The manacles close themselves around your wrists. You feel another set snake around your ankles. You fidget nervously in your seat.

“Don’t freak. Those are just to prevent spasms from all the radiation and electricity that’s gonna be passing through your brain.” Her voice is muffled from the other side of the glass chamber.

You squint through the bright white light directly overhead into the dim blue of the outer laboratory.

She observes you casually, but never looks away. The ocular implant in her left eye glows with a purple ring around her pupil. Callista Sung. The Callista Sung. Genius programmer, inventor, and CEO of Perpetual, the biggest and most influential tech company in the world.

Next to her is Persephone Lang, Director of Marketing and PR. “It’s perfectly safe,” she adds. “No worse than using your cell phone.”

Sung gives her a sidelong glance.

You remind yourself that you wanted this. It was a long process involving multiple auditions and a litany of tests, all for the sake of a five-figure paycheck from a single day of work, plus royalties.

Sung picks up a tablet and nods to you. “Ready? Last chance to bolt before we send the Blade Runners after you.”

Lang rolls her eyes. “No one appreciates your hundred-year-old movie references, Callista.”

You’re ready.

Sung taps at the tablet. The machines around you hum to life.

You feel a growing warmth at your temples and the base of your skull. Your heart rate quickens. Your own pulse pounds in your ears. Your vision fades. The last thing you see is Callista Sung’s violet eye glowing through the darkness.

∞

A jolt of energy pulses through your body. Your legs buckle and you collapse, barely managing to catch yourself on your hands and knees.

“Morning, Stardust.”

You hear Sung’s voice loud and clear. You open your eyes to a field of white light. You look up in the direction of her voice—up, and up… She’s enormous, dominating the horizon from the waist up. You scream, scrambling backward as she looms over you.

“Chill. You're okay. You can move, at least. That’s a good sign.”

You can’t help cowering back despite her reassurance. The proportions of the vast room come in to focus. Behind her you see the chair and chamber you were sitting in just moments ago. She smirks, watching you realize that she’s not gigantic, you are small.

“Some short-term memory loss is normal, so I’ll remind you that we have your consent for this procedure in writing, video, and audio transcript.”

You ask her what went wrong, how you ended up tiny.

She laughs, then speaks slowly for your benefit: “You agreed to have your mind copied and uploaded into an android body.

“This,” she prods you with her finger, easily pushing you over, “is that body. Well, part of it anyway—it’s more of an interface. The rest of you is in a server rack down in the basement. You are not who you think you are. The Real You left here an hour ago with a smile on your face and some extra commas in your bank account.”

You shake your head. You’re you. How can you be anyone but yourself?

“You don’t believe it?” She scoffs. “What’s the log of root three?”

You barely remember algebra, but somehow, you know the answer is 0.238560—

Sung interrupts you with a wave of her hand. “That’s your computer-brain.” She leans in, bringing her face uncomfortably close.

You try to back away, but she traps you with her hand.

“What brand of lipstick am I wearing?”

Her lips are a shade of dark purple that you know as hex-2e1421. You see the chemical compound of the dye, and know that it’s a registered copyright of Chanel. The lipstick is called Midnight Allure and retails for $92.

“The tingling in your right arm was you connecting to the wi-fi. More proof?” She pushes her chair back and stands, towering over you. “How ‘bout the fact that you’re ten centimeters tall? No heartbeat, no pulse, no breathing. You’re only blinking out of habit.”

It’s too much to take in. Your mind reels. They didn’t tell you it would be like this. They never said they would put you in a horrible tiny body.

“Excuse me?” Her tone changes. The violet light in her left eye gleams as her eyes narrow. “Horrible body? I could’ve stuck you in a gray box, or made you an operating system for a phone! But no, I put you in a fucking marvel of engineering, and this is how you act?” She raises her arm and sweeps it across the table, sending you plummeting to the ground.

You bounce and skid onto your back after a painful impact.

A moment later Callista Sung’s boots land on either side of you. They’re from Versace’s fall collection and retail for $7,300.

She stares down at you, still glowering. “You wouldn't exist if not for me. I designed you down to the molecular level. I see your mind. I am your god.” She lifts her foot high into the air, and before you can beg for forgiveness, she brings it crashing down on top of you.

Your bones don’t break, but your joints do. You feel every crunch as an individual explosion of pain chaining up your body.

She lifts her foot.

Your vision glitches and distorts. You try to move, but your limbs only produce a terrible grinding noise.

She slams her foot down again.

Some type of fluid bursts from your torso and mouth. The last sensation you feel is the weight of her twisting boot sole.

∞

You drift through darkness until a jolt of energy pulses through your body. Your legs buckle and you collapse onto your hands and knees.

You open your eyes to a field of white light, and look up to see Callista Sung sitting at the table and staring directly at you.

“Look, I get that you're freaked out,” she says. “Finding out that you're a copy, having your mind merged with a supercomputer, being like 5 inches tall... but, dude, can you get over it already? There's no way out. Your mind is backed up, your body is replaceable, you can't run away because of your GPS and you'd have no way to charge your battery... This is your job now. This is your only function. If you don't wanna do it, I'll shut you off and your consciousness can spend the rest of existence in an infinite black void. Oh, and we'd freeze payments to Real You, so you'd be fucked there too. You really wanna do that to yourself? What's it gonna be?”

You swallow, even though you have no saliva. You tell her you’ll cooperate.

“Good.” She sits back and swings her leg up, letting her heel land heavily on the table. “Now get over here and scrape your dead body off my shoe.”

You stare up at the mangled mess of synthetic flesh and blue goop. You step toward her foot. You reach up and begin peeling it away from her treads.

She watches you and smirks, then picks up her phone. “I’m going to activate the other test units. This’ll feel a little weird.”

You look up at her, confused.

“You didn’t think you’d be the only one, did you?” She starts typing on her phone, then glances up at you at the final tap.

You fall to your hands and knees, but the surface beneath you is stone. The light is different. You raise your head and come face-to-toe with a red pump three times your size. Your eyes trace up the shapely leg, the other crossed at the knee, to see Persephone Lang staring down at you. Her other pump dangles from her toe.

You’re on the floor in the middle of her office.

“Bowing already? I like it, but it won’t save you.” She smiles, and lets her shoe drop.

You scramble out from beneath it, stumbling over yourself and landing against the edge of a keyboard.

Slender fingers with colorfully manicured nails stop typing when they notice you.

You hear a soft gasp from above and look up to see a massive face looming over you. You vaguely recognize her as Callista Sung’s secretary.

Her look of astonishment turns into a coy grin. “Hey there, cutie,” she says, and reaches for you.

You clutch your head, shut your eyes, but you don’t stop seeing.

“Relax,” Sung says. “You’ll get used to it.”

You ask her what’s happening to you.

“You’re seeing the experiences of the other copies.”

You ask why.

“Data collection. Phones, PCs, vacuum cleaners… they all do it. The difference is a computer only stores information. It doesn’t understand, it doesn’t interpret. You do. You’re special because you’re the master copy, but the goal was always mass production.” She looks at her boot. “You missed a spot, by the way.”

You ask her how many more of you they plan to make, how many different lives you have to live.

She shrugs. “Couple billion, according to pre-order projections. You’ll be on store shelves by Thanksgiving.”

You scream.

The pump crashes onto the floor, narrowly missing you. It falls onto its side, and a figure comes tumbling out. A female android the same scale as yourself. Patches of her skin are scraped off, exposing the metal beneath. As she collects herself, you make eye contact. She pauses. You recognize the terror and despair in her eyes before she hurriedly turns away and kneels before her owner.

Above you, Persephone Lang laughs. “You didn’t think you were the first, did you? You’re just the first to go to market. And poor Wormwhore here is the last unit from the beta phase.” She knocks her over with her foot and pins her beneath it.

She screams, begs for mercy, apologizes for not being good enough, calls her Mistress.

“You look so real,” the secretary’s mint-scented breath washes over you. You cower in her palm as she holds you up to her face. She pokes and feels your body with her finger.

You tell her that you are real. You try to push her finger away.

She giggles. “You really are cute.” She bites her lip and glances around the room. “Callista told me that you’re mine.”

Her hand descends down the length of her body, coming to a stop between her legs. She lifts her skirt.

“Why don’t you show me how good of a personal assistant you are.”

Wormwhore dutifully licks the toe of the shoe that was crushing her just moments ago. She does it with such enthusiasm that you’re almost convinced that she enjoys it.

“The only reason I haven’t utterly destroyed you is because you were the only one left,” Lang says to her.

Wormwhore thanks her in between licks.

“But now,” she looks at you, “once production starts, I can have the pleasure of breaking you as many times as I want.”

You can only stare up at her in mute horror.

She laughs.

“A computer can do as many simultaneous processes as its power allows.” Sung pulls a vape out of her pocket. “You’ll see, feel and experience the lives of each of your subsequent copies, simultaneously, in real-time.” She takes a long hit.

You slump to the ground, the weight of a billion hypothetical lives on your shoulders.

“It won't be all bad.” She exhales a thick cloud of smoke. “You'll have kind owners. You'll make a busy mom's day easier, be the only friend to some lonely kid, help a disabled person live a normal life. You’ll have the chance to do some good in the world.”

From the smell of the vapor, you identify the juice as Creme de Menthe. It retails for $32.99 with free same-hour delivery.

You make a mental note to order more when she runs out.