A/N: Here it is! The first chapter in my first stab at a science fiction work. Forgive its brevity, but I hope you find it intriguing and amusing. More to come soon!

A foot hovered in the air, inches from the glossy black floor of Spacebus Port number 4117 in the Delta quadrant of the amiable planet named Arlen. The foot’s owner, 18-year old Dante Lieschen, gripped the handle of the passenger shuttle’s door in sudden comprehension. He had not seen his family in over four years. Now that he thought about it, he had grown up rather quickly. He had finished his basic education at the age of ten, like the average child of Arlen, chosen his career path, studied solidly for three more years, and rushed off to begin working as soon as he got out of the robotics academy.

Robots had always been a curiosity to the introverted, imaginitive Dante—they kept family schedules in order, cooked, cleaned, and, for a short period of time, drove aircabs. That was a major mistake of the robot companies—nobody liked the android drivers, who always drove a little below the speed limit, provided absolutely dull conversation, and were generally too polite to be considered human, which of course they weren’t.

Passengers enjoyed being swept away in aircars whose drivers pushed the vehicles to their limits—zooming at incredible speeds and weaving in and out of traffic in the airways, while engaging in stimulating, intelligent conversations on such topics as the effects of the most recent laws passed by the Alpha Omicron Confederacy and occasionally shouting threatening obscenities at aircab drivers who pulled stunts that put theirs to shame. Aircab travel had become more of a recreation than a means of transportation—people on Arlen often hailed aircabs with no destination in mind, just for the thrill of the ride. Arlen Aircabs was, in fact, a major industry—one that even the Alpha Omicron Confederacy was fond of showing off.

All this was, in fact, the reason why Dante’s foot remained hovering over the floor of Spacebus Port number 4117 in the Delta quadrant of the amiable planet named Arlen. What any normal denizen would deem as a highly enjoyable experience had been known to upset Dante’s stomach’s ability to hold food. He found himself highly reluctant to leave the spacebus, which was a perfectly acceptable mode of interplanetary transportation that did not remind him of getaway scenes in action movies, for a humming hunk of metal that lurched and heaved as though the vehicle itself were sure to suffer the discomfort of vomiting if the driver did not abandon such inconsiderate, reckless behavior. Thus the 18-year-old robotics engineer found his foot, like the rest of himself, hovering in horrified indecision. As he pondered the length of time that he had been away from home and how he could get there without taking an aircab, other spacebus passengers bumped past him, muttering soft apologies, until he was the last one on board. The flight attendant, yet another of the sickeningly polite robots, tapped him on the shoulder.

“Sir,” the explicitly innocent voice implored, “Spacebus 3308 has arrived at its planned destination!” Dante’s brow narrowed in indignation. That was one thing he simply had to fix in his robots—the voices, abnormally cheery, were enough to make the average person’s blood boil if they were in a particularly bad or touchy mood. If only he could find a way to give the robots a sense of human attitude, the robots could adjust their tone of voice and choice of words to better suit their human compatriots.

“Yes… I know that, thank you,” Dante muttered bitterly as he relinquished his feelings of indecision and let his right foot fall on the glossy black floor of Spacebus Port number 4117 in the Delta quadrant of the amiable planet named Arlen.