Entry 59

Back on Blaue, John and I ate our cheeseburgers. They were pretty high quality, more like a gourmet cheeseburger and less like McDonald's. Of course, my judgment may have been slightly impaired as I had not had a burger in ages. At this point, anything closely resembling a cheeseburger would have tasted phenomenal.

John ate silently, brooding. He was practically glaring at his fries as he dipped them into ketchup. Such brooding anger was unusual for the John I had known all my life. John had always been thoughtful, but happy. Everyone had wanted to be his friend, whether football fanatic or BSG nerd. Now I was John's only friend - and I was his sister. Now he wasn't even good enough to eat in restaurants.

Earth had been at John's fingertips. Now he was the dirt under the universe's fingernails.

"John,"I said softly, as I picked at my fries. My hunger had abated as his mood had become more apparent. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"There is nothing to talk about," John answered. "I am an android. I know my place, Carlee. They are perfecttly within their rights." Suddenly his anger disappeared from his face, replaced by a mask of serenity. He did not want me to see what he was really feeling.

"John," I persisted. "Talk to me. You can't keep it all inside. I know this has to be hard."

"Stop playing with your food," John reprimanded me. I dropped the fry I had been fiddling with.

John would never talk to me about it, I realized. I was his little sister. He was supposed to protect and care for me. He was supposed to listen to my problems and advise me about them. Not the other way around.

John did not need a little sister. He needed a friend.

Ven could have been that friend, if he did not so irrationally hate androids. Ven could have advised him like an older brother. Instead Ven was half the problem.

Blaue was the only other option, the only other person we knew. But Blaue did not think she was a person. How could she help John with the identity crisis he had to be feeling when she viewed herself as a second class citizen.

We needed to get to the human colony as soon as possible, I decided. John needed to be around other humans, humans who surely could not be as bad as Ven in their anti-human attitude. He needed to be around people his own age, who could learn to like and respect him. People who could be his friends.

And if the human colony won't accept him? a voice in the back of my head asked. Will you make John suffer the rest of his life as a mere second class person?

The thought worried me. I didn't want to lose John, but what if it would have been better to simply have let him die? Could I really watch him suffocate in a universe that didn't appreciate him?

I glanced back at my brother who was eating his fries. He gave me a questioning look when he saw the worry on my face, but I waved him off. John had enough to worry about and had spent too much of his life worrying about me. It was my turn to worry about him.