Johnny ended the call in frustration, took a bottle of whisky and a couple of store bought sandwiches from the crate and went to the bedroom. The night was productive and he managed to write another four pages.

“10 pages in a day, not too bad if I do say so myself.” Johnny said pleased. “This way I can be done with this horror in a month tops. No one who reads this shit wants to read more than 300 pages.”

In the morning Johnny got up, took a shower and decide to cook himself some breakfast. He’d bought some eggs and bacon on his way up but shortly realized that he didn’t have any oil, bread, salt and pepper. Also all the pans and pots in the cupboard were covered by a thick layer of dust and cobwebs.

“No way I’m cleaning that!” he said as he put his winter coat on, decided to go into the nearest town and have some decent breakfast, maybe find a local who would like to make some extra money by cleaning the place up.

As he opened the front door he saw the box. He’d forgotten everything about it. He slid through the narrow slit between the box and the wall and made his way to the car.

On the drive to the town he tried calling the company again. He’d hoped to find a human operator this time, however the conversation went the same as before: the automated voice asking for the unit id over and over and Johnny getting frustrated and ending the call.

After an hours drive he reached something with the semblance of a town. It looked deserted. The diner was not hard to find and as he went in he saw it was empty except from the woman behind the counter.

“Hello.” Johnny muttered.

“Hello, darling. What can I get you? Just so you know, we’re closing so I couldn’t do you for more than a couple of eggs and some bacon.” the woman said in a motherly tone.

“Yeah, that sounds great. What about some coffee?”

“Sure thing.”

“Slow morning, huh?” Johnny asked.

“Slow everything. Almost everyone’s left. You’re lucky you caught me here, i’m getting ready to leave myself.”

“Why’s that?”

“Don’t you know anything darling? No one actually leaves in these parts during winter. We just lock up and come back in spring. You passing by?”

“No, actually I just moved into the old Denver cabin.”

“You must be one tough cookie. You one of them survivalists?” the woman asked as she set a big plate of bacon, eggs and bread in front of Johnny.

“No ma’am.” Johnny said with his mouth full. He hadn’t realized how hungry he actually was until now.

“Well, then you’d better stock-up for the winter. After you’re done eating head over to old George’s across the street, I believe he’s still here.”

“I was thinking of asking someone in town to help me clean-up the cabin. Paid work of course.”

“Hah” the woman chuckled “there’s no one here anymore. And even if there was I don’t think you’d get them to come anywhere close to that cabin.” she walked away towards a door in the back of the counter.

“Darling, the food is on the house. Now if you’d excuse me, I’ll be packing up.” she said from the door frame.

Johnny walked over to George’s store and caught the old man on his way out.

“You’re in luck young man,” he said “a couple of minutes and I would have been a long way from here. So, what can I do you for?”

“Well, I need some canned food and something to drink if you have it.” Johnny replied.

“Plan on riding out the winter here?”

“Yep.” Johnny didn’t feel to talkative at the moment. For some reason the expression on the diner lady’s face when he said he was living in the Denver cabin upset him.

“So which model do you want?”

“Model?” Johnny asked bewildered.

“What kind of shotgun do you want, young man?”

“No, I don’t want any shotgun, thank you.”

“You sure? Well, suit yourself.”

Johnny paid in cash and put the boxes in his car. As per usual there was more drink than food. He couldn’t shake the eerie feeling he got from the two townspeople, it was like they were running from something.

“What do they expect? An alien invasion during winter? Like this place would turn into an intergalactic retreat for wiry, grey people with an interest for anal probing?” Johnny thought to himself and started chuckling at the idea of him discovering one of the great unknown American secrets.

It was already past noon when he got back to the cabin and the sun was on its descending route. He managed to get the supplies in the cabin, past the big box and started bringing in firewood. He made a small fire in the bedroom, opened a fresh bottle of whiskey and started typing away at his computer.

The words flowed freely and by the time he finished just under half of the bottle he had written another five pages. It kept getting easier and easier as long as he didn’t focus on what he was writing and just put his brain on autopilot.

Now he had a little buzz and felt very energetic, a man of action ready to do things, right the wrongs, change the world. He played around with the thought of cleaning the cabin but put it away soon enough. However, the box kept creeping into his thoughts, it was a nuisance. Every time he went in or out of the house he had to squeeze by it. He needed to do something about it.

Johnny went down the stairs, opened the front door and started looking at the box, rubbing his hands together. He grabbed it by both sides as best he could and started tugging at it. The box slowly slid on the wooden boards until it was right up to the door frame. Johnny was spent, his underused muscles aching and he realized the box was actually wider than the door opening.

“Well, gotta perform the surgery as it lays then.” he said grabbing the car keys from the table.

He started hacking away at the side facing the door. After a quarter of an hour he had created a small opening down the middle so he ripped the carboard with a jolt and packing peanuts started avalanching from the box.

What was left in the box, the product itself was nothing short of breathtaking. Johnny moved his gaze from top to bottom and felt his heart stop in place. He couldn’t believe his eyes. The product was a woman, pale skin, completely naked with nothing but her long bright red hair covering some parts of her.

She was perfect for lack of a better word. She stood there motionless with her eyes closed looking like something that would make Michelangelo seem like a lobotomized amateur.

Johnny kept eyeing her from top to bottom with a dumb grin on his face, a small droplet of saliva coming out of the right corner of his mouth. When he finally made his way up to the face the woman opened her bright green eyes and fixed Johnny with her gaze.

“Hello!” she said with a soft, calm voice.

Johnny froze like a deer caught in the headlights and subsequently fell down like a tree being cut. He was passed out on his back in a puddle of packing peanuts.

When Johnny came to it was already morning and light was creeping in through the window and the small slit of the open door. He was cold and soon found out he had urinated on himself. His vision was still blurry and when he completely came to he saw the naked woman standing stiff right in front of him. She had taken a step forward, however she was still technically on the porch.

Just when Johnny’s vision managed to focus on the woman's face she bent her neck to peer down directly at him. The motion was so sharp it reminded Johnny of the snapping motions specters made in those bad horror movies. The motion and stare appealed to his primordial brain and scared him within an inch of his life. He started desperately crawling on his back as fast as he could until he hit the side of the small sofa with the back of his head.

“What the fuck are you?” he managed to blurt out while gasping for air.

“I am am hyper-simuloid.” the answer came in the same soft, calm voice. She followed Johnny with her sight as he made his caterpillar walk.

“Why the fuck are you here?” Johnny voice was so high it was close to a shriek. His eyelids were gaping wide making his eyeballs look like they were on the verge of popping out of the skull.

“I was sent here.” the woman replied

“By whom?” Johnny was screaming at this point, his entire body trembling. Most of the fear had washed away and now the trembling was due to the anger he felt towards himself for acting like this, for being scared.

“DrexLabs.”

Johnny fumbled in his pants pockets and finally produced his smartphone and then started getting up slowly, his gaze firmly planted on the woman. Anger and lust, having a mixer in Johnny’s head. He was furious with himself for having pissed his pants and for shaking like a child in front of the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He was not sure what her game was, but in Johnny’s head she looked like a goddess searching for her throne and some slaves to do her bidding.

Finally Johnny managed an upright position and started looking for the DrexLabs phone number in his call logs. The call went through almost instantaneously.

“DrexLabs. How may we help you?” the automated voice said on the other end.

“Ummm, yeah, hello? I opened the package you guys sent me.” Johnny said.

“Please communicate the unit id?” the automated voice said replied.

“Do you have an unit id?” Johnny asked the woman.

“H3...” she answered immediately.

“H3” Johnny repeated in the speaker.

“...L3...”

“L3”

“...N-alpha.” she said and blinked her eyes to confirm the end of the string.

“N-alpha”.

“What is your name sir, please?” the automated voice asked.

“Johnny Barber.”

“Yes, John D. Barber. This checks out Mr. Barber. How may i assist you?”

“Who are you people, what is this thing in my house and why was she sent here?” Johnny hurriedly asked.

“DrexLabs is a small start-up located in Vilnius, Lithuania focusing on emerging artificial beings design. Our focus at the moment is artificial humans and the model you have been sent is one of the latest generation prototypes. It is an artificial human created using cutting edge positronic circuits.”

“OK! OK! Stop this nonsense. I’ve never heard of anything like this being possible in real life. It all sounds like a sci-fi novel.”

“I assure you Mr. Barber that it is very true. Ask your model to reveal its power source.”

Johnny was already facing the woman and asked her to do just that while still holding the phone to his ear. Slowly the woman took a step forward, turned around, her back and perfect bottom facing Johnny and bent her arm from the elbow backwards, pushed her finger through the skin on her scapula and made a small tear in the flesh of her back. Very little blood squirted out and Johnny could see the blue light beneath the flesh, slowly pulsing.

“Oh, Jesus!” Johnny exclaimed. “Alright, let’s say I believe you. Why is she here?”

“After developing this model the board of DrexLabs had some concerns regarding it, mostly due to the fact it was so close to humans and decided to perform an UAT.”

“UAT? What’s that?”

“It stands for User Acceptance Test and in order to do this half a dozen units of this model were sent to people around the world without their knowing to see how the models would perform and most importantly if they would be accepted into the household.”

“So what can she do?”

“Virtually anything a human can do, only better and without procrastination.”

“Ummm...I see. Anyway, I don’t want her. I..I..” Johnny’s voice trailed off, his eyes lingering on the curves of the woman in front of him

“Sir, if you would just move past the natural resistance to change you may find out that our models can vastly improve your quality of life.”

“No! I don’t want her. When can you come and take her away?”

“Unfortunately due to your location and a staffing issue it will be approximately a month before we can perform a pick-up. ”

“Shit. That’s fine.”

“You will be contacted when the pick-up team is headed towards you. Thank you for your time Mr. Barber.” the voice said and the conversation was closed immediately.

Arousal and fear were playing for keeps in Johnny's brain. The idea that it can do anything that a real human could was slithering around in his mind, poking at all the implications.

“Did anything really mean everything? Like EVERYTHING, everything?” Johnny kept asking himself even after the common sense, rational part of his nature took over.

“Can you please get back in the box?” he finally said after long minutes of inspecting her body, piece by piece.

SHe did so without any complaint and Johnny closed the front door in it’s face.

That night Johnny tried to write, without any success. It was like he was bobbing for apples in an empty vat. His mind was constantly slipping towards the naked woman in the box. He couldn’t form a complete sentence without her image flashing in his mind.

“Goddamnit! I’m Freudian slipping into her with every sentence.” Johnny said to himself laughing and thinking of actually slipping into her so he decided to take the night off and do a little bit of drinking.

He sat with his half-full glass looking into the fire. He slowly recalled and analyzed the conversation with the automaton. He realized that the voice had called the unit ‘it’ while he kept saying ‘she’. Johnny realized that it was practically impossible for him to think about her as it. She was too real, no telltale of anything artificial. His thoughts trailed off and he finally fell asleep.

When Johnny woke up the next day his first thoughts went towards the redheaded woman, much to his discontent. He got out of the bed, put his clothes on, went downstairs, visited the bathroom and had a look through the fridge. All of this at a very slow pace, just to fill his time with something and not rush towards the door.

The air was colder than before and it smelled like winter. Looking inside the fridge he realized it would be a long and unpleasant winter if he didn’t replenish his food stock. He looked on the map for another town nearby, one that hopefully would be still alive, and found one just a few hours drive south of the cabin.

When he opened the door hoping he would get another look at the gorgeous woman Johnny was startled by what he saw. The woman’s skin had blue-gray tint to it and there were crystals of water all over her body.

“What happened to you? Why are you blue?” Johnny asked in a blurt.

“All of my outer shell is pseudo-organic. It is created to simulate real human flesh, hair, bone and soft tissue, almost indistinguishable from the real thing.” the woman spoke in the same calm and soft voice. The disconnect between her appearance and her voice was unnerving.