Swimming in his Night Nebulae, Brun wandered here and there.

After having drunk the potions that Bernardo and those unworthy people hid, he no longer had a home to return to. The times he’d shown up in the cold lab, the reception had been the screeching of alarms and gunshots, lots of gunshots. The bullets didn’t affect him, alright? They didn’t even reach him. His Nebulae took care of them, but they still scared him, and they scared him a lot.

Maybe absorbing the potions hadn’t been such a good idea after all. If before the unworthy people had no affection for him, now they loathed him.

So, he wandered aimlessly through deserts and jungles, avoiding villages because dogs barked a lot and wanted to bite him, and avoiding people because even people who were not unworthy didn’t want him around either; a treatment he’d grown accustomed to receiving. Maybe they didn’t want him because they were afraid of what his toxic light could do, like the people in the cold lab, or maybe it was because of the way he looked. It had been a long time since he had taken a bath and he smelled bad; his pajamas were dirty and torn, and the hairs on his face were long and scary; he could see himself in the reflection of the stars.

The only thing that made him a little happy was waiting for the night to come and falling asleep watching the beautiful and radiant moon in the sky. The moon had the cure for his ills, he knew, and though he couldn’t reach it, at least not for now, he was happy to watch it until sleep came.

Sometimes, tired of being moved from here to there by the Night Nebulae, he would use his legs and walk around. Once, walking through a long valley, he lost one of his rubber slippers somewhere and hurt his foot on a rock, got scratches on his legs from those dwarf trees that had sharp arms and many spikes on the leaves. Another time, walking through a place with many plants, he felt so hot that he feared that his life would escape through sweat; after a while, a rain surprised him, and his clothes were soaked, and he felt very cold.

Of course, this was always under the watchful eye of those robot men with one red eye that followed him everywhere.

Wherever he detached himself from the Nebulae and returned to the world, there appeared those androids.

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None of them was his friend, the one who used to visit him at night to give him his medicine. These were different. They came unannounced and walked behind him, but a bit farther away. They feared his light, too. He had gotten too close to one of them and the Cytlope began to release smoke from all sides.

Why don’t you help me find my brother? he asked them once, but they didn’t answer. C’mon! I know you know how to talk. I’ve heard you. The androids were still silent. If you plan to keep quiet because you don’t have a mouth, I tell you that you don’t need one to talk, y’know? I had a Cytlope friend, and he talked, and Duplicated Children have mouths and don’t use them, and yet I can hear them.

Actually, it had been a long time since he had seen the children or talked to them.

And with so much silence, how not to feel alone?

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Until one day, some new Cytlopes appeared, and with a shot of light, destroyed the others that followed him everywhere. Witnessing that shower of sparks was quite amazing!

These new robot men were different. They could get close to him, and they had some funny things attached to their heads, cubes that resembled the colored cubes he used to play with as a child, although black. Wanting to see those cubes up close, he took it from one of them and, instantly, the poor thing threw sparks from his head and collapsed on the ground. Well, it would have been better not to.

I’m sorry, he apologized.

“Brun, we have come to take you to your brother,” the new Cytlopes said.

The robot men put him in the back of a huge truck, where some people—dressed in white clothes that covered them from head to toe—laid him on a table and jabbed him.

“Don’t worry, Brun. You’ll see your brother soon,” they told him, and he fell asleep.

Waking up, he found his brother right there, his own duplicate. And that was the happiest day of his life.

“Hi, Brun. I’m your brother, Broga,” his brother told him, smiling, and hugged him with those machine arms.

I’ve been looking everywhere for you, Brun said, moved to tears.

“I know. It’s just that there were bad people out there and I didn’t want them to see me, that was all,” Broga replied. “Soon, you’ll be back to normal. I’ll help you.”

And then you will leave me, as Bernardo did? Will you come to visit me?

“I’m not leaving, Brun. This is our home. You and I will live here, together, okay?”

And Broga smiled, and for some reason—the way he moved or the way he smiled—Brun got the impression that Broga and his android friend knew each other, even so well that they could even be very good friends. After all, there must be a reason why, from time to time, his brother disguised himself as the android.