Z.O.E.

____4

"This was never supposed to happen," Mr. Z. O. kept reassuring me. We were back in my sleeping chamber, and he was inspecting the wires and the machine. "You only wake on a very specific schedule, and this was not scheduled. I'm so sorry about all that discomfort; it's really never supposed to be like that."

I didn't listen as he mumbled about the machine. I was lost in my mind. I had been here before? As I looked around, I didn't remember it. Not any more than how everywhere is familiar like a dream.

I followed him back along the bridge. "Well, my dear, it seems I will need to adjust a few things here and there before you can go home again. In the meantime, why don't we just go on with things." He patted my arm.

"But what am I?" I wondered, staring out the window as we passed the army of toys on their conveyor belt below.

"You're an experiment," Mr. Z. O. said with a twinkle in his eye. "Experiment 963 to be exact."

He led me back into his cozy room, settling himself with more ease than ever into the sofa. "We live in an age desperate for entertainment." Mr. Z. O. intertwined his fingers and looked me in the eye. "So I thought and I thought and I came up with you. You have been living in another world thanks to my invention. The past, actually. You're not just entertaining, you see, you're educational as well! I programmed you with the machine so you can absorb information as if it's really happening. You've been living all this time merely in your imagination! The goal is for you to wake up again and tell us all about how people used to live. A lot of information has been lost, you see, and I've done my best to replicate it. I went to great lengths, I can assure you. Most people don't know a thing that you know. That's been just the problem, though."

Mr. Z. O. frowned and rubbed his hands together. "You see, whenever you wake up here as you're scheduled, you don't seem to maintain your memories. Very unfortunate. I've been working on that glitch, but now it seems the whole machine malfunctioned and spat you out now! I'll fix that in a jiffy and then we'll sort all the rest out, how does that sound?"

I sat staring at his beaming eyes under those bushy eyebrows. "I'm a doll," I said quietly.

"You're quite an expensive doll, my dear," Mr. Z. O. chuckled.

"Am I the first?" I asked him.

"Oh yes, the first of your kind," he answered proudly.

I turned my head to look out the window, knowing now what all the foreign spires and peaks signified. This was the future. Father used to joke about flying cars in the future. He didn't have a clue about this.

I had given up disbelieving, thinking I was in a dream. It wasn't that I trusted Mr. Z. O. though I knew he wasn't lying. It was that I trusted myself, and that was worse because deep down, I knew the truth, as if I had always known.