Ted's Dolls Interlude 5: Alumni Weekend (Patreon)

If you haven't read any of the Ted's Dolls stories before, you should start with Ted's Dolls 1: Jane before reading this one. And if you are current with the stories, you might want a refresher by reading Ted’s Dolls 26: Elliot’s Dummy.

The alumni stood in the vestibule catching with old and new friends. The ballroom doors opened and they filtered in. The tables were set for dinner and were covered in fine linen in the colors of the university. Wait staff started helping people to their seats. Up near the podium if they were on the preferred list or to the generally available seats if they were not. They also were taking dinner and drink orders. There was a raised stage along the far wall with a closed curtain.

As dinner was served an announcement was made that the President of the university would be speaking shortly. The President managed to keep his speech short, thanking the alumni for attending, talking about the talent show that was about to take place, and encouraging them to tour the grounds the following day. He mentioned the exhibit that would be display in the gymnasium when the doors opened at ten o’clock.

Elliot stood mostly relaxed in the wings. Rob however was a nervous wreck. “Where’s Tanya?”

“On stage.”

“Why?”

“Her idea. The audience is going to see her standing on stage through the first three acts before I go on.”

“Oh.”

“If you look to the far side of the stage there are some tall plants and a woman who seems to be frozen in the act of watering them. From the audience’s view, she is mostly obscured by the plants. But, when they rearrange the stage for the dance troop, she’ll be moved somewhere else. And so on.”

True to his word, the stagehands would move Tonya’s ventriloquist body to a different location between acts. For the dancers, she was sitting on a sofa that would move around the stage and the dancers would even leap over it a few times.

For a rock band’s performance, she was standing in front of a tower of amplifiers. The driving beat of the music would cause her hair to pulse. For a poetry recital, she was sat down in front of the poet to listen. And after that act, she was stood up and placed down at center stage.

The master of ceremonies announced, “And now we present, Real Talk, with Elliot Wiser.” Elliot walked out to polite applause. He adjusted the microphone in front of the dummy before putting his hand inside.

“Have you been enjoying the show?”

“Um.”

“Are you okay?”

“There’s a lot of people looking at me.”

“We can’t ask them to leave. That wouldn’t be polite.”

“I just didn’t expect there to be so many of them.”

“It’ll be fine. Here, look at me.” He grabbed the dummy’s chin and turned its head to face him. “Have you been enjoying the show?”

“Sure. Standing in front of the amplifiers when the band played was awesome.”

“Well, now, you’re part of the show.”

“I am?”

“Yes. You’re going to assist me for my hypnosis act.”

“I thought you were a ventriloquist.”

“I’m both.”

“Seems unusual that you’re doing two acts at once. Did you end up bumping someone else from the show?”

“No, I was always doing both things.”

“Well, it won’t work. Hypnosis is fake.”

“How do you know?”

“Do I look like a dummy?”

“Um.”

“You know what I meant.”

“Right. Of course not. You attend the university. You can’t be a dummy.”

“Hah! I am a dummy. Got you.”

“Fine. Still, let’s start the act. It’s already been nearly five minutes and all we’ve established is you’re a dummy.”

“And that I got you.”

“Of course. Now. Let’s do this the traditional way.” He pulled a pocket watch from his pocket.

“Seriously? A pocket watch?”

“You never mind that and just follow the watch with your eyes.”

He swung the watch and the dummy’s eyes swung side to side in an exaggerated manner.

“This isn’t going to work.” Her eyes moved side to side in lock step with the watch.

“Just relax and follow the watch. Your eyes will start to feel heavy. That’s perfectly normal.”

“My eyes are made of wood. They’re never heavy.”

“Perfectly normal. You can feel them starting to close on their own.”

“That’s just you pulling the things in my head.”

“You are getting sleepy,” he said forcefully, then whispered, “C’mon work with me here.”

She whispered. “It’s not my fault you aren’t very good at hypnosis.”

“You can barely keep your eyes opened.”

Her eyes opened wide. “I can.”

“You cannot.”

Her eyes were nearly closed.

“I…” she yawned. “… can.”

“They are too heavy. You are asleep.”

The dummy’s body slumped forward slightly, it’s head down.

“There we go, one hypnotized dummy.”

The dummy mumbled something about not being a dummy.

The act continued as Elliot ran the dummy through its mouth being stuck open or close as Tanya had experienced in real life. When the hypnosis part was done, Elliot wrapped up the act.

“Now, do you believe in hypnosis?”

“No. I was just humoring you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was never hypnotized. I just held my mouth open.” As she continued speaking, her mouth was wide open, “Whenever you said I should. It’s not like I need to move my mouth to talk.”

“No, I suppose you wouldn’t.”

Her mouth closed and stayed closed halfway through saying, “The audience isn’t made of dummies either. They know you’re doing all the talking.”

“That is true. There’s only one thing left to do.”

“What?”

He pulled his hand out of her back and waved to the audience. He picked her up and walked off the stage.

The audience applauded and the master of ceremonies announced the next act.

Rob was waiting off stage. “Well, done.”

“I couldn’t have done it without Tanya.”

“I’m sure someone else would have done it. But, I don’t know if they’d have enjoyed as much as Tanya.”

“Is Ted stopping by?”

“No, he said she’d return to normal in the morning. I’ll just take her back to the dorm.”

“Okay. Thanks for giving her the chance to do all this.”

“Our pleasure. G’night, Elliot.”

“Good night, Rob.”

* * *

Mitch, Burke, Richard, and a few members of the theater department were let into the Gymnasium around 9:30 the next morning. Twenty minutes later, Ted received a text from Mitch, “All systems normal.”

There was a small line of people gathered around the gymnasium door. The maintenance man from the night before was standing off to the side talking to another maintenance team member. Ted went straight to the two university employees when he and Paris arrived together.

With an exchange of nods, the maintenance man climbed to the three steps up to the door of the gymnasium and unlocked the doors. The doors were propped open to allow easy entry into the building.

Some people immediately rushed in while others looked around as if expecting someone to say something. Paris started to walk in but noticed Ted wasn’t coming. “You aren’t coming in?”

“I’d rather see how people look as they’re leaving. And I don’t want to have to answer questions.”

“Okay,” she said and she walked in alone.

Once through the doors, there were black curtains forming a small room. There were two openings in the curtains, one on the wall to the left and one straight ahead. Burke stood in front of the opening to the left. She waved at him and he pointed to the opening straight ahead. Through the opening, the curtains snaked right, left, and right so one could not see from the exhibit entrance into the exhibit. There were no lights here as well except for a dim glow ahead. At the end of the snaking corridor was the first set piece of the exhibit. It appeared to be an airlock on a spaceship. “Please step into the airlock,” said Richard.

“How’s it going?” she said.

“Great. Can’t talk. I’m on duty.”

When there were six people in the airlock, Richard put his hand out to prevent more from entering and pressed a button on a panel next to him that rolled a door across the opening, separating those six within the airlock. A recording played. Paris recognized Whitney as the speaker, “Welcome to the Generation Omicron Long Distance Starship, or GOLD for short. Beyond the airlock is the remains of the doomed starship recreated for you. It is as accurate a representation as can be determined by our historians and scientists. Please stick together and do not linger in any one of the rooms too long so other may enjoy the exhibition too. Thanks for you patronage.” The door on the opposite side opened and the six visitors could hear the low thrumming sound of a machine in the distance. As they exited, the door closed behind them and six more people were loaded into the airlock.

Ahead of them, was a room that might have been an engineering room of a starship. Four figures stood rigidly at the various panels. Lights were flashing wildly. In one corner there was the gory remains of one, no two bodies that were dissected as if by several laser scalpels. A third person was standing over the bodies silently screaming. A computerized voice said, “… Reactor meltdown imminent... Evacuation recommended… Reactor meltdown imminent...” Presumably the chief engineer was giving orders to one of the other engineers while one of them is openly panicking.

“Hey, check this out,” one of the other people in Paris’ group of exhibit viewers said. He pointed to a wall where a crack widened and a hand tried to reach out before being pulled back and the wall sealing shut again.

“Think it will happen again?” someone else said.

They waited a moment. The lights dimmed in the room and a light above the exit turned on.

“I guess we have to move on.”

Through the next curtained off room they traveled and ended up on in a medical ward. Every bed was filled and other injured people were leaned up against walls, seated in office chairs, and some obviously dead people were lying on the ground. There was a couple doctors posed as if performing surgery right in the ward.

The computerized voice continued to announce the imminent meltdown.

Some of the visitors were feeling the dolls. “These look extraordinarily real.”

“You haven’t rented a doll?”

“No. I don’t have the money.”

“I’ll get you one next week. They are amazing. Don’t you agree, Paris?” The other student said.

“They are extra special,” she said.

“Check out this view port.”

On the left side was a view port into the interior of the ship. Looking through it, one could see several humans, naked, standing in rows and columns.

“There must thousands of them,” said one of the students who was looking left and right to try to determine the extent of the rows and columns.

The next two rooms were people fighting to get into escape pods. The voice over had dialog mixed into the computer warning about imminent destruction:

“Please remain calm. Panic will lead to more injuries.”

“Get out of the way!”

“Mary, no! I need to get on that pod.”

“That pod is full.”

“My daughter’s on that pod without me.”

“She’s lucky. There are no pods left.”

“What?”

“What?”

“Do you know who I am?”

“Dead. Now shut up and go find a place to die.”

The tour group rounded a corner to the left, implying they were half way around the gym. In front of them was a long flat wall of the ship to their left and black curtains on the right and above them. As they reached the midpoint, there was an opening in the wall and the large numbers of naked figures standing in long rows and columns were broken up by the sound of whooshing air. In the ceiling and painted on the black curtains were human bodies floating in space outside the ship.

“This isn’t a hull breach. Why was the door opened?” Said one of the visitors.

“Why were they just standing there, so tightly packed together?”

“Look, some of them are still standing in tight rows.”

“There are definitely thousands of them.”

“Can Ted make that many dolls?”

“I think there’s a matte painting in there.”

One of them reached in and there are a transparent barrier. “Force field?”

“Plastic. But I think it’s supposed to be a force field.”

“Cool.”

Traveling around the last bend, they heard the computer voice again before they passed through the next curtain.

“—eltdown imminent… Evacuati…”

“Someone shut that fucking thing off. I can’t think.”

Paris smiled. That was Ted’s voice.

“Sir, someone opened the cargo bay door.”

“What? What about the passengers?”

“We’ve lost about two hundred of them.”

“Given they were in stasis, they should survive in a vacuum indefinitely.”

“Are we going to mount a rescue?”

“They’re probably better off not being on the ship when it explodes.”

“None of that talk. Get me engineering,” the captain said.

A few beeping sounds played and several screams were heard over the intercom.

“Engineering! Compose yourselves. Status?”

“It was horrible, sir. A pulse of energy just sliced Higgins and Parker into several pieces.”

Distant, “Another spike.”

“Down!!”

A loud noise and more screaming played over the intercom.

The captain said, “Send reinforcement to engineering. They need to shutdown that reactor without getting sliced in half.”

The lights dimmed in the room and the tour group continued through the curtains. They emerged in the lobby, coming through the curtains behind Burke. Burke said, “If you are going to talk about the exhibit, please do so away from those who haven’t had a chance to experience it.”

Paris left the building and walked over to Ted. “Well?” he said.

She kissed him. “I had no idea you were a budding science fiction writer.”

He laughed. “Neither did I.”

“How much of that was people and how much was stage props?”

“Most of the figures in the rooms are people you know. The rest was made by the theater department.”

“Are you going to stand here all day?”

“I’ll probably sit down eventually. I’m actually waiting to see what Dean Wolch has to say. She did commission the exhibit.”

“How did the moving stuff work?”

“I’ll tell you later.”