Loner Adam suddenly shows up with a new girlfriend, a six-foot willowy blonde with a bubbly sense of humour, who walks with a stick.

He introduces her to his friends just as 'Sandy'.

Sandy has fun meeting everyone and gets along with them. 

After drinks, Adam invites everyone back to his flat for drinks.

At the flat, Adam does all the 'catering', with Sandy perching on one end of the sofa and chatting away with the others.

The evening goes well, until somebody asked Sandy about how long she had known Adam.

Sandy, not having been told otherwise, answers with the truth...

"We only met up this morning", she said, "but I feel like I’ve known him all my life."

Some of Adam's friends are amazed, and instantly suspicious, at how Sandy has got so comfortable with Adam, and so familiar, so quickly. The tone of the questions changes, and Sandy is obviously becoming uncomfortable. Adam, realising what’s going on, stops doing what he’s doing in the kitchen and comes over.

To everyone’s amazement, Sandy flinches and pulls back.

"I didn’t do anything wrong I just told them the truth. It’s what you told me to do…!”

“It’s OK, love”, Adam said, gently hugging Sandy, as she started sobbing. “You weren’t to know…”

Adam looked up at his so-called friends.

“Look what you’ve done!”, he said. “You didn’t have to upset her. At least I can do something about that…”

Adam looked at Sandy, then whispered something in her ear.

Sandy instantly stopped crying, settled herself and smiled. She then kissed Adam.

Adam gently wiped her tears away.

“Sandy, security override Zeta one. Open your charging port.”

In a complete monotone, blank faced, Sandy said “Confirmation code?”

“Tango, tango four nine”, said Adam.

Sandy then proceeded to unbutton her blouse; she then pressed in a specific way on her chest, just below her bra.

A panel slid open, and Adam’s friends all gasped.

“Sandy was telling you the truth about only meeting me this morning”, said Adam. “It’s because it was when I picked her up from the factory.”

“I think you’d better explain”, said his mate Tim.

“I think I’ll let Sandy tell you”, said Adam. “Sandy, run ident sequence 1a.”

“Hello everyone”, said Sandy. “I am a Human type one Android, complete with an imprint of a real brain. I was activated one week ago, and I’ve been taught everything about my new owner, as well as how to get on in the company of ordinary humans. The reason I walk with a stick is my imprint source has a damaged leg, so it’s very difficult to get me to walk properly without one.”

“Sandy, detach your right hand”, said Adam.

Sandy grabbed her right wrist with her left hand, rotated it through 90 degrees, and pulled it off.

There were more gasps, and one of the other girls, Tracy, was promptly sick.

“Sorry to shock you all”, said Adam, “but I thought I’d prove to you someone wasn’t just moving in to get at my money, as well as me not ‘cradle-snatching’”, (Sandy did look a lot younger than Adam).

With that, the shock gradually wore off, and people started asking more questions about Sandy.

Sandy refitted her hand, closed the access port and buttoned up her blouse.

“I hope I haven’t upset anyone”, she said, “I can assure you if I have that it was unintentional.”

The evening settled down and people gradually said their goodbyes and left, still fascinated about Sandy. Even so, after everything that had happened, they still had no problems treating her as ‘one of the crowd’.

Eventually, only Adam and Sandy were left.

Adam sat down with Sandy and cuddled her.

“Apart from that one slipup, you did beautifully”, he said. He then reached up and pressed on Sandy’s face in a certain way and removed the mask.

The dusky face of an Egyptian woman stared at him, tears in her eyes.

“Please, let me go!”, she said. “I’ve done everything you asked…”

“Sorry, my dear”, Adam said, “no can do. You knew the ‘modifications’ were permanent when you were first programmed and activated.”

Anara cried again. She had been ‘taken’ from near where she worked at the local bank and knocked out. When she had awoken, she had just been sealed into the android ‘shell’ of Sandy. Everything was permanently moulded onto her, except for the mask, which could be removed for eating, drinking and other ‘human maintenance’ and a small removable panel down below that allowed access to the crotch area for ‘other matters’. Her right hand, non-working ever since her stroke (which was why she really walked with a stick) had been removed and replaced with an advanced prosthetic that actually worked better than her original hand.

“You should be grateful”, Adam said. “You’ve got better quality of life, you can use your hand again, and the shell helps you with support after your stroke. All you have to do is let yourself be controlled by the personality that I’ve had programmed into you.”

Anara just sobbed, staring at her white skinned ‘hands’. She was still crying as Adam fastened the mask back on...