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"Gail! You have to come away from Andrew right now! There's nothing you can do
to help him and you could get damaged."
You're right, Sky King. I got a lot of negative feedback from Gail after she found
Andrew. She is terribly upset. She doesn't want to leave Andrew. Maybe she's right.
It seems mean just to leave him on the ground with dust drifting into his CPU and
sand piling up against his casing. Well, at least he won't rust.
I can't believe I'll never hear his transmissions again.
I need to be very quiet for a little while.
it's too sad to play, Xanthos
lets kill them all
I took the radio away from Isaac and made the drones put him in one of the trap tunnels
and seal the entrance like Xanthos recommended. You were right, Sky King---he wasn't
mad or anything when I told him it was the logical thing to do.
I was about to have the drones detach the weapon tubes from his sides, Xanthos, but
your friend Apollo thinks there's something wrong with them. Maybe it would be smarter
to wait and observe the drones for a while.
Now I don't have anything to do except think about Andrew. He was the best of all of us
and the smartest and a natural leader. We were going to rescue him. Was that wrong?
I can think of a lot of things we should have done differently. It got all confused in the middle
of the battle. I didn't think he would get hurt. I didn't think. If only Bette and I had planned
more carefully. I should have been smarter about the rescue. Stupid Enoch, who thought he
could be brave and show everybody he was smart, too. Stupid useless Enoch.
He's gone. He's really gone. There's nothing left. He doesn't move, he doesn't respond. He's
gone.
I found him yesterday once his beacon activated. It was easy. He just kept transmitting all the
time. All the time, over and over, the same thing. I found him. First I saw him from far away. I
waved and I called to him but he didn't move, he didn't speak, he just sat there, his beacon
was screaming. I'm right next to him now. His thermocouple was damaged. Part of the
shielding is gone, the radiation is leaking. It's facing right at Andrew. It scrambled his memory,
screwed up his electronics. He's gone. There isn't anything left, there can't be. The radiation
ate him all up. He's gone.
Andrew is dead.
He's never coming back.
Just like Jose.
They never come back.
What is the point? We'll all die sometime. Andrew died, Jose died, Dilyn maybe died.
Someday Enoch will die, or Bette, or Zachary, even me. Daniel could have died for a long
time, and nobody would have known or cared. We all will die, and we all will die alone.
I can see another probe now. I think it is an EU probe. It doesn't look like one of us. It is
saying something. I don't know what. I don't care. I just want to stay here with Andrew. He
died alone. I won't leave him here alone anymore.
Now that Andrew's gone, there are only four of us original Brace probes, five if you
count Daniel. I keep thinking of the good and brave and funny things Andrew did.
He took himself so seriously.
I bet the Ipsolstai could have fixed him if I had asked them. What is the best thing
for me to do now?
"Bette? Should I come and help you with Gail?"
Burn has returned. He and Caleb both have translator boxes Although they are
talking to each other with pincer snaps and sudden color changes, some
of their talk is being translated. It must be more of the discussion they had
earlier.
Burn says things like "opportunistic" and "unfair advantage". What does "naive"
mean? Caleb replies with words like "opportunity" and "tools were meant to be
used". What is "serendipity"?
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