Page 140 of Everdoll

I didn’t want to be trapped in an identity didn’t exist under Mina’s reign. All options except disappearing into her deep ocean, keeping everything hidden in her grasp were meaningless.

Right, this was the only way.

Two years had passed; I had tried enough, hadn’t I? What should I do now? What was the solution that wouldn’t harm her but would reignite the dried-up walls of my soul?

How should I face the outside world without Mina? The outside world was real, and I couldn’t handle real. I was utterly unsuccessful at making things real, I lacked that ability. But what about… unreal things? Could I love the fake Mina? A Mina who had no free will, who would never die for me, who would never leave me…

The fake Minas…

Wasn’t the only thing you cared about real? What happened to you?

The child Remi whispered this, but I didn’t hear him; my eyes sparkled.

I chased after reality in vain. What’s real anyway? What determines its fakeness?

I settled at my desk and began carving the wax head. My mind had gone quiet, I wasn’t thinking about anything anymore. Crafting the face that haunted me was a healing descent. It was proof of my madness, my weakness. A familiar wreckage I couldn’t stop clinging to…

There was no need to escape from the fakeness. From the very beginning, it was in my veins.

She was drawn to me because of my fakeness. She thought I wasn’t human—wasn’t real. But when she discovered what I truly was, everything gone wrong.

When both of us became human, things got complicated.

All the destructive and complex feelings, expectations, and other external factors had come between us. Now I understood why Mina was afraid of me being human. This girl was truly superior to me. Little Mina had seen this coming, had observed it carefully, and had decided what she needed to run away from. But I was persistent, and at the time, I was too ignorant to see it.

A relationship between two real people cannot work. One of them must be without free will. Two complex souls cannot stay together.

Human love was always doomed to end.

But the bond between the artificial and the human? That was eternal.

Perhaps if the roles were reversed, I could find peace again. I could drift off to sleep in that familiar heavenly feeling. Perhaps… I could live like this forever.

Wasn’t that the safest way? I had no other way to calm my mind without harming her. If I couldn’t have the real one, I would make as many fakes as I wanted.

This was it… Absolute solution.

The first sculpture was too cute. A relic from the days Mina wore pink lace and ribbons. I dressed her in detail, pinning her favorite clips into her hair. I still remember the night, back when we were kids, when I first started counting her hair. It took a week of sleepless devotion: 127,659 strands. Two years ago, that number dropped to 119,932. I kept meticulous records of her eyebrows and lashes, too, ensuring the wax model replicated Mina with surgical precision. It had to be perfect. A breathing copy of my dearest…

Perfect? Didn’t you hate ‘perfect’?

When I placed the final strand and leaned in to kiss her glass cheeks, a flush rose to my ears. I wasn’t sure where the embarrassment came from. Was it because I felt disrespectful toward her, or did I find it pleasurable to kiss even her copy? Such a freak. I kissed her again. But the stone wasn’t enough. I wanted Mina’s warmth. I needed something else.

Something close to real. Perhaps a hyper-realistic robot or… A clone.

All my senses snapped back to life. My body, which had been drifting like a ghost for two years, remembered how to move. My heart was stumbling in my chest, as if it were learning how for the very first time.

I realized I had wasted time. I went to the storage room and took Mina’s belongings. I built a secret passage to my gray-and-black-toned room. A passage only I could enter, leading to my paradise at the end of the long corridor. I filled that artificial garden with everything tied to her. Her books neatly lined on a shelf, her gifts in a blue box, and for the sculpture… a small chair where pink-dressed Mina would sit. Stroking her curly hair, Johanna’s voice echoes in my mind.

You treat her as a doll.

A shiver ran down my spine, but I kept stroking the sculpture’s hair, smiling.

Until now, I had handled all my work through the committee. In the two years without Mina, I had been as useful as a robot. I became one of the most productive scientists in Mars history, bringing to life all sorts of interesting concepts like dream television. However, I had stopped touching science for my own reasons. I destroyed stupid device and never touched anything for Mina again.

But now, I was serving something related to her again. I was serving her again. I was the luckiest man. I brought my equipment to the new Loxton mansion in one of Lesse’s remote corners.

Using her DNA, I completed the nuclear transfer and settled the embryos into massive glass-walled bioreactors acting as incubation chambers. Under the dim light, the silence of my lab was broken only by the whir of servo motors and the click of assistant androids’ limbs. I continued working with passion, tirelessly, forming a sacred rite.