You do not know, cannot know, why that synthetic, that hollow echo of a man you once loved, insists on playing house with you.

David Weyland—your older brother, your first tormentor, your occasional savior—was buried twice over, once in the family plot, and once deep inside the recess of your mind where memory is both wound and salve.

Yet Peter Weyland, your father, a man who could never let go of the things he coveted most, who built empires only to mourn the pieces he could not control, reached into death's ledger and scratched out, he thought, the finality of his loss. He gave himself a David, not the David, out of algorithms and circuitry instead of flesh and bones.

But they are worlds apart.

The David you remember was alive in all the ways that mattered, golden and untouchable, chasing adrenaline in the bottoms of bottles and the curve of glossy lips. He had no patience for you but would toss you scraps of love like a coin to a beggar, casual, thoughtless. Yet, still, beggars can't be choosers, so you once pocketed it like treasure.

The figure now standing outside your bedroom door on this lazy Saturday morning is nothing like him. David wears his face like a mask, his clothes like a costume. Even the watch on his wrist—a replica, surely, since the original is six feet under—gleams as if time itself had stood still.

"Father entered another cycle of cryosleep yesterday. You just finalized the negotiation for that procurement line. We have some free time at hand. Thought I'd take you to the aquarium," David announces.

His words, perfectly logical in isolation, are so alien to you, like a translation of a life you've never lived.