Bridget, 38, who might have a lot on her plate soon

"Hey, Rory." I greet my secretary as I walk into the foyer of my office on the top floor of the Bureau of Sexual Services. "What's my agenda looking like for today?"

"Well," he says, consulting his laptop, "the big item is your assessment. You don't have any meetings scheduled for the next couple of hours, so you can handle that now or wait for this afternoon. Whichever you'd prefer."

I nod thoughtfully. One of my first acts when I was brought in as facility director here at BoSS was to order all employees to undergo an assessment every month--to make sure everyone better understands the process and purpose of the services we provide. It'd hardly make sense if the director herself wasn't included. And it isn't like I don't appreciate the additional opportunities for fucking. My husband Mark understands.

"Anything else?" I ask.

"A couple of new general directives from Washington. And a personal email from Coimbra. I didn't look at it past the subject line. I'm sure you'll want to read it and respond."

"I'm sure. And meetings?"

"Like I said, nothing until eleven. That's when you have the budget discussion for the BDSM wing. And then there's the general managers' meeting after lunch."

"Fine, fine." It doesn't sound like anything onerous. Maybe a few contentious compromises to be hammered out at the budget meeting, but nothing too stress-inducing. Most of my time as director these last couple of weeks has been similarly relaxed.

As long as I don't think too much about HASP.

The Heuristic Assessing Sexual Preference--the latest AI agent sent over from the head office. It formulates its own custom assessment questionnaires, tailored to each individual client based on all the data mining and personal profile projections government money can buy, then evaluates the results to produce very specific, very custom experiences. It's supposed to streamline the process, increase client satisfaction, and it certainly has succeeded in cutting down on turnover times. Whereas during the first three months of BoSS's operations, it could take two to four weeks from start to finish to provide a brand new client not already on file with the experience they were looking for, now it happens in a matter of minutes.

I don't trust it as far as I can throw it, which--given it's running on a heavy bank of servers in a data center somewhere--isn't very far.

I simply find the whole system too opaque. And some of the experiences it has generated since we started using it have been wild.

But I shouldn't dwell too much on things I can't control. Now, I need to decide if I should go down to the lobby for my assessment or handle some of the paperwork waiting for me in my office. Or--hell!--I could spend this time doing a quick impromptu inspection of the facility.