Guilt|Pleasure

THE DOLL: Part 1

"He's a what?"

"MX2426," Oshihara Mamoru repeated, the annoyance in his voice was thinly veiled. "He's an experimental Doll."

"Which tells me nothing," I said and rubbed out the half-smoked cigarette that had lost its taste. "A Doll that does what?"

Oshihara sighed and massaged the bridge of his nose with his index and forefinger.

"That's privileged information," he said. "Your job's to find him and bring him back. You don't need to know anything else."

I regarded him for a few moments, then glanced down at the glossy photo of the young man I was to find. I pressed the lighter into the near empty packet of cigarettes and stood up. In the over-sized meeting room with only three of us, the slightest sound of my chair being pushed back was horrendously loud.

"Have a nice day gentlemen," I said as I shoved the cigarettes into my jacket pocket.

"Mamoru," Crawford said, his first word since I’d come into the room. "Tell him."

"Mr. Crawford...."

"Tell him," Crawford said again. The words and the voice were absolute.

I halted by the doorway, thoroughly intrigued by the secret Oshihara desperately wanted to keep.

"Yes, sir," Oshihara finally said.

I didn't move from the doorway.

"Mr. Lynch, something very valuable has been stolen from me. I would pay any price to have it back," Crawford said and gestured for me sit back down. "I understand you've never failed."

"I've been fortunate," I said. "What does this valuable thing mean to you?"

He lowered his eyes and stared fixedly at the photo on the table.

"He's a very expensive experiment," he said. "Something that took hundreds of millions of dollars and over twenty years to create."

I made my way back to my seat at the long conference table as he spoke.

"In some way," he continued. "he's like a child I gave birth to and raised. And then, someone took him away."

"This Doll was taken by force?"

"We don't know. We could assume so," Oshihara said. "The last person seen with him was Dr. Soma, one of many scientists on several teams developing this Doll. Dr. Soma has not been seen since the Doll disappeared."

"Would this Doll know how to leave the facility on its own?"

"Hardly. He was conceived and raised in a laboratory, has never seen nor experienced anything outside the artificial environment we’ve given him."

"So what is he?"

"He's a synthetic human. He looks, feels and reacts like a human. However, his behavior and emotions compliment the user's desires."

"So he's an interactive toy," I said.

Oshihara shrugged. "In layman's terms I suppose. But he isn’t a toy."

"What do you hope to gain from the investment you placed in this Doll?" I asked, my interest piqued. I looked at the picture again. There was nothing about the young man that looked artificial.

"It is what a thing like him can return to us," Crawford said. He drew the picture toward himself. "A thing that will always be devoted to you and love you unconditionally. A thing that can give you emotional and physical pleasure whenever and wherever you like, and tells you it will love you forever. And it could and it will. A thing that will bear the face and touch and scent of the one you love or a lost love." Crawford looked up at me and tapped at the picture with a fingertip. "An ideal, Mr. Lynch. The perfect lover all of us has imagined and searched for all of our lives.”

"You assume all of us look for the same thing in our lovers," I said after a while. "What you described can easily fit the description of a family pet. Well, except for the physical pleasure part, unless you’re into that.”

Crawford's smile widened and he broke out in a peal of laughter that echoed in the room. It sounded insane. Not what I had expected from one of the most powerful men on the East Coast.

"Mr. Crawford...," Oshihara said softly.

Crawford held up his hand and shook his head. Gradually his laughter died down into labored breathing. "I'm fine, Mamoru," he said and took out his silk handkerchief. He dabbed at his eyes which had the slightest sign of wetness at the corners. "Pardon me, Mr. Lynch."

I gave him a nod and took out my cigarette pack again. He waited patiently for me to tap out a cigarette and light it before he spoke.

"What kind of lover do you idealize, Mr. Lynch?"

"I don't idealize someone like that," I said. "I fuck who I feel like fucking. I make love to who I feel like making love to. I like a little variety in my diet."

Oshihara flinched when I cursed, but he said nothing.

"The Doll can be a whore and an intimate friend," Crawford said. "It can be whoever you want it to be, any time you wish."

"How does it know what I want?"

"Its A.I. has been programmed to be especially sensitive to the user’s needs. It can sense your desires through subtle gestures or words you communicate to it. It will know what you would like to have it do, without being told." Oshihara said. "Its body has been made specifically to heighten the pleasure of its users—"

I broke into a smile which made Oshihara stop speaking.

"What do you find so humorous about all of this?" he asked.

"You don't?" I said and took a long drag on my cigarette. "You're hiring me to bring back a sex toy—a very advanced and expensive Dutch wife."

I blew out a thin line of smoke and watched it float up toward the ceiling.

"More than a sex toy, Mr. Lynch," Crawford said. He refrained from laughing again. "My property."

He pushed the photo toward me. It slid across the polished surface of the table and rested just inches away from me.

"Twenty million dollars," he said. "Half now and the rest when you have him back here safely. I also want Soma dead."

"Twenty million covers the Doll retrieval. Soma's an additional charge."

A corner of Crawford's mouth turned up into a grin. "Of course. Would five million more suffice?"

I shrugged. "I suppose."

"No one can know about this Doll," Oshihara cut in, "or we will be forced to...."

He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't have to. I knew what he was saying. "Does this thing have a name?" I asked.

"He doesn’t have a name, just a part number. But, he will answer to ‘Kai’." Crawford said.

CHAPTER 2