A happy, chipper, feminine mental voice interrupts Andrea's moping.

"Ugh, this is such a yucky place! Are you suuuure you want to live here? You could live anywhere you want, you know! If you want, you could live in a fancy penthouse apartment instead... or a luxurious mansion... ooh, or even a magical palace on the moon! Sure, you might have to share one of the nicer places with a few friends... or, like, maybe pretend to be one of the maids in a mansion or something? Still, doesn't that sound like way more fun than living in a gross basement?"

“I do NOT want to be a maid. I know what happens to maid Eta’s. I definitely don’t want to share. I wan’t to live as normal a life as I’m allowed to before things get too weird.” And twitch streamer is as normal a job as Andrea could think of while still promoting the Eta class like he had to. This flat would do fine for that. It’s not like a poorly ventilated basement flat was a health hazard for him anymore anyway.

”Plus, people prefer it when someone is relate-able, streaming from a mansion would alienate people.” He knows he can convince the AI partner more often if he puts things in terms of gaining popularity.

"Nothing that they don't want to have happen to them, silly! Besides, you're an Analog model with boy parts! You could be very popular, if you played things right~"

But this isn't the first time that particular argument has been raised... and it does in fact seem to be true that there are demographics that see excessive luxury as a negative factor... so Andrea's mental copilot chooses a different tack.

"But I suppose... if you realllly insist on living in a basement, then I'm really going to have to insist that you make it a nice basement! I'm not just going to let you mope around on a mouldy old couch all day! Sure, this place is technically clean enough to rent to a human, but it absolutely needs more work to be presentable! Like, a fresh coat of paint in some nicer colour? Maybe a replacement for that awful carpet? At the very least, you're going to need to buy some new furniture, and some cute decorations!"

“Fiiiiiiiine. I’lll get decorations for whats in view of the webcam. The point of you requiring I do cute stuff is for the benefit of people seeing me do it. They won’t see the rest of the apartment though.” Andrea knows pretty well by now how much to give into his AI partner to avoid punishment, and how much he can get away with doing things his own way. 

At least now as an Eta class Andrea doesn’t ever get tired from walking. He can just walk to the mall. Bed bath and beyond has kitschy decoration stuff right?…

He’s still not used to being in public like this… people keep looking at him as he goes through the store. Makes him nervous.

"Being cute isn't just for the benefit of people that see you, silly! Surrounding yourself with cute things helps you feel cuter yourself! You're getting ready to start your new dream job! You should be smiling and happy, but instead, you're skulking through the mall, like you think that someone's going to attack you or something! 'Shy' can be sort of cute sometimes, but you definitely shouldn't be looking scared! Especially not in public, where all sorts of people can see you! Come on, you remember the way I taught you to walk, right?"

Andrea wants to delete her so badly. He wants the deletion to be painful. Stupid AI policing his every action. He HATES having to remember his lessons, and following them was even worse.

He was a boy damnit! Guys are allowed to slouch! Stupid dumb jerk AI.

But he knows he can’t get away with ignoring this ‘suggestion’. Andrea straightens up and starts walking more ‘cutely’, bouncing on his feet a little as he walked. Making sure to act more bubbly. He hates this, it makes him look so girly.

"Yep, juuuust like that, keep it up! You could even try smiling at people! After all, you definitely need to smile for the camera, so this is, like, extra practice!"

He puts on a fake smile as he practically bounces around the store. “Fuck you, happy now?” He mumbles under his breath. He just wants this shopping trip to be over now.

"I'll won't be happy until you're happy... and I guess it might take us a little while to get there properly. But I know that you can do it, if you work hard and try your best!"

Whatever Andrea initially had in mind about getting things that'd fit into the area immediately behind the camera while streaming, Bed Bath and Beyond certainly does seem to have a lot of stuff for those first two areas... especially in the part of the store Andrea is bouncing through.

Not everything is pink, but a lot of it certainly is, and the whole store has a generally girly smell, sort of an undifferentiated mix of a dozen floral perfumes wafting off from the bath products.

"You haven't bought anything yet. Do you see anything you like?"

Andrea has always hated the smell of stores like this, all the perfumes and soaps mixing is overpowering. Especially with their enhanced taste receptors meaning they can taste it on the air. He’s lucky he no longer strictly has to breathe in anymore, though he does have to actively remember to stop breathing or he will just out of habit.

”I want a gamer pad… don’t want it to look like a 40 year old karen decorated it. I guess those smaller pillows are fine… but all these floral patterns look so… old person.” Surely there’s stuff for the youth™️ in this store. He keeps looking.

"A 'gamer pad'... ooh, like extra LEDs in the furniture and stuff? That can be cute!"

Asking for 'no floral designs' is a bit of a high bar at BB&B, but there is indeed an LED-equipped bedroom set in this section.

“Okay… thats uhmm… not bad actually. It’s very rgb gamer aesthetic. But does it have to be pink?” The answer is probably yes, but sometimes the AI doesn’t care about things being maximally cute. Just cute enough.

Even if it did have to be a set up like that display one. He’d change out the cushions for plushies at least, that’s still cute aesthetic but like… everyone wanted cool merch plushies. It”s slightly less explicitly girly.

"It doesn't have to be pink... but pink is a cute colour!"

More to the point, the other selections definitely trend more towards the "40 year old Karen" aesthetic, featuring such things as 'paintings of flowers' and 'scented candles'.

If nothing else, this doesn't seem to be a good store for plushies, since you haven't seen any at all.

Fine, he orders the pink gamer bed and bedside tables to be delivered. Better than anything else here… maybe it means he will get more leniency on decorations. “Are we good now? Can I go to the tech store now?”

Bed Bath and Beyond didn't have delivery robots before the invasion, but it sure does now! Epsilon-class units from the Yeone Collective have been instrumental in keeping the Earth economy afloat, and both delivery and installation of furniture seems to fall under their remit. Given that this is a 'business expense' for your essential Eta-class work, payment is rather automatic in your case... and absent specific instructions to the contrary, you might even find your new furniture already assembled and waiting by the time you get back to your new home!

"You've gotten some furniture, and that'll probably make things nicer when you have to sleep, since you've decided to keep doing that. Still, since you insisted that the most important part was anything the camera might see... maybe you should check out the office section while you're here, so you have somewhere to put your computer?"

Now that it's been brought to Andrea's attention, BB&B does indeed have an office section, which might have been a better part of the store to be checking than the bedroom section. 

In fact, calling it the 'office' section is probably stretching the definition, given the gaming chairs and associated accessories, which seem to be doing brisk competition with more traditional office furniture!

It’s all ending up very stereotypical gamer girl… theres no way anyone will think he's a boy with a set up like this. “You sure I can’t just buy a normal desk and chair?… I bought the pink bed already” He does like the glowy shelf though. It’d match his bed.

the AI is being so pushy today! Probably because these are long term decisions rather than just slacking on being cute day to day. Why can’t he at least be a cute BOY if he has to do stuff cutely… why does it all have to be so… over the top feminine.

"You don't have to buy it here, silly! But you were the one who told me that you wanted to meet a certain aesthetic... and here it is!"

There's actually a variety of pink gaming setups in stock... though that might just be an attempt to focus on the most likely demographic to want to purchase that sort of furniture from BB&B, as opposed to from somewhere else.

“So if I went to best buy right now and bought totally regular black and rgb gaming merch… You’d let me?”

Honestly the second set up wasn't bad if it wasn’t for the pinkness. Much nicer desk design.

"It's not what I'd do... but you are allowed to do that, if that's really what you want."

There's a slight pause, before the expected addendum comes up.

"Of course... since this is sort of about your public appearance... if you do choose a less cute working area, I might have to be just a teensy little bit more insistent about your outfits."

NOPE! Not letting her have aaannnny more sway over his outfits. Last time she had outfit control left him in way too slutty clothes. “FINE! I’ll take the pink desk and chair.” At least BB&B has autopay going on, doesn’t need to talk to anyone about these embarrasing purchases.

Now time to go to go to Bestbuy for the actual technology he needs.

Guess he’s not getting out of this theme… so even when he goes to bestbuy for the actual technology he makes sure it matches the overall theme of pink glowy gamer gear. Ugh. Well at least it’s 2020 and not like…. 2009. Surely SOME guy had to have pink gamer gear.

Razer with all its pink glowy game gear just made a LOT of money from the Yeone. In as much as money still mattered at all these days. Everything is white or pink or gold except for the mouse, which is a Razer Naga and that only comes in black. Andrea needs a good MMO mouse! Mice are the one thing he wont sacrifice on the altar of aesthetics.

At least he doesn’t need to buy a computer, he IS the computer!

”Are we done now?” He mumbles to his AI partner as he approaches the front counter with all his orders.

"That's a personal choice! You're done when you're suuuure you've got everything you want!"

Best Buy is different from when Andrea was here last. All the employees would've ordinarily been dressed up in white shirt and tie, acting as "Agents of the Geek Squad" and such, while attentively manning the registers and prowling the shelves. Instead, the store is comparatively empty of humans, the normal checkouts are sort of barren, and the only visible human employee on duty is a 30-something guy chilling behind the larger customer service desk, visibly playing a game on the computer (some obscure JRPG instead of something more deniable like, Solitare), and he's wearing a t-shirt that says "I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords!" instead of anything businesslike. He looks up as Andrea approaches, and after a moment of scrutiny, breaks out into a wide grin.

"How can I help you, ma'am?"

“I’m a boy… actually…” This is why he hates going out in public… People mistake him for a girl, or a trans at best. His case is not helped by the armloads of excessively pink gamer gear he is bringing to the counter.

He does not appreciate the guys shirt, Andrea would personally rather the robot overlords fucked right off. But it’s not like he can undo his Eta class conversion.