New friends, old friends......
Mood:  sad

There's something wrong with Justin.

I know I don't talk about him much on here. Maybe that's because we knew each other back on Earth, have been friends for a while, actually. And maybe because of that I feel there are privacy issues. In any case, his behavior of the past few days has made me worried enough to break that general silence.

Ever since we boarded, Justin has been a willing participant whenever some of us wanted to do something interesting, like explore or hang out or whatever. Sure, he spends a lot of time in the Drew le' tor computer labs looking up their history, or in the gardens, but he's also very out and about and sociable.

But in the past few days he's withdrawn himself from basically everybody but his Drew le' tor mentor, Memory. At first I let him be because I respect his privacy and need to work through any issues he might be having. But then Memory actually sought me out and told me to try talking to him. I really didn't want to, since I generally don't like it when someone breaks up my own introspection party, but she insisted. So I went.

And I was stupid.

He let me into his room, but once there we just didn't speak for awhile. I honestly didn't know what to say, and he puttered around his little apartment, wandering aimlessly to and fro, fiddling with his sludge machine, sitting and standing and sitting again. It was an extravagant form of pacing, I guess, and it was making me anxious.

I had to make an attempt to lighten the mood. "So," I said a little too brightly, "who died?"

Yeah, somebody shoot me.

He turned and gave me a look I can't even begin to describe, but it was somewhere between shock and rage and dead eyes. I couldn't maintain eye contact. I couldn't even maintain physical presence. I muttered a "sorry" at him, held on for a few more seconds, then quickly retreated.

I can only hope that he forgives me for that gaffe. In the meantime, I'm really worried about him. Maybe he's missing his wife at home. Or maybe somebody really did die, and he senses it or knows about it outright, and I pulled the biggest open-mouth-insert-foot in the Cosmos.

But I want him to know that, whatever is going on, he can always talk to me if/when he ever wants to, and I promise I won't try to be funny anymore.