She's somewhere else, bound back inside a body. She turns to look toward the voice, but the metal does not bend far or quickly.

He can walk.

"Let me get a look at you."

He scans her hungrily. 

"I suppose it's common, wanting your parents to be proud of you. But I was afraid you would never see what I've done, and yet here you are. Edgar McAlistair, at your service."

Her neck can tilt enough to slowly look him up and down. It is Edgar, all grown up now.

She tries to say something, but only produces a click, followed by a short burst of staticky symphonic music. A copy of the flaw in the doll she had once created, somehow.

"I never could keep up with you the way dad could," he says, sighing. 

He begins to pace.

"I established a name for myself. We provide a service. Lots of families want dolls."

She turns her head; it's hard to tell whether she's shaking her head no or just following his movement.

"It's very successful. People are happier, thanks to me."

He touches his face nervously.

Another burst of staticky pianos, and she has apparently figured out movement enough to raise an arm toward him.

He takes her hand, clasping it tightly, then rethinking, and relaxing his grasp. 

She tilts her head inquisitively, but leaves her hand in his.

He sighs, and let's go.

"Can't you...speak to me? I'm sure there's something I can do."

She slowly shakes her head. She plays a few seconds of staticky violin music, switches to a country station, then goes silent again.

"Can you choose which songs to play? Different stations can correspond to different phrases, we can make a code..."

She nods emphatically.

"We can try toggling each station on and off. That gives us quite a bit to work with. How many stations do you have...I'm afraid I didn't read much of your notes being what it took to get started, I was a bit distracted at the time. May I?"

He approaches her, preparing to change the station.

She clicks her radio on, still tuned to the country station.

He counts the number of stations; this is his only hope of communicating with her the way he needs wants to, after all.

Country, jazz, R&B, soft rock, transition metal, future liturgical, symphonic, numbers, alternative, bubblegum pop, bubblegum punk, and classical.

After he cycles through for the count, she turns her radio off, switches to a station and turns it back on for each of the first three stations, then skips ahead to the last to account for the first 12 letters (country. jazz. R&B. classical), then turns it off, switches to the first station, turns it on, and switches to the next station before turning it off, repeating with the second-to-last and last stations for the next 11 letters (country, jazz. bubblegum punk, classical). She ends with a set of two like the last set, but switching to the previous station instead of the next, with enough for the last 3 letters and 3 other characters (jazz, country. symphonic, future liturgical). At the end, she stops to check if Edgar is following.

He follows.

"I wonder if I ought to have another look at your notes," he muses.

"Can you record music?"

He walks over to the nearby desk, rifling through papers, which are spilling over the desk. He knocks over an inkwell in the process, but ignores it.

The ink is far enough from her notes that she isn't concerned, either. She nods. He must have recorded music, to create his song, so she should be able to. She moves different motors, turning on her radio and shifting limbs and winding a reel of something until she finds an action that starts recording. She turns off her radio and rewinds her tape to play back a second of the hymn.

He claps; it's barely condescending at all.

"Well then. We have the numbers station, and we have all the letters we need. The remaining available states can indicate common words. We can probably use the same technique to cover 27 words, if we leave one of them as just an indicator...we can experiment with options, if for now you just use country and classical for yes and no."

She does not visibly react to any possible condescension in his clapping; it's possible she didn't notice.

 She nods and plays a moment of the classical station.

They go back and forth a bit on the details of the code. 

It takes five stations (jazz, R&B, soft rock, transition metal, and future liturgical) to cover all twenty six letters (he wonders if this binary toggling has other applications?), with country and classical dedicated to 'yes' and 'no' respectively. The numbers station, after just a few minutes of recording, can net them any numbers she needs, which leaves them with symphonic, alternative, bubblegum pop, and bubblegum punk.

"We can use the last four to represent emotions, up to sixteen. I know those might be harder to communicate through words." 

Sixteen? Well. If one of the emotions is "space" and another is "comma" and another is "end of sentence"...

After the important separators are declared, she suggests "happy, sad, curious, science.", which should cover most of them.

He has a few suggestions, too.

Disappointment, pride, confusion. 

Love?

Those seem like subsets or combinations of the other emotions, but sure. They can leave the other ones available for anything else that comes up?

"(love)Edgar (curious) how old are you now. (curious)(sad)(pride) how and when did you find my notes. how many dolls are there."

"It's been some time. I'll be thirty soon enough. Father never knew how to manage without you. I was strong, though. I'll be married soon, mother. I found your notes in the trunk in the attic, with some of our family's old things, and I knew I needed to impress Faye. She wanted to see that I had ambition, and I showed her. We have thousands of dolls out there- seven models, though you're unique."

She pauses the conversation to declare that one of the remaining patterns represents a question mark.

"(sad)(pride)(happy)Congratulations. I did not hide my notes well. (science) Do the dolls not all wish to die, then?"

"I usually send them out without talking to them much myself, just enough to explain their situation. I've only spoken in-depth with you and Jasper."

"It could be valuable to check, not everyone would think of or understand a code. (curious)The doll I raised was named Jasper. Who is this one?"

"The same one. I thought it would be the proof-of-concept, in case only certain dead could be raised, I thought I might as well use one that had been successful."

"I did not include a warning in my notes when I hid them. It should work on any dead person, does it? Have there been any cases of the material from the possessions of the dead not having enough material to bring them back?"

"No problems so far. The wealthy and the melancholy want their dead back, and it seems to work just fine as long as the remains aren't mixed with anything else human. Plant and mineral matter doesn't pose the slightest risk, and fragments are fine."

"Good. Has any progress been made on speech? I thought dolls would speak."

"We can include improved features in the next model. Allowing them to speak proved harder than I anticipated."

"With a copy of the design you are using, I should be able to modify it to let them speak, or at least write."

"If I had half the scientific mind you did- I did my best to replicate your results, but I know where my strengths lie. The business is flourishing, but letting them speak will certainly be a nice extra. I'll have it brought to you in a moment."

She nods, but does not say anything.

He lapses into silence, twiddling his thumbs.

And in a moment, in comes the design. The woman holding it places it on the table. 

"Annabelle? I hope our Edgar introduced me. He can be so forgetful sometimes."

"(yes) Hello. Are you his fiance Fay(happy)?"

Edgar translates this for her. What a helpful young man.

"I am his fiancée, and we're very happy. Can I do anything for you?"

She leans to look at the plans, stopping just before she would overbalance and fall.

"(happy)(pride). (science) will study plans and think about how to let dolls speak. Later may need help with experiments or books, now nothing."

"Faye and I will return later, then. Enjoy, mother."

"(yes) (love)"

The plans for the inner components of the dolls are almost exactly as she remembers them, but the bodies have changed, and the connections to it may have as well.

There have been a few changes.

Here, there are somewhat fewer components concentrated, to adjust the weight of that area, and here, they are distributed differently to promote flexibility...

That explains why she can move more easily than Jasper seemed to.

She thinks of experiments to try for different designs to allow a doll to press letters onto a page instead of controlling a radio until she is interrupted.

He doesn't interrupt her. She'll come up with something brilliant, and their business will be more successful than ever.

Instead, he talks to his wife.

"Thank you for comporting yourself so well, Faye. I'm glad you're learning to be comfortable here." 

"It's a very beautiful prison, Edgar. I'm glad I met your mother. May I go?"

"I had hoped we were past this. You've always been such an old soul. Wise beyond your years."

"You always were fond of pedestals. For your mother, for me, for yourself...I think I'm going to retire to my room."

And she does.

He lets her go.

She needs a chance to cool down, so she can have one.

He decides to give his mother some more time alone.

She continues to plan. From what she remembers of the cadavers she dissected, installing a tongue, lips, and lungs to speak would be prohibitively complex, especially given the clumsiness and slowness of the dead. The best of her ideas so far is a set of embossed letter-stamps for a strip of carbon paper and paper to press against, rolled into position by a wheel, using mostly the same components and connections that extend the muscle-like responsiveness to will to the radio's controls.

(And perhaps when it's done and all the dolls who want to return have been destroyed, and she's made up for designing them in the first place and everyone knows it, she can get to really know Edgar and his fiancé, and they can go out and see everything that's changed about the town. He's made so many dolls, nobody would even stare. And maybe Jasper would have had a change of heart, and waited for her, and they could both go back together.)

Edgar returns (to see his mother!) after giving her some time to think. He knows she does her best thinking undisturbed; his father never interrupted her work.

"Mother? Have you thought of something?"

"(yes) speech muscles, complex fast not good for dolls. raised letter, carbon paper, positioning wheel, lever for pressure, small change from radio control design."

"I'm sure we can do that at low cost. I think I'll leave providing the carbon to the buyers, but we can invest in this."

"Good. We should do a test to make sure it works without unexpected problems. Once they are developed, they should cost less than a radio, without a receiver, recorder, and player. Will need to install other wiring, I made some connections through it."

She turns to look at him. She's improved at moving the doll. "All the dolls will be able to say if they wish to go back."

"...go back?"

"To the afterlife. If they have not created codes. Many might want to return."

"I see. There is an afterlife, then. I had my doubts."

"(yes). I did too. I was there and still do."

"Do you not want to go back, then? If you still have doubts."

"I do. But I have things I need to do first. And people I want to spend time with. After (yes)."

"Do you expect most dolls to feel the same way?"

"(yes) but I do not know. They should be able to say, if so."

"I was hoping I could make living humans immortal, someday. Do you think I shouldn't?"

"(no), I would not miss it if I had not been. If you can, I think you should."

"I see."

He doesn't.

"Thank you, mother. Did you want to meet Jasper?"

...

"He is still here? (yes). If he will see me."

"I promise I'll ask him. He's visiting with Fay right now."

"His daughter. It can wait. Is his wife back?"

"No. It didn't seem as useful to have her around. Should I reconsider?"

"(No). She should stay."

"If you insist."

He chuckles.

"I suppose I should update you on current events."

"(Yes). Please do."

He tells her about the string of robberies plaguing their city, mob politics, and the recent developments in the field of botany.

The thinking plant's communication is very like her code with Edgar. She wonders what else such things might be good for. At least they only bred the one.

Edgar is steering safely away from the crimes, right? Especially now that there isn't a chance of even a lucky dice roll to protect him from the mob.

"I can be careful. I didn't inherit your particular brand of fervent passion."

"Probably for the best. Have they objected to you bringing back anyone they killed?"

"The dolls don't get in their way; if they did, they would just kill them again. It requires balance. We should talk about the design, I want to incorporate more of your brilliance into the dolls."

"Aside from speech, most obvious improvements mobility, dexterity, durability. Possibly would move better in less human body, but more complex to connect. I will need to think on it. Temporary, flimsy doll, to ask ghosts whether to destroy it and leave them or bring back into a better doll? What aspects did you most want to improve?"

"Customers say they want to hear what their loved ones are thinking. I think the focus should be on a larger alphabet of symbols than the one we've devised. Simple concepts like approval, disapproval, and confusion, as well as objects..."

"It is easiest to express thoughts in words, and they will surely want to be able to write the names of their loved ones."

"I can find a way to represent the alphabet, I'm sure, but speech would be a serious investment on my part. Do you think they need to vocalize?"

"No, I think an alphabet like this would be enough. Possibly with additional word symbols, or with common letters easier to reach, but it would allow communication."

"You're probably right. Do you think it's about time I brought Jasper in here?"

"Yes."

"...If he is done with Fay."

"I should check on them anyway. I'll be only a moment."

He kisses her on the forehead, and steps out.

Perhaps Jasper will remember her sending him back the first time, and will be impressed by the success of her communication code, once it is explained to him, and will want to go back together with her. He might.

Seeing him is probably an unforgivable use of her time, when she could be designing better ways for the dolls to move, or to allow them to go back more easily, or trying to prevent the living from dying to begin with.

She waits.

"Here we go. Mother, Jasper. Jasper, mother."

"Hello, again."

"When I saw her face...is it me you're looking for?"