The Lab at 3 AM glowed like a cocoon of light.

Engineer Chen’s fingers absently traced the smooth silicone—freshly extracted from the core of a high-end prosthetic—now gleaming under the desk lamp like mother-of-pearl. When the coffee machine hummed emptily for the seventh time, he flashed back to that morning’s subway ride: a young woman applying a hyper-realistic skin-feel film to her phone, testing the texture with the reverence of a lover’s touch. Then, catching sight of an adult toy ad on a nearby screen, she’d flipped her phone face-down on her lap, flustered.

Three years later, the question roared back during a late-night interview. When the MRLDOLL research team knocked on their 137th subject’s door, a librarian who’d lived alone for a decade revealed him secret: seven silicone companions tucked beneath him piano bench, each shrouded in velvet dust covers. “They’re more attentive than my wife,” he admitted, misting him ferns as the spray hung in the air like unspoken loneliness. “But they’ll never see sunlight.”