Kimberly got up and walked up in front of the class, holding what seemed like an off-brand Barbie of some sort. The doll was about ten inches high, with red hair and a more realistic figure than a Barbie, but still clearly an adult, and dressed in a yellow sundress and strappy sandals.

Trust Machines: Show and Tell

by Trismegistus Shandy

Thanks to dkfenger for creating the Trust Machines universe, and to dkfenger and JAK for beta-reading the first draft.

“All right,” said Ms. Koopman, eyeing her kindergarten class. “Who’s next...? Kimberly, what have you got for Show and Tell?”

The little girl she’d called on got up and walked up in front of the class, holding what seemed like an off-brand Barbie of some sort. The doll was about ten inches high, with red hair and a more realistic figure than a Barbie, but still clearly an adult, and dressed in a yellow sundress and strappy sandals.

“This is my uncle Kevin,” she announced. “Mommy used the vim machine to turn him into my doll.”

Ms. Koopman opened her eyes wide in surprise. “Kimberly, are you sure you should bring your uncle to school? It could be very bad for your uncle if you lose him.”

“I’m always very careful,” Kimberly insisted. “I keep her inside my backpack when I’m not playing with her.”

“How was it that he venned into your doll? And for how long?”

“He lost his job because of an indestructible downturn,” Kimberly explained. “And he tried to find another one, but he couldn’t, so he moved in and slept on our sofa. And then he said he didn’t want to eat us out of hows and whom, so one day when me and him and Mommy were playing tea party, he said he would be my doll for a year and maybe the indestroy would upturn again and people would give him another job, so we all went to the mall, and me and Mommy went in one side of the vim machine and Uncle Kevin went in the other one, and I picked out the doll I wanted and Mommy pushed the big green button and Uncle Kevin turned into a doll!” Her voice grew more and more excited as she hurried on with her narrative.

“Very nice,” Ms. Koopman said, lavishly praising her and suppressing a shudder. She’d gotten venned into various humanoid and animal forms — only over the weekend or summer, because the principal frowned on staff coming to work venned — but the one time she’d tried being a hat for her friend Megan, she’d hated the way it had affected her mind and never wanted to be inanimate again. The idea of being a doll for a whole year...

“When you grow up, you’ll be able to have your friends turn you into things and turn your friends into things,” she said, addressing the class as a whole. “But you must be very careful to only go into the Venn machine with someone you trust completely. And before you agree to change into something for a long time, like Kimberly’s Uncle Kevin, you should try it out for just a day first and see if you like it.”

“Uncle Kevin said he’d been an unanimal object before,” Kimberly said. “He wouldn’t tell me what it was, though. He said it was a grown-up secret.”

Ms. Koopman tried not to show her embarrassment at the thoughts that suggested. “That was very smart. I hope you didn’t try to wheedle the answer out of him.”

“No, ma’am.”

“All right. Arianna, you’re next... Kimberly, be sure to put your uncle down deep inside your backpack so she doesn’t fall out.” Ms. Koopman winced slightly, realizing Kimberly’s use of female pronouns for her doll-uncle had rubbed off on her. While she listened to Arianna talk about the big conch shell she’d found at the beach last summer, she started writing a note to Kimberly’s mother, telling her that Kimberly had brought her uncle to school and recommending that she not let her take him out of the house again. She’d hate to have him get lost. Being a doll for a year would be bad enough even with a loving niece to play with him every day; it could be a lot worse.

Four of my novels and one short fiction collection are available from Smashwords in ePub format and from Amazon in Kindle format. Smashwords pays its authors better than Amazon.