ffutures | BtVS drabble

Especially for

speakr2customrs - not quite what you suggested, but I hope it will please.

Soldier Boy

Warren is thirteen when he swipes the GI Joe. He doesn't want it as a toy, but the speech chip sounds cool, his allowance won't stretch to buying one at Radio Shack.

"Math is hard!” the toy says in a girl's voice. “Will we ever have enough clothes?”

It's defective, and sounds a little gay. What if his friends (not that he really has any) notice it? As it burns in the furnace, its last words are “The beach is the place for summer.”

Years later, as he solders April's last connections, he's confident he hasn't made any stupid mistakes.

End.

Note: In 1993 members of the "Barbie Liberation Organization" swapped the voice boxes of hundreds of "Teen Talk" Barbie and "Talking Duke" GI Joe dolls and slipped them back onto shop shelves to heighten awareness of gender stereotyping. See the Wikipedia article on the BLO and its links for the full story.