Everything seemed to be going well, and then my whole plan got run over by a truck. Literally; an accident on a nearby highway sent a truck similar to a semi off the road, and it ultimately stopped after crashing through some fences and the back of my family’s house. It smashed through my parents’ bedroom and part of mine. I awoke, in incredible pain, unable to move, and not understanding what had happened, but I found Lisa and switched to her. Though her 360-degree sight was not as dependent on light as human sight, she still needed some light, and there was nothing. I kept a night light on but it was out, and on memory I maneuvered Lisa to the light switch but it also failed to bring any light. So I assumed whatever happened had knocked out the electricity.

After a few minutes with Lisa, I felt my way around in the dark (harder than it would have been for a person, as I get a more limited sense of touch feedback from her than I do from my own skin) and found a flashlight. And I saw what happened. We had something like a telephone, but it was under the truck somewhere. Having no way to get help in the house, I ran to the house of a neighbor with lights on. They’d been awakened by the crash and had already called for emergency help, but I gave them more details from what I’d seen with the flashlight. It was a good thing Lisa could speak!

The emergency response was similar to what you would have expected on Earth. It took about 10 minutes, and they brought this world’s equivalents to two ambulances and a fire truck. I came out and met them, and one of them talked with Lisa while the others went in the house.

In order to get at the bodies, they pulled the beds out from under the sides of the truck. They loaded my badly mangled body into one of the ambulances and took it away while they worked to retrieve my parents bodies. They found my father’s body, but he was declared dead on scene. They didn’t find my mother until hours later, after they removed the truck, and then they only found parts of her.

Lisa remained on scene, and using her, I helped an investigator with the details I could about the accident report, but there wasn’t much I could provide but identifying information. He was fascinated to learn Lisa was a clay doll, and I gave him a lot of my story. He had taken testimony from clay dolls before, so it wasn’t unprecedented, but he was used to them being either clumsy robots or small dolls, and in either case he expected them to have to write out answers rather than talk.

We finished both the report and my story and then he said, “I’m guessing you want to be back with your body.”

“Yeah, might be good. For a little while, at least. I’m still awake, but they think I’m unconscious because I’m fully focused on being Lisa. Normally it’s not a problem to operate both bodies, but my body is in so much pain right now that I am not able to. So if I let my real body become conscious, this one will just become a statue. I can probably only make it work if we’re together and I’m looking straight at her.”

“OK. You don’t worry about your house for now. My team will be here and we will keep the place secure. Nobody’s going to come loot the place.”

“OK.”

I went with the officer to the hospital. And I put Lisa in a sort of on-guard position outside the door to the room I was in before I switched back over to my body.

“Aaaaaah!”

“Oh, good, you’re awake.”

They gave me some pain reliever and a doctor explained that both my legs and one arm were completely destroyed. The other arm and some other bones were broken, but I’d heal, apart from the lost limbs.

I was thinking about making fully clay limbs to replace the ones I lost, though it would take a while. But the next day they explained to me that the way they help people who have lost limbs is to provide stainless steel prosthetics which can be attached with clay joints that would let me control them. It would take a quarter of a year to ensure all the broken bones were fully healed, and another quarter to fit the prosthetics together and let me learn to use them, and by then I was already supposed to be in school.

I was sure I could postpone it, but I instead called them and asked about the possibility of sending Lisa to school in my place. They hadn’t ever heard of anybody doing something like that, but they also hadn’t ever heard of anyone having such a functional clay doll. They encouraged me to do it, figuring that the spirit of wanting to proceed despite the challenge would be good for me mentally, and maybe help me recover faster.

They put me in casts the next morning, and after about a week the pain was down to where I only needed to be on over-the-counter level of pain relievers. At that point, Linda started working with me; she was something like a social worker, and helped me deal with the paperwork and other issues.

The trucking company had insurance that was going to pay for all the damage to the house, personal possessions, and my medical care, and an additional amount for the deaths and loss of limbs. My parents had their own insurance that was also going to pay a good amount for the deaths and my loss of limbs. My body was in no condition to sign, but Lisa could, and Linda produced a form that Lisa could sign, I could mark akin to a person signing with an X, and Linda signed as a witness, affirming that Lisa was me and could act for me for all purposes, and so Lisa signed all the paperwork. I hadn’t really practiced writing with Lisa and it was a bit sloppy but much better than I could do now with my one remaining hand. But since the form was usually used with toy-sized dolls, that was better than most did.

One day Linda took Lisa over to my house to survey the damage. The clothes in my closet were ruined, and I only had a few outfits in a hamper that could still be used. Lisa’s clothes were in the part of the room that wasn’t damaged. A good deal of clay I had saved, almost half of another Lisa worth of it, was also safe. Everything in my parents’ bedroom was destroyed, but they wouldn’t be needing it anyway. I was happy to accept a cash payment for it. And there was significant structural damage to the walls in that part of the house, but much of the rest of it appeared intact. The contents in other parts of the house were OK, including my paperwork about my upcoming school.

Together, we assembled a list of the possessions within the house that were lost, and approximate replacement values, and this was sent to the trucking company’s insurance firm as a statement of some of the damages done. An inspector verified the other parts of the house were OK, and figured an amount for the repairs.

The one other thing that was needed before work could start was removal of the personal items I wanted to keep. Linda arranged movers and a place to store the things I wanted to keep, and sale or disposal of things I chose not to keep. I really wanted to pare down to just what I could take with me to my apartment at the school, and sell the house once it was repaired. There wasn’t a reason to come back here with no family. I contacted the school, confirming I would attend using Lisa, and they helped me contact my roommate. I had already explained to him about Lisa, but now I had to explain to him that I was only going to be sending Lisa at first because of the accident. The rules for behavior we had arranged still applied, and I would still pay for half the rent. Lisa would arrive with some things needed for school and some of my possessions that wouldn’t be used until I got there.

When the construction company started, the first step was a cleanout of all the damaged walls and debris. Linda arranged for Lisa to be there during this stage so she could accept any more valuables discovered during the cleanout, and they did find some jewelry. A separate construction company was replacing fences destroyed in the accident and Lisa was asked to approve the replacements. But once this part was done, Lisa didn’t stay to supervise it all. I needed to have her at school before long, anyway.

Before she left for school, mostly using Lisa, I built a 12-inch clay doll from some of my clay. This was just the basic kind lots of people had, but it would help once Lisa was gone.

Lisa rode a bus like a person would, found the apartment, got my key, and picked one of the bedrooms arbitrarily and set up the stuff she went with - just basic school supplies, school paperwork, and her clothes. The rest followed on a truck the later that night.

My roommate Jack arrived a short while later and was fine with the choice. He had arrived with all his stuff, so I helped him get things into the apartment, and he spent a couple hours unpacking enough of it to make himself feel at home, which I let him do on his own, knowing how personal the layout of things can be.

“I’m going to go get some food. You want something?” Jack called out after a while, then realized his mistake.

“Oh, right, you’re just the clay doll. The way you were helping me move stuff in earlier, it was easy to forget that. I’ve never seen a clay doll as large nor as realistic nor as genuinely useful as you before.”

Jack left to find food. My truck showed up while he was out, and the men were helping me unload my stuff into my room when Jack got back.

Jack came home and ate, and I came out to join him at the dining room table once the movers were gone even though I didn’t eat anything, and I told him the detailed story, both of how I made Lisa, and the accident. That took most of the night, and I didn’t worry about unpacking my stuff. Most of that stuff wouldn’t be needed until my real body showed up, and none of it until classes started for real.

Orientation Day

In the morning, it was first impressions time. I was about to meet a bunch of my classmates. So I got out Lisa’s nice dress, the one I bought for her as an art project, and the associated items. And once Jack was out of the shower, I went in, cleaned myself up, dried off, and put on the outfit. After depositing the towel and my previous clothes in my room, I joined Jack at the table where he was eating breakfast.

“That dress looks really nice.”

“Thank you. These were the first clothes I bought for Lisa, what she wore when I turned in the project. It wasn’t until I took her home with me later that she had any other clothes, and I never anticipated I would be using her this way, so all her other clothes are pretty basic, not meant to impress but just to cover her. I’m going to have to buy some better clothes for her, but for today, when I meet my classmates for the first time, I’m wearing the best I’ve got.”

“Damn. I bet some guys would pay a lot of money for something like Lisa.”

“That is pretty much why I’m here, to figure out how to help people do this, and to figure out how best to make money from it.”

Once Jack finished his breakfast, we got ready to go. I carried what would serve as my school bag, with mainly just the paperwork in it. This reminded me another thing I needed was proper school supplies; I had a bare minimum. Jack had an actual notebook with his stuff in it, and the map was clipped to the outside. And like that we set out for the place on campus where this orientation was to begin.

When we got there, we found signs for different numbered groups were spread around the area, and Jack and I were in different groups so we parted ways.

As I approached my group’s sign, I heard a few whistles, and a few shouts of “clay doll” or “River City doll.” It’s clear some people recognized me; I wasn’t aware Lisa had become that much of a celebrity, but then, I did get offers from this school and a number of its competitors, and I was wearing the outfit people saw in the publicity photos.

I walked up to the girl sitting at the table the sign was attached to, gave her my number, and she pulled out a name tag with my name on it. Frowning slightly, she read my name as a question, “Joe?” Just as Joe is a male name on Earth, my name here was a male one, and so she was not expecting a girl to show up with this number.

“Yes, sort of. I’m actually Joe’s clay doll. Joe is laid up in a hospital back in River City after a truck crashed into his bedroom while he was sleeping.”

“Oh, the clay doll guy, right! They told me you were in this group, but they didn’t tell me you were sending the clay doll instead of your physical body. Sorry to hear about the accident, but glad to hear that you are finding a way to attend school anyway.”

“I see you have some blanks there. Can I have one of those?”

“Sure.”

She handed me a blank name card and a marker. Using the two cards I labeled myself JOE’S CLAY DOLL LISA. Seeing that I’d made a two-card name tag, she handed me another of the plastic sleeves when I gave back the marker. I arranged the tags one above the other on the flat part of my dress, and joined the group standing behind her.

I answered the same questions from members of this group several times over. After several more people arrived, the girl determined her whole group was present, and introduced herself as Carly.

“You all are here because you’re enrolled in the robotics and electronics program.”

Nobody, including Carly, thought I was out of place; building a life-size clay doll was close enough to robotics that it seemed a natural place for me to be. They didn’t know I was actually going to study significantly on the electronics side of that program, but even if they did, they probably would think I wanted to be able to use electronics to replace bodily functions I couldn’t do with clay. And I might do that.

Carly lifted the sign, which was apparently separate from but supported by the table somehow, and continued speaking. I also noticed it had the same color and writing on both sides.

“I’m going to lead you on a tour of the campus covering the parts everybody uses and the parts you, as students in robotics or electronics, are likely to use. Look for the sign if you lose sight of me.”

Naturally, since each group was going to see a different selection of campus sights, other groups who were also leaving at this time took off in other directions, though throughout the tour there were usually other groups visible except when we were inside the buildings for our department. She showed us around the core part of the campus, some monuments that were no doubt known to all students, and eventually to a cafeteria where the group stopped for lunch. Since Lisa didn’t eat, I wandered the place, looking for familiar faces, initially among the groups that had arrived before us. And... it was pretty terrible. I got cat-calls, offers to go on dates, and worse. If possible, it was worse than what women faced on Earth.

I eventually ran into Melissa, a girl I knew from Rockheart, and she was surprised to see Lisa, and I had to tell my whole story again.

I eventually saw Jack, who had arrived later than I did. Someone else from his group had clearly barely restrained himself from the kind of responses many of the other guys had made. It suggested to me that I was dressed up too well. I think a combination of only having lived as a guy here and a woman on Earth, and the different ways sex worked, had blinded me to some of the things I would have gotten as a normal child here. I only saw Lisa as “a nice-looking woman” while a bunch of the guys saw her as super-attractive. But maybe the plainer clothes in the rest of Lisa’s wardrobe were really all I needed.

But at that moment Carly was calling our group to leave and continue our tour, so I had to say goodbye.

The next stop was in our department, where we split into smaller groups and got packets of info about the classes we might take and the research programs. After that, we saw several buildings where people might take general classes shared with people from other tracks, including the large business school where almost everybody here was going to take some classes. Eventually, we made our way out to the stadium, which had lines on the field for some sport I’d never paid attention to before, but there was a platform on it facing the side of the field where everyone was assembling, each of our numbered groups having an assigned section.

Music was blasting out of speakers as everyone assembled, but shortly after it seemed no more groups were coming in and the final groups were getting to their seats, the music stopped and the president of the school came out onto the platform and started to speak. Her speech would have been totally unremarkable except that she called me out.

“Our incoming class includes the first student to ever attempt to attend classes entirely via clay doll. You may have heard of the River City Doll, an art project built by a student over at Rockheart last year which is a very realistic looking statue of a woman, but made of his own clay so that he can walk it around like a real person. This statue was built to precise anatomical standards, so when she walks, she looks exactly like a real woman would walk, and she has replicas of some internal organs, allowing her to speak. This student suffered serious injuries in an accident over the summer and is still hospitalized from it, but through a stroke of luck his art project was not damaged, and he will attend classes here at the school of electronics and robotics this term entirely via the statue. Some of you might meet him, or her, in your classes here.”

This mention came in the middle of a segment in which she called out a number of remarkable students in the entering class, so I was not the only one singled out, but everybody was going to know I was here.

The speech in full was about 45 minutes long, and as it concluded and we were dismissed, the music started up again. And it was pretty much chaos at that point. While each of our groups had been led in by our tour guide and directly to our section, we’d all been told the tour was over and we would just go back to wherever we were living, or whatever else we wanted to do after the speech ended, and everybody was trying to cram through the exits all at once. I had seen Jack’s section, but it was quite some distance from mine, and there was no easy way to get beyond the aisle leading to the nearest exit, so I followed the crowd out and then, unable to locate Jack in the huge mob of people going every which way, I headed for home, pulling out the map as a guide.

It took me about 45 minutes from the end of the speech to get back to the apartment, most of that just trying to get out of and away from the stadium, and Jack was another 45 minutes later due to having stopped to pick up food, having realized how inadequate what he picked up yesterday was. He went straight to making himself dinner, while I reviewed the documents I picked up today and my research plan, since I’d be meeting with my advisor in the morning.

Meeting My Advisor

In the morning, I needed to go into my department, meet my advisor for the electronics program, and get registered for some classes. My advisor had one other incoming student who arrived first, so he was talking with that student while another student showed me around the labs. At 10 I got in to see him while the other student got the tour.

He’d heard my story from the president, privately, before she mentioned it to everyone at the stadium, so I didn’t have to go over it all with him as I had done several times yesterday, but I did fill in some of the details, including how I expected my real body to be here for the second half of the year, but I might still attend some classes as Lisa even afterward, depending on circumstances.

I also gave him the story I had prepared about why I was going to focus so much on the electronics part of this program, which was the idea about using electronics to help those less coordinated with moving multiple clay tools at once to manipulate the doll more easily.

“I want to make it so that they can just move one tool to move the arm, one to move the hand, and no more than two tools to walk. Speech is probably going to be beyond the capabilities of customers like that, but the ones who can manage the arms and legs of the one I have now might be able to manage some sort of electronic voice. We’ll have to have test subjects with different degrees of ability with clay tools to test different varieties of the doll.”

“That all makes sense,” he replied. “I can help find suitable candidates who are willing to give the sort of feedback you need in exchange for your service in helping them build doll components and ultimately a complete doll.”

I pointed out, “There’s one important thing. These test subjects are going to need a lot of their clay and significant skill with building things with it. The clay requirement is non-negotiable, but the building skill requirement may be overcome in time with molds and tools.”

“Understood. When we sell these things, it’s going to be a major purchase for the buyers and they are going to have to invest significant amounts of their own time both to build and learn to use the doll.”

“Correct. And there’s one other matter I’d like to discuss with you discreetly.”

“Is this matter of a sexual nature?”

“Yes.”

He led me to a special padded room with a table and a few chairs, and securely closed the door behind us. A red light came on just above the door.

“We have a law about conversations involving such subjects. Nobody else will be able to hear us here. Our conversation will be recorded, but that recording will be private and only available if there is some accusation that something illicit occurred. When we discuss such subjects, it must always be in a room like this one.”

“OK. Good to know. I think I had a more sheltered upbringing than some of the other students here. Or maybe my libido is just a bit less. But I’ve come to understand that a lot of men can’t look at Lisa without thinking about sex. So some of my research might need to be done discreetly, and carefully to avoid violating any school rules, and I’d appreciate your help in that regard.”

“Yes, that subject area is not out of bounds here, but you are correct that some of your work may need to be handled delicately.”

I pulled out a picture of Lisa and showed it to him.

“You’ve probably seen this, how Lisa looked at the exhibit at Rockheart. She was at that point an art project, so I chose what I thought were clothes that were going to make Lisa look nice. I wore this outfit yesterday, without the sash, and a number of the male students here behaved as though I was the hottest woman in the world, in my fertile period.”

“You aren’t alone in your way of thinking, It’s just some men, and particularly men of the age of many of our students, who behave that way. I think any woman here who dressed like you did yesterday would get some of that, and what you’re wearing today is a much better choice.”

Lisa was wearing what I perceived as more businesslike attire today, and it was the nicest of the other clothes I had hurriedly bought for Lisa so she had different outfits for every day of the week. But I got back to my point of being here.

“At some point I’m going to need to figure out whether those men are viable customers. Are they willing to devote hundreds of hours of work and save their clay for most of a year in order to make something like this?”

“Part of your work here should be to figure out how to reduce the time and clay needed. The entire body probably doesn’t need to be made of clay.”

“Understood. But would they actually be able to use it? It’s my understanding that what they want is only available in the presence of a fertile female, and each female is only fertile for one period of a few days each year.”

“Since you say you had a sheltered upbringing, you probably didn’t learn about this, but there is synthetic female pheromone which such men can use, and sex toys designed to release an appropriate dose. And yes, it’s expensive.”

“That’s the thing I was missing! And clearly my dad knew, and didn’t tell me, perhaps to avoid having me turn into one of those guys.”

“That is common today. When we market this we’ll have to work within laws that restrict how we can advertise anything having to do with men’s use of female pheromones. So only men who already already shop for pheromones will hear about it.”

“But that’s OK, because they’re the only ones who could use it in that way, right? And we can still do other advertising that doesn’t mention sexual function, right?”

“Correct on both accounts.”

“So the question on the sex version will be whether these men find the doll appealing enough to expend significant additional effort and cost compared to whatever other sex toys they are using.”

“Correct. And I’m inclined to think that some of them would. A minority, to be sure, but the ones who are willing to devote additional money and time to get the most out of it.”

“More than a dozen of your school’s competitors were convinced enough that they would that they extended me offers assuming that these men would be the primary market.”

“No doubt those were from schools with men like that in positions of power. But they were able to make the offers because they see you as a sure thing. Even if few of those men have the money and are willing to invest the time to make one, or even if there are none at all and you can only sell to the people who would use them for nonsexual purposes, you would not have to sell many to pay off the school. The only way you can fail is if you grossly overestimate the market, and make parts for millions of the things when only hundreds are able to be sold. So my advice is to only prepare to sell hundreds. Make the first run large enough to pay the school’s bill if you sell out. Once those sell, you’ll have actual demand figures to help you tell whether the next run should be hundreds, or thousands, or even more.”

“Thanks.”

We left the special room and continued our discussion. He described the business account I would have. Basically, the school was going to set up a business for me later today. The account would start in the red by the school’s fee. Any materials I needed to buy beyond what the school typically kept in stock or any external services I needed to purchase would be billed to the account as well. Money from sales would go to pay this debt back. When it was all paid off, and I had enough funds to continue operating, they would sever the agreement that had the school managing the business’s finances and turn it all over to me. If it looked like I wasn’t going to succeed, the agreement would be suspended, meaning that I could no longer buy supplies through the school without first reactivating it. This could mean I quit business, and never needed to pay back the rest of the debt. If I still had inventory available to sell, the proceeds would go against that debt, and if I made more product independently, I’d have to pay 30% of my profits against the debt until it was paid off. But he seemed pretty sure I was not going to get into that situation.

Finally, we talked about classes I would take.

“There are some business management classes you’ll need to take before you leave here as a successful student, with two options depending on whether you expect to manage the finances yourself or hire someone to do so. You don’t have to take them right away, and you can sign up for pretty much any other classes you want. Those other classes should be to aid in your research on the project, though we will give you wide latitude in determining that for yourself. Of course, I’m your advisor and I can offer anything from hints to a full program of classes depending on how much advice you want. There are no prerequisites, because students come here from a variety of backgrounds and often with real-life experiences that can substitute for the learning from other classes, but what might have been prerequisites at your last school are written as recommendations here. There are grades. If you fail a class, we may ask you to take the recommended courses before trying it again.”

“That’s good to know. Thanks. I already have some ideas about courses I might take this term but I’ll ask you if I have any questions.”

After this, he directed me to a business office where they set up the business account for me. I had the rest of the day to go pick up books and supplies and explore where there were stores for clothes and food (which I’d eventually need when my real body was here) and other things.