This story was strongly inspired by AnonymousPerv's fantastic Mannequin X. I hope he doesn't mind me doing my own take on the same situation - I intend it as my highest form of flattery.
*****
I smiled wryly at the naked mannequin at the front of the conference room and thought again what an unusual career I'd had since leaving university.
Some of my classmates had entered the automotive or aeronautical professions and others had gone into nanotech or even the space industry. I decided to use my engineering degree to develop sex toys.
Rob, the head of research and development at the company was a friend of my parents and offered me a job when I graduated and I thought it would be an interesting challenge so agreed.
The first project I was involved with was a totally waterproof vibrator that would operate properly when submerged up to 5 feet under water. It was surprisingly difficult to make it waterproof but also allow the batteries to be replaced but we managed it after considerable trial and error. I don't mind saying I tested the final product thoroughly in the bath.
Once the waterproof vibrator was on the shelves, I was then given a project of my own to run - a new sex doll that was intended to be as similar to the real thing as possible and should also be fully jointed and able to hold any pose it was put into.
Rob dealt with the clients but I led the engineering team - me, Billy, and Simon. It may have been my first project in charge but mostly it was an interesting challenge to be solved.
The skin was very difficult to mimic. We started with similar materials to existing male masturbatory sheaths but we came up with our own methods for adding pores and faint lines and even gossamer-thin hairs. Eventually, we managed to almost perfectly mimic every aspect of a female human body and had built two prototypes.
The research and development took over a year and was funded partly by outside investors with an interest and a view to exporting the final product overseas.
Today was the final demonstration of what the investment had built. I have a habit of arriving early for meetings but I made sure to arrive to this one even earlier than usual and set up Lexi, one of our two prototypes ready for the demo.
It was an incredibly important meeting - the future of the entire company rested on the success of a product we had worked on for over a year. But I felt a lot calmer and ready for the demo now that I was in the room with Lexi ready to go.
Lexi was a thin, beautiful nubile blonde doll, named after and slightly resembling porn star Lexi Belle. The other prototype was referred to as Alia, after Alia Janine, and was a more hour-glass voluptuous shape with large breasts and round bum and hips.
Both dolls were designed to resemble models we scanned and measured in minute detail. Sometimes I wondered what they thought about the idea of men all over the world screwing them, at least in effigy.
Just as I was thinking what it must be like, Rob burst into the room, looking flustered.
"Nikki - there you are!"
"Here I am," I agreed, "where is Alia?"
"There's a problem with Alia."
"What?" I stood up and started towards the door to go see to whatever had happened.
"There's no use," said Rob, holding his arm out in my path.
"What happened?" I asked urgently.
"An accident in transit. A silly series of events that led to her falling over and getting cut on the sharp edge of a workbench. Just dumb luck."
The downside of making dolls so real is that they are no more resilient than real people. If an accident would harm a person, it would also harm one of our dolls.
"Maybe we can fix her before they arrive."
"It'll take hours and they're due in minutes."
I took a minute to collect myself and think things through.
"Well at least we have Lexi - I guess we'll have to make do with just one doll."
"We've told them there will be two. They're expecting two."
"Well we'll just have to explain. I'm sure they'll understand."
"I'm not so sure," said Rob in a dour tone. "They might think we aren't reliable enough to trust with the full project and take their money to a rival."
Rob looked distraught - without the investors' funds, we couldn't afford to set up the machines necessary for mass production. We would be left with the two prototypes we already had and however many more we could manufacture by hand in the same process, which just wasn't cost effective. Either every doll we built would be prohibitively expensive to buy or we would sell them at a loss.
"Well what else can we do?" I asked in exasperation.
"We could go back to Billy's idea to have the doll and a real model side by side for comparison," said Rob eventually.
"We'd never be able to get a model here in time," I said. It seemed it was my turn to be pessimistic.
"Maybe someone in the building," suggested Rob. Then his eyes turned to me with an odd expression.
There aren't very many women in the company and I could see where he was going with that idea.
"Now, hang on, I'm no model," I said emphatically.
"You're the closest to Alia in the building."
"The Alia doll has G cup breasts. Mine are, well, much bigger than that. And a totally different shape!"
"They don't know exactly what she looks like - just that she's more voluptuous than Lexi, and you match that description if you don't mind my saying."
"That doesn't make me a model!" I said, desperately. "And anyway, I need to talk the investors through the features."
I knew that for the comparison to work properly, I would have to pretend to be a mannequin like Lexi so they can't tell immediately which is which.
"The comparison will speak for itself and I can answer most questions they might have. Look, you're the best option we've got. Could we get away with just one doll? Maybe. But having a model next to Lexi would give us the best chance."