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recognizable only by the different colored furs covering it. In one corner of the huge room, there was a massive sunken bathtub as big as a swimming pool, surrounded by vegetation of marvelous shapes 14 and colors. ‘Would you like some female companions? asked the robot. “Come, you can make your own choice.’ I put my belt on again and found myself transported back in front of the machine used for making robots. A luminous cube appeared in r e I was shown to an armchair facing the cube and given a helmet. When I had settled down, a magnificent young brunette with marvelously harmonious proportions appeared three-dimensionally within the luminous cube. She moved in such a way as to show rr rari ' : oa 1 herself off, and had she not been in a cube floating one meter above the ground, I would have thought she was real. My robot asked me whether she pleased me and if I wished to have her shape altered or her face modified. I told him that I considered her perfect. He replied that aesthetically speaking, she was the ideal woman, or rather, one of the three types of ideal women, as defined by the computer according to the taste of the majority of residents on the planet. But I could ask for any modification that I desired. 1 1 1 1 1 At my refusal to change anything whatsoever about that magnificent creature, a second woman, this time blonde and alluring, appeared in the luminous cube. She was different but just as perfect as the first one. With her I could not find anything to alter either. Finally, a third young female, this one a redhead more sensual than the first two, appeared in the strange cube. The robot asked me if I cared to see other models, or if these three ideal types of my race would be enough for me. I answered quite naturally that I thought these three people were extraordinary. At that moment, a magnificent black woman appeared in the cube, then a very fine slender Chinese female, and then finally another 169 THE SECOND ENCOUNTER - A FORETASTE OF PARADISE front of me. voluptuous young Asian woman.