The technician sighed a little, snapping the tiny debug manual closed before she slipped into a deep pocket on the side of her belt. Its pages were worn with a massed jumble of bookmarks and dog-ears, years of heavy use and abuse at all hours of the day and night. The belt pocket itself was in rougher shape still, edges of the opening polished smooth from hundreds, perhaps thousands of withdrawals and returns. Long hours, longer weeks.

"It happens to all the display model 'Monas' eventually", she said into the room out of the corner of her mouth, not yet turning from where she stood over the diagnostic panel to face the sharply-dressed older woman tapping her foot by the door. Instead she continued to run her expert eyes across the complex mass of screens, dials, and lights that could so easily have been a nightmare cross between a stock ticker, an EEG, and an Escher painting.

The tech continued, barely seeming interested in if her audience knew or cared what was said.

"They're designed to learn the patterns of their owner. Learn their quirks, things they like or don't like, kick them about, that sort of thing. And I mean REALLY learn, these things are built to modify themselves on the fly, really create a custom bitch for whoever buys 'em. 

"You can't just take that kind of model design and make it do that fifty, a hundred, two hundred times during customer demos without modification. You're going to get breakdowns, can't be helped. The 'Monas' weren't designed for this kind of thing."

Muttering to herself, the suited manager shook her head and stepped fully into the repair office. The space was larger than it strictly needed to be having started life as storage space for the off-display product, but nevertheless had become cramped over years of repair staff usage. Technicians being what they were, the Firm's highly efficient pit crew had converted a generously spacious office into a mass of wires, boxes, lubricant vials, and miscellaneous scalpels. 

The tools of the mindsculpters' art. 

The manager crossed the available floor-space in four long strides, each footfall landing with a hard click of stiletto heel on concrete flooring, and gazed at the naked form of their previous display model 'Mona'. Even as physically lovely as very nearly all their product was, this one was clearly defective. Sweat slicked its trembling flesh, unseeing eyes glazed in a frantic need it lacked the capacity to understand or fulfil. Very few seconds its hips bucked slowly as though in a nightmare and, finding no resistance against which to grind, the 'Mona' started to weep before forgetting its tears mere seconds later. 

The manager scowled at it, pursing her lips. What a waste of such fantastic material...

The shaking, nearly-catatonic form of naked slavery that whimpered, very quietly, in the straps of the reprogramming chair upset her a little, so she kicked it until it shut up. The 'Mona' rocked back with the force of the impact, held securely in place by the straps around its body, head, and limbs. The straps weren't tight: the 'Mona' didn't need them to be anymore.

As the kick penetrated the 'Mona's' empty head, it groaned loudly, shaking intensifying, nipples hardening. The thing was trying to cum and failing, as the craving to be used by an owner, any owner, ran up against its programming and snapped what little was left of its 'will' in half.

"We don't have the time to develop a whole new display SKU, Jen', said the manager to her tech. "Just patch the Mona up and have it back on the Floor as fast as possible. I only need it until close of day Thursday, we'll be shut down on Friday to rotate floor models. If it can hold together for another couple of days until then, we can send it back to HQ to be reflashed. At least we wouldn't lose inventory."

Jen sucked her teeth a little. 

"Tough turnaround, boss. 'Mona' decay's a bitch to work around. I can probably buy you to the end of today, but you saw how it responded to your kick. Its orgasm lock won't hold past maybe tomorrow morning, the thing's addicted to breaking now. It's lost basic conditioning, too, it can't resist a command anymore. Face it, this thing wouldn't pass basic 'Mona' inspection at this point. I wouldn't even trust a reflashing. This thing's a full factory rebuild or nothing, if you want to keep it as a Mona."

The manager knew, in her heart, that Jen was right. Designed for the kind of owner who "likes a girl with spirit", as it were, the 'Mona' model line was built as a personal pleasure-toy model. They were constructed to imprint on an owner and learn their owners wants and needs, then spend their time snarking, sassing, and generally playfully resisting whatever the owner said until their token resistance was overcome and they collapsed into the devoted, loving slavery that was a hallmark of any Firm-made model. Any Firm 'Mona' had to be able to demonstrate playful resistance, extreme but controllable sex addiction, orgasm lock releasable on owner command, and various other stringent QA metrics before release. 

This miserable thing was barely able to stand anymore. What a waste...

Jen turned to the manager holding a printed readout, and winced a little sympathetically. 

"I reckon this one's a Tiffany after today, boss, I do. Frankly if it were me, boss, I'd probably Tiff it right now and just save you the trouble. I mean look at the thing."

She used her right foot to gently nudge the Mona's knees apart in the chair. The Mona made a low, almost pained sound, somewhere between a moan and a beg, thrusting its hairless cunt towards the foot in blind need, unable to move past the loose strapping holding its torso in place. Mindlessly unselfconscious, the Mona began to weep, its pussy dry only thanks to naldox injections keeping its physical arousal locked behind a misted veil of drugged denial. 

The manager exhaled a heavy breath, and nodded. 

"I see what you mean. How many cycles did this one take?"

Jen turned to the debug panel and pulled out a thin steel rod connected by a thin wire to the back of the panel. She pushed apart the Mona's thighs, ignoring the scream of desperation, and slowly inserted the rod into the Mona's cunt as she placed a hand on the thing's belly to hold it down. 

The machine beeped, as the microchip embedded in the space just below the Mona's cervix registered. 

Jen left the reader in place as she moved back over to the machine, leaving the Mona to sob as it clenched around the rod and failed to cum. She looked at the machine for a few seconds.

"188 cycles, boss. Yeah, no wonder this thing can't hold together, that's pretty high even for a high-performance Mona, which this one...", she scrolled through a few screens, "...yeah this one was not that. Not a bad model, but it has a pretty high Love index and its Obsession index was in the red too."

Jen sighed, perhaps wistfully. "Would've made a fantastic personal bitch for someone...". She shrugged. "Ah well.

"If you want my opinion, boss? Tiff it and send it to the back for reformatting. I'll put in a ticket for Mabel to start the rework process, we'll have this thing giggling and licking in a fortnight, boss."

The manager nodded slowly and rolled her shoulders, a loose begrudging acceptance in the way she flicked her hand as she turned to the door. 

"Fine. If it's that far gone, give it to Mabel now. I don't want to waste resources on defective goods. Even as a Tiffany, we'll probably have to sell it as an ex-display anyway, more's the fucking pity. I'll put in a req for another floor Mona."

She stopped in the door, and barely turned her head back to look at the tech tapping away into the programming chair's keyboard over the twitching Mona. 

"Oh, and...

"Good work, Jen."

The manager smiled as she stepped out, closing the door before the Jen started to vocalise its climax too loud. It might disturb her customers, after all.