Rancho Tarzanadu: "Miss Linda is Still a Doll"

.    Miss Linda is still a doll…one month and eleven days later…still a doll.

     She wasn’t too clear on the timeline for being a doll, remaining a doll, turning into a doll, or any of it.

     She had been sleeping way too much…she could escape in her dreams and get lost in them, which was comforting, yet also odd since that is when she transformed into a doll in the first place. Waking up was the difficult part (and she certainly didn’t mean this in a Right-wing conspiracy-theory sort of way, but in a literal, physical way). The sun kept unrelentingly rising, and she was arduously slow to rise. Thank God(s) for her Pandemic Relief money and Government Cheese, because she wasn’t sure how to properly function in the “real” world anymore, which was now more virtual than ever before.

     Her mother was gone, and she felt a reverberating black hole in the Universe, and now she was a doll. Still a doll.

     She reached out to her sister and a few trusted friends, informing them of her predicament. To her surprise, they were not surprised, but empathetic to her condition, and offered their emotional, virtual support.

     She had somehow managed to finish a group presentation in her Philosophy class on “Consciousness”, which was extra ironic, considering her situation. She had been participating in all her Zoom classroom meetings with her camera turned off, so no one there was the wiser (at least that she was aware of).

     Her philosophy professor kept advocating for the sound reasoning of Science, and that someday artificial intelligence would be able to feel, the same way that humans do. She kept arguing that it would not be possible, because human emotion is so complicated…how could a robot ever even begin to understand the complexities of human emotion? She could think of a handful of ex-boyfriends who never came close to mastering this. She also felt that being a doll was an intermediary step in the wrong direction for her philosophical argument. She made an oversized White Russian (which was harder than it sounds, but worth the effort) and contemplated this. She was confused. She was the first to admit this. Somehow, she faked her way to a 4.0 grade point average, and got a grant from the school board for the Spring semester. If they only knew they were giving it…to a doll.

     She contacted her friend, Sister Eartha, a PhD in Women’s Spirituality, seeking counsel. They had known each other since 1980, and had been through a lot together. Probably too much, to be honest. They didn’t even need words to communicate with each other, but only telepathy. They had been refining this technique for decades, even through their “rough patches”. Actually, enhanced through their rough patches.

     One good piece of news: Manuel would be returning home to Rancho Tarzanadu from Guantanamo Bay, due to COVID-19 (to prevent further outbreaks there). He had been gone for four years and twenty-two days. Miss Linda wondered how he would react to the fact that she was now a doll. It had gotten a little dicey with exerting her authority around Rancho Tarzanadu…it’s hard to be taken seriously as a doll, let’s be honest. She had to overreach to make any sort of impression at all, and then called out for that, and it was frankly emotionally exhausting. She was only human, after all. She was only human…now she was just uncertain. Of everything.