“Okay, pick.”
“Huh?” Andrea’s doll asked, confused.
The two were standing in the back room where all the rejects went. It basically looked like any back storage room, except for a key difference.
It was filled with the tiny dolls to the brim.
There were shelves lining the walls of the back room, each itself lined with either capsules containing single doll rejects, or large plexiglass boxes containing dozens of them. The room went back far enough that it could've easily contained hundreds of thousands of the little things.
On the home front, Andrea had been training her new toy well, and had decided to name it Andre. At first, Andre thought it was getting recognized as a human being, but Andrea was quick to crush this mentality. She only did that because it was lackluster to always use general pronouns when referring to it.
Now, Andrea held Andre in her hand, as he scanned the rows of dolls, all sleeping until ready to be released.
“You want me to choose?” he clarified.
“You’ve gotten to be a very good pet in the past few weeks, so I've decided to let you choose who could be released. You may pick five.”
Andre couldn't believe it. After weeks of enduring Andrea’s harsh regiment, he finally had the chance to make a few friends! Not to mention rescue some of the dolls still cooped up in storage.
“I'll walk around to give you a chance to examine everything. I'll permit you, for once, to stop me when you've chosen.”
“Y-yes mistress!” he responded.
Then she began to slowly move forward, giving her pet a chance to look at all the possible candidates for rescue. Andrea smiled, knowing that anything he was rescuing these little nothings from could not possibly be any worse than what Andrea could do for them. But that's neither here nor there.
“Stop, mistress,” he added on the last part after a little hesitation. Andrea smiled, proud at herself for having been able to instill this much fear into her new toy. And a reject, of all things! If any of these dolls were handed to Andrea before being labeled as rejects, they probably wouldn't have even gotten here to this back room. Of course, they'd probably have mostly died, but again, neither here nor there.
“Which one?” Andrea questioned.
“That one in the capsule, third from the top.”
Andrea could see who he was talking about. It was a young girl who looked about in her twenties as well, but couldn't have been older than a month or two in reality. But Andrea could see why he picked her because she was very, very beautiful.
Not as beautiful as Andrea, of course, but beautiful all the same. She had light, glassy skin and amber-red hair.
“Excellent choice,” Andrea said, grabbing the four inch, pill shaped plastic capsule and putting it in her purse.
Then Andrea walked forward again, slowly still.
“Stop mistress.”
He pointed to a large plastic bin near the floor holding quite a few dolls. “The small one in the corner.”
Andrea almost wanted to cry out laughing. It was a kid!
Well, not quite a kid, but he couldn't have been more biologically or psychologically older than a twelve year old, which is what he looked like. He had light tan skin, making Andrea briefly wonder if his model was based off the people who have Andrea’s the own Middle Eastern roots.
How unfortunate, thought Andrea, crouching down, opening the bin, and removing him from the bin.
Then she kept going.
The next one he pointed to was another child, this time a girl, about fourteen with dark skin and hair.
Well, the man made his choice, she decided, and put the capsule in her handbag.
Then he chose another man and a woman, each about his age.
“This is quite the assortment you've got here,” Andrea said, closing her bag up.
“Yes, yes it is, mistress. Will you please look after them?”
Andrea looked at Andre on her hand sympathetically, and said, “I can assure you that they'll be able to live the rest of their lives with me.”
He smiled, before being haphazardly tossed in her purse amongst the other junk and containers as Andrea nonchalantly left the storage room, unable to wait to get home.