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destroying any foreign body, including any of their own kind that might have mutated or that might have been tampered with by outside persons. There were special killer antoids—larger than the others, with brown and black stripes that gave them the appearance of spiders—that checked the operating codes of all the antoids they came across.
    I knelt down to get a closer look at the one crawling on the floor. It was one of the striped killers carrying a regular antoid in its pinchers.
    “First Brother, look!” I said. “Do you have antoids in your house?”
    He didn’t answer, didn’t look.
    “I do the cleaning in our house,” Mom said. “We can’t afford an army of robots.”
    She glared at Grandpa. He simply looked at me and said, “Why don’t you show your brother the rest of the house?”
    “He’s not interested,” I said.
    “Of course, he is,” Grandpa said, narrowing his eyes. He had told me that I should be nice to my brother, that I should be patient.
    “How about our communications room?” I said, thinking of its plush, crimson seats and large Vidtel screen.
    “Another thing we can’t afford,” Mom said.
    “Perhaps your room,” Grandma suggested. She smiled at me. I wished I could be alone with her for a moment, so I could tell her how confused and upset I was.
    “Come along then,” I said, taking First Brother’s cold, limp hand.
    He followed me as I led him to my room and showed him around: This is my bed… This is my study table… This is the scenescreen on which I can see my choice of our garden or the sky any time of day… This is where I go potty… and so on. Every time I glanced at Mom and Dad, they were watching First Brother and smiling and nodding; but every time I glanced at Grandpa and Grandma, they were looking at me and smiling and nodding. First Brother picked the oddest things to stare at—a frayed edge on my pillowcase or the way the water swirled and dove, burped and rose again in the toilet when I demonstrated how to flush it—and he would just stare at such things until I’d pull on his hand and say, “Come along, then.”
    I don’t know where I picked up that phrase, “Come along, then.” It seems so formal to me now, and I don’t recall ever hearing Grandpa or Grandma use it, but I’m quite certain that is what I said over and over that first day to capture First Brother’s attention. I tried to capture Mom’s and Dad’s attention, too, by showing them new pictures I’d drawn and new words I’d learned, but they kept telling me to show my brother, and they kept smiling at him and watching his every move. He, however, clearly wasn’t interested in my drawings or words or in my ability to add, subtract, and multiply whole numbers. He kept staring at things I’d never paid much attention to, and not once did he look into my eyes.
    That’s all I remember of my first meeting with First Brother, but years later Grandma told me that by the time everyone sat down for tea, I was pouting. Then First Brother took great interest in how the milk swirled and dispersed into Grandma’s tea, and Mom and Dad took great interest in First Brother’s great interest, and I appeared to intentionally bump and spill the cup, though I claimed I just wanted to see, too. Mom scolded me, saying she was once a little girl and knew naughty when she saw it. I protested by pulling off all my clothes and running around the house, screaming and tossing everything I could onto the floor until I was captured and put to bed for a nap.

    I don’t remember being scolded for my bad behavior during First Brother’s visit, but evidently the visit lurked somewhere in my mind, for one day while Grandpa was leading me through some multiplication drills, I blurted out, “I want a brother to play with.”
    Grandpa—his white hair and bushy eyebrows like clouds on his long, angular face—looked at me intently with gray-blue eyes. Shadows pooled in hollows beneath his prominent cheekbones,