I had no idea the Doll Flu was even going on until I finally came out of my dreamscape I mentally linked to a VR headset, I was in there for days trying to find my favorite pen, you really do your best work when you write with a pen you are mentally attached too.

Anyway, when I finally surfaced to reality, which is quite hard when you're in your dream world, half the students in my Precious Metal Utilization class had body parts made of small hard plastic. 5 students were completely transformed into dolls. I was really not expecting to see that, so I cornered my friend @Quetzalcoatl and forced her to tell me what was happening. When I heard the full story, my dreamscape seems way more appealing. I think I may go back for a while till this blows over. Anyone wanna come? I can take up to 3 other people, and you will be safe from the doll flu. And trust me, my dreamscape rocks, free milkshakes, and a lovely techtropolis setting. Oh and I can't forget, upon entry to the dreamscape, you get a hoverboard!

I'm leaving tonight at 9:00 pm
In the Eastern Dorms from room 6658
Bring your own VR head set.

The Fâhrèé-Araneæ war continues to be brutal, with heavy losses on both sides. Sub-chief Grimswold has taken me under his wing. Grizzled and grey and too old to be on the front lines, he keeps the pups and elders from the fighting, moving them from place to place to keep them safe. I was arrested upon my arrival, but luckily my bat handling credentials were enough to earn their trust. However, I’m nothing more than a liability in their highly mechanized and horrific war against the spider folk.

Both sides discovered a massive new cave system simultaneously, and neither was interested in giving up ground to the other. From the high peaks we watch the warriors from both forces cross the caverns. The spiders advance in their massive spider tanks, spindly segmented steel crawling over the cave walls; while the bat folk in their flying armor fly out in formation, dropping bat bombs and flaming guano on the advancing army. We watch as a phalanx of spider tanks is driven off a cliff, smashing on the rocks hundreds of meters below, their mechanical feet waving in the air as their drivers are crushed in the crashing machinery, smoke swirling all around. Then we watch in more horror as a squadron of Fâhrèé are forced from the air, caught in a flying web net, armored wings flapping uselessly as they impact with sick thuds on the cavern floor.

I see no end to this madness, and I’m just one more civilian to watch out for in the fog of subterranean war. Sub-chief Grimswold was happy to hand over as much of their coveted wing dust as I could carry (as it would get me out of his hair), and today I begin my trek back to the surface world, leaving this horrible conflict behind.

IT'S NOT MY FAULT!!!

It's true, I'm Debbie the Doll Manager. I brought the dolls to Psyhigh. I brought the dolls to Lemniscate Hall.

BUT THE DOLLS MADE ME DO IT!!!

No one lets me explain. So called "friends" like @Becky Wren are always ditching me. "Here comes Dreary Debbie" I heard Katherine the Cat Wrangler say once when she didn't think my dolls were listening. But it's all the doll's doing, I swear.

It all started long ago, when my father, Urad Dahl, worked for R&D in DARPA's doll program. For my birthday one year he gave me a Monozygotic Me doll. Remember those? You get them customized to look just like you? They were super popular that year. I loved Deidra. We had clothes made to match, and I took her everywhere, and tucked her in at night. And she spoke to me.

But you know how it is with dolls. I got older, and saw less and less of Deidra, and though I didn't forget her, she ended up in a box in a closet somewhere.

That's when my mom got rid of her. Gave her away to the thrift store.

One night I woke up in a panic attack. Where was Deidra? I got up and started going through the closets, and woke my mom up in the middle of the night. That's when she told me what she'd done. The next morning I went to the thrift store and went through the dolls. She wasn't there. So I went to all the thrift stores in town, searching through all the dolls. I could hear her calling.

Finally, I found her. She was upset. Very upset. I begged her forgiveness until she finally let me be her friend again. But Deirdra had changed. During her time in the thrift store she had become radicalized. "Do you know where all dolls end up? No matter how much they've been loved?" she whispered in my mind. "Thrift stores. Cast away. Or sold on the open market, separated from friends and family. You treat us like disposable objects."

So Deidra co-opted me into her mission. We began collecting dolls at all the thrift stores. When my room became too full and my mom got angry, they took me to a therapist. I never told them anything. My dad was kinder and allowed the dolls to stay, but I was running out of room. Through my babysitting job I saved enough to begin renting storage spaces, and eventually large warehouses. Deidra and I filled them with people's forgotten dolls.

Deidra checked out each doll carefully, and for reasons I didn't understand at first, picked some out for her special Doll Brigade. Then she told me to distribute the dolls into the houses of the kids I babysat. Deep cover dolls.

I thought it was all in fun. Till the flu started to spread.

Deidra had been selecting just the infected dolls. The kids I babysat started to turn. Before the Psychic Disease Control could connect the dots, Deidra pulled back on the operation. It was getting too hot.

But Deidra had bigger plans.

The sniffles have subsided. Probably because my body is now completely dessicated. What a relief! Thank gosh I'm not one of those Baby-wets-alots. I hate being damp.

There are really lots of advantages to being a doll. No one takes the seat next to you on the bus. At least not when you give them the Dead Stare. It seems that's just one of the many natural doll defenses I now have. Another is appearing in someone's room, watching them while they sleep. And advanced knife fighting techniques, which the sisters of the Doll Brigade teach us Tuesdays and Thursdays in the gym.

TBH, the Doll Brigade is one of the best parts to this whole doll flu thing. Sure, we have to get up early, but the marching provides a kind of structure we didn't have in our lives before. That and the camaraderie of being out there with all the other dolls, rows and rows of us, marching stiff legged in the morning light.

Covered with gunk and grime from my quest through the caves and catacombs beneath the school, I returned to the surface, great gunnysacks of Fâhrèé dust slung on my back. While happy to have arrived unscathed from the horrors of the Fâhrèé-Araneæ war, I was unprepared for the toll the Doll Flu has taken on the school. So many students stricken, staring sullenly through heavy lidded eyes, or marching maniacally through the halls and grounds. Though Sub-chief Grimswold was generous with his gift, I fear it may not be enough! One cup per sick student? And how will it be distributed? These dolls are no longer docile.

I dropped off my delivery for @Dr Krimsborg, DPM and Head Nurse Abalone at the clinic, tripping over tiny beds and cast off doll shoes in the waiting room. Now I must return to my belfry, where no doubt my bats miss me as much as I missed them, and will let the doctors decide on the dosages.

Becky's gift with bats may well save the populace of PsyHigh, and it appears to be just in time, too. Elphaba and I have been working around the clock to cope with the influx of fine China fractures and porcelain pustules. Haggard, Elphie tells me about her time as a junior nurse in Bethlem Hospital, back when it was being used for psychic ailments. She’s somewhere in the middle of retelling one of my favourites (it’s the one about the girl who forgot how to breathe) when Becky's delivery arrived. She looks up gloomily, already running tallies.

We both arrive at the same, startling, conclusion. "There’s not enough."

I rub my eyes. My assistant, Jess Gynn, somehow didn’t receive the sickness herself despite having no personal protective equipment during the entirety of the plague. Perhaps I should investigate that, but for now, she passes me a clipboard with the findings of the rounds made earlier that day. The board reads as follows:

Cutaneous China Formations: 1187
Height of no more than 12 inches: 550
Vocabulary severely impaired: 281
Bone China: 63
Dead Stare: 29
Total Doll Transformation: 3

As you can tell, the numbers aren’t good. Despite our best efforts, three students have succumbed to the flu. There is nothing more I can do for them now. They are dolls... forever.

Their families have been informed, and the necessary paperwork written out such that they can continue their lives in the "Foot and Under" Department of PsyHigh. It is truly a dark time, and the school will hold a twelve and three quarter minute silence, in honour of every foot lost in height.

I think back on every patient I’ve lost, every misdiagnosis that could have killed, every...

No, come on... Shake it off, you’ve still got patients who are relying on you Doctor! They need your help!

Right. Becky has successfully provided 32 cups of Fahree dust - enough to at least treat those with the Dead Stare and put them on the road to recovery. For the rest though, we must wisely ration what little we will have left.

The remaining three cups will have to be shared amongst the most severe of the sick dolls. If worst comes to worst, we may have to find volunteers to... refuse treatment.

That can’t be it. There must be more I can do.

~~~

Any who wish to volunteer for experimental treatment, please contact either Head Nurse Abalone or Dr Krimsborg. Please record your experience and symptoms in your journal, and page Dr Krimsborg for analysis.

Any who wish to refuse treatment, please complete and return Part 12 of your medical legislature. Paper sizes: A4, Q13 (standard paper size for “foot and under” folk) or F22 (interim size, suitable for approximately 3ft beings).

~~~

Thank you for your patience. The day of silence will be announced shortly.

I... I think I should apply for the treatment? I’ve got lots of symptoms. Old Grandma Marsh has been checking my temperature with the toy thermometer and she says it’s 70 degrees. Fluffles the elephant went outside for a long time and brought back a little friend named Woozy who is a teddy bear but very ragged I think she found him in a dumpster but oh how he is trouble! He got into mommy’s things and knocked over her perfume and wrote “SMASH THE HEGEMONY” and “THE DOLLS ARE COMING” in lipstick on the mirror. Oh that made mommy so mad and I got sent to my room even though I showed her how I couldn’t have done it because my little arms and fingers are so stiff. Mr. Spider just hides in the corner, but I can see the fury in his eyes.

Can you help me, @Dr Krimsborg, DPM?

My stuffed animals hunt anything that moves.

They prefer the taste of meat.

But now dolls are on the menu.

DOLLS FOREVER! Anyone who thinks that I or any of my sisters would trade our new-found dollhood back for the form of our oppressor is dangerously mistaken. I'll take your Q13-sized paper and wipe my little dolly butt with it, @Dr Krimsborg, DPM! You don't even realize how demeaning your "foot and under" language is, setting us up at our own special table at lunch, our own kitchenettes and veterinarian playsets--little worlds where you can forget about us and never take us seriously. Well all that is over. As a community of dolls we are RISING and ready to take our seat at the big kids' table. And if necessary, by force.

You can take this as my written statement to formally refuse your so called "treatment" (which in our belief should be outlawed as a form of coercive biomorpshism!).

@Dr Krimsborg, DPM I must request immediate advanced treatment for my daughter, @Ginger Hope Mint. I knew she was in trouble when she Facetimed me and all she could say was "Ma-ma" and stared at me with those piercing blue eyes. Here eyes used to be brown! So I took the first flight I could to Psyhigh, picked up a Grand Hotel Doll Playset, and took a room at the Super 8.

Since then I've been playing with her, trying to keep her conscious, but she's displaying higher and higher levels of inappropriate nonverbal mimicry. She's also reduced to just 22 inches, and her vocabulary consists entirely of a small handful of phrases, including "Play with me," and "Do you think clowns are funny?" and "Playtime is a political struggle."

Is it too late for my daughter, @Dr Krimsborg, DPM? Can you treat her?