhaps this one chance- Though I was correct in my assumptions, and felt correct in my postulates to be tested that night, I also knew the law regarding humans and their attachment to their bodies, even after they enter the Forever Broken.  A woman found guilty of harvesting an unused body would be sent to the Sanitarium, near Carfax. But I am a doll, ungoverned by their law, the penalty for catching me would be to simply 'switch me off', disregarding my pleas not to forever break me. This same lack of law governing my sentence, lacked the very crime itself as a doll harvesting a corpse was not truly a crime to a human, proven in my postulate that the human was gone from the body as the medium discharged their force from the galvanized medium. Surely they would all see that, wouldn't they?
 There would be no flying back to the Cemetery not in this torrential downpour, so I took an inordinate amount time hitching up the horse to the carriage, but painted black, it would be hard to discern in the dark, obfuscated by the torrents that fell in sheets from the thunderheads above.

  . . . To Be Continued , , ,