The Avross Coorporation

"Complete." The voice sounds, and so I scream. The loudest, most heart-wrenching, torn, broken sound I've ever made, emanating from deep within my shattered soul. But the pain isn't stopping. It's still increasing. I'm crying now, tears of blood, furiously, and writhing on the ground in agony as I spasm over and over again from the complete and utter oblivion I'm being held within.

When I awake, I'm back on my restrainer and we're heading to the operating chamber once again. Inside, similar machines to the ones that took my tongue all that time ago surround me, this time with spinning disks of sand-paper. They descend on my helpless, floating body, and begin removing parts and reshaping it to how they please. One goes for my legs, removing the skin and part of the muscle between my thighs, ripping it up into a bloody mess. Another goes for my chest, removing part of the outside of my stomach. One comes in with a needle and pumps up my breasts, another grinds off part of my lower back to make me more curved, and a final machine sands my face into a pulp. What is interesting about this ordeal, is that although I can feel the pain, and my body is still screaming at me to escape, the sensation seems like nothing compared to what I went through before, so I do not wince or move in any way as the changes undergo my precious body. Yet another robot comes in from behind me with a large drill and seems to make a hole straight from the left hand side of my back into me, before inserting a tube in the space left behind. I am now dripping blood all over the floor, and am close to falling unconscious, but I still do not care about the pain.

One robot begins the task of attaching new, plastic body parts to me. Over every part of me the others removed, it glues a replacement, skin-coloured part in it's place, seamlessly blending into my skin and making it look like it's barely there at all. Finally my face mask is refitted, with two holes for the eyes, but none for the mouth or nose, just a blank, plastic face. I start to suffocate. With no place to breathe from, I slowly start to die, and yet I do not care. Skilfully, and with much precision, I see the drill robot come up to my neck and create another hole straight through to my wind-pipe, and place a plastic tube into it. The suffocation stops, and I realise that I am breathing through the small hole in the side of my neck. Operation complete, the surgical machines move away, and another arm, holding a paint can, arrives, and sprays me all over with a glossy finish, hiding the blood and plastic. Finally, after it's completed it's job, my hanger glides away from the operation room and into what I can only describe as a packaging line. Robotic arms gliding everywhere, carrying polystyrene, instruction manuals and charging cables into branded Avross cardboard boxes onto a conveyor belt. The restrainer rolls over into a queue with a bunch of others, all holding people just like me; glossy and faceless, essentially robots. After a short wait, my restrainer lurches forward and I am dropped into a box. Robotic arms push me into the fetal position and place me into my cardboard prison, the contours of my plastic face fitting perfectly into the polystyrene of the packaging. I feel a tube being attached to the hole in my back, presumably to keep me fed, and the box is sealed.

In total darkness I am transported from the conveyor belt to an awaiting lorry, then to a plane and another lorry before finally stopping, days later, in a large, empty room. I hear voices, two men chatting quietly,

"Here's the latest batch."

"Cool, we were running low."

"If you'd just sign here please."

"Ok, great ... there, that OK?"

"Yep, perfect, thanks."

"Thanks, have a nice day!"

"You too."

After a while of waiting, listening to the man grunting as he moves boxes around, I am carried into a large, echoey chamber full of people chatting and loud noises. Suddenly, I realise. I'm in a shop, about to be sold as a robot to whoever happens to be next in line to buy the latest model. I try to scream, to wobble, to make any sort of indication that I am not, in fact, a robot, but, of course, I have no mouth and no tongue. Any movement at all, in fact, is met with such an enormous, searing pain that I stop without a second thought, and vow never to do that again. I am placed on what I can only assume is a shelf, and simply lie there as I wait for somebody to come over and purchase me forever.

After several days of customers coming and going, I am finally picked up by somebody and carried towards the cashier, I assume. The group I'm with appears to be a family, clearly very excited at the thought of purchasing one finally.

"Mom, Mom, Mom! Are we really getting one, finally? All my friends have one, and they get carried about all day, it's soooo unfair!" cries a young boy, probably 9 or 10 years old.

"Yes, we are. Your father and I have finally decided that it would benefit all of us to have another helping hand around the place, so remember, it's only yours to play with when it's not doing something for the rest of us, OK?" the Mother says, sternly.

The dad adds, "Remember, please don't damage it though. It cost us a lot of money, money we could have spent on other things, but we felt like it was the right decision."

I am carried out to a car and bundled in the back, family still chatting away madly, obviously very excited about their purchase. The journey back to their house is a hot, sticky one, but I don't mind – nothing compares to the pain I'd experienced earlier.

I'm carried into what I can only assume in the family's living room for the unboxing. After much scraping of chairs and moving of furniture, the dad asks, "Are we ready?" and a couple of other voices all enthusiastically cry "Yes!"

"All right then, let's get it out!"

I hear the sound of tape being ripped off my box, and out of the corner of my eyes I see little chinks of light. A loud "Ooooh!" erupts in the room as they marvel at my back.

"Right, so how do we turn it on?" the father asks.

"I think it's already on, dad, it's voice controlled," the young boy replies.

"Alright then, if that's the case, stand up, robot!"

There's laughter throughout the room, and the pain in my neck starts once again, so I begin to stand. A series of awws and ahhs can be heard as my perfect, shining, curved, plastic body rises out of my box. Taking in my surroundings, I see I am in a living room, as I expected, surrounded by a man, a woman and their young boy.

"Stand on one leg!" the boy shouts, excited, and so I do. They all laugh, and I've never felt more humiliated or broken in my entire life. Standing in a stranger's living room, naked, forced to complete their every command without question or hesitation.

"Do the washing up," the Dad requests, and so I begin to walk over to their kitchen, and start cleaning the family's dishes.

"Wooo!" the boy cries, "This is great!"

The Mom and Dad seem happy too, content with their decision.

"After you've done that, weed the garden!" the Mom says, happily.

"Then tidy my room!"

"Then wash the windows!"

"Then sweep the floors!"

"Then hang out the washing!"

"Then make tomorrow's dinner!" the Mom joyfully laughs, "In fact, make all of our dinners for the next week!"

Still washing the dishes, I think about my new home, and what life will be like from now on. Giving it a bit of consideration, I decide that it is actually fairly favourable compared to the life I was living only a few days ago. Completing the dishes, fairly exhausted and very hungry, I move straight onto the gardening, kneeling down on the lawn, stark naked, removing weeds from this family's overgrown garden. The family leave me to it, getting bored of watching me, and head back inside to watch TV, leaving me in the cold as night looms over, still gardening. After several hours of this it is now almost pitch black, just the light from a nearby street light allowing me to see what I'm doing. I'm now shaking from lack of nourishment, but there's no way for me to get food as my mouth is completely covered over, and even if I could eat, I'm supposed to be a robot, nobody would even think to let me. Every time I waver though, the pain comes back, stronger than ever, so I continue into the early morning. By this point, a combination of pain, from failing to complete the task properly, starvation and sleep-deprivation overcome me, and I fall unconscious on the grass.

Slipping in and out of consciousness, every awake moment filled with excruciating pain, I lie there, in the grass, waiting for the family to notice in the morning. At about 8am the father comes out, sees me, and lets out a shout: "Come here, look! We forgot to turn the robot off, and it's run out of power!"

"Oh, that's alright, there was a charging hose thing in the box, we simply plug it in to that socket in the wall. Oh my, it has done a good job of the garden though, eh? Look at this part, perfect!" the Mom says.

"Ok, that's good, let me get it back inside then, I don't think I can manage it on my own."

I am carried back inside and a hose is connected from a socket in the wall to the hole the machine had drilled into my back, leading straight to my stomach. I feel the feed filling me up, fast - I can't taste it, but I know it's there. The huge pain is still there though, in my neck, so I immediately start to try to walk back to the garden, to finish off the job, and the hose falls out of my back.

"Oh no, look!" the father cries, realizing I'm walking away, "Wait until you're fully recharged before continuing on with your tasks."

"There, that should do it," he said, smiling.

The pain immediately stops and I am carried back to the charging hose and, once connected up again, relieved. The feed shoots inside me again, and soon my stomach is full and bulging from the pressure. With nowhere else to go, it starts to fill up my throat with food, and then my mouth fills too. Finally, only when I am truly stuffed full does the pressure elate slightly. I lie there on the floor and fall asleep. Welcome to my new life, I suppose.