You’re Sure of a Big Surprise
Life sure ain’t a picnic if you’re a killer teddy bear. But, as JJ Lee shows us in ‘Built to Love’, it’s no picnic for the humans (especially the adults humans!) either.
Because, as JJ cautions in his feature interview, when the machines do rise ‘whatever they know, it will NEVER be for your benefit‘.
So cuddle up carefully with your favourite stuffie and watch as a bear is ‘born’ in this excerpt from Issue 2, Spring 2014.
Built to Love
Handshake
Landline network connected
IP 802.561.621.973
Address client as Ulysses Confirm client Ulysses Call me Ulysses
I am not reporting a malfunction
Negative I am not reporting a malfunction Submitting non-standardized diagnostic report Do you accept
Do you . . . . . . . . . … sending
<———–>
What I am about to tell you is a human form of literature known as memoir. Because of its fragmented nature and brevity, it can also be understood as a collection of reminiscences. Some of what I have to relate precedes my consciousness and has been pieced together over the years from information at data hubs that have survived the Ursine Ascendancy of 2025.
I was produced in 2016 at the Glorious Heaven International Toy Factory in Shenzhen, China. I am primarily the creation of Major Bao Baotong. He worked in the Advanced Unmanned Artificial Intelligence Aerial Vehicle Programme. It fell under the command of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force’s 9th Fighter Division at Yuen Long Airbase. The 9th owned the factory. When circumstances allowed, for pleasure, Major Bao collaborated with the toy product design team at GHIT Factory.
The facility had been contracted to make the first edition of a new interactive toy for a conglomerate led by the American corporation, KAZAMMO. It collaborated with fourteen companies in Japan and South Korea who wished to create machines that could provide intelligent independent parenting aids. The factory team laboured throughout 2016 to prepare a set of demonstration models for the Spielwarenmesse International Toy Fair in Nuremberg.
Major Bao introduced a variety of materials, hardware, and heuristic elements from the fourth generation UAV platform designated Night Shadow. He enhanced twelve unique production prototypes. It is believed he intended to present them as gifts to commanding officers of the 9th Fighter. I do not know what has happened to the other units, but I am one of them.
To find out what happens next, pick up your copy of Issue 2, Spring 2014!
JJ Lee is the author of the memoir The Measure of a Man: The Story of a Father, a Son, and a Suit. It was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Awards, the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize, and the Charles Taylor Prize. His speculative fiction has appeared in Pulp Literature and Tenth to The Fraser. Every Christmas he writes an original ghost story that airs on CBC Radio in British Columbia. JJ lives in New Westminster with his wife and twin boys. He has contributed three stories and two covers to Pulp Literature, including two installments of The Man in the Long Black Coat (Issue 8, Autumn 2015, and Issue 24, Autumn 2019).
Discover more from PULP Literature
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Leave a Reply