The salesman rose and bowed as Anthony Lampton entered the room. 'Good day, Mr Lampton,' said the salesman brightly, reading the customer's name from his visual feed. His implant also informed him that the Assistant software was assimilating information on Lampton's previous purchases. He gestured to a chair in front of his desk, and Lampton sat down nervously.

'And what can I do for you today, sir?' continued the salesman in a brisk, chipper tone.

'I ... er, I want a ... a girl,' stammered Lampton.

'A pleasure model, sir?'

'Uh, yes.' Lampton shifted nervously in his seat.

'That would be the Servitor Six range, sir,' he said. 'Female genalts for sexual recreation.' The salesman selected Servitor Six from the range of products on sale. He waved a hand and several holograms of naked women of different shapes and sizes appeared at the edge of his desk, on Lampton's left. Since Servitor Six was the product range, Assistant would look at the customer's history of sexually oriented purchases first. 'May I ask about sir's preferred physical type?' asked the salesman.

'Yes, er-petite.'

A life-size hologram of a girl appeared on Lampton's right. She was olive-skinned with brown hair, a little shorter and narrower in the frame than average, with a narrow waist and breasts a little larger than most women.

'Skin colour, sir?'

'Puh, pale.'

'If sir would look to his left...' Lampton turned his head, and the range of girls displayed there now showed six smaller versions of the life-size one to Lampton's right, in varying colours. They ranged from total albino, absolutely white, through various pale pinks to a light tan. Lampton pointed to the third of the six, the lightest but two, and the larger hologram to his right changed colour to match.

'Hair, sir?'

'Dark brown. Almost black.' The salesman nodded and the large hologram changed.

'Straight or curled, sir?'

'Straight.'

The salesman waved his hand to the small display on the customer's left again. It showed female heads arranged in a grid. From left to right their hair changed from wavy to completely straight. The top row had utterly black hair, the middle ones bark brown and the lower ones dark brownish-red. 'Many gentlemen like just a hint of a wave and a touch of red, sir.' The background behind one head, toward the bottom right of the grid, glowed brighter than the others to highlight the salesman's suggestion.

'A little blacker.' The grid changed to heads with hair increasingly dark bottom to top, and increasingly red left to right. The central head was highlighted. 'Up one...' said Lampton. 'Right one-perfect.' The selection of heads disappeared, and on his right Lampton saw exactly the hair he wanted, just a little off straight with a touch of red in its near-black brownness.

'GeneBank offers a huge range of eye colours, sir. Where would sir like to start?'

'Brown. With, with a hint of green.'

A grid selection of eyes appeared on his left with simple brown in the middle, shading to brown-amber, brown-green, brown-grey and brown-red in the four corners. They went on like this, picking out the details of the body that Lampton wanted to own. When it came to breast size, the salesman enthusiastically said, 'Say when!' The breasts on the large hologram grew to enormous size until eventually Lampton told him to stop. Then he slowly scaled them back until they were something a little more like normal, though still large. Lampton ummed and ahhed over their size, until the salesman suggested that sir could always go back and change them later. After that Lampton chose vividly pink, prominent nipples and followed the salesman's advice to go with a genetic absence of genital hair. They played with length of leg and musculature of the thighs and buttocks, but once again those could be fine-tuned at the end of the process. Meanwhile, Assistant fed the salesman a stream of information about Lampton's preferences in pornography. Well, that was interesting. This should not be a hard sale to make.

'And now sir,' said the salesman with a flourish, 'we come to the jewel in the crown, that thing that makes a woman what she is: the face. These are some examples of our popular facial packages.' A selection appeared on Lampton's left: a smiling plastic-looking doll-face, a haughty fine-boned aristocrat, an elfin face with pointed ears, a meek round face that looked born to serve and yield, a feline face with cat ears ... 'Might I make a suggestion, sir?' asked the salesman. The Assistant software was feeding him information about the faces of girls in the pornography that Lampton watched most.

'Go ahead.'

'I think sir might appreciate the Pleading Pretty range.' The selection changed to a range of heartbreakingly beautiful faces. They all had big, moist eyes and lips that seemed ready to tremble, and wore an expression that could be taken either for fear or for pleading. Lampton's breath stopped as he saw them, and he swallowed heavily. The salesman watched his reactions carefully. Yes, he had been right about this customer. It was time to broach the subject gently. He highlighted a face. 'This basic profile is called Big Eyes Small Mouth, sir. Particularly popular with gentlemen who like their Servitor humble and compliant.' Lampton's lips twitched at the words, but the customer said nothing. Assistant had determined Lampton's ideal face from his viewing history, and suggested a number of changes to the basic Big Eyes Small Mouth profile. 'We can alter the configuration a little-or as much as sir wants. Raise the cheekbones a trifle perhaps? Lips a little redder and fuller?' The face changed and took on a slightly oriental cast. The narrow little mouth was like a rose now, lips blushed a deep red-pink.

'Ye-yes. That, that's very good,' said Lampton. He was flushed. The selection disappeared, and the life-size display on his right now showed that entrancing face.

'Now sir. We come to the personality.' The salesman leant closer across his desk and adopted a confidential tone. 'Different customers like their Servitors to play different roles. May I suggest that sir will get the greatest enjoyment from his purchase if he is completely honest about his desires? GeneBank does cater for all manner of tastes here, sir.' He paused, but Lampton offered no comment. He looked quite nervous. 'Would I be right in thinking that sir would prefer his Servitor ... submissive?'

'Er, well-in a manner of speaking, yes,' said Lampton finally.

The salesman smiled. 'We offer three basic submissive personality types,' he said. 'The Dependent lives to please. She requires expressions of approval from her owner. Without them she feels deep-seated guilt and emotional anguish. The Puppet cannot help obeying. When given a command, she will comply. The Kink enjoys being disciplined. She derives sexual pleasure from being chastised-anything from shouting to a good hard thrashing. However. There is a fourth type, not a submissive, which appeals to some gentlemen. The Rebel is deliberately disobedient. She will resist and not do as she is told. She is quite useless as a domestic servant, but those gentlemen who enjoy physically punishing their Servitor often relish one who hates being treated that way.' The sentence rolled out of his mouth with confident ease. He was reading it from a script in his visual feed. Advertising executives had spent hours in meetings coming up with wording expressly designed to appeal to people with Lampton's tastes.

He studied the customer's face with interest. Lampton was obviously interested, but embarrassed. 'Perhaps sir would like to see a demonstration,' he suggested, and without waiting he activated a hologram. It showed a still of a blonde girl tied naked to a frame, a look of outrage on her face. 'This is how the Rebel performed in tests,' explained the salesman. The hologram started to move, and audio started up.

'No! Get away from me!' shouted the girl at someone out of shot. 'Don't-you can't! Don't touch me!'

A man stepped into the hologram shot, holding a cane menacingly in his hand. 'You're being very naughty,' he said. 'Girls who don't do as they are told have to be punished. Now will you do what I want, or am I going to have to give you a good hard spanking?'

'No-I won't! You can't!'

'This is your last chance. Will you be a good girl and take me in your mouth? If not, I'm going to have to teach you a lesson.'

'Nooo!' she screamed. 'I won't! Never! Keep away from me!'

'Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,' taunted the man. 'It looks as if someone needs a lesson. And then we'll see if you'll obey me or not.' He stepped around the shrieking blonde and stood behind her, swishing the cane in the air. He drew back his arm, and then the hologram cut off. The salesman was politely awaiting a decision.

'Er, yes. Yes, that's, that's...'

'Sir is interested in the Rebel personality type?'

'Yes. The Rebel, yes.'

'And her sexual preferences, sir? We could provide a Servitor that hates being penetrated, or one that loves it really despite her tendency to fight it.'

'No, one that hates it. Definitely one that hates it.'

'And lesbian drives, sir?'

'Uh, yes! If she was, uh...' Lampton fumbled for words.

'Sir would like a Servitor that likes girls but hates men?'

'Yes. Exactly.'

'Then we come to memories, sir. GeneBank offers a selection of memory implants. The Servitor could know that she is an artificial organism, or believe that she is sir's wife. We also offer a number of fantasy scenarios: for example, she can be made to believe that she is a princess captured by enemy soldiers and delivered to their king. Another possibility is that she believes she is sir's daughter...'

'I, I'm not sure...'

'Sir can think about that and decide it later. Can I offer sir any special features? Virginal regeneration, perhaps?'

'What's that?'

'The Servitor has a hymen which heals indefinitely, no matter how many times it is broken. It takes about a week to regrow fully.'

'Yes! That sounds, uh, good...'

'Any animal features, sir? Feline is particularly popular-a tail and cat ears--'

'No! No, nothing like that-just-er--'

'Just good straight meat and potatoes, eh, sir? Very good. Would sir consider anything for himself? GeneBank offers substantial reductions on therapies in conjunction with this purchase. How about an increase in your physical strength, sir, to make that little girl even more helpless before your might?' How much do we pay these executives to come up with this drivel, the salesman thought to himself as he read those lines from his script. 'Or penis enlargement to make it hurt her even more?'

'I-I'm not sure...'

'There's no need to decide now, sir. The reduction is valid if ordered within one hundred days of your purchase. Now, sir, the Rebel model does require restraint. Sir will need to keep her locked up, or she will run away. GeneBank offers a full range of security systems, restraints and instruments of punishment ideal for use with the Servitor Six...' The view on Lampton's left displayed a bewildering array of racks and frames with terrified girls attached to them.