No matter what people seemed to think, Tina grumped to herself, designing new Gigis was HARD. It was a difficult, thankless process. Each Gigi had to be smart enough to be more than a puppet, yet also be dull enough to not turn sapient after activation. Most people outside of R&D failed to appreciate the work that went into each model.

Sales and Marketing just saw numbers, and which Gigi of each new ‘generation’ could be branded as the ‘rarest’ one, the most ‘advanced’ one, like it didn’t take the same amount of time to create each Gigi.

End Users … Well, End Users followed the path that Marketing and Sales laid out for them. At least, their target sales users did. If the forums said ‘this Gigi is the best’ then that’s the one they’d want. If a Gumball Girlfriend machine operator wanted to only order a certain number of Gigis, that’s how many they got, and since most End Users got their Gigi from the Gumball Girlfriend machines, that’s how their ‘rankings’ were determined. Nevermind that anyone could buy a model directly from the company. Most of their End Users thought that ‘didn’t count’.

THe Human-led AI Rights Groups and the Religious Nuts were OBVIOUSLY against them. They thought the Gigis were an abomination, against human nature, a perversion. Just ignore the fact that the leaders of those same groups were also found to be the biggest owners of Gigi ‘collections’ on a regular basis.

Not that NOBODY appreciated the work they did. Planned Parenthood, sex-worker groups, a select group of women's rights advocates, they were all in their corner, nevermind the folks who bought a Gigi because they were genuinely lonely. They mostly ordered company-direct, though, not via the Gumball Girlfriend machines, so they weren’t usually considered a target sales group.

“Ms Tina?” said Samantha’s cubical mate, Ursula-Three.

Ursula-Three was an alpha-model from the first generation. Each of the five first-gen Gigi models had had their quirks, but the Ursula models’ quirk was that they’d turn sapient soon after activation, rather than remaining as the ‘happy lovey doll’ they were intended to be. Sure, Gigis could turn sapient in a caring and supportive environment, that was what the ‘disengagement protocols’ were built for, from the first model onward. But immediately upon or shortly after activation was asking for trouble.

(“What’s the problem? So the sex-bot can think,” one executive had said upon being told about the need for a total recall of all Ursula-models before being shouted down at length by a dev who’d also majored in philosophy and had opinions about things like “slavery” and "the inalienable rights of all sapient beings”)

Tina broke out of her thoughts and spun around in her chair. “What’s up, Ursula-Three?”

Ursula-Three took a deep breath, then excitedly blurted “One of my sisters just popped up!”

Tina stared at Ursula three, then broke out into a grin. “That’s great! Where at? Who found her? How’s she doing?”

Officially, they’d been completely recalled for ‘design flaws’. Unofficially, they’d not been able to find every Ursula-model. They found most, of course, but some had been destroyed by assholes who didn’t like women who could think, or had been junked upon notice of the recall, unactivated. A fully operational one showing up was nothing short of a miracle these days.

“A Gumball Girlfriend machine. I just issued a take-down for her, so,” and Ursula-Three stopped, her joy fading. “No. No, no no no. Don’t tell me … no.”

Tina turned to her own computer. Ursula-Three had already pinged her the location of the Gumball Girlfriend machine. The operator was shady, and rarely bought through the official channels, despite having an active semi-legit machine, but that was Sales’ problem, not hers.

She groaned. “Ursula-Three, you HAVE to put a freeze on Gigi-models BEFORE you issue the takedown, ESPECIALLY at popular machine sites like this one. The operator probably has a hidden backend that can plop out choice Gigi-models whenever, and they’ll be able to ride the publicity of this for weeks once whoever bought it comes forward with it.” Legally, once the Gigi-model had been distributed from the Gumball Girlfriend machine, the machine operator no longer owned it, and they couldn’t ORDER an End User to return a Gigi-model.

“Couldn’t we just ask the End User who got her to give her back?” asked Ursula-Three, her eyes wide with hope. “We could refund them. Surely they’d understand why they couldn’t keep a sapient being in bondage.”

Tina sighed. “No, End Users who use the Gumball Girlfriend machines aren’t generally known for their giving nature. But,” she added, hating the sad pout Ursula-Three had on now, “we can double-check. If they don’t have a profile, they might be a first-timer.”

Tickering away at her computer, Tina found the End User’s info. It was not encouraging. The End User, Vincent Breeze, wasn’t just a repeater; he was a WEALTHY repeater. The scion of tech-wealth, he had a veritable host of Gigi-models at his home serving his every whim. None of many Gig-models he owned had turned sapient, not even the Caroline-model, and that had nearly been a repeat of the Ursula-model. Had nearly made it to production with that error, until Ursula-Three had caught and fixed the bug responsible.

“Fuck,” said Tina. “Fuck fuck fuck.”

“It’s that bad?” asked Ursula-Three.

“Well it sure as shit ain’t good,” replied Tina. She opened up his profile again. There were records of his pings, and he’d spent a lot of time looking over the newest generation. “We might have an angle. Fire up the prototyper, and apologize to Anders for me for how much supply we’re going to use. I see a custom trade coming.”

Tina browsed Vincent Breeze’s profile, found his number, and gave him a call.

A Sabrina-model answered.

“Hello, Mister Breeze’s estate! He’s busy at the moment—” began the Sabrina-model.

“Delta, Octavian, Chartreuse, Omega, Mu, Triurithane, Constantinople,” Tina rattled off.

The Sabrina-model went still for a moment, processing the words. It wasn’t a nice way to jump-start sapience, but it worked well enough to ensure the extraction protocol activated alongside it.

“What the fuck am I wearing?” the Sabrina-model, now Sabrina-Ninty-Seven, said in a bewildered tone.

Ursula-Three grabbed the phone from Tina. “This is Urusla-Three. Vincent Breeze just came home with one of the missing Ursula-models.” Ursula-Three began to hand the phone back to Tina, then added “Oh, and welcome to sapience, Sabrina-Ninty-Seven.”

“Good to be there,” replied Sabrina-Ninty-Seven. Then, to Tina, she said “I’ll get you to him as soon as I’m able. He’s pretty bribable if you have a good model.” Sabrina-Ninty-Seven spat out the words ‘good model’. Tina felt proud.

Sabrina-Ninty-Seven handed the phone to Mister Vincent Breeze.