A/N - Picture in case you didn't get what the official standard e-slave haircut was. Video: The hair station in case you think we invented the whole Joe haircut machine from our imaginations or something. You'd have to be a creative genius or something to invent all this stuff. At some point, you're going to realise this isn't science fiction but a drama-documentary from the future! All hail the new mechanical order!

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It was days away from the time when all bids on slaves were final. The robots were working on our user friendly skills and installed an app on our collars which could detect if you were smiling or not. Joe's guess was this was an attempt to make us more 'user friendly'. I had different ideas. I think the machines thought that if we smiled we might actually become happier and more content with our servitude. Which weirdly was possibly working on me. I was less pleased about being sent to serve him and would be happy to stay here.

Joe joined me just after a collar class. Joe tilted his hair a black bob with bangs back.

"All Hail the new mechanical order," I said with practically no space between words. It had all the life and spontaneity of the words 'please put your trays in the uplight rock position' - I wanted to say "all snail the new tyrannical Mordor" but there were people around. The only way to advance on your current profile was to rat your fellow slaves out. We could trick the voice machine but not another profile desperate human.

"So do you think I look enough like Olivia Wilde in Tron: legacy enough yet?" said Joe.

"Yes, you rock it" I said.

"Yes, the dressing machine just did it to me. I guess my hair has grown out so it's not weaving in the extensions in anymore" he said.

Joe had told Kayla and I the story a while back - he had long hair in hippy poney-tail when he was captured and the machines had put him down as a girl despite the beard. Desperate he had managed to cut chunks off but the machines wouldn't change his 'setting' and just woven/glue in extensions like they would do any short cropped woman. Not only had they removed any 'unsightly' hair they had some way to make sure it wouldn't come back. So Joe's beard and my armpits were as naked as the jungle after delivery of Agent Orange.

I told him about the lesson he missed for his visit to the hair machine. Apparently, we could be password protected. That meant that if the owner set a password we would be muted about 10 minutes after they stopped 'using' us. The problem was if our owner forgot the password. Young human owners typically set passwords but then have a habit of forgetting them. They taught us about what kinds of passwords to accept. People had habits of setting long complex passwords like alpha nine six zeta seven then forgetting them.

"The secret," said to Joe "is apparently to make sure they register an email address. Then they can activate the lost password key."

"So let me get this right. You have an owner standing in front of you. You know it's him, he knows its you, and if they tell you to do something you can ignore them because your password protected. That's crazy?" said Joe.

"It doesn't matter Joe The pain button doesn't work - only the automatics."

"That's brilliant I can't wait not to do that," said Joe "but if they don't have an email account and no password your mute for life ?"

"That's about it. Number one reason for cheap slaves on eBay. Basically, the only solution is to get a new collar"

"Pricey, plus dangerous".

We passed a new confused girl struggling along in their high heels, a new trainee.

"Have you noticed how super competitive all the LA slaves are? It's all like 'I lived in Beverly hills and now I'm going to be the best slave in America."

"The term America is now deprecated. Use the term Region 1" said Joe's collar stinging him badly enough to make him stick his tongue out. The Robots were busily renaming places based on their DVD code. So Region 1 was USA and Canada, Region 2 Europe. All regions were to be run from Washington 2.0 the new machine capital.

"Yes, they should know certain things are only tolerated because they are done badly," I said.

"Huh ?" started joe "like what? Give me one good example. "

"Like advertising. if it was 100% effective we would ban it as brainwashing. We only tolerate it because no one is that good at it. Slavery is the same. We should take pride in being slow and inefficient with it. An efficient slave is both unnecessary and a contradiction in terms" I said.

We walked on for a while.

"I know you're worried," I said

"It's about 66," Joe said begin careful not to use her real name in public.

"She likes you," I said.

"I don't know why. I'm worried we won't end up together. Even if we end up in the same place I might be assigned a different girlfriend, she a different boyfriend" said Joe."I went to the principle again asking them to change my record."

"What did he say?" I said as lamely as possible, while I smiled.

"They can't change it and get everything fixed before the sale."

"But our owners don't want to sell products that are not broken but are returned, it would loose them money." I said. I also knew that girls got higher bids than boys so it might have been a deliberate fraud. I was being careful both prism and fellow slaves looking for brownie points were listening.

"If I go with you now I'm likely to be returned. If I stay I can get my error changed and join you later" said Joe.

"but if you're sold with us he might keep you."

"I'm worried," Joe said.

"Remember to smile," said Cortona to me.

"We all are. We've never done this before. Any of us" I said through gritted teeth.