It was the taunting that started it. Girls poking fun at her because she hadn’t had a boy’s tongue in her mouth or hand up her blouse. Boys sniggering about the ‘frigid ice queen’ whenever she passed by. But it was the pity that finished it. Her friends trying to fix her up with reluctant boys who fumbled around while she sat in her cool innocence that effectively iced their ardour.

Leaving high school for college Anna discovered a button within her, only in her imagination but it worked. Leaving her home she erased her emotions, pressing the button with a simply manicured finger and becoming the unobtainable one. She created a persona where her mind was a computer; her blood was liquid ice pumped around her synthetic body by a battery driven machine.

Throughout her first year that button became her saviour. Taunts did not penetrate the chilled exterior she cloaked herself with. Young men never considered enticing her out on a date; she seemed too distant to even think of asking. Anna attended classes, was polite with her classmates, gave deference to her tutors and nothing touched her.

Of course, she wasn’t an android girl and eventually something was going to pierce the plastic, kiss the battery and re-spark the humanity. Eventually. Just not yet.