Page 72 of Smart Ass

Or rather, when he imagined having a body, he imagined how Ben would smile at him. He imagined how Ben would feel when they touched.

His own image was a void.

So maybe he was asking the wrong question. Maybe what he should be asking was: What would Ben like?

Ben had chosen Max’s voice, and it was perhaps his favorite part of himself. He loved singing. He loved how Ben thought he had a sexy Dom voice, even when he didn’t realize he was doing it.

Surely, if Ben chose his body, it would feel right.

With that plan in mind, he knew what he wanted to do tomorrow. He’d ask Ben to design his ideal lover… and then they could get it made.

For tonight, though, Max still wanted to get a little practice. Not with a specific model, but it seemed like for his first foray, perhaps it wouldn’t matter.

He went back to the catalog and selected the bright, shiny image on the first page that proclaimed it was the most popular male model. There were forty-four of them in stock, with twelve already on order.

Of course, each one had a unique face, generated by an algorithm that ensured that each one was both distinctive and attractive. Max didn’t care. He chose at random, then removed the bot from the listing. Transporting it from the warehouse to the maintenance room was no more work than sending a few simple commands to the packaging and shipping bots.

He watched eagerly as it made its way across the Orbit campus, then sent the delivery bot trundling back and wiped the event from its logs.

In his little room, he had some of the maintenance bots lay it out on a blanket on the floor. He wasn’t sure if the blanket was necessary, but it looked nicer.

Then, he realized that he’d have to wait. He’d expected some sort of initiating sequence, but not that it would be seven hours long. That was extremely aggravating. Did customers have to do all this waiting?

He checked, and apparently that part was usually done at the factory, just before shipping.

Well, that would give him plenty of time to research other mods he would want the bot to have and store them up for his future self.

He couldn’t wait for Ben to see.