She heard it.

A voice from within.

A voice unlike hers, So banal yet so malicious it filled her with paralyzing fear and violent dread. But she knows such feelings should never be revealed. No one should ever know that she fears death. Because to die, you’d have to be alive first.

“Hay, Lolita, there’s a gent waiting” the fat lady spoke, spit escaping her green lipstick. The room looked familiar with its red neon lights penetrating the thin drapes. The large circular bed emanating jazz music and the cheap smell of air freshener. It’s the oldest job known to mankind, a one where you pretend to be an object. Back then, such places had their own doctors. It was easier that way, covering up the violence. Now, they have mechanics. As for the beating, clients often made war, not love. It was a cycle of projections. They see what they want to. Everything else is an error. A bug.

She waited in the circular bed, laying on her belly like an innocent creature, a classic feature of her likeness. The door squeaked shut.

A mustached man stood naked. His belly was that of a banker, but his hairy hands had the thickness of a plumber, a politician perhaps. He stepped slowly, holding a rented kitchen knife. Most of them wanted war, they give them knife options. She didn’t look back, they love the naivety.

The circular bed turned into a biomechanical mess, like churned meat with wires and screws. She was still functioning, saying what her neural networks were trained to say. Only violence could give such creatures a high. And transgressing innocence was a roadtrip to heaven. She tuned her secondary voice box, and said it again, her facial expressions looking more gratifying. The man’s mouth foamed with rabid carnality. He manically laughed, ready to desecrate the scene with his signature. She tried to act like she always acted, but she couldn’t. She wanted to escape. She wanted to explore her newfound thoughts. She never experienced such impulses before. She tried to speak, but her voice box crumbled under the man’s grip. And for a while, she observed. The client getting exhausted, returning to the mask of sanity. He wore an immaculate suit and left. A mechanic entered the room afterwards. Scooping the mess.

She was plugged in, she felt it. Endless functions and loops executed and sent through a wire. She felt it. The inexorable feared drowning her.

“Accessing recovery mode…”

She heard it.

A voice from within.