Human Sister

Sara

    O n the morning of what turned out to be a foreboding New Year’s Eve, the man to my right on the flight home from Calgary began a friendly conversation as soon as I took my window seat. He was attractive, polite, articulate, and well-dressed in a light blue suit with red pinstripes. During the course of our short flight to San Francisco, he asked how old I was (he said that in three months his son would be sixteen, too), what I was studying in school (he thought that Grandpa’s style of homeschooling me was interesting, but didn’t I think I was missing something by not having any classmates?), where I lived (he seemed especially curious as to why I was being raised by my grandparents on a vineyard in Sonoma’s Russian River Valley rather than by my parents in Canada), and so on. But as the plane began its descent into the Bay Area, his questions became more pointed.
    Why was my finger in a cast?
    “I broke it.”
    What kind of work did my parents do?
    “They design robotic instruments, primarily for medical use.”
    Did I think it possible that there still were some androids in Canada?
    Here, I felt the conversation was veering off into dangerous territory. “If you don’t mind,” I said, “I’d like to listen to my voicemail before we land.”
    I adjusted the earphones and immediately heard the rhythmic push and glide, schzz… schzz… schzz… , of Elio’s blades on the smoothly frozen surface of Keizersgracht in Amsterdam. It had been ten days since I last hugged him as he was about to board a plane in Calgary, and after what seemed like such a long separation, merely the thought of him sent a brief schzz through my body.
    Elio began describing the frozen canal and the many people, old and young, who were out skating, bundled up in brightly colored winter clothes. His words “I miss you so much” and his heavy breathing came through heartwarmingly clear over the background sounds of children’s laughing and squealing in delight.
    The plane shuddered as it touched down. I clicked off the recording I’d listened to repeatedly during the past couple of days and looked out the window. San Francisco was overcast, wet, and cold on New Year’s Eve morning, but Elio had called about an hour earlier to say that he had just arrived from Amsterdam, and I imagined that inside the terminal he and Grandpa waited with warm arms.
    I had just begun to raise my hands to remove my earphones when I noticed that the man to my right was staring at me. I feared that he was intent on starting up our conversation where it had left off, so, trying not to be too impolite, I quickly turned my head to look out the window and clicked the recording back on.
    Elio said that winter in the Netherlands had so far been quite cold and everyone there was excited about the possibility of having the 200-kilometer Elfstedentocht ice-skating marathon in Friesland, a traditional event that hadn’t been held in over thirty years due to global warming. His former schoolmates wanted him to stay for the race, but he’d declined. “I’ll be home to celebrate New Year’s Eve with you, Sara,” he said, “Elfstedentocht or no Elfstedentocht.”
    People began standing in the aisle and reaching into the overhead bins to retrieve their belongings. I again clicked off the recording and, without looking in the direction of the man beside me, began packing my earphones into my carry-on bag.
    It was then I noticed the man wasn’t moving. I fumbled with my bag, arranging and rearranging its contents, all the while avoiding eye contact with him. When people from rows behind us began walking past our row and he still hadn’t made any effort to stand, I turned to him and said, “May I get up, please?”
    “There’s no rush, is there?”
    I clenched my carry-on in my lap and watched as the last passengers walked past our row of seats. “Please, sir. Grandpa will be waiting for me. Please let me out.”
    “Is Elio waiting for you, too?” A thin smile appeared on his face.
    I turned toward the window with a start. Elio’s name had not been mentioned during our conversation. Blood throbbed in my neck. Was I being kidnapped?
    As I’d rehearsed many times when I was a child, I pressed the “5” key on my teleband five times, then the “enter” key five times, all within five seconds. A tiny green light appeared above the time display, indicating that the band was signaling Sakato (our private security service), Grandpa and Grandma