sentient // phan

http//: 9

Dan plucked up his keys from the hook on the wall and I followed him down the lift and to the garage. He pulled open the passenger door of a nice ground-car, something I thought a young millionaire like Dan would never own, and gestured me inside. I smiled, stepping in.

"Thank you." He nodded, shut the door, and traveled around to the driver's side. He stuck the key in the ignition, and the car revved to life. As the garage door slid open, he put his arm around the back of my seat, looking behind him as he backed out.

"Why a ground car?" I asked. He spun the wheel and kept his eyes on the clean road outside his large apartment building. I glanced up through the window to try and see the penthouse where Dan- where we- lived, but my view was blocked by hundreds of flying cars zooming this way and that. That must have been the "fog" I had seen when I arrived, not having a word for it before then. Dan chuckled.

"Safer. Faster. Easier," He pulled onto a long straight, taking us out of the residential square and down a cliff-side, a perfect view of the lower level below us. "More... human." I nodded, and we were silent for a second before something occurred to me, and I piped up.

"Why are you being so nice to me?" I asked tentatively, pinching the fabric that clung to my thigh. To my surprise, he just let out a small chuckled.

"Why do you ask? Because I was such a dick to you before?" He chuckled again, but I looked up at him.

"What's a dick?" His face turned red, and he cleared his throat.

"A, uh, not nice person."

"Ah." We were silent for a second more as I wondered why he'd get so... what's that word... embarrassed by my question. We passed by a row of identical plastic trees, the cliffside dropping delicate earth as we drove near the edge, the only thing between us and a thousand metre fall a thin metal railing.

"It's because I realised that you don't have a choice to be with me. And you've never been... well, you're kind to me. And you're practically... alive. You have free will and you can feel pain, whether or not it actually hurts and... well, I just thought we could be friends." My mouth split into a smile.

"That's good. Because I like you." And I bent forward to look through the windshield up at the residential area of the upper level, everything identical and monochrome. Compared to the hectic brown city below us, I could understand why Dan wanted to be there.

"I used to live down there." Dan said, nodding to his left. I resisted the urge to explain that I knew, that I knew everything about him, and just shook my head.

"You don't have to-"

"If we're going to be friends, you need to know these things. So just shut up and let me spill my guts." I knit my eyebrows in confusion at his phrasing, but he didn't explain. He turned his eyes back to the steadily winding road in front of us, taking us back up a hill to the downtown area of the upper level, which contained all the shops and restaurants.

"It wasn't bad, like a lot of the second or third generation upper masses think. It was just so... unorganised. If you looked up at that sparkling perfect city as much as I did as a kid, you'd glorify it as much as you could, and debase the trash heap that was your home so much that you couldn't wait to get out." He sighed as pulled to a stoplight, and we finally saw a few people and cars, though not nearly as much as above, where all the shops stood on pedestals in the air, floating above us along with the vehicles. We continued on, and Dan seemed to know where he was going.

"And it was just me and my mum for a while, and I turned eighteen and started inventing, and people around us started getting jobs in the factory building bots, and there was nothing anyone wanted more than a bot. Man, people were selling their furniture and cars and houses away for a good droid. We never got one." He paused and pulled into the nearly empty parking lot beneath a shop, next to a long, twisty escalator leading up to the building, and he shut the car off.

"I don't know where I was going with that." He chuckled, running his hand through his hair. He leant back in his seat, his hands still on the wheel.

"And your mum?" I asked. He looked to me, confused.

"What about her?"

"Where's she?" I knew the answer, of course, but I wanted to ask.

"Somewhere down there." He lied, shifting, uncomfortable. "Let's go, shall we? Get you some clothes." He opened the door without a second thought, and I followed him up the escalator. There was no one around for a minutes, so Dan turned to me just before we entered.

"Now, listen, you are going to get some weird stares. People will be confused, okay? There's nothing- no one- exactly like you, as advanced as you, okay?" I nodded. "If you get too uncomfortable, take my hand and squeeze it. We'll get out of there, got it?"

"Yeah." I grinned. "Thanks."

"I know what it's like to get stared at." He stepped onto the pressure mat, and I joined him, and the door opened just long enough for us both to get in and slid shut behind us- the latest advancement in anti-burglary technology. A shopkeeper turned away from a display he was setting up with two faceless', one of the first kinds of working bots, and smiled to us, until his face dropped in realisation.

"Daniel Howell?" He quickly ran up to Dan, grasping his hand and shaking violently. "What a pleasure, Dan Howell, in my shop. Gee. Didn't think I sold clothes your... type. And who's this?" He asked, turning to me. He was fairly young, with thick black glasses and a wild quiff of blond hair and a dazzling smile. Dan opened his mouth to reply, but was interrupted. "Oh, a companion droid?" He reached out and just touched my face, squeezing my skin between his fingers. "Never seen one like this before." Before I could grasp Dan's hand, the shopkeeper turned to him, dropping his arm to his side. I raised my hand to my face to feel the place he had pinched, fitting the silicone back to my jaw.

"Yes, well, he's state of the art." Dan said hostility dripping from his words, wrapping his arm around my waist and making us take a step back. The shopkeeper raised his hands in surrender putting his face down.

"I apologise. Please, shop at your leisure. I'll ring you up once you're done." And he quickly left to the back room. Dan turned to me.

"Sorry about that." He dropped his arm from my waist. I was still slightly stunned. "You okay? You wanna go home?"

"You called me 'he'." I whispered, almost to myself. Dan narrowed his eyes but smirked, twitching his head to the side slightly.

"Sorry, would you prefer other pronouns?"

"No, it's not that, it's just... you used to call me 'it'." I said. He sighed.

"Well, I can't be friends with an 'it', can I? Come on." And he waved me further into the shop.