"What the heck is this?" Amber asked looking over the contraption. "I mean, I know what it looks like, but seriously, you can't tell me this is what you were working on this whole time."
Mark cringed a little. "Well, I didn't so much 'make it' as 'put it together.' I was only doing it in my free time. They insisted on sending it in separate boxes."
Amber crossed her arms. "Okay. Who is 'they'?"
"A website... the positives reviews were TOO FAKE to be a scam. 'The Republic of Amerika.' 'The Kingdom of Canada.' 'The Second Holy Roman Empire.' 'The Free Independent City of Hong Kong.' It was obviously part of the motif. They said each one was custom built."
"It looks like a prop from a 1930s science fiction series."
"My grandpa loved those," Mark said simplistically.
"Oh. Sorry," Amber said sincerely. She leaned over the table looking down at the toy. "So does it actually do anything? Like sparkle or something?"
Mark pushed up on his glasses. "It had some odd internal parts. I was strictly warned not to mess with those. They were really going for the retro-style." Amber picked it up. "HEY!"
"Don't worry, I'm not going to break your new toy," she said turning it over in her hands.
Mark sometimes wondered why he hung out with Amber, then again, she was one of the few people who ever paid him any attention.
"Hey Mark! Zap!" Amber point at him and pulled the trigger... both were shocked when a bolt of light came out of the toy, then by chance bounced off of Mark's glasses, hit Amber instead.
Amber stood at attention as her entire body glowed.
Amber had always been taller than him, but she grew taller ever so slightly. Amber hadn't been unattractive before, but in the glow her figure became somewhat, exaggerated. But that was nothing compared to the rest of the changes.
Amber's skin became hairless and shiny, he couldn't tell if it was metal, plastic, latex, or something else entirely. Her skin turned bright orange, seemingly losing any finer details.
Her clothes vanished, but Mark saw that she now lacked nipples, a belly button, and her crotch was flat and smooth like a doll. Her feet morphed into digigrated paws. Her tail bone grew into a literal orange plastic tail in the shape of fluffy fur. Her hands morphed into something resembling padded claws but with a thumb. Her hair vanished completely as her head became came that of a wolf. Her eyes became reflective, like glass, the insides giving the shine of camera lens'. Dark brown appeared along her back, tail, and shoulders, then up to her forehead. Instead of mold lines, faint blue glowing line formed around her neck, shoulders, hips, knees, and other joints, giving the impression of segmented pieces.
The robot knelt and held up the ray gun in both hands to Mark. Bewildered at the whole thing, Mark witlessly took the ray gun.
The anthro-wolf robot stood up at attention.
Mark finally managed to stutter out, "A-Amber, is that you?"
The robot replied casually, "Oh I have a serial number and model number and everything, but I know you won't remember any of it, so just continuing to call me 'Amber', or anything for that matter, it's your right to use whatever name you want for me. Surprised you don't wanna call me 'Fluffy' or 'You There' as payback for some of the fun I've had with you."
"Oh dangit!" Mark said, while he definitely thought Amber looked ... well, kinda hot this way, he wasn't about to say that loud least she pound his face in. "Maybe there's a way to fix you."
"I don't need repairs genius, I'm right 'out of the box', and for the other definition, I'd say that's already covered." She said without a hint of bitterness.
"I mean reverse what just happened to you!"
Amber blanched. "What would I want THAT?!" She took a pose like she was lecturing in front of a class. "I'm an object, so I don't want a lot, but what I DO want is to be of use to you, and if you could turn the hamburger back into the cow, I'd be WAY less use to you. So you don't need to whine about having a super useful machine at your disposal as you please. I'll happily be your end table if need be, thought that would be a total waste of my functions."
And it slowly dawned on Mark everything Amber was saying.
"Uh, stand on one leg?"
She balanced perfectly.
"How, original," she said flatly.
Without thinking Mark said, "Take your head off?" Then gasped in horror when he realized what he'd just said.
Still standing on one leg, Amber nonchalant reached for her necked, pressed some button, and disconnected her head, pulling at it so rested in her hands like a basket ball. The base of her neck glowed with a blue ring, a thick blue cord continued to connect her head to her body. From even this brief look Mark could tell Amber's insides didn't look human at all.
"Anything else owner?" Her head asked expectantly.
Struggling not to faint, Mark stammered, "Put your head back on! Stop standing on one leg!"
"Fine, it was your idea."
"If I told you to throw yourself in the trash compactor... would you?"
Amber said causally, "I'd be sure to confirm your order and make sure I understood clearly. I'm a pretty damn expensive piece of hardware, as you can tell. And I know you're such a sap that you'll feel all guilty about it later," she said as if she was chatting about a can-opener. "Like when you had to throw out your old PC, and I helped get rid of those games you never played, and you went and bought them all back from the thrift store."
He said tentatively, "So you're a willing slave."
She rolled her eyes. "Oh grow up. Willing slave is an oxymoron. According to the current status of laws, I'm not human, not even flesh and blood, therefore, I can't legally BE a slave, no more than your computer, so don't you start angsting over it dimwit."
In spit of the surrealness of the situation, Mark said. "Do you have to still insult me like that?"
"And here I thought you'd be happy I was insulting you, 'cause it proves you didn't just delete my original personality, but I guess I can't expect you to catch on like that. You're free to order me to stop, or even change or shut off my personality if you really wanted me at my most efficient, and most beautiful," she stroke a pose, "but I know if you did that you'd just whine about 'killing me' if you did, so there's not much chance of that happening."
Mark sat down, more like flopped down, onto the faded brown couch behind him. "What am I going to do? No one will recognize you like this. But that just means everyone will think I did something to you."
"Technically I did this to myself my owner. Are you saying I'm ugly this way?" She asked.
Mark looked up at her flawless form, every detail trancendent. "N-no, I'm not."
"Don't tell me you're scared of me more NOW when I belong to you than when you were my pet stress ball."
Mark startled a bit hearing Amber describe it that way. "No, I'm not scared of it."
"But as for people not recognizing me," part of her thigh opened up, and she pulled out a driver's license. But there was a big barcode over most of it, and instead of things like 'date of birth,' it listed him as her 'owner.'
Mark felt dizzy. "So... I altered all of reality?"
Amber opened her mouth, stopped, and assumed a thinking pose. "... Good question... Though that would create paradoxes if you say zapped someone's father or mother, for obvious reasons. Let alone say someone's grandparent. Let me check mysef online." Out of her thigh she took a bright orange digital-pad clearly made to be inserted into the spot she'd taken it from. "I'll just do some internet searching..."
"Wait! What if you pick up a virus or something?!"
"What I do online isn't connected to my programming. They're separate machines, like an emulation."
"Want me to get some clothes while you look?"
She gave him an indignant look. "What? Something wrong with my body?"
"You're fine like that?"
"Like duh. Did you see me screaming and covering myself like some silly human? No offense."
"Uh, none taken. How can you be an object if you own a car? Objects can't own objects!"
"Companies aren't alive. But people slurp up the legal fiction of companies owning things, suing, being able to hold copyright, when they aren't actually people. The only different is that you own me instead of the other way around."
"Well... maybe I can set up a shell company in your name, and make you the property of it, and you'll be your own owner thing!"
Amber actually stepped back from him, raising up her arms defensively. Looking at him like he'd asked a regular person to marry a goat.
"No way!" Amber crossed her arms. "Owning myself?! That's an abomination! I'm not some sicko!"
Mark was taken-back at how strongly Amber rejected the idea, when being asked if she'd destroy herself if commanded hadn't gotten a twitch out of her.
Mark sighed. "So what if I asked you to blow up the Earth?"
"I'd insist I make sure you had somewhere else to live first so you weren't blow up along with it, and had sufficient company and luxuries before so you wouldn't go mad from isolation or boredom."
"So that's it? You have no morality?"
"Oh don't be silly, I have morals," she counted off her fingers. "Protect owner, owner's happiness is right, owner's desires are right, protect owner's property, which includes me obviously, look after owner's property, again includes me, unless owner no longer desires it, then remove or dispose of it as needed, after thanking said object for its loyal service first of course."
Mark shivered slightly... but he doesn't tell if it was from fear, or excitement after all these years of being under Amber's thumb.
"So... is the ray gun part of some evil secret company making robots out of people?"
"I don't see us on sale anywhere online, even in 'those places' online. But if that was the case, I'd be the legal property of that company, not you, they wouldn't have the CEO wasting time zapping people, and you wouldn't give the option for grunts to alter the settings so they could steal some of the merchandise for themselves."
"Plus," she knocked on her smooth plastic crotch. "I'm a barbie doll nude robot, which eliminates the obvious reasons you'd have attractive humanoid looking objects that you can order around. So the whole 'evil company' idea doesn't make any sense.
"Maybe they're giving these out to people and the effect just makes everyone else just not notice?"
"But wouldn't the world be full of custom non-human servants?" Mark asked.
"Like I said, maybe it is, and we just haven't noticed before?" Amber shrugged.
"But how are we going to explain this to your family?" Mark said, still trying to grasp every implication this had.
"I'm an object, I don't have family. Not yet I think."
"YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN!" Mark snapped.
"Well, that's easy to find out," Amber said as she quickly dialed on her wolf-pad (as he saw the logo on the back).
"What are you doing?!"
"Calling Amber's, I mean my parents, well, the parents of the human Amber."
Mark wanted to tell her to stop... but the order caught in his throat. Everything was happening so fast!
The phone picked up. Amber spoke at the screen.
"Hi mom, hi dad. I'm not your daughter anymore. I'm Mark's personal wolf-gal robot. So seriously, do whatever the heck ya want with my stuff and my room. Unless there's anything in there Mark would want, but I seriously doubt there's anything a geek like him would want."
"Oh! Okay dear. We hope you're useful being Mark's robot," Amber's mother said like this was nothing.
"Love you sweetie," her father said. "Be a good robot."
"Bye-bye," Amber said before cutting off the call.
Mark just stared with his jaw hanging open. His eyes darted to the toy. Just how many ways could he change things?