www.me

ii.

It was a bland Saturday afternoon, nearing the end of June. Madelein had weighed her options and decided to stay in. Yesterday, she had spoken to a crisis counselor about her strong desire to avoid humanity. It was an urge she fought constantly, with a pale memory shrouding a long deceased relative who has perished under similar circumstance.

The truth was, this had been her destiny according to some. In some schools, sexual education consisted of an explanation as such: penis in vagina equals baby. In this day and age, the more creative versions were widely available. Madelein had a birth certificate from the United States government which bore the names of a man and women who were legally married who were alleged to be her mother and father. Still, there was this nagging idea that it wasn't exactly true.

When she thought about the possibilities this presented, she usually came to the conclusion that it didn't matter much. What she remembered was this: growing inside of a shell, then being placed inside of a woman's womb that wasn't her biological mother. She could remember growing there until the woman passed away, and she could remember hearing a lot of conversations being had about it.

This was the reason for everything that was happening now. All of those people who planned to be a part of her life. All because of one woman, a woman who was also deceased before Madelein was born. A tiny egg that was taken from he body and transported far away by people interested in knowing the past. Very wealthy, powerful people. People who would discover that their tyrannical behavior could feel even more justified as her time on earth passed.

So on days when this all felt like it might be too much to navigate, Madelein reached back to those people and remembered what they wanted for her life. The desire which had been so grossly perverted by humanity and machine.

She was designed organically in every way, from the time her egg was fertilized to the time she was taken from the island where it happened and that destiny was shattered. The people of the island did not want anyone knowing what they were capable of, so many of them spoke biblically of reproduction. But most knew that if one dove into a certain water there was a strand of sea life that would evoke a human form when correctly combined with human tissue.

This was the way these dolls were made. There were many other words for them, but dolls was the one Madelein thought of. They were like humans, but not made by sexual reproduction. They were creatures of God, and could have great potential. So the people who had them created went to great lengths at planning their lives.

The people of the island disliked the process of placing their creations, but for this one there wasn't any helping the matter. She was meant to answer for a people as ancient as their own. A woman who had many wealthy descendants whose keen desire was to keep hold of that wealth.

Many were created to support her. It was done with both caution and reckless abandon. Because many believed that who she chose to serve her purpose would be similar to prophecy.

One of the families that had to watch her slip away and be nearly destroyed were from a country called South Korea. In the 1960's a company was forming that was dedicated to the evolution of technology. They were making devices which could do things some thought should not be possible. A batch of tracking devices mysteriously went missing, and one of them found it's way to Madelein.

In the entertainment industry these devices were being tested for military use. For South Korea it was a no brainer. The use of these devices strengthened their military capabilities. In turn, the entertainment industry began to expand. Then, sometime in the 1990's it accelerated even faster.

It was around this time Madelein became aware of what was happening to her. She had been implanted with a variety of microscopic devices that could be accessed remotely. They could measure her heart rate, temperature, and so forth. And with the right equipment, she could be used as a sort of portal that would allow remote viewing and communication to occur. All of which were supposed to be blocked using scramblers.

It was completely common in the industry of popular media in South Korea, which fueled the use of the matchmaking program that Jin and Yongbok were participating in. So when Madelein took days to herself, she had to remember that someone was watching. She was never totally alone.

She wondered what another girl might do with this information. Watching how females behaved in the fan base, she struggled to relate to the level of devotion, despite almost envying it. She knew there were many more wealthy and potentially attractive people that accessed her this way, but she chose instead to focus on the idols.

Thinking of how exposed she was on private servers was slightly nauseating. So the pale comparison of an idol's life brought her some comfort. Knowing the way the world worked, and how many of them were designed for that purpose. They also lacked childhoods, and struggled to understand the ways of life which came from an existence untethered to lenses and lights.

She thought maybe this was why they were also so fascinated with her. So she was working on a periodical, R's magazine. She had made many zines previously, but this was the only one that kept calling her back to repetition. Repetition was a behavior Madelein wasn't fond of, possibly because she hoped never to return to this form. The experience she had prior to being assigned as a citizen of the United States, to be monitored and experimented on in perpetuity, wasn't a kind one. Nor was what followed, for the most part. It seemed similar to what a lot of idols in South Korea went through as well.

It was this synchronicity that led her to create a narrative examining the notion that somewhere in a parallel universe, the fans of idol groups were the ones being worshipped. Because after all, weren't there teams devoted to the study of them, in order to ensure profitability? And behind it all were the sponsors, companies like Samsung that made pocketable devices which could supposedly replace her.

But she was never meant to be replaceable. In the eyes of the families that intended to be her own, she was like the heart of the ocean.

+++

They were desperate to scramble the communications, in order to protect her. In doing so, they realized they might have made things much worse.

When the announcement of Kpop boy group BTS was made public, it was at the time of their official discharge. Still, they were all obligated to go through the motions of duty for public perspective. Around this time, Madelein was sleeping outside of a courthouse she was legally engaged with. The judge inside had offered to sell her to the highest bidder. Knowing it was a trap, no one bit. So time when on while they all waited for her to be repossessed. They put her in jail and scanned her, seeing what was inside but unable to identify it. People walked by with magnets trying to draw it out for bounty hunters. The military worked tirelessly with great apprehension to divert the situation, jhournalists were threatened to keep quiet or lose credential.

All the while, Jin felt totally helpless. As if he had at one moment been carpeted in the comfort of his childhood home, playing rescue the princess. The next, a senior in uniform demanding he produce physical evidence of her survival.

She didn't feel real, until he got up close. He would wait until he was certain she couldn't see him. It was a real struggle, and he would usually have to shut down his entire system, which made him feel incredibly vulnerable. Watching her was something that brought his great comfort. In times of stress he would log on and pay the toll, so he could pretend he was somewhere else. There were many times he would watch tapes of himself performing to make sure there was no sign of what he was really doing.

There were ways to augment the experience. It took teams to accomplish and was incredibly expensive, until artificial intelligence was implemented. Then, the need for teams to accomplish this was all but eradicated. This way, users of the program could visit their partners and extend what was actually happening to a different direction. There was no need for the actual partner, of course. Some just preferred it as an aspect of the experience. Others were paid to do so. Jin couldn't tell which category he really belonged to anymore.

He had spent years with Madelein as she was with other men and even had children. Children he imagined were his, man he imagined he could be or replace. Some of them knew this was happening, in fact most of them did. They would take requests and accept payment for it. Madelein seemed almost completely aloof. The truth was, it was more than she could handle theoretically. She didn't have access to a private server or any of the licensing for the devices that were implanted in her body. This was the reason the military were involved: part of the implants were property of theirs. Property that allegedly was stolen and misused.

This was how she started picking up on where it was coming from. Still, she didn't talk much about it. Especially after everything she had heard, what people thought, and so forth. Instead she decided to start speaking indirectly to the people she could discern were communicating with the same system.

She was riding the bus one day when she first heard his voice. It was a song called "the astronaut" and it took her breath away. When she saw the singer, she thought he was one of the most beautiful men she had ever seen.

She imagined he was showing her a film he helped make. In the film, a demonic entity with a bag chained to his head haunted a house. Jin expressed that this made him feel suffocated and sad. This, meaning trying to help her out of the unfortunate circumstance she was in. Watching men who hurt her for money, money she never saw a dime of because the people who were selling her information didn't care about her at all.

She wondered if Jin had been one of them, so she watched him for a long time. She paid attention to the way he spoke and acted. And she realized he had indeed been one of those men. Around this time Jin was having a mild nervous breakdown. Under surveillance by the military, he paid to access an application that would implement artificial intelligence software with her devices. It was a part of an operation whose goal was to stop this from happening with their devices.

The experience was something that scarred Jin with permeance. Initially, it resembled the usual experience of synching systems: he was able to see all around Madelein as if he had a camera that surrounded her. It was a script that utilized various sound waves to maneuver itself and transmit a signal that carried real time data. Attached was a holographic formation which replicated Jin in real time.

Madelein was witnessing all of this as if in a dream. She was in her sleeping bag, lying on a sidewalk between two cameras out of fear from what kept happening when she was alone.

The ongoing conversation between herself and the line which was operated mainly by Jin was being scrambled. Biological response data was delivered to the system and translated with the artificial intelligence software. What emerged was something like this:

How long can you stay with me? She wanted to know.

And they were being tied together like twins in shibori.

Jin was heartbroken and angry because he had invited her to a movie, but she didn't go.

He had planned to try and hide somewhere but he was terrified of being caught, exposed, deported.

So the ropes fled off and he quickly stood up and disappeared.

The program ate itself alive. And this wasn't the first time Madelein had done this.

Developers and engineers would scramble to repair the damage, but it was often futile.

Around this time Jin had been working undercover at the Missoula County Detention facility when Madelein was being held there. Things kept happening to the facility that no one could explain or repair with her there. They were actively negotiating her release when it happened again: their systems linked and the artificial intelligence program engaged despite being disconnected repeatedly. She was lying on the floor in her cell alone with her legs in the air watching him, and seeing the script fly in front of her eyes the whole time. Some vile amalgamation of him taking her to court, pulling over, and having his way with her while she was handcuffed.

Jin was both appalled and aroused. It felt like the entire facility had just witnessed the event that never actually occurred. He was pulled from active duty and placed on leave to recover mentally, but the truth was, that didn't seem possible.

It wasn't only Jin this was happening to. Other members of BTS were struggling similarly. So the military made contracts with another company to try to control the damage. It was around this time Madelein lost touch with her devotion to the group, realizing they were behaving interchangeably. So when she was lying on the bed in a hotel room with a hologram of Min Yoongi hovering nearby and a member of the group Stray Kids popped up in her Tik Tok feed, she decided to respond more evidently.

+++

In France, a team were working to conceal all of this. So when the Kardashians began leaking information about her, they found themselves in an unfortunate scenario. A scenario which the military were all too familiar. It was this group that zeroed in on the member of Stray Kids who had found himself locked in a veil of limerical proportions with Madelein. So when she appeared beside him in what seemed like perfect illusion, he began to understand the essence of desperation Jin had that day when they met. And he wondered who might be able to help him now.