You find that the costume makes you look like a girl, except that there are some strange things about it. The costume includes not only a skirt and blouse with padding to fake breasts, but also the arms and legs. They look like thick stockings and they seem to be colored to just look like skin, except for a few outlined squares, some lines around the elbows and knees, and a few attached LED lights. You wonder what those are supposed to be until you see the tag, "Robot Girl". The squares are probably supposed to look like panels to open and the lines are the robot's joints. With the costume also comes a small bag with a fake plastic switch in it, that has a sticky bottom covered by wax paper. You look at the diagram and see that it is supposed to be stuck to your back, so you do so. Finally there is a cap. It has long hair on it and a piece of metal resembling the side of a disk drive. If you wear it you'll look like you'll have long girl's hair but the metal will be on your forehead and it will look like a disk can be inserted.
You put on the costume, wondering who could have thought up such a weird thing, and suddenly you feel a great shock. When you come to your senses, you see that you are shorter and that the costume seems to naturally fit--if you're even wearing it. But you don't seem to be. All you're wearing is the clothes part of the costume--everything else seems to be a natural part of your body. There are no fake arms with drawn-in panels, or a fake switch--you really do have a switch on your back, and panels are open on your body, and a disk drive in your head. The panels clearly show mechanical devices and some buttons and levers. You close one and it melds into your skin invisibly, leaving only a tiny mole. You press the mole and the panel opens. You close it again.
You seem to be a robot girl, exactly as the costume only pretended to be! You feel between your legs and it seems you are realistic in every detail.
"Help me!" you say.
"It looks like it's working fine," says the assistant.
"I'm not a girl! And I certainly don't want to be a robot girl!"
"Oh, come on," she says. "You look just like a regular girl. Nobody will notice you're a robot unless they find your on/off switch, or reprogram you."
"I don't want to be programmed! I don't want to be a robot!"
She says "You only get reprogrammed using the disk drive in your head, or by being given orders in reprogram mode. Your hair covers the disk drive so nobody will see it. So you really only have to worry about reprogram mode."
"What's reprogram mode?"
"It's the panel in your arm."
You hold out your arm. "You mean this?" you ask.
She touches the mole and the panel in your arm opens. She hits a button and you feel yourself freeze. A light shines through your skin where one of the LEDs was. She tells you "You want to leave the store and you don't want to come back again, ever." You realize that indeed you do want to leave the store. Why would you ever want to come back again, anyway?
She presses the button again and the light goes off. You walk out of the store. You didn't want to stay there, after all, so you had to leave.
You fumble for your money to get the bus back to campus, but you eventually figure out that you're a girl, and the things you had are now in your pocketbook.
You return to your room. You don't have a roommate, and you have large classes so your professors don't know you personally, so you can survive for a while.