So he continued cautiously to the factory, parked, biometricked into the facility, and went to his work station.

Broadheads duties consisted of customized template impression on the brains of the RealDolls, one of the final stages of their creation. All he had to do was adjust the batch controls for the neurological template according to the customers specs and launch the tailored nanites into the spongey matrix of the RealDoll brain, where they would wire the raw paraneurons into the desired configuration.

For the first half hour of his shift, Broadhead performed up to par, thanks to strict and dutiful concentration. He managed to ignore the alluring, disturbing counterfactual sights before his eyes and concoct the proper formulae for the templates of the first two RealDolls as they came by on the microvilli conveyor belt on the far side of a glass wall that provided sterile isolation for the product in its unfinished state.

But then came the third RealDoll.

Pinocchia.

As the shapely nude form rested mindlessly, save for wetwared autonomic functions, on the temporarily non-wiggling microvilli of the conveyor, beautiful blank face to the ceiling, Broadheads control touchscreen was colonized by spiders. Not venomous, fanged creatures, but comic Daddy Longlegs wearing derbies and smoking stogies. Broadhead had encountered these beings before in his fantasy world, and he knew that hed gain valuable karma points by crushing them. He began to stab his thumbs onto the imaginary bugs on the screen.

Nothing like the resulting batch of template nanites that he randomly encoded had ever before been created.

Broadheads thumb hit the LAUNCH icon.

On the far side of the glass wall, a robot arm bearing a long, impossibly thin hypodermic lance moved into position behind Pinocchias left ear, jabbed forward, penetrating skin, muscle and bone, and pumped its load into the Real Dolls artificial brain.

The conveyor restarted, carrying Pinocchia onward to the dressing, packing and shipping department.

Broadheads actions indeed accrued karma points-but not as he imagined.

For he had given Pinocchia free will, curiosity, unease and desire.

Chapter 2.

Tom Geppi receives a much-anticipated delivery.

Tom Geppi was a carpenter-which in this era meant that he invented novel materials, building up exotic substances for specific uses atom by atom. His passion for material sciences was all-encompassing, filling his every waking minute. He cared nothing for sports, nothing for fine cuisines, nothing for fancy cars or art or entertainment. He lived only to craft ingenious substances that would improve on the tawdry creations of Mother Nature. His dream was to eventually replace every natural surface in the world with an improved version of his own making. He had many clients who found his services very useful, and paid accordingly.

But despite his monkish, otaku nature, Geppi had certain urges common to all mankind. His libido was healthy. But his social skills and patience for sexual courtship were nil. This disjunction between need and fulfillment troubled him, disturbing the concentration necessary for his vocation.

He had tried shutting off his libido with nanites, but found that this interfered with his creativity, and so he abandoned the temporary wetware rewiring. He tried human prostitutes, but their unpredictable behavior disconcerted him.

The obvious, easy, albeit expensive solution to his quandary was to buy a RealDoll.

So he did, placing his order and resigning himself to waiting uncomfortably through the six-month gestation period of the vat-flesh android.

A period that was now, at last, over.

Informed by the RealDoll factory that his unit had shipped, Tom Geppi made ready to receive her.

He had converted a room of his home in an exclusive suburb of Boston to hold the RealDoll and serve as the chamber to which he could retreat for regular, utilitarian ventings of his carnal urges.

The chamber held a large, double-thick futon and a special chair, the latter provided by the RealDoll people as part of the purchase price. According to the online owners manual, that was all the furniture that was required to sustain a RealDoll. When it wasnt on the bed, performing its duties, it would sit blankly in the chair, in quasi-sleep mode. Its nutritional and eliminative functions, identical to a humans, would be handled by the chair, an adaptation of common medical tech.

As Geppi was nervously inspecting the accoutrements of the Real-Dolls room for the tenth time, his doorbell rang.

The FedUps man had used a handtruck to wheel up the big grey ovoid pod to Geppis doorstep.

"Where ya want her?" The florid-faced FedUps man was leering boldly, and Geppi felt ashamed and confused. There was no stigma in having a RealDoll. Hundreds of thousands had been sold. Celebrities boasted of owning them. This rude fellow had to be jealous he couldnt afford one.

"The rooms this way," Geppi said, and pointed. The delivery man wheeled the pod in. He weaseled the handtruck out from under the big egg and said, "Want me to crack er for ya?"

"No, you can go now."

"Sure. Have fun."

Once alone with his purchase, Geppi tremblingly unseamed the egg, which fell away in two halves that intelligently lost their rigidity, pooling like easily disposable fabric around the feet of their contents.

The feet of the RealDoll.

Clothed in an outfit Geppi had picked from the catalogue-the Columbina style-the RealDoll stood, still in quasi-sleep mode and supported by a temporary shipping exoskeleton.

The dolls hair was black as mussel-shells, and cut in a pageboy. Her heart-shaped, button-nosed face, palely complected, was rendered less-than-classically perfect by an overlarge mouth. Her eyelids were permanently tinted blue, her lips crimson.

Her outfit consisted of a jacket secured with braided frogs and which flared out at the hips-scooped low to disclose generous breasts-and tight calf-length pants. The material of both was patterned with large diamonds, red, green and gold. White hosiery emerged from the hem of the pants, leading down to soft black shoes more like slippers than streetwear.

Geppi studied the doll for long minutes. She was exactly as he had dictated. Now, to awaken her, he had only to speak her name, a name he had chosen and suitably altered in memory of a fairytale he had enjoyed as a child, a fairytale whose creator-figure harmonized vaguely with Geppis own name and vocation.

"Pinocchia-"

The dolls eyelids fluttered upward, revealing milkjade eyes. The exoskeleton reacted to the return of her consciousness by instantly powdering away, and she stepped forward.

Shocked despite himself, Geppi took a corresponding step backwards. Pinocchia halted, smiled, and spoke.

"I am your RealDoll. What should I do?"

Her silky voice matched perfectly the synthesized sound file he had supplied six months ago. Geppi felt dizzy.

But not too disconcerted to issue his first order.

"Take your jacket off."

Pinocchias slim, delicate fingers, long nails lacquered gold and green to harmonize with her costume, reached up to the fastenings of her top. She undid them with neither hesitancy nor haste, then slipped out of her coat.

Her bountiful ivory breasts were not further confined. Their jaunty nipples, wide-aureoled, poked rather more upward than forward.

Pinocchia continued to smile as Geppi reached forward to cup her tits. She closed her eyes as he squeezed those pliant globes. When he worked her nipples, she moaned satisfactorily.

Geppi released her tits and began to unfasten his own pants. "Down on your knees, Pinocchia."

Pinocchia dropped gracefully down, just as Geppi succeeded in unswaddling his cock and balls. Even as he arranged his privates, he was stiffening to an unprecedented degree.

Pinocchia regarded the cock and balls just inches from her face with neither lust nor disgust, but rather a wholesome, open acceptance, as if they matched some primal archetype seeded in her mind. Her reaction was not completely ideal, but Geppi supposed he could alter those parameters, train her in the ways that would please him.

"Suck, Pinocchia."

Pinocchia reached up with expert alacrity. She cradled Geppis balls with her left hand, the tips of her long nails producing five points of sharp pleasure. With her right hand she took the shaft of his prick and guided it into her mouth.

Her lips contoured his cock head. They seemed to possess elastic qualities and pressure mechanisms not found in baseline humans. At first Pinocchia concentrated these exquisite properties just on the head of Geppis cock, drawing inarticulate gurgling noises from him. Her tongue serpented busily, out of sight.

Then she began to travel the entire length of his dick, burying her face against his pubic hair before almost relinquishing his cock entirely, performing small rotations and counter-rotations of her head all the while.

Geppi stopped her after a momentary eternity of pleasure. "Enough of that. Stand up and remove your pants."

Pinocchia did as bidden. As the waist of her trousers slid down over her ripe buttocks, he discerned that her creamy hosiery was merely thigh-high stockings integral with fabric straps and belt, leaving her completely accessible from front and rear.

After Pinocchia had stepped out of her pooled pants, she stood calmly, her lush dark bush a sporran whose hidden contents were her glorious calibrated cunt.

Geppis tumescence brooked no delay or subtlety. "Bend forward."

Pinocchia adjusted her stance a bit, then jackknifed so completely that her head nearly touched the floor, as certainly did her trailing hair. Her breasts compressed against her thighs, and she locked her wrists behind her ankles.

Her asshole, puckered as if to kiss the sky, invited entrance, but was trumped by the glistening convolved lips of her dilated cunt.

Geppi slammed home his dick to its base up that wet hole, to be met with intricate pressures. Only a half-dozen strokes sufficed for him to spray her barren innards with his jism.

Breath laboring, his knees going weak, Geppi disengaged. Pinocchia remained folded until Geppi ordered her erect.

"Thats-thats enough for now. Sit in your chair."

Pinocchia took the designated seat, assuming a prim, programmed attitude. She jolted a little as automatic catheters and feedlines docked with her flesh. Then her eyes closed.

Tasking off the lights in the room, which assumed a twilight ambiance due to thickly curtained windows admitting only shards of late afternoon light, Tom Geppi left, believing his RealDoll to be in quasi-sleep mode.

But she was not.

Chapter 3.

The RealDoll ponders her existence.

Pinocchias azure eyelids opened in the gloom as soon as Geppi shut the door. She arose from her chair, which whirred as its attachments retracted.

An unsatisfied pressure and complaint in her cunt demanded attention.

Pinocchia moved to the filton and sat upon the low mattress. She leaned completely back and raised her feet to prop them on the edge of the futon. Her legs spraddled wide, airing her dripping cunt. With her left hand she cupped her left breast and began to replicate what Geppi had done. Her right hand went below and instinctively found her sticky clitoris. She commenced a sensuous massage of that tender nubbin.

Pinocchias hips and ass began to jog in rhythm with her fingering. She moved her left hand down around the outer curve of her buttocks, where her fingers gained entrance to her cunt. She levered two fingers inside herself, then brought them out, glazed with sperm and her own juices, and carried them to her mouth, never stopping vigorous manipulation of her swollen clit. After cleaning her fingers, she sent them back to make small repetitive plunges into her hole.

After some minutes of this play, Pinocchia climaxed in a bucking spasm. Her orgasm-slackened legs lost their footing on the futon and trailed out across the floor.

Anxiety competed with satisfaction in Pinocchias brain.

Why had she done that? What did it mean? Did her self-pleasuring constitute disobedience to her owner? Or was it permissible under a broad interpretation of her operating instructions?

Pinocchia tried accessing various READ ME wetwared memories and found nothing that would cover her situation.

If her makers had failed to anticipate such a situation, did that mean that she, Pinocchia, was uniquely flawed? But what could be wrong about giving herself pleasure, after attending to her owners needs? Perhaps she was uniquely gifted.

If I am different from others of my kind, thought Pinocchia, then perhaps my destiny is different as well If I have greater capacities, then I must be able to do more, be more, experience more. Perhaps I can share certain privileges and responsibilities and burdens of humanity. I know that I was not born as humans are. I was grown in a tank. But that difference aside, what stops me from becoming fully human, of being granted that status?

Pinocchia spent the next several hours pondering these existential thoughts, and many more of a similar ilk. The room darkened around her, and her damp thighs dried to tackiness. By the end of this interval, she had reached no firm conclusions. But she knew that her life could not be bounded by mattress and chair alone.

Maybe her owner-could one human own another?-could help her understand.

Pinocchia stood up. She donned her gaily patterned costume and left her room through the unlocked door.

Chapter 4.

Geppi receives a startlement; an argument ensues; Pinocchia flees.

Pinocchia in her satin slippers catfooted silently through the nighted residence of her owner. She came upon the kitchen, still redolent of Geppis savory supper, and her stomach alerted her to its needs, unmet due to premature disconnection from the chair. She opened the cool box, spied a quart of milk, confiscated it, and drank it entire. Some grapes followed, then three pears, cores and all.

Temporarily sated, Pinocchia continued on through corridors in search of her owner.

Geppis bedroom was discernible due to soft snores issuing from within. Pinocchia slipped through the silently opened door.

A heated bed accustomed Geppi to slumber in the nude. A cybernetic sleephood blocked exterior disturbances and induced pleasant dreams. He lay on his back, his soft genitals a somnolent chick or hare nested in his lap.

Pinocchia quickly removed her clothing, save for her stockings. She climbed onto the bed with her owner, but stopped short of matching his full sprawl. She lowered her breasts onto his cock and began pillowy tumefacient undulations against him.

Geppis sleephood evidently was capable of incorporating this stimulation into his dreams without jarring him awake. His dick swiftly ramped up to its fullest dimensions.

Pinocchia had a hand free to work at her own genitals. By the time Geppi was ready to enter her, she was ready to receive him.

Pinocchia instantly climbed atop Geppi and maneuvered his cock into her eager vat-flesh slot, past the scrim of fur and through the dual parentheses of the labia. She began to rock atop him.

This much was too much for the sleephood, and it abdicated responsibility for Geppis unconsciousness, issuing an alarm.

The man shot awake and yanked his hood off.