The gift shop of the Harvenstall Art Museum is unlike any gift shop in any other art gallery.  For one thing, it is manned by synthetics mainly.  They never seem to tire of answering stupid questions.  Here’s are some examples:

A woman comes up to the counter and asks a synthetic, “Do artists use house paint when they are painting houses?”

“No, they use regular artists paint.”

A beautiful woman with a great figure comes up to the counter and asks, “Are there any artists here who would like to paint a picture of me in the nude?”

“Yes there are.  But that isn’t allowed unless you are taken to the Artists’ Gallery or you return on Friday or Saturday night after museum hours when such a thing is allowed.”

A bold young man approaches a female-appearing synthetic at the counter and asks, “Could I have sex with you after you are done for the day?”

“No, because I go to a chamber after work and am deactivated.  I am also not programmed to have sex with humans.”

A little girl comes to the counter and asks, “I saw a horsey in the Projection Gallery.  Can I ride it?”

“Only if it allowed.”

A child asks the synthetic at the counter, “If I break anything, do I have to pay for it?”

“No.  It can be repaired or replaced with a simulation of the thing that is broken.”

A teen asks the synthetic, “What would happen if I tried to steal something?”

“You would not be allowed to leave the museum.  All doors would be locked and a security synthetic would bring you to the police station.”

A curious young man asks the female-appearing synthetic, “If you could have sex with humans, would you produce androids or humans?”

“The person would be a cyborg because I would produce a synthetic DNA that would be similar to my DNA and your DNA when combined at conception.  It would be up to you as to the sex of the cyborg if you have a preference.”

A person asks the synthetic, “If an artist has completed a work of art in front of visitors, does he also paint the wet paint sign?”

“That isn’t necessary because each completed painting is sprayed with a coating that dries in seconds.”

In the gift shop are items you will not find anywhere else.  There are projection boxes that can exhibit statues, 3-D art, and art that is in motion.  It depends on the program in the box.  Each box can be controlled by a computer device.  To save space, each box comes in kit form and is fairly easy to construct.  Place the program into the programmer, plug it in, and voila you have a piece of projection art. 

There are EPU programs that allow you to do art in a computer program.  You can also see what artists have done and interact with them in the era in which they worked.  You can be there in the studio of great artists in this dimension’s art history and in other dimensions.   You want to be a model for Rembrandt or Picasso?  No problem.  Do you want to give advice to Peter Paul Rubens or be a critic of Renoir?  Go ahead.  You might hear some angry words.  But you can go ahead. 

There are art creation devices you can buy and bring home like the statue synthesizer.  You feed in raw material that is synthesized into various types of materials, design the statue and form it in an EPU program, and then decide what size you want to statue to be within reason.  You can’t make Mount Everest that is full sized or make a model of the world that is the size of an atom.  But what is produced is something you can display. 

There are reproductions like those you will find in other art gallery gift shops.  But there are also computerized reproductions that can include you and friends.  You can have a painting that looks like it was done by a master that has you in it.  If you’re not ashamed being shown naked you can be in a cubist style painting or something Salvador Dali might have created.  Maybe you could become The Thinker instead of the real model of the Rodin masterpiece. 

You can buy art supplies and rent synthetics that can pose as models.  They never serve behind the counter.  But if you go in the back of the shop you can select what you want and rent them for a day or a week.  They are only for the purpose of art creation.  You can have a female-appearing synthetic pose nude.  But if you try to have sex with it, you will be rejected and could be hurt.  Even if you had two female-appearing synthetics pose nude, you could never show them having lesbian sex.  They are programmed not to participate in that. None of the synthetics are pleasure units.  If you want to rent one of them, go to the Breeves Total Entertainment Arcade located in the subterranean area of Newgate.  It’s appropriate that the arcade is underground since some people’s idea of entertainment should be hidden. 

Instead of ordinary art books, there are multi-books.  They are electronic and can present flat pages and pictures, projections of pieces of art, moving images and sound, and experiencable programs.  If they have freestyle capability, a person can interact with the program.  Of course the books that feature nudes can only be sold to adults and the covers aren’t displayed for obvious reasons. 

Classes in the Artists’ Gallery are offered and if you choose to go there, you are given a pass for $1.  And if you choose to go to the galleries after hours on Friday and Saturday nights, you need to pay for the right to go in at the gift shop.  A synthetic is always on duty then.  But don’t ask him or her to take off their clothes to give you a taste of how it will be because that is another stupid question area and they aren’t allowed to be naked. 

There are also programmable art mirrors that can be programmed to show you as you want to be shown.  You can insert a program that has you looking like a Civil War general, or a cowboy, or a showgirl from Chicago in the 1920’s, or an abstract image of you, or anyone you want to look like.  And it will look like you’re looking into a mirror.  You can set the image and have it shown constantly as long as the mirror is plugged in or is run by the nuclear batteries.  Some people buy more than one even though a full-length mirror can cost over $500.  A modest mirror that measures 80 centimeters by 80 centimeters costs $100 and can be changed as often as desired. 

Clothing can be bought in the gift shop too.  There aren’t real gems on them.  But they look almost like the clothing in the Wearable Art Gallery.  You can even have a suit of armor and a sword that look like what is there.  But the diamonds are all synthetic and the sword is made from crystalline aluminum.  The entire ensemble costs nearly $1000.  But people are willing to pay the price in order to have a fake of an exhibit from the Wearable Art Gallery. 

There are also models of objects in the galleries you can take home and construct either like a regular model or in model construction chambers by micro-machines.  Sometimes it’s more fun watching the micro-machines construct the models on the screen or experience the construction with an EPU headset.  You can buy the chambers and micro-machines so that you can have more models constructed as you watch. 

If you want to have a model of a starship that is a meter long that is an exact replica inside and outside of a 1000-meter long starship, it is best to have micro-machines constructing it in zero gravity or in a space dock inside the chamber.  You can even have a crew of 2000 micro-machines.  If you want it to be powered like a real starship, you will need a miniature hyperlight reactor which will make the model cost about $10 million more.  An injection reactor will cost only $500,000 more.  A powered starship will be able to fly at hyperlight speed and be able to use its weapons.  But with a basic non-powered model costing only $600 if you already have the construction chamber and micro-machines, most people go for the less expensive model. 

You can even buy replicas of the furniture in the Functional Art Gallery and GSLP systems so that you can send a powered projectile to the moon, if you want.  By the time outsiders return to the moon, whenver that is, they may find a bunch of projectiles littering the surface of the moon.  If they know about the Harvenstall Art Museum’s gift shop of the science museum’s gift shop that sells the same system, they will know the things are from Newgate.  With an art gallery gift shop unlike any other art gallery gift shop in this dimension, it will be pretty easy guessing where the stuff came from. 

Spend a few minutes to pick up what you have made for you in the galleries.  All that is made is transported to the shop’s back room.  You don’t need a claim ticket because every person that buys something in a gallery is scanned and his identity is programmed into the gift shop’s visitors computer.  Some lucky customers are given daily coupons so that they can purchase things for less.  And often one visitor that enters the museum is given a special card when they go to the gift shop which allows them to go to the museum at any time for a year free of charge and buy items for between 10 to 50% off.  Not bad when the admission price is less than an outsider would pay to see a movie and have popcorn and a drink.  And in my opinion, it’s more interesting to go to the museum than watch a movie no matter how entertaining it is.