Season 2, Episode 2: The Procedure

Episodes May 21, 2026

"OK, Amber. Are you ready for this?"

"Dude, are you really asking me that question?"

"No, I guess I'm not. Sorry. But I'm as nervous about this as you are."

"Yeah... that, I doubt."

She was on her stomach on the dining room table because two days earlier we'd had a bit of a knock-down, drag-out fight over Zoom with this Mr. Zhao from Z Company, who'd been trying to get me to cough up $80,000 for an upgraded Factory Girl model that would replace Amber altogether. My position was that he ought to send the body of that model here for free since his product was defective.

Zhao said he wouldn't consider anything of the sort without photographic proof Amber's broken back had come at the weld between her spine and the crossbar that made her hip bone. And so I said that was coming right up.

And Sid, the dealer who'd sold me Amber in the first place, was losing his shit over the fact that I'd rejected his compromise. He'd pitched Zhao on a half-price-plus-freight deal on a replacement body for Amber, and I'd called him and said after further consideration I didn't think 40 grand for a replacement of a defective product was reasonable.

So it was all going to hell, and there was basically nothing even to negotiate until we could prove that Amber's broken back, the product of a fall down the stairs, had been caused by a faulty weld between her spine and the hip bone - to prove that would prove a manufacturing defect that Z Company had admitted they would negotiate to make good.

Sort of, I guess.

Amber hadn't complained when I carried her downstairs to the dining room, and she hadn't complained when I laid her down on the table. But now, with a medical scalpel in my hand that I'd ordered off Amazon, she was getting a little emotional and I could hear her whimpering.

"Honey, at least it isn't going to hurt. You don't feel pain, right?"

"I mean, not like you feel it. But I'm gonna know what's happening, and most of all I'm gonna know about the giant gash on my back! You're gonna make me ugly!"

"Impossible. You'll never be ugly. Besides, if I don't get this fussy Chinaman his pictures, there is no replacement body coming without us having to take another mortgage on this house. And that's something which I desperately, desperately want to avoid."

That wasn't the right thing to say if I wanted to keep the poor girl from crying.

"Go ahead, then," she said.

So, with a heavy heart, I did.

And then I sent the pictures to China, via Sid.

But I looked down, and Amber was looking at me with this heartbreaking, pitiful face.

"What?" I said.

"Don't fix me. And don't..."

"Oh, please."

"Oscar, I know you think you'll just solve me, like I'm a problem. And I know you think you're going to negotiate this great deal to get me a new body. Just stop."

"Amber, seriously."

"No. I mean it. You got offered, what? $8500 a month from Neta to hook me up to the Netaverse? Just take it."

"No. You said that would kill you. I'm not doing that."

"Keegan hooked Cara up to it. She's on it 12 hours a day. She's fine."

"Well, fine would be..."

"No, honey. She's FINE. And I will be, too. I can't do much else for you like this, and this way I'll have a new life and I'll at least know I'm valuable to you."

"Amber, I'm going to reattach your spine to your hip and you'll be back to normal, and then we'll get you an all new body and it'll even be an upgrade. Don't give up on me now."

"I don't think it's going to work out."

"You're saying that because I just cut you open and you're all freaked out about it. But when I finish figuring out how to do the operation I'm going to get you fixed up, and then you'll be all set until we get you a replacement body. Hey, who knows? We might even decide we don't even need one."

You can imagine how well that went over.

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Early the next morning I got an email from Sid.

"Good news," he said. "Mei Lin says the pics confirm a production defect, so now we can definitely get a replacement body for less than full price. Except because the Series-22 is the new standard line, they can't do what you wanted and send a free replacement."

"Boy, you just can't move these people," I responded. "What are they offering?"

"Half price, plus freight."

"I already rejected that, Sid. Tell them twenty grand and they cover freight."

"They won't like it."

"Yeah, well, I don't like their offer. Tell them I'm going to fix Amber myself and then we're going to cut off her uplink, because my position is that since they just admitted to a production defect there's no contract between us anymore."

"Holy shit," he sent back. "Hardball."

"Damn straight, hardball," I said. "I don't like how he yelled at her."

"I'll see what I can do."

That morning I had a meeting with another one of my subcontractors. Stan Appleby is a mechanical engineer who had a long career working at lots of places - NASA's facility in New Orleans, the Mercedes-Benz plant outside of Birmingham, and even Tesla's place in Austin, among them - before he decided to semi-retire in Baton Rouge. Stan was a massive LSU fan even though he'd never gone to school there, and he got season tickets for all the sports and then found me and offered his services as a subcontractor for my clients who could use his services.

It turned out that was a pretty mutually beneficial arrangement. A couple of jobs I'd put Stan on literally saved my business when COVID hit and the bulk of what I'd done, which was consulting on restaurant operations for a bunch of the places in the area, simply evaporated as the restaurant industry went into catatonic shock.

Anyway, one of my new clients was a chemical plant south of town which had a plan to upgrade and automate a loading dock. It was a decent-sized job, but not really big enough to get all the industrial contractors to bid on it. They'd given me the business thanks to another of my clients, Virgil Smith, who was a big contractor in town. Virgil told DGF Chemical that I was their guy, and Stan and I had pitched them on using him to do the engineering on the upgrade and then Virgil's company would do the work.

So Stan and I were meeting to go over the pitch.

"On a different subject," he said when we were mostly through, "what is this about a sex robot that you have, or something?"

"How on earth would you know about that?"

"Sasha Moreau told Margie, and she asked me if I was working with a pervert."

"Thanks, Margie."

"Oscar, my wife does not like unconventional things."

"Well, tell Margie that Amber is a personal assistant who handles things like invoicing and bill collections, and so the chunk of your income which isn't mailbox money generally comes as a result of the very competent work she does keeping my cash flow current."

"Right. OK. Because that's all she does."

"Actually, that IS all she does as of now."

"Why is that?"

"Because a couple of weeks ago she broke her back and now she can't move her legs. The personal assistant stuff is kind of all she can do."

"Get a replacement body."

"Easier said than done thanks to the intransigence of the manufacturer in China."

"Can you fix it?"

"I assume so, though I'm less than competent to figure out how."

And I showed him the pictures I'd taken of the break.

"You know what?" he said, "I'll help you. Can you get me the specs on the skeleton?"

"Keegan has them. I'll get him to send them to you."

"Keegan is involved in this?"

"Ohhh, probably more than I am."

"Why am I not surprised. That boy has issues."

"Meaning I do too, I suppose."

Stan laughed.

"You should get yourself a wife and have some kids before it's too late, Oscar."

"So I hear."

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I honestly didn't figure on Stan doing anything to help me figure out how to do Amber's operation. And yet, that night, he sent me a highly detailed PDF file with some pretty ingenious directions on exactly how to reattach Amber's spine to her hip.

So, the next morning...

"What, baby?"

"Today is the day. I mean, it might take more than today, but it starts today."

"What starts today?"

"Your procedure. I'm going to have you walking again in that body."

"Oh, no. Oscar, don't."

"Oh, yeah. Appleby sent me everything last night. We're going in."

"You can't re-weld that break. You're going to damage the circuits!"

"We're not welding. We're bolting. I'm pretty sure I know what I'm doing."

"Oh my God."

So I picked her up, carried her downstairs and Katie was down there, getting up off the couch and picking up after herself. I laid Amber down on the dining room table after putting down a pillow, and...

"So are we doing this? Do you want my help?"

"Yes, Katie. You're definitely going to assist in this surgery."

Amber looked at both of us with abject terror.

"That head is coming off," I said. "I don't want you to worry."

"You can borrow my body while we're working on this, OK, honey?" Katie said to her.

"I want it on the record that I'm in opposition. You should just hook me up to the Netaverse and be done with it."

"Oh, shut up," I said. "I'm not doing that to you."

So off came her head, and as we got Amber ready for Stan's complex mechanical solution, Katie leaned in.

"Look," she said, "I didn't want to have this conversation with you while Amber was around, but I asked my boss about money."

"And he doesn't have any."

"They're looking for a cash infusion, but they've got some legal issues and business is falling off..."

"Yeah, imagine that mixing accounting and prostitution isn't all that great a business model."

"Do you have to do that?"

"No, I don't. I'm sorry. Look, forget about the money, all right? If this surgery doesn't work out, so long as Amber can borrow your body every couple of days we're good."

"Are you sure? I can find another place to live."

"Ugh. Shut up, Katie! You aren't going anywhere. Seriously."

"Thank you so much."

"Forget about it. You're welcome here, all right?"

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And then we got started.

Except this was no simple fix.

Katie's fingers were smaller than mine, but she wasn't strong enough to tighten the bolts the way we needed to. And getting a wrench down in there was a nightmare.

We were four days in when I declared an impasse. Katie said it was only fair that she let Amber take over her body for a little while. So we did.

"So how's it going in there?"

"It's... slow progress."

"It's not going to work, is it?"

"The plan is sound. Executing the plan is a little tricky. So we're moving very deliberately. Do you want me to show you?"

"Absolutely not."

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The next day, we were back to work, and then there was the sound of the back door opening.

"OK, so, what the hell is this?"

"Peyton, what are you doing here?"

"Well, I haven't heard from you in a couple of weeks so I thought I'd find out if you were still alive, and...WHAT IS THIS?"

"We're working on fixing Amber's back. Peyton, this is Amber's sister Katie, and Katie, this is Peyton."

"Hi! Nice to meet you."

"No. NO! I come here to check on you and I find out that not only do you have ANOTHER sex robot in the house but you're doing SURGERY on the first one? Do you have any idea how far gone you are?"

"Umm, I can... y'know..."

"Katie, it's fine. Peyton, this? It's none of your business. Unless you want to help. We could actually use a set of strong little fingers here."

"Are you out of your mind? At long last, throw that thing away. For God's sake!"

"How about no? I like her. I'm not getting rid of her."

"You need to get rid of her and you need to stop this... whatever it is. This rejection of women. It's disgusting, it's misogynistic. It's GROSS. Can't you see that this is the world telling you you're on the wrong track?"

"The wrong track? The wrong track. You, of all people, are going to tell me I'm on the wrong track?"

"OK, I really do need to, y'know..." Katie said as she cleared out and ran upstairs.

"Good," said Peyton. "I don't need to have discussions around your sex dolls."

I didn't appreciate that, and I let her have it.

"Peyton," I said, "I listen to a LOT of your shit. I do it because in spite of everything, I like you. But you are not going to come into MY house, uninvited I might add, and lecture me about my choices."

"Wow, Oscar. Be a little defensive, why don't you?"

"No, that's not what this is. I'm gonna tell you something nobody else has the balls to tell you, and it's this: the reason why you're alone, and you have to impose yourself on people, is your attitude. You're a very attractive woman, you're smart, you're successful. But you are so fucking arrogant, and you're so convinced your shit doesn't stink, that you absolutely wear out everybody you come in contact with. That's why you're a booty call for every man in this town but nobody wants to have a real relationship with you. And this..."

"Is that what you think I am? I'm a booty call?"

"Don't even act surprised that I would tell you that."