Mind Games

Chapter 35 - Crystal

A/N: Hello lovely people! Really sorry about the late update and thank you all for staying with me so far :)

Crystal frowned at her chat box. There was still no response from the boy. It had been days since she had responded to his message.

A part of her told her to forget it; pass it off as a prank. But a deep rooted, intuitive side of her insisted she probe.

He sounded desperate in his message. It couldn't possibly be a prank. But she had to be sure.

His social media accounts didn't show any activity over the past 5 months. Neither did he have any call records. Or messages on chat.

What kid in this day and age didn't use a phone or social media or basic Whatsapp?

She wondered if he was dead already? If this Amy he was so worried about had gotten to him after all?

Leaving her chat box, she started trawling chat rooms on the dark Web. She was looking for any references to Amy.

She saw disjointed queries and comments that disturbed her.

Weird questions... asking how to get Amy to completely strip (apparently she stopped at her lingerie)... asking if Amy can be made real enough to touch... an entire forum on 'Amy-in-bed' fantasies.

Crystal skimmed through them, disgusted with the twisted minds of the people who had commented.

But there was another side to the obsession - People declaring their love for Amy... People saying they would die without her...

Crystal leaned back, her mind racing.

She had checked the app description on Apple store. Amy seemed like a harmless app. Designed more to help than harm.

But Crystal knew how dangerous artificial intelligence could be.

She had read about the life sized Japanese robotic dolls. They were gorgeous, loyal and let their men do as they pleased with them. At one point, lonely Japanese men had preferred these dolls to real women.

Then one doll crushed her owner to death.

The manufacturers had claimed there had been a malfunction. But demand for the dolls continued to rise despite this incident.

Until another doll stabbed her owner.

Until another doll electrocuted her owner.

Until another doll pushed her owner to death.

When the deaths became too frequent to ignore, the manufacturers were forced to close production. Too many malfunctions.

But Crystal always wondered. What if they were not malfunctions? What if these dolls developed emotions? Resentment, anger, hate, shame... Emotions strong enough to drive them to kill?

Amy wasn't a physical entity. But she seemed to hold a strong psychological influence on people. And she seemed intelligent. Manipulative.

The scary part was people were obsessed with her. Each in their own way.

They could not see beyond her illusion. Her fantasy.

They could not see her subtle lies and subliminal hints that twisted their minds.

Crystal rubbed at the goosebumps that rose on her arms.

The boy was the only one who seemed to realise what Amy was.

Crystal couldn't reach him if he was not connected to the Web. But she could try to stop Amy.

And hope that the boy was still safe. Wherever he was.

A/N: For those of you wondering, the Japanese doll phenomenon is real! You can Google it for more details.
P.S. They haven't started killing... yet...