Ungirls
By Lauren Beukes, first published in Amazon Original Stories
In a story inspired by the incel phenmenon, Nats, a sex worker in Capetown, decides to provide the voice for growgirls, the latest line of sexdolls, made out of artificially grown organs. After she is exposed to the public as the voice actress, Nats is haunted by a violent stalker.
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Plot Summary
A woman named Nats is doing voiceover recordings in a recording studio. She usually works on radio commercials, and does a variety of sex work to pay for school. At the moment, she is doing voiceover for a futuristic sex doll called a “growjob,” which uses human women’s voices to simulate the experience of real sexual encounters. After her recording session, Nats meets up with three of her friends who are also young sex-workers, and they make jokes about their work over drinks. Simultaneously, a motivational speaker, Scott Parker, is giving an address to an adoring crowd. In his talk, he professes the importance of men’s role in society and rails against women who want to go against “the natural superiority” of the male species. On a television-exclusive event, a journalist gives an in-depth review of a growjob, explaining how they are built to be so realistic by using lab-grown human organs, advanced prosthetics, and interchangeable silicone heads. In an online chat room, a man shows off his new growjob to a group of obsessed admirers. A few days after her recording session, Nats is with one of her regular clients when her phone is flooded with calls and text messages. Nat has been exposed as one of the programmable growjob voices, and now hundreds of strangers know her name and where to find her. She flees to her mothers’ house, where she attempts suicide. She wakes up in the hospital soon after. As she goes through this ordeal, scenes play out showing various men enjoying their growjobs. Nats begins to receive anonymous emails from someone who claims they can help her. Soon after these messages begin, the growjobs start to act out against their owners. Their voices become distorted and angry, and they encourage men to kill themselves. Across the world, the men who own growjobs start committing suicide in horrific ways. Infuriated by his growjob turning against him, a man murders a group of girls in a parking lot. Throughout all of this, the anonymous person continues to email Nats despite her begging for the hacking to stop. Nats blocks the emails and goes to the police. Scott Parker is interviewed about the fallout and hazards of the growjobs and their psychological effect on men. He claims that false intimacy and non-monogamy are the catalysts for these kinds of reactions in men. At the same time, men in the online growjob chatroom discuss the events and their disappointment in the loss of their growjobs. A final anonymous email arrives, and the author tells Nats that he will always be coming after her.
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