Lily and the Automated Doll Factory

“I don’t think this is how they were supposed to work,” I said to the man next to me.

We stood in front of a red metal box with three square windows on it, and between that box was a conveyor belt with 5 dolls on it. One doll was at the end of the conveyor belt and looked like she had just been put there by someone. The other four were lined up neatly behind her, waiting their turn.

The man beside me shrugged. “They say the machine is malfunctioning. The dolls keep coming out slightly different than usual. They have to be cleaned up before they go into the box.”

I looked from one doll to another. They all looked like little girls; they had yellow hair, blue eyes, round faces, button noses, and wore similar clothes: They were wearing white dresses with red hearts on them, but some of the dresses were longer than others. Each doll also had a pair of black shoes on her feet and held a small green handbag in her hands. The only difference between each one was that some did not have socks or red lipstick on their lips or eyeliner on their eyelids. Some even had a few strands of hair sticking out from their heads or faces that needed to be fixed before they could be placed in the machine again.

A short woman walked over to us and smiled at me when she reached us. “Hello! My name is Marge and I am here to help you when you are ready to make your own doll!” She held out her right hand so I could shake it. I took it lightly and shook her hand once before letting go. “Is there anything you would like your doll to look like? Any color hair you want? What kind of clothing? Would you like your doll to look like a girl or boy? What age do you want your doll to be?” She listed off all these questions quickly; I could barely hear all of them unless she stopped talking for a moment so I could answer one at time. She asked me questions about my hair length, eye color, height, weight, style preference, skin tone, freckles… everything except for what my name was and where I was from (she probably already knew).

I finally stopped her when she got down to asking about my age range for my doll because I didn’t know if I wanted an adult or child sized version of myself made up as a toy so I told her that I didn’t know yet and she said that was fine then, she would just ask me later on when she finished making my doll.

As Marge went back into the open door where the dolls came out slowly onto the conveyor belt one by one, I looked over at the man again and saw he was looking through his phone while tapping his foot impatiently against the ground; he looked very bored with how things were going here today since the machine wasn’t working properly so far and we weren’t allowed near any buttons or levers or anything else inside the room where the dolls were being made because Marge didn’t want us touching anything until after we had finished making our dolls ourselves so we couldn’t see how things worked inside there either. We couldn’t leave either because she said we had to stay here until she let us know our dolls were ready for us outside of this room too.

Finally, Marge walked back over to us after putting away some things in drawers behind her and said: “Alright then! Your doll is almost done! It should only take two seconds more now before it is ready! You can go sit down over there if you want while we wait!” She pointed at some chairs along one side of the room for us to sit down in but neither me nor the man moved from where we stood; instead he kept tapping his foot against the floor impatiently while he stared ahead at nothing with bored eyes now as he waited too.

Then suddenly one of the dolls on the conveyor belt began moving closer towards me; it looked like it had been given new clothes now because its dress no longer looked wrinkled and dirty as before but instead was clean and smooth like all the other dresses on all the other dolls on that conveyor belt now.