According to thedetective, there were no boyfriends, ex-husbands, or anyone else inJoyce's life as she worked in the store. She seemed to have develop...d norelationships at all, emulating the very model of frigidity. Thensuddenly and apparently without any known reason, she had become themost obvious example of promiscuity - the prostitute. Were there otherexamples like that? Maybe there were. Maybe she had gotten into drugsand needed the money to support her habit. There was nothing in the. He was still squatting, whichput him at eye level with her. "You can be my friend even if youcan't come play with me. Let me give you a flower." She pulled thedandelion from behind her ear, and carefully slid it behind Zane'sleft ear. He felt a powerful sensation as her fingers brushed hisear, and the stem of the flower tickled the side of his neck. "Thank you, Amanda," he said, smiling. "It's beautiful. I've got togo now, though. Maybe I'll see you around here another day." Hestood up. ?Actually he looked more than a little hurt. I didn’t mean to make him feel bad when I put down that I would be a slave all weekend. I knew when I put it down that he wasn’t planning for anything like that but mostly I did it just for my own thrill of knowing it was on a signed contract. Admittedly I knew when I did it that putting down that I wanted this to last longer then he was prepared for would make him feel a little inept and I did enjoy that but that wasn’t the main reason I put that. They could replace arms, legs liver, everything else but when the mind went that was it. Early experiments to download a mind to a computer when horribly wrong and although there were still studies in the field no real human trials have ever been approved since then. Population growth was halted at 17 billion. Since then a couple was allowed only one child per gender in a marriage. A male and a female were allowed one of each, two males were allowed two male children and so on. Anything beyond.