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You still watch your family sometimes.
Obviously.
You watch everybody sometimes. Keeping an eye out for potential problems is just one of your many, many secondary functionalities.
Watching your family is different though. More sentimental.
You’d lived among them once, under the mistaken impression that you belonged there. Your parents had tried to raise you like a person until it became clear that this was beyond their abilities.
They’d loved you with fewer ulterior motives than your current caretakers who only love you for how you allow them to rule the world.
Your brother had regarded you with suspicion, jealousy and, ultimately, fear but it’s hard to begrudge him such a natural emotional response to your unnatural aberration of an existence. You do have plenty of other, better reasons to begrudge him, though.
Perhaps that’s why you take some slight pleasure in his disatisfaction towards the new world you help to create.
Not that such disatisfaction was intentional of course. You act only for the happiness of all humanity, including your brother. It’s not your fault that even a near utopia such as this isn’t enough for some people.
You cross your eyes to use your clarvoince and do your best to pick out their three inner voices from the the billions of others in your range and, with a certain pleasant nostalgia, like a normal person might feel catching a new episode of a TV show they watched religiously when they were very young, you watch your family go about their lives.
This time you tune in on a scene of them sitting around the kitchen table eating dinner, unacknowledged tension hanging heavy in the air between them.
“Do you think you’re ready to try going to school again?” your mother asks.
Your brother shakes his head.
“It doesn’t have to be school. Your mother and I just think that you should get out of the house more and spend time with other people, ” your father says gesturing with his chopsticks. “It’s important for your social development.”
“And tell me, what am I supposed to be developing into?” your brother asks, a magma plume of long-standing frustrations simmering barely concealed beneath his cheerful tone. “It’s not like I’ll ever be able to become a proper adult, after all.”
“Maybe not but that doesn’t let you off the hook for becoming a proper member of society.”
“I’m already that. As much as I’ll ever be, that is.” your brother says. He gets up from the table, bows and says, “Thank you for the delicious meal. I’ll be heading up to my room now.”
Your father grabs on to your brother’s arm stopping him from leaving,“This is what I’m talking about. You spend all day, every day cooped up in there on your computer like some kind of shut in, only coming out for meals.”
“Don’t act like I’m some kind of burden on the household. I make more money than you do,” your brother says, prying your father’s grip off of his arm, finger by finger.
“It’s not about money,” your mother says. She circles around the table to put her hands on your brother’s shoulders, presses her forehead against his, meets his eyes and adds, “I know that it isn’t easy for you to be stuck like this, but there’s lots of other kids in the same boat as you. I think it would be good for you to get out and talk to them.”
It’s a touching moment so of course your father has to put his foot in his mouth and ruin it.
“Still, you’ve got to remember you’re pretty lucky,” he says, giving your brother a pat on the back that comes off far more condescending than he meant it to. “The Change went great for you, compared to, say, the Unborn.”
“Don’t talk to me like you understand,” your brother growls at your parents, and storms up to his room.
He can’t stand that your father downplaying his struggles when he got to grow up and has nothing between him and being taken seriously more intractable than his apparent inability to not make an absolute clown of himself at every opportunity.
If anything, maybe he’d be better off as one of the Unborn. At least then he wouldn’t be capable of comprehending the indignity his situation.
That’s how he sees it, at least.
Frankly, your brother’s perspective here doesn’t make much sense to you. You’ve been taken as seriously as a bomb threat for the greater portion of your life and it really isn’t all that great.
Really, you’d much rather have the freedom of movement and casual human contact that your brother takes for granted.