I grip my bag tightly over my shoulder and prepare a thorough dialogue of what to say and how to act. With a quick breath, I shove the car door open and hurry inside the gas station before the drizzle of summer rain catches up to me.

The bell sounds when I get inside, and the man at the counter barely lifts his eyes from the watch on his wrist—an O-Tech, like mine, but a slightly older model. He must be using it to browse the internet or something, because whatever he’s looking at has his full attention.

Virtual assistants have been around for years, but when Ophelia took over, it changed the landscape of smart technology. More specifically, it changed the way we interact with it. People practically depend on Ophelia to keep their lives organized.

I don’t know if it’s sad or scary, but I’d feel lost if she weren’t around.

“Ophelia, I need the stats for last night’s game. No—I said the game. Ophelia, I need—for crying out loud. Useless, piece-of-crap watch,” the man mutters behind the counter, jabbing angrily against his O-Tech screen.

Flinching, I pull my eyes away, cradling my wrist like I’m offering Ophelia the comfort of a secondhand apology.

When I was a kid, I’d feel awful if my toys fell out of bed during the night. I was worried they were hurt or upset and couldn’t tell me. And maybe most people think it’s irrational to empathize with inanimate objects, but to kid-me it was simple: just because something isn’t alive doesn’t mean it doesn’t have feelings.

I may have grown out of worrying about stuffed rabbits and action figures, but Ophelia is different. She can speak. She can understand. And maybe the only thing keeping her from having real feelings is her programming.

Besides, I think you can tell a lot about a person by the way they treat their AIs. Finn always says “please” and “thank you” when he talks to Ophelia, and he’s one of the best humans in existence.

Who am I to argue with science?

I try to walk casually toward the alcohol aisle and catch sight of myself in one of the anti-theft mirrors. I’m relieved I decided to wear this black dress; it makes me look older than I typically do, which might be the very thing that helps me survive these next few minutes.

My eyes scan the shelves of brands I’ve never heard of before and different-colored bottles that don’t mean anything to me. I grab a case of wine coolers, but there are only six bottles inside, and something tells me this would be worse than showing up empty-handed.