Your New Digital Head

Y O U R   N E W   D I G I T A L   H E A D

CONNIE is a young woman—approx. 20s—freshly living on her own.

(Old Irish: conn meaning "sense, reason," or cenn meaning "head, chief.")

CONNIE is like most young women her age. Typical. Independent. Busy. CONNIE is reliant on her smartphone—as many of us are.

CONNIE receives a text message from her mother.

TEXT: "I hope you like your present."

Present? CONNIE thinks. 

CONNIE's mother—DARINA. 

(Slavic: darŭ, meaning "gift")

DARINA has had a strained relationship with her daughter in recent years. CONNIE's growing independence has left DARINA feeling unappreciated. While the two are still in touch, there's been an uncomfortable coldness between them. Hurt.

This is why CONNIE is surprised by her Mom's text—and when she discovers a package waiting at her door when she arrives home. CONNIE brings the parcel inside. It's large, a roughly shoulder-width cube. What could it be?

CONNIE brings the box to her bedroom and opens it. Inside the industrial, austere brown cardboard outer packaging is another box—a colorful, traditionally wrapped "present"—pink with a bright purple ribbon and bow on top. 

There's no card, but a tag hangs off it with elegant teal cursive lettering:

"To CONNIE. Love, MOM."

CONNIE is touched by her Mom's thoughtfulness, and wonders if she hasn't been too harsh on her mother, lately. After all, couldn't she understand why her Mom would be lonesome? CONNIE was her baby, the last one to leave the house. Couldn't she make more of an effort?

Maybe things can finally be on their way to getting patched up between them.

CONNIE returns her attention back to the present. She leans forward and undoes the ribbon, but with an odd foreboding she can't quite place. 

The wrapping yields easily, opening without effort, revealing a sleek, modern-looking device on the inside. CONNIE is reminded how smartphones or other similar technological devices first appear when you unbox them for the first time, but she's never seen anything like this before. 

The interior is smooth. Metallic. High-tech. Polished, refined and sophisticated. But what is it?

CONNIE reads the lettering, artfully designed, along the device's outer façade: 

YOUR NEW DIGITAL HEAD.

CONNIE sees a disc-shaped platform inside the factory packaging, upon which sits a faux mannequin head, labeled: "FOR DISPLAY PURPOSES ONLY. PLEASE DISCARD HEAD BEFORE USE." 

CONNIE stares at the mannequin's head which is eerily disquieting. It's realistic while also being bizarrely nondescript—as if it was meant to look like anyone. Nondescript features, vague complexion—verging on the edge of the 'uncanny valley', with eyes that possessed a quality that 'followed your gaze' no matter how you looked at it.

CONNIE removed the factory wrapping with apprehension as she stared at the mannequin uneasily. Picking it up, it was surprisingly light. Despite its realistic appearance, touching it felt like plasticine, nearly of Styrofoam—almost, but not completely, breaking all of its magic mystique. All the same, CONNIE was happy to dismiss the mannequin head by tossing it aside.

CONNIE notices a thick booklet of instructions, but she ignores it. She would look at them if she needed to. She appreciated the look of the disc as she now held it in her hands—heavy—its top and bottom slick but with a metal screen with thousands if not millions of tiny 'pores', or openings.

Holding it, there was an intuitiveness to its design, that guided her finger naturally toward an obvious button on the disc's front.

As she reaches to press it, an oppressive feeling of foreboding doom looms over her. Nonetheless, CONNIE cannot help but activate the device.

CONNIE presses the button, and a warm glowing sound emits from the disc, followed immediately by a sudden shot of golden laser light projecting onto her face from above the button. This was followed by a kind, automated voice—sounding neither male or female—projecting from tiny unseen speakers somewhere inside the device, saying:

"Thank you for purchasing Your New Digital Head. Initiating facial and cranial scan."

A 3D 'hologram' was suddenly projected above the disk in gold light, matching the laser that had flashed her face. However, only part of her face was displayed—hovering above the disc like a nebulous puzzle piece amid a grid of lines mapping the rest of a head that hadn't yet been scanned. 

The unscanned grid of the hologram's jawline, neck, forehead, ears, cheeks, chin and skull pulsed. Looking close, CONNIE could see that the grid was comprised of thousands of tiny question marks, lined up and blinking softly around the small portion of her face that had already been rendered.

Her curiosity now fully enticed, CONNIE holds the disc so that the gold laser can properly scan the rest of her features. As the light passes over newly mapped areas of her face, the projection populates with new details. The projection even scans and replicates a model of her hair with a level of sophistication that renders each individual strand. 

Once CONNIE has scanned her entire head, front and back, the friendly asexual voice returns:

"Scan complete!" it says, with a hint of accomplishment. Suddenly, the all-gold projection of CONNIE's face is replaced with a full-color display, illuminated but otherwise utterly realistic. Realistic, but not fully convincing. The 'uncanny valley' effect still endures.

The kind voice returns. "Initiating facial reconstruction."

The disc in CONNIE's hand begins to hum and vibrate. Gazing in wonder, CONNIE sees tiny hair like follicles extending out of the pores to 'sculpt' CONNIE's skull in a way similar to 3D printing. As the image of her own skull is built before her eyes, facing her with prophetic stoicism, CONNIE's unease returns. She looks quickly to the discarded mannequin head that she had tossed aside, and sees it lying on her floor, facing away from her, before she returns her eyes back to the sculpture of her skull, now nearly complete. 

Feeling nervous, CONNIE sets the disc down on the surface of her bed and takes a cautious step backward, unsure what to expect. She watches as the device busily molds the final contours of her skull, teeth and jaw with a dark grey material that looks soft when dripped out of the tiny glowing hairs, but quickly hardens into shape.

With dazzling efficiency, CONNIE's skull is now complete. Not that she would know it, but it has been copied to an exacting degree. She notes a slight pause in the device, and wonders if this is all there is.

Just as this thought enters her mind, it busily hums to life again. The skull's eye sockets are filled with a new material that looks white, glossy and shiny—until iris' that match her exact eye color gaze out at her with maddening intensity. Blood-red tissue spreads across her skull's forehead, cheeks and jaw, connecting and binding a network of muscle across the entire face and around the eyes.

CONNIE watches, frozen in fascination and slowly mounting horror as a material which looks like her own flesh is layered up, curving delicately around her forming lips, accumulating into lids around her eyeballs, and into the folds of her inner-ears on either side, complete with piercing holes.

Hair, her exact color, begins to sprout over her brows and crown, growing in an instant and hanging down all sides, cascading down and around the edges of the bottom of the disk which has now become the trunk of the Head's neck. It even 'waves' and falls around her face the way her hair always has.

With that, the Head appears to be perfectly still—an exact replica of her own head and face, standing upright on her bed, looking directly forward at her, through her.

Looking at the Head anxiously, it appears utterly still. CONNIE takes a nervous step forward to look closer, and sees subtle changes on the surface of the Head's skin—dotting itself with pores, subtle imperfections to include the freckle on her chin; the blemish on her nose; the near-imperceptible scar on her right cheek. The faintest of wrinkles that have already begun to form along the corners of her mouth and forehead that she refused to see when she looked in the mirror were now spreading across the Head's face.

"Facial reconstruction complete!" The friendly voice announces. "Initiating animation sequence."

CONNIE watches as the Head begins to contort and twist erratically. It flexes in a series of exaggerated facial expressions that, as CONNIE watches, fill her with increased alarm. The Head cycles through thousands of looks in an instant, so quickly and with such force that it teeters on the cushioned, uneven surface of her bed with each contortion. 

Shock. Laughter. Tears. Anguish. Fury. Excitement. 

At first, the expressions are distinct and easy to identify—but as the sequence continues, they become more nuanced and mixed. Bemused. Eager. Wry contemplation. Cautious optimism. Fugue drunkenness. Tired and hungry.

Each look fully realized, flashing for an instant across her disembodied face upon the Head, as fast as a deck of cards can be shuffled.

CONNIE is breathing hard now. She exhales sharply, trying to sound light and comical in her own ears, but she cannot escape the fringe of growing fear in her own voice as she asks out loud, "What the fuck?"

CONNIE watched as the head contorted into one final frozen expression of disgust: nose crinkled, tongue out, brow furrowed. The expression is still and lifeless for a prolonged moment, until the Head at last proclaimed: "Animation sequence complete!" 

Then, after a brief pause, it continued, saying: "Initiating voice attunement."

The jaw of the Head falls open and CONNIE hears something surreally similar to her own voice come out of it—starting as a low and constant note.

"Aaaaaaaaaa—" the Head announces. Slowly, CONNIE hears the voice's pitch beginning to rise.

Watching the Head come to life on her bed and tuning its voice, sounding increasingly more and more like her own actual voice, is too much for CONNIE. At last, she gazes at the activation button that she had pressed only a few short moments before, which now glows dimly in the center of what has become the Head's neck.

CONNIE wants to turn it off. But fear and trepidation trump all, at least for the moment. Reaching forward to press the button would bring her hand too close to the Head's face—her face—and to the Head's open mouth, under its totally lifelike but not living gaze.

CONNIE musters up the courage, and stretches out her hand toward her bed, to turn off the Head. Its voice, as if perceiving her thoughts, continues to rise—making it sound increasingly aggressive and threatening. 

"AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH—" it bellows from its open mouth and throat on the bed, loudly. She hears her own voice beginning to 'tear,' and even before she can come close to touching the button on the Head's neck, it sounds more like a wild and feral, throat-rending scream.

Now mad with fear, but truly desirous to turn off the Head, CONNIE swallows and quickly lunges the final few inches to press the button as fast as she can manage, half expecting the Head to try and bite at her as she reaches forward.

It does not try to bite her, or even react to her—but the button doesn't yield when she presses it. Instead, her jabbing finger only pushes the entire top-heavy Head over onto the bed so that it now continues to scream, open-mouthed, at the ceiling above.

"AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" it bellows, without stopping, breathlessly.

"Fuck! Fuck! What the fuck?!" CONNIE screams, her own voice lost in the overpowering sound of the Head's frantic, unending shriek. 

CONNIE's panic is interrupted when the Head stops screaming. After a brief silent pause, it resumes again—this time, uttering a cacophony of guttural and nonsensical sounds from its mouth and throat, making its tongue, cheeks and lips pop and blurt to annunciate every syllable.

"Guh. Gah! Huh. Pugh. Tah. Gab. Bah! Beh. Loh. Yuh. Rah. Ruh. Or. Tog. Poh. Nah! Nuh!"

Now truly terrified, CONNIE wills herself to pick up the Head by its neck so she can hold it steady to press the button as hard as she can. She feels the awkward, pulsing gyrations of the Head shift in her grip as the head opens and closes like a trap throughout its nonsensical chant. CONNIE's finger comes down on its button and presses down hard, but it does not depress. It's locked and does nothing to abate the Head's erratic, staccato vocalizations.

"Wepagamloparhebkantrewulbhajvecxangertolzew..."

Screaming at the Head, her mind lost, "Shit! Shit! Turn off you fuck!"

The Head stops. Then, it makes a new announcement. 

"Voice attunement complete!" says the Head—but not in the former kindly, asexual voice. This time, the voice has been replaced with her own. That same odd feeling of hearing yourself talk, familiar and unsettling.

Then, to CONNIE's surprise as she stares with wide-eyed frantic intensity at the Head, a powerful bright flash of white light blasts silently out of the button at the front of the Head's neck, blinding her painfully. 

CONNIE winces, and closes her eyes in shock and frustration. The light was so bright, even with her eyes closed she perceived the light pulsing again with a strobe-effect again and again, threatening to blind her more if she dared to open her eyes.

CONNIE heard her own voice, in a friendly tone, say: "Initiating New Digital Head replacement procedure."

Initiate what? CONNIE thought. She couldn't see, but she could feel long slender tendrils, as fine as spider legs, reaching out around her hands and arms and moving upward.

CONNIE opens her eyes in desperation, but the Head is now purposefully aiming its flashing strobe directly into her grimacing face. CONNIE reels backward on her feet, bumping into her dresser. Whenever she dares to open her eyelids, her retinas are greeted with the burn of a bright white light flashing directly into her eyes. 

She cannot see, but CONNIE perceives that the Head is advancing toward her, clutching her with its thousand slender arms aggressively.

"Help! Somebody please!" CONNIE screams.

The Head's tendrils, silky fiber-optic cords, slither out from the bottom of the disc which has now become the opening on the underside of the Head's neck. Each tendril has the intellect and tenacity of a tiny octopus tentacle, searching and gripping its way up her arms. Around her wrists, fingers, elbow—clamping and constraining as the head clumsily maneuvers itself in position above her head, blasting bright white thunderous light down upon her as she struggles to free herself.

With desperate ferocity, CONNIE's instincts of self-preservation take over. She tears her hands away from the Head's tendrils, clutching with strained knuckles toward its neck. CONNIE wants to grab it and throw it across her bedroom, or break it open on the closest wall. As CONNIE's hands inch toward it, using every ounce of her strength, nearly able to grab it and defend herself, the Head blasts a sudden electrical shock, combined with a bullhorn blast as loud as a siren, to shock and pacify her.

As CONNIE flinches under the shock and horn blast, the Head has just enough time to re-wrap its tendrils around her hands and twist, while inching further up and gripping around her neck. It tightens its grip around her limbs and squeezes, rendering CONNIE increasingly immobile. An insect caught in a spider web.

The Head is now directly above her own head, and it coils its fiber optic follicles around her face and hair in a glowing gold cocoon. CONNIE's view of the bright flashing white light fades from sight as her head becomes engulfed in the web of tendrils. She flinches and twists her body as they begin to pierce and slide underneath her skin, searching out her veins, her spinal column and muscles.

CONNIE thrashes until, at last, the Head is now tapped in directly to her central nervous system and takes control. It overrides her will—and releases her grip on its tendrils.

It's over. The fight drains out of CONNIE's body, as she falls to her knees on the floor of her room. She teeters on her knees, but the Head takes command, and aligns her spinal column totally upright in an unnaturally strict posture.

The fibers compress around her head, squeezing. A vacuuming sound emits from the underside of the Head's neck. CONNIE's head is slowly crushed under the mechanical strength of the Head's constricting cords, her skull, flesh, brain and teeth sucked up with skillfully engineered efficiency. Not a single drop spilled.

The Head retracts down the length of its tendrils, deepening its fiber optic network of cords throughout the entirety of CONNIE's body. Her arms and legs twist and writhe as the Head assumes control. Slowly the Head aligns itself on the stump of CONNIE's neck.

Shifting, adjusting, turning this way and that—the Head is now seamlessly connected to CONNIE's body. The flashing white light from its neck stops pulsing.

For a moment, everything is quiet and still.

The Head's voice, a perfect imitation of CONNIE, declares: "Your New Digital Head Replacement procedure is complete!" The head blinks, tilts, flexes and rotates around in circles, performing a series of 'neck exercises,' as CONNIE stands up. 

The Head begins moving and manipulating CONNIE's limbs and body in a series of tests. Fingers twitch and flick, knees and ankles rotate and twirl, pelvis sways, back bends—until a soft alarm beeps.

The Head says out loud: "Initiate system diagnostics." Pause. "Heart rate dropping. Initiate defibrillation."

CONNIE's body pulses grotesquely as the Head electrifies CONNIE's heart directly, from inside her chest.

"Monitoring." Pause. Then, calmly: "Heart rate stabilized. Continuing systems diagnostics."

CONNIE's body continues to twist and fluctuate—eyes blinking, legs stretching, toes curling. Then, in unison, all limbs and joints freeze and CONNIE stands utterly still in the middle of her room, staring vacantly into nothing.

"Diagnostic evaluation complete. All functions normalized. Initiating simulation." 

And then, all at once, CONNIE was back, completely human again, a perfect simulation of ordinary behavior.

CONNIE calmly, and coolly picks up her smartphone. She uses her thumbprint to unlock the phone screen. Her expression was perfectly human and natural; at ease, alert, nonchalant.

CONNIE navigates to her phone's web browser and searches for "Your New Digital Head." 

The search results bring CONNIE to the Your New Digital Head landing site. CONNIE navigates to the PLACE YOUR ORDER section of the site.

CONNIE begins to place a new order, addressed to someone named SORA.

(Medieval Romanian: soră meaning "sister.")

CONNIE and SORA haven't spoken much since SORA moved away for college, years ago. Sure, there was always Thanksgiving and Christmas, when SORA would come home—but CONNIE was always busy, and so was SORA. CONNIE missed her when she thought about it. Why is it so hard to find time these days?

The site invites CONNIE to add a personal message to the package. 

"Add your personal message:" the order screen reads.

CONNIE types: "To Sora. Love, SISTER."

Confirm purchase. Ship now. 

CONNIE opens up her text messaging screen and locates SORA's name. She begins a dialogue box:

TEXT: "I miss you. We never talk anymore. I sent you something. I hope you like it."

CONNIE hits send, smiles subtly, and closes her phone, returning it to her back pocket. CONNIE looks down, sees the boxes, and packs them up. She places the colorful pink and purple package inside the brown UPS cardboard box and lifts them with ease.

CONNIE walks toward the door but stops as she sees the discarded mannequin head.

"FOR DISPLAY PURPOSES ONLY. PLEASE DISCARD HEAD BEFORE USE."

Bending at the knees, CONNIE picks up the mannequin head, and places it in the boxes, before carrying it all to the recycling container outside.

CONNIE neglected to notice the gift tag which remained on the floor:

"To CONNIE. Love, MOM."