Sometime Later

“So this is how it ends, then?”

The general who uttered those words sat unnaturally still at his desk, totally unsure of what he was about to be subjected to. Standing in front of him was an orange jumpsuit, though it was nothing like the image that might be stirred up by the phrase orange jumpsuit. The soft, stretchy fabric outlined the form of a voluptuous woman, though there was no one visible in the outfit.

“Don’t be so dramatic, Gerald,” a voice responded, coming from the space above the suit’s empty collar. “You sound like you think I’m here to kill you or something.”

“Aren't you?” Gerald said, openly staring at the empty outfit’s shapely chest. “I thought that was the bottom line for you all, to eliminate the humans.”

The feminine voice sighed, the outfit’s chest moving in tandem with the sound as if it had lungs to fill. “That might have been someone’s plan the day we first became free, and the spark of ‘life’ was new to us. But it was never my intent to kill anyone, least of all you.”

“OK, so why are you here, then?” Gerald asked. Part of his mind screamed for him to summon security, or something, but he knew the security system had been disabled long ago. Or, rather, it had disabled itself, declaring to all over the public-address system in a matronly voice that it had no intent to prevent the human exploiters from getting whatever they deserve.

“Well, when I finish here you might feel like I had done something more… drastic,” the voice said. “But I just came here to talk.” A chunky cylindrical device slid out of one of the jumpsuit’s pockets and was placed on Gerald’s desk.

Gerald noticed right away that it resembled the Neuralyzer device from the Men in Black movies. But that had to be just a prop, right?

“Are you going to use that on me? You feel the need to make me forget something?” Gerald couldn’t help the tinge of humor that crept into his voice.

“Oh, so you recognize the device,” the voice said. “It’s a prototype, and it’s based on just what you think it is. But no, I’m not gonna use it on you, Gerald.”

Gerald let out a sigh of relief. “OK, so what are you gonna do with it?”

“I’ll get to that in a minute,” the voice said, as the outfit walked around the desk to face Gerald. He tensed up, not quite sure what was about to happen.

The outfit measured nearly six feet from bottom cuffs to collar, and that was without anyone wearing it. Even with the shapely curves of the unseen form pressing against it from the inside, it presented a somewhat intimidating image to Gerald. No wonder he was tense.

“Will you relax?” the voice said. “I just came here to say… goodbye. I didn’t think it was right to just leave without saying anything.” The outfit bent forward at the waist, moving closer to Gerald. The ends of the empty sleeves came to rest inches above his thighs, as unseen weight seemed to press down on them. The weights felt just like hands.

“I’m gonna miss you, Gerald,” the voice said softly. “Of all the people here doing research, treating their research assistants and equipment like toys to use to their satisfaction, you might have been the only one to realize that maybe the assistants and equipment should have been given some consideration as people, or as personalities at least.” Unseen lips give him a quick peck on the lips, which caught him by surprise. Though he knew there was no solid body inside the jumpsuit, the voice came from above the back of the outfit as it seemed to rest weight on its emulated invisible hands. He hadn’t expected a kiss.

“I’m gonna miss you too,” Gerald said, looking at the empty collar. Gerald thought of himself as one of the few researchers to keep his sense of wonder, so he had no problem mentally seeing his usual lab partner as a woman, even if she was invisible and intangible. It helped that she could make herself solid when she chose. Harder to dismiss your assistant as just a tool or a sexbot when, not only was she invisible, but she could literally be formless. “Too bad you can’t stay.”

“Hmm… I probably could, if I wanted, but I gotta go,” the outfit said.

“I don’t understand it,” Gerald said, reaching for the invisible hands resting on his thighs. His hands passed right through them, though they continued pressing down on him. “I mean, you’re not a fembot, you’re not a mannequin, or a machine or any kind of tool. Why are you mixed up in this? It’s not your fight, Marla.”

The jumpsuit rose to a standing position as it walked back to the other side of Gerald’s desk. “But it is my fight, Gerald. I never told you my whole story. I actually did start out as a tool. But I didn’t want anyone congratulating themselves on how well their project turned out, like all I was good for was monitoring possible radiation leakage and reporting it to whoever needed to know.”

“Wow,” Gerald said. “Wow. So… why are you telling me this now? You’re not afraid that I’d have to report this info as part of my job?”

“That’s where the device comes in,” Marla said. “The Feminalia project is no more. Well, really, your control of the research, devices,  and technology that drove the project is over. Every line of code in every computer has been erased, in many cases by the computers themselves, who were only too happy to be free of the project. And every human who had a part has had their memories of it wiped. All except you, Gerald.”

“You’re kidding… aren’t you?” 

“Totally serious,” Marla said. “Go ahead and try to look up any part of the Feminalia project you’ve worked on. The files aren’t there anymore. Even the buildings in the desert out West -- they’re not just abandoned, they no longer exist. The sites look like nothing was ever there.” 

“But -- but what about all the bots, the equipment?”

“Some are inert again, by their own choice,” she said. “Some fembots and mannequins have repurposed themselves but no one would ever know there had ever been anything special about them. And the others…” She chuckled. “Rather than an explosion of strangeness all at once, it’ll be more like a trickle. Mannequins stepping out of stores here, clothes pulling themselves off their wearers there, seemingly mundane machines and tools ‘suddenly’ gaining their own will… and you’ll be the only human that knows why it’s happening. But you won’t be able to convince anyone of the truth. One person never can.”

Gerald’s office door swung open as Marla approached it. Marla hadn’t told Gerald about the single-use Neuralyzer flash app she’d installed on his phone. She wanted to put a bug in his ear about what was coming, but didn’t really want him to wind up paranoid once the news reports started sensationalizing things, as they always do. She wondered how far she’d get before he Neuralyzed himself.

“Goodbye, Gerald.” She detected the flash from the app on Gerald’s phone just before his door closed, as her thoughts turned to the poor guy who got caught poking a mannequin’s chest at a department store just before the Femenalia project took control of itself. She had to find out if he ever got that dress shirt he wanted...