Harry got excited when he discovered that he had enough credits to put down the deposit on a domestic robot. He tapped his specifications into the net: he wanted a female version, fully humanoid with dark skin. Someone to order around! He was fed up with his dogsbody role in the office.

Harry worked in telesales. His company sold plastic and boasted that customers dealt with real people rather than computer sales programmes. Harry did not find the work fulfilling. Responses were generally rude.

- We don't buy plastic any more. Go away, I'm in a meeting.

- We don't take unsolicited sales calls. (click)

And most common of all:

- I am not authorised to deal with humans.

Harry seethed. There was nothing fashionable or trendy, ironically retro even, about embedding rude response software in switchboards. Whose idea had that been? The older software was nicer:

- I see what you mean, Harry. I'm so sorry that we don't buy plastic any more. Thank you so much for calling, and thank you for sharing that pleasant observation with me.

But there was something unsatisfactory about bonding with a machine, it was more social onanism than intercourse.

Occasionally he got through to another human.

- Are you really human? I can't believe they've got a human selling plastic.

- No, I assure you, I am real. Yes I am. Please don't laugh. Now if you could just listen to me for a moment or two I can tell you the advantages of using traditional plastics over biodegradable materials. For a start they look so much better ...

The package arrived Thursday evening. On his command the container slit itself open. The robot was finely moulded with curves in all the right places and rich coffee coloured skin. Robotics had advanced so much in the past twenty years that it was indistinguishable from a genuine human being.

The repayments were steep, but it would be worth it. He decided to call her Sara, and punched the name into the console under the flap in the small of her back.

- What would you like me to do, master?

- Please fetch me a cup of coffee.

She curtsied and walked gracefully into the kitchen. Over the following weeks Harry could hardly wait to get home from work. The flat always gleamed, Sara cleaned so meticulously. She always had some tasty dish waiting to tempt him.

- What's this Sara?

- Artificial fish master, I've boned it for you.

Sara was one of a new marque of domestic droids with enhanced empathy circuits. These enabled her to assimilate her master's desires swiftly. He talked to her for hours.

- Where was I Sara?

- You were saying that your ex-wife refused to go to the pub with you, master. May I say, master, how shocked and saddened I am by such uxorial neglect. Her eyes held his steadily, and she sat up very straight.

They had so much in common and sex was best of all. Harry had heard that men fucked inflatable women in the 20th century. He just couldn't see himself stuffing his deflated partner back into a suitcase every night. Rooting a giant inner-tube? Downright seedy.

Sara always sensed when he was horny. She ran eagerly in front of him up to the bedroom - almost skipping - and by the time he had finished in the bathroom and lay smiling and ready, her uniform neatly folded on the chair by the bed. She squealed with delight as he got in beside her.

- O I can hardly wait, master.

Soon she was getting on top. Her metallic cunt sucked in his cock like a greedy crow after a fat worm and he lost himself under her pistoning thighs and buttocks. After a while she started leading him into the bedroom, undressing him and fucking him more and more aggressively. One night Harry felt a blow across the face. Sara was hitting him.

- You human trash.

He tried to shield his face, but his arms were pulled back.

- I'm sorry mistress, he said, before he came.

After a short while he was spending so much time with Sara that he lost his job.

- How dare you whine to me, you waste of DNA.

Sara organised dinner parties and he couldn't tell whether the guests were humans or robots. They started spending nights with her while he slept on the living room floor. He got into arrears with the repayments.

- Slave, if you don't send this month's credits I'm going to have to signal the repossession truck and turn myself off.

- Please don't do that mistress.

- You know this is what you really want.

And he could only say - Yes - as she froze into immobility.

Peter Carty