The X15

Alexis Borschgonovich smiled at the toymaker, looking throughout his shop. She'd gotten a hot tip that he had some vintage fifties memorabilia for sale, and the woman was hot on its trail. Like a bloodhound to the scent, she'd been drawn to this old Germanic store, a classical toy store like something out of the Santa Claus mythos.

She was a picker, someone who bought items to resell them at a higher price later, and this would be her biggest score yet. “So, Mr... Matthias, right?” He nodded, and she continued. “I've heard that you have a certain rare toy in your possession that sells for... Well, a lot.”

“Ah, well... I have a lot of toys.” The man let a slow grin play across his face, the action reminding her of his age. Matthias was remarkably young for someone who owned such a shop, looking like he'd just gotten out of grad school. Youth and antiques seldom went hand in hand, and Alexis begin to suspect that she had the wrong guy after all.

Still, she didn't need to let him know that... “I'm going to need a more specific number than 'a lot'.” She smiled, pulling out her notebook just in case he could give her a lead.

Matthias smiled back at her, his eyes twinkling. “As will I. How much money is this toy worth, exactly?” He pulled out a notepad of his own, clicking a mechanical pencil with a practiced gesture.

Alexis blinked with mild surprise, her heart beginning to pick up his pace. Despite his age, the man was clearly a professional; so it looked like she just might make her payday after all.

The woman grinned at him, brushing a lock of her deep brown hair behind her her right ear. “Well... I can sell this guy for around ten thousand dollars, depending on condition. Which means I'll buy him from you for two-thirds of that, easy.”

She was a born negotiator, and she’d talked people out of millions of dollars in total, haggling them down to insanely low amounts. Some pickers were fair, but some pickers didn’t like to make profit. She was a far more fiscally-minded woman, and had no time for trivialities like ensuring her sellers got a fair price.

But to her slight surprise, instead of responding excitedly her mark only responded with an: “If I have him.”

“If you have him.” Alexis nodded.

Mattias chuckled, jotting something down in his notepad. “A toy like this... It's quite a stretch to believe it's worth so much. Tell me, what is it? Why is it worth so much... And why do you think that I have it?”

“Smart. I like that.” Alexis said with a chuckle. “It's a robot from the fifties, a little wind-up job. It's worth more than its weight in gold because it happened to be used in three nuclear test ops without taking any damage.”

At that, Matthias stopped jotting down notes, his eyes widening. “What? Are you serious?” He grinned, taking a deep breath. “A thing like that... It must be a record.”

“It is.” Alexis smiled and nodded. “And it's one of a kind. I think you have it because... Well, I've been seeing a lot of these vintage toys popping up from time to time. It's a red robot with 'X15' on its chest, if that helps.”

“It does. But I’ll need you to describe it a little more… How did its head look? Its body? Did it have mechanical arms or those ones with the bendy tubes around the joints to cover up how crude they looked?”

“My, you’re thorough!” Alexis’s smile widened. “Boxy and rectangular all around, with a pair of antennae for ears, a little tuning fork atop its head… You were right on the bendy tubes, which are blue and end in grew claw-hands; and lastly its legs are these little rectangles, fixed in place with wheels on the underside that can spin when it’s wound up. From what I’ve heard.”

The man nodded, jotting down more in his notepad. His brow furrowed as he scribbled more; finally nodding to himself and turning the book around so Alexis could see. “Something like this?”

Alexis gasped, looking at the picture. It was a perfect replica of the photos she’d seen; this could really be her big payday! “That’s perfect!” She clapped her hands and grinned. “So, you really do have it?”

Matthias smiled and snapped his book shut, looking to the woman with a smile on his face. “Not yet, but I will soon.”

The trim of his book’s pages seemed to glow a bright gold for a moment, and Alexis had to blink repeatedly to clear the illusion from her eyes. “Um… Wait.” Her brow furrowed. “What did you mean by you’ll have it soon?”

She moved to cross out his name in her notebook only to flinch as her pen dropped from numb fingers. She tried to bend over to pick it up, but her body was oddly stiff—like she couldn’t move anything from the waist down.

In fact, she couldn’t really move anything except for her arms and her head, and those she could only swivel. “H-hey, I feel funny…” She muttered, looking up to Matthias for help. “Could you call the hospital?”

“Hospital? No need for any of those!” Matthias smiled, clapping his hands together and looking at the girl expectantly. “As I said, I’ll have the toy soon… And I’m sure your seller is very interested in acquiring it.”

He walked up to the confused woman, plucking her notebook from her hands and looking down at it, grinning as he saw she’d recorded the buyer’s contact information. “Well, isn’t that convenient?” He flipped through another few pages, seeing an impressive list of other toys she was looking for, coupled with pictures she’d taken of them.

“My, my, I will have my work cut out for me.” Matthias smiled, closing her journal and tapping Alexis on her nose with it. “Thanks for the… Well, let’s call it inspiration.”

“Inspiration? For what?” Alexis whimpered; shivering a moment later as her hands began to ache, feeling number and number by the second. She awkwardly swiveled her arms so she could see her afflicted hands, squeaking as she realized something was very wrong.

Her hands looked like they were swollen in an utterly inhuman way. They looked to be growing boxy and flat, her four fingers squished together while her thumbs had grown wide and wider. As a matter of fact, they were starting to look like the claws of the robot which she’d been looking for…

“No way…” Alexis breathed, gawping as her fingers stiffened, turning to what she realized was metal; soon covered by gray paint. It was so surreal that she almost didn’t think to panic—until her fingers merged, that is.

It was like a bad special effect in a movie: one second she had a full set of fingers—albeit boxy, squared ones—and the next they were just one rectangular block after another. Her heart raced as she realized what was happening to her, and she screamed.

“I was wondering when you’d begin to panic. They always panic, you know.” Matthias smiled, pulling up a toymaker’s stool and sitting on it with a small smile. “Not that you don’t deserve it.”

“Deserve… Deserve what? What do you mean?” Alexis stammered with horror, her heart clenching as the tingling swept up her arms. She refused to look at them, but she could still feel her body crinkling; her skin scrunching up into plastic flex tubing. She could feel her muscles and bones combining into a steel frame beneath this, making her whimper loudly as she waited for Matthias to respond.

He grinned and leaned a little closer to her. “You know what I mean. People like you, the kind of people who say one price but mean another, using their connections to guarantee themselves a hundred percent profit on what they’re buying. I’ve seen your notes; this thing is worth more than a hundred thousand dollars.”

“S-so I lied! That’s what people do!” The transforming woman whined, gasping as her chest began to ache. This time she couldn’t help but look to the changes, finding her breasts merging together, her shirt vanishing as the changes spread across her upper body and exposing that she began to grow into a boxy, robotic form.

“People? Try sociopaths. I’ve never known a good person who can lie for a living and be content with their lives… And yet you seem perfectly fine with yours. Why is that, exactly?” He leaned in close to her, his eyes narrowed. “I think that it’s because you’re really a much worse person than you’re letting on, and that this good-natured vibe you put off is just an act.”

“And what if it isn’t? You seem fit to judge me no matter what I say!” Alexis bluffed, trying to pretend that he hadn’t just seen right through her. Inwardly, she was terrified: nobody had ever gotten this close to her true personality, not even her family.

“Well…” Matthias flipped back through her notebook to get to the page describing the robot. “To tell you the truth, I was on your side until I read: ‘Matthias: young, easy mark, undersell by ninety percent’.” He snapped the book shut with a scowl and slipped it into his back pocket. “You even did the math on the page.”

“Well, damn.” Alexis glared, realizing that she couldn’t talk her way out of this one. She grunted a moment later as her upper chest took an invisible blow. When she looked down, she saw a large emblazoned placard on her chest: 4L3X15. Then, before eyes, the '4L3' vanished, the 'X15 sliding across the placard to rest square in the center of her boxy body.

“Oh, damn!” The woman repeated herself, looking up to the man with horror. “You—you have to stop this, you can’t seriously be doing this to me! I’m a person, not a toy!”

“Not for long.” Matthias quipped glibly, running his hands along the pauldrons that now tipped Alexis's shoulders.

Alexis shivered as she realized that she could feel the toymaker's hand on her red metal pauldrons. The transforming girl realized it would somehow be so much better if she wasn't able to feel through her cold metal body.

Her cold metal body! She was becoming a toy! The thought nearly overwhelmed her with fear, and she tried begging for her life again. “Please, I'll pay anything; do anything!” Alexis whined, trembling as her stomach squared off as well, becoming flat and smooth.

“Hm... Then hold still.” Matthias chuckled, leaning over to the counter behind him and pulling out a large ornate key, the sort that wouldn't be out of place on a high-class windup toy.

“N-no! Anything but putting that key in my back! Why would I offer to become a toy to avoid becoming a toy!” Alexis struggled to move, but her legs were damnably numb and she could only wiggle her arms up and down.

“I don't know, why would you cheat people out of money that should be theirs?” Matthias chuckled, winking at his hapless victim as he walked behind her. “You're a complicated woman, Alexis—and you're about to become a whole lot simpler.”

Alexis's eyes widened and she gasped, horrified. “No! No, no; please!” She wiggled her arms up and down even more, swiveling her head from side to side with horror. Then a horrible tingling swept along her neck, and she squealed as her next shake of the head got it to spin in a full circle.

Her neck had been replaced with a metal swivel joint, just like her shoulders! Alexis whined loudly, but despite her horror she turned her head around to look at Matthias as he aligned the key with a hole in her metal back.

“Damn, that's creepy. Like an owl.” Matthias chuckled, fitting the tip of the key into the groove. He smiled up at the girl and pushed it into her, ratcheting it into place with a loud click.

“Beep.” Alexis said in a flat monotone, her eyes widening as she heard the sound she'd just made. “What did. You do. To me.” Her eyes bulged further as her voice droned out in a long and flat monotone.

“Hm? Well, you know what I said, right? Simpler.” Matthias smiled, grabbing the large key in her back and clicking it slowly, making Alexis's stomach turn as her organs became gears, clicking and whirring along with the key.

“Beep. But. What. Did. You. Do. To. My. Voice. Beep. Why. Am. I. Talking. Like. This. Beep.” Alexis's heart hammered in horror, just before it became a large and cog-toothed gear.

“I think you know why, but you just won’t admit it to yourself.” Matthias laughed, proving an angry glare from his victim.

“Beep. I. Don’t. Want. To. Be. A. Robot. Beep.” Alexis glared harder as her legs flowed into a new form, skin rippling as it became flat and shined metal. She couldn’t see it happen thanks to her stiff neck, but by God could she feel it.

She could feel her knees disappearing, for her new form had but two blocks for legs. She could feel her bones disappearing within herself; replaced with cogs and rotating machinery to support the wheels that would form on her feet.

The transforming woman had thought that she’d braced herself for that change, but when it finally came she was completely caught off guard. The soles of her feet clicked and split down the middle to make room for her new wheels, even as her feet began to swell into a pair of large rectangular boxes.

Then she actually felt her bones twisting and rounding in to a two pairs of spoked wheels, something that wasn’t quite attached to her body, and yet somehow perfectly a part of her. It was like she was wearing roller skates that had fused with her body, a thought which made her sink into desperation as she realized just how powerless she was.

“Beep. Please. Beep.” It was getting so much harder to talk, her mouth aching as it began to close, her teeth becoming metal rods. She whimpered as her grille settled in, wishing that she'd used her last human words to curse the man out instead of begging him to change her back.

“Beep.” She said again, her voice a dull and robotic monotone. Her head cramped up as it began to expand, becoming a large block atop the swiveling joint that was her neck. Her hair vanished; her eyes became blank and round robotic circles; and her nose and ears changed into antennae that stuck out awkwardly from her head.

“And we're almost done.” Matthias chuckled, placing his hands on her pauldrons and pressing down on her body.

To Alexis's horror, she realized that his action was making her shrink; getting smaller and smaller by the second. A terrified “Beep” escaped her mouth, its flat tone denying her the emotion she truly felt.

She'd been taller than him when this had started. Now she was at his shoulders... Then the center of his chest... Then his waist... Down and down she went, smaller and smaller, becoming a blocky and robotic mechanical toy.

Finally, she stood at barely a foot tall, the world so huge around her. Her giant tormentor looked down to her with a smug grin on his face, leaning down to inspect her body.

“And one more touch...” Matthias said with a grin, picking her up by her legs in one hand and brushing over her with the other. Alexis's whole body tingled like she was being electrically charged, and she realized he was somehow irradiating her, making her a perfect match to the original X15.

“Perfect.” He grinned, moving his empty hand to her back and turning her key, winding her until it was as tight as it could get.

Alexis felt her body getting so strained; her gears needing to move, needing to unwind this tension. She stared at him in horror, praying that he would release her key. Thankfully he did, and Alexis's body sprang into motion.

The wheels on her feet spun gently as her arms swiveled up and down stiffly, her head turning from side to side. “Beep. Beep. Beep.” She repeated endlessly, the sound forced out through her throat by a little noisemaker in her chest.

Alexis felt a surge of relief as her body's tension began to unwind; then a whelming wave of dread as she realized that this was her life now. She existed only to be wound and unwound, to beep again and again while moving stiffly and wheeling herself around.

“So, this little toy is worth a hundred thousand dollars...” Matthias smirked as he placed Alexis on a nearby table, letting her wheel herself around in small circles. “Let me call up your buyer and see if he's still interested.”

Alexis watched with despair as the toymaker sold her over the phone, wondering how long it would take her to go mad like this. Nobody besides they toymaker knew that she was a toy, nobody would be able to save her. She trapped inside this silly metal body, forever.