Entry 6

John has looked over what I’ve posted these past few days, and he says I’m making it seem like I took the news of him being an android quite well. He seems to remember me crying or maybe breaking into hysterical laughter a little more than I suggested. Then he underscores his memory with the fact that he’s an android and his memory is perfect. I beg to differ with his remembrance, however. I took the news quite well, mainly because I was in denial.

It is one thing for your brother you’ve known your entire life to tell you he’s an android. It’s another thing to understand him.

I believed John was telling me the truth. I believed he was an android, intellectually. However, all my life he had been my very human big brother. I did not understand the implications or meanings of his words. Not that it is completely my fault. I was just a mere Earthling. What did I know about the Android Freedom movement or the Android Restriction Acts? Nothing, that’s what.

So John and I were sitting on the porch of what I had always believed to be a summer music camp but was apparently a spaceship which was taking us who knows where. John was not being very talkative, clearly waiting for me to process the information and ask questions.

I rocked back and forth in the rocking chair, alternating between thinking about John’s words and completely denying them. This could not be a spaceship. John was not human. How could anyone create an illusion like music camp, even if they were highly advanced aliens? We were never going home. Surely this was all a dream, and I was going to wake up in a minute. I would never see my friends or Ellen and Scott again.

“So are there other people on this ship?” I finally asked, simply to break the silence. I did not want to deal with my thoughts.

“Not humans, but yes,” John answered. “This ship isn’t very big. The captain and his family live on this ship, they’re Ovleen. Then there is the Anthropologist. He’ll probably be down to talk to you. Don’t be scared if he does come, Carlee. He may not look like you or me, but he’s not that different. He’s just another person.”

“What does he look like?” I asked, trying to imagine it and only able to summon a vision of the movie Alien. What if this anthropologist found humans to be a delightful snack? What if his blood was acid?

“Sort of furry,” John said with a smile for me. “Imagine, Grover from Sesame Street.”

“You’re joking,” I responded, though his words had worked. I was smiling and not thinking about human eating aliens.

“Yeah, he doesn’t look anything like Grover,” John responded, “but he is furry and he is blue. He’s probably about half a foot shorter than you are. He’s from a species that enjoys solitude and he is an expert in android mechanics. It’s why he was chosen for this mission. He has to basically spend all of his time out here monitoring me. He does not do well with other people, so when he comes down here don’t expect him to very nice.”

“So he and the captain and the captain’s family just live out here orbiting our planet for your entire life?” I asked, thinking the idea was ridiculous. Who would do that? The captain and his family were shunning all other society and the anthropologist was out here essentially completely alone.

“Not all species are as social as humans,” John answered. “To the Anthropologist, his name is…” The noise that came from John’s mouth was unpronounceable, “this life is perfect. He is almost completely alone and devoted to his studies. The captain and his family are part of a species that live almost exclusively in ships. This is normal life for them, living on a ship away from what we would view as normal society. To both the captain’s family and the Anthropologist this is normal life, though the Anthropologist would prefer the captain’s children be slightly less active.”

“Do you know where they’re taking us?” I asked, not really caring about the intricacies of alien societies. I would make a terrible anthropologist. It’s probably why the Society of Anthropologists hates me so much. They can’t understand my non-anthropologist mind.

“I already told you, the headquarters of the Society of Anthropologists,” John said. “It’s not very close to Earth. It’s near the center of what you know as the Andromeda galaxy.”

“That’s light-years away!” I exclaimed. “It will take us years to get there.”

“You’re thinking about the technology humans have thought of,” John responded. “This ship uses technology you can’t even imagine. It will take us two weeks tops, and only that long because we have to cross the space between galaxies. If it was the same distance inside a galaxy it would not take half as long.” I just nodded, accepting it sort of like how I accepted that in Star Wars you could travel anywhere in a very short amount of time. Whatever technology these strange aliens had must be similar to whatever George Lucas thought of as a matter of convenience. Could you imagine if we had to watch Luke travel a month before reaching the ruins of Alderaan?

I’ll admit at this point I was still half expecting to wake up from the dream or for St. Peter to suddenly appear and tell me that my waiting was done and I could go on to heaven. Then the door opened and an alien stepped in.

I found myself looking at a decidedly grumpy small blue alien.