Season 2, Episode 3: Recovery

Episodes May 21, 2026

Amber and I had been fighting.

And I'd been fighting with the Z Company.

Plus I'd been sort-of fighting with Katie.

I'll start with Amber.

She did NOT take that initial exploratory incision well. And it was understandable that it would freak her out - people get cut on knowing that the cut will heal and it still gives most perfectly normal humans the heebie-jeebies. For an android or robot or Factory Girl, whatever we were calling Amber, knowing that her silicone skin was going to forever carry a 10-inch glue scar that might occasionally decide to open back up? Sure.

Except that incision was the key to proving - as we did - that her broken back was a production defect at the Z Company factory. Which was the ticket to Amber getting a new body.

It was also the necessary precursor to the surgery we were trying to perfect. And, OK, that was a bit more of an iffy prospect than even the new replacement body we were negotiating for.

But after Keegan had brought Cara over and she'd filled Amber's head with how awesome her job was as an AI tour guide in the Netaverse, the fact that Neta had approached me about, essentially, giving Amber the same job had filled up her mind.

To back up on this, in case you aren't up to speed... Keegan could explain this better than I can, but Z Company has some sort of proprietary code with their Factory Girl robots that makes them ideal AI agents within the Netaverse, and so Neta had for a year or so been trying to procure Factory Girls to plug them into their little virtual-reality fantasyland.

When Keegan got Cara, he immediately plugged her in. That netted him a cool $8500 per month, which the way he saw it would make her a profitable investment in just more than seven months even without anything else she could do for him. It was supposed to be a violation of the terms of service on his support contract with the Z Company, but it's not like Keegan cared about that. He knew more about how Cara was coded than anybody at Z did. There was the issue of a warranty, but after seeing what little respect Z had for a warranty in Amber's case he didn't care about that, either.

Moreover, Keegan set up a bunch of trapdoors in Cara's AI code - and he did this with Amber as well - so that no reference to the Netaverse would ever get transmitted to Z's servers. They weren't going to find out about it.

And when Amber found out about all of that, it factored in pretty heavily in her attempt to just give up. She didn't want me to try to fix her back, even though I'd gotten Stan Appleby to help design a solution with a (somewhat) reasonable chance of working. And she said she thought it was a waste of time trying to replace her body.

"Just plug me into the Netaverse full-time," she said. "That way I can make you some money, and you can either replace me, or... go get married or something."

I guess this was her way of trying to let go. Maybe it would have been a good move to do that.

But I didn't want to.

I liked her. I wanted to have Fun Amber back. So I told her no, and she threw a fairly cute tantrum about it. And then she refused to talk to me even though I pulled her head off and gave her a long reset before putting that head on Katie's body.

She just set about doing housework and wouldn't say a word.

Things weren't a lot better on the negotiations with Z Company for a replacement body. Initially, after we submitted the photos of Amber's spine showing that her back had broken at the weld between the spine and her hip bone, they'd grudgingly offered to replace the body for half price plus freight. Which came to forty grand and change.

And Sid, the broker I'd used to buy Amber from Z Company in the first place, was really proud of that deal. I said forget it. I'd paid six grand to buy Amber in the first place - it was a lowball introductory offer which was really an inducement to place Factory Girls with American customers so they could collect data to train their AI for future models, which I picked up on right away. Why would I pay seven times that price to compensate them for remedying a defective product?

So we were haggling, and it got pretty ugly.

I went to see Drew Haggard, who's my attorney and has been my best friend since college, and asked him what he thought about this.

Drew was NOT a fan of the Amber saga. But he'd met Amber and confessed that he could see the attraction. He'd gotten divorced not long before and I could tell that if it wasn't for the fact that he was taking up with one of the paralegals in his office, he might get into this game himself.

"Look," he said, "the problem we've got here is that it's going to be almost impossible to sue these guys for product liability or breach of contract."

"Why not?"

"Because it's a sex doll company, Oscar. Come on. You want that in the newspaper?"

"Nobody reads the paper anymore, dude. But yeah, I take your point."

"But this does sort of cut both ways. There are aggressive things you can do which will make life difficult for them. This Netaverse thing - if your guy Keegan can fix it so they don't find out, that's a pretty obvious solution. In four months Amber will pay for that replacement body."

I was looking at my phone, because I'd just gotten a text from Sid.

"Less than four months, from the looks of it. Apparently Z has come down and they want 30 grand now. Plus they say they'll include a replacement head which has 'upgrades' from the current Amber."

"I'd be suspicious of that."

"Yeah, me too. On the other hand..."

"What?"

"That replacement head could hook up to the Netaverse and earn me that $8500 a month."

"You don't think they'd have better network security as part of those upgrades?"

"I don't think they've got anything Keegan can't take apart and recode any kind of way he pleases. He's that good."

"Well, then, maybe you're getting there."

"Except we're still five times my initial cost, and it rankles."

Drew shrugged.

"And you thought this would be simpler than just finding a nice girl."

"Yeah, it's terrible. Hey, how are those alimony payments going?"

He threw me out of his office for that smartass remark. I couldn't really blame him. I told him he was due to host our weekly guy's night out and he hadn't picked a bar yet, and so he said to tell the others we were meeting at a dive bar just off LSU's campus.

"The Library? Why? So we can ogle a bunch of blue-haired college kids with nose rings?"

"Mary Ellen bartends there. It's her second job."

"You should pay her better."

"Now I'm REALLY throwing you out."

--------------------------

I made it home, my phone ringing just as I came in through the back door. It was Appleby.

"I haven't talked to you in a few days," he said. "How'd the surgery go?"

"Well, I'm not finished with it yet."

Amber looked up at me. She was doing the dishes in Katie's body and she had that mean look she was always getting when she was in that body. It was strange - in her own body, she most certainly didn't have a Resting Bitch Face. But Katie sure did, and in that body so did Amber.

I smiled at her. She went back to the dishes.

"I'm not an electrical engineer, you know," Stan was saying.

"Wait, I'm sorry. What was that?"

"I'm just saying, this cage design with the bottom strut will hold that spine to that hipbone. But there might be some play in there. My big concern is whether your girl's legs are gonna work properly, though. I can't even assess what damage got done to her circuits, and I wouldn't know how to fix that anyway."

"Look," I said, "Can you just come over and see what I've done so far?"

"Actually, yeah. I'm sort of in your neighborhood and I've got some time, so, sure. Be there in ten."

I hung up and looked at Amber. And she looked at me but didn't say anything.

"You actually have to talk to me right now," I said.

"What?"

"Stan Appleby is coming over to look at this contraption we built into your back, and my guess is when he's done we'll be able to finish the operation."

"I told you. I don't care."

"Oh, stop it. Yes, you do."

"No. I don't. Like I said, you should just put me in the Netaverse."

"Who's the boss here? It's not you. I already told you I'm not doing that. You have to live in the real world with me. Sorry!"

She gave me a real stink-eye look for that, but a few minutes later Stan came over and she was friendly to him.

And he was quite taken with Amber, which I thought was funny. Stan was one of the people who had expressed disapproval over me bringing her home in the first place. Now he got it.

Before I knew what was happening, Stan was showing Amber - who was in Katie's body - all of the intricacies of the solution he'd designed to bolt her backbone down to her hip bone.

"Oscar actually did a really good job implementing this," he said. "You should be proud of him."

"Oh, she is," I said. Which earned me another stink-eye.

But then Stan made Amber turn a wrench for him, because her fingers were small enough to get into the hole and tighten down a couple of the bolts on the side of the cage we'd built around that connection.

Then he surprised me with a question.

"Do you have any zip-ties?" he asked.

"Yeah, actually. What are those for?"

"We'll use them to stabilize this thing so we can tighten the bolts the way they need to be tightened."

I rolled my eyes.

"Why didn't I think of that? Damn."

"Because you aren't a mechanical engineer."

Amber beamed at him.

-----------------------------------------

A few minutes later, Stan had bugged out, saying he had a thing, and I was putting Amber's head on her old body for the big test.

"Well? What's the verdict?"

"Seems like I can move 'em. So I guess it's a success."

"How about that enthusiastic gratitude! You want to try to stand up?"

She nodded, so I helped her turn over and get off the table. And...

"Whoa! OK, this is weird."

"Uh oh. What's the problem?"

"I can't... get my legs to move back."

"What, like you're just bent over?"

"Well..."

And she straightened up, but now it was like she was sticking out her butt.

"I guess it'll do," she said.

"Can you keep your balance this way, Amber?"

"Gonna find out!"

"Well, when people have a bad injury like this it'll oftentimes require learning how to walk again. I guess it wouldn't be a surprise if that's your situation."

"It's weird, though. Like, there's no reason why I can't move my legs back. I mean, the connection is where it's supposed to be."

"You mean your hip, right? Like that bar didn't rotate when we attached it."

"Right. I saw it. This is..."

"I wonder if it's a circuitry problem."

That was the wrong thing to say, and I regretted it immediately when I saw her reaction.

"OK," I said, trying to change the subject, "let's get you comfy on the bed, because the final piece de resistance is yet to come."

"Really? What's that?"

"The gluing."

"Oh, for crying out loud. Just take my head off and do it here. I can't even stand the thought of the scar you're going to give me."

So I did, but before I got started, I recruited some help by putting Katie's head back on.

"Well? Is it over? Did it work?"

"Sort of."

"What does that mean?"

"She's reattached, and she can move her legs. And she can walk, but..."

"But what?"

"It's a little like Old Lady Amber at this point. I'm not sure we're a 100 percent success."

"I mean, she ought to count herself lucky. Anybody else would have trashed her. Or done the Netaverse thing with her."

"Yeah, she's not quite at the full gratitude stage just yet."

"Is that why her head is off?"

"Yeah. I need some help gluing her back together. If I'm pressing the edges together, can you smear some Sil-Poxy in the crease where the incision is?"

"Sure. How are you gonna hold it closed so the glue cures?"

"I don't know. Open to ideas."

Katie smiled, and said she had one.

It wasn't bad.

By that night, Amber was walking around, albeit not in the most athletic way imaginable. She even managed...

...a smile.

The next day she was happily doing the secretary thing with me in the office and Keegan called. I put him on speaker.

"Hey," he said, "I sent you the preliminary report on the VS Industries hack. These are some slippery bastards, but I think we're getting there. Haven't tied this to our boy Dan Cole yet, though. Maybe he's not involved."

"Virgil thinks so," I said. "I don't know how happy he'll be if he finds out he's wrong. By the way, you're on speaker. Amber's here."

"Hey, Keegan!"

"Hey, honey. Oh, I forgot to ask how you and Cara got along."

"Fine. Well..."

"Go ahead, Amber," I said. "Tell him."

"It's OK," said Keegan. "She's plugged into the Netaverse right now. They've got her playing Mrs. Barney the Dinosaur in an adventure two Peruvians and a kid from Malaysia are doing. Don't ask."

"So I told Oscar, she's kind of a know-it-all. It's bad."

Keegan laughed.

"Tell me about it! That's what happens when you connect your Factory Girl to the internet. She looks everything up immediately and blurts it out, and you get fact-checked with everything that comes out of your mouth!"

"I didn't like it. I'm not gonna lie. She made me feel dumb."

"It's easy. When she does that, get in her face and tell her to look it up again. As often as not she'll find something else that agrees with you and she'll back down."

"Yeah, well, that wasn't really our situation."

"Why not?" Keegan asked.

"Because she was correcting me on stuff that I'd, y'know forgot. Like a character's name from a movie, or what Virgil's secretary's name is."

"Wait," I said. "You forgot?"

"How are you forgetting things?" Keegan asked.

"I don't know! I just do sometimes, that's all."

"Run a self-diagnostic," said Keegan.

"I've done it! There's nothing wrong with me!"

"And yet you forget easy things like Patty's name?" I asked.

"OK, don't get mad at me! I haven't done anything wrong."

I picked up the phone, took it off speaker and put it to my ear.

"Do you think maybe her brain got scrambled in that fall?" Keegan asked.

"I dunno. It's possible, but..."

"Just be looking out for that," he said.

And then I hung up as Amber was tugging at my sleeve and telling me she was going off to get started on dinner, and making her way out by leaning on walls all along the way.

"I'm getting you a walker!" I yelled after her.

"No you aren't!" she said back.

Just then, my email inbox pinged. It was Mei Lin from Z Company saying she had a development, and could we do a Zoom call with me, her and Zhao. I said yes.

And five minutes later we were negotiating.

Twenty minutes after that I was in the bedroom watching Amber.