Human Sister

the two, something astonishing was discovered. There were alterations at multiple sites. These alterations couldn’t have come from natural mutations because they occur in every cell that has been examined from all the many blood and tissue samples taken over the past six months. Fortunately, it appears your health hasn’t been compromised in any way.”
    “What are these alterations? What happened to me?”
    “The working hypothesis is that either your parents or First Brother infected you with incredibly efficient transduction vectors that performed the alterations, and that these alterations protect you from some as-yet-unknown anthropocide. Perhaps these modifications enhance the expression or inhibition of certain genes, given certain threatening environmental stimuli. This transfection, or series of transfections, invaded all of your cells, germline included, performed the modifications, and disappeared, leaving not a trace—no lingering antibodies, nothing. Furthermore, whatever it was apparently wasn’t contagious, since Elio, Grandma, and I are all free from these or similar alterations.”
    “What about Michael?” I asked. “Does he have the same alterations?”
    “Yes. I performed my own analysis to determine that he does. Obviously, whatever was done happened before the cells used to create part of Michael were extracted from you.”
    “Doesn’t this imply,” Michael said, “that they must have foreseen, years ago, a war against humans, and they wanted to protect Sara?”
    “We can only speculate,” Grandpa answered.
    “First Brother wanted to see Elio when we visited Calgary,” I said. “Maybe they were planning the same transfection for him.”
    “Perhaps, but now we’ll probably never know.”
    “Why didn’t you tell us about this before? Why did you make up that story about the liver enzymes?”
    “They didn’t want you to know they’d found something peculiar in you because they couldn’t be certain that you weren’t communicating with the androids. And I don’t want to know if you are. I just hope you’re not. I’m told that there are encrypted transmissions flowing between Mars and Earth, but who or what is receiving and transmitting those communications here on Earth is unknown. You can be certain, however, that we’re being carefully monitored, and I don’t think I need to warn you—”
    “Are they going to try to sterilize Sara,” Michael interrupted, “pursuant to the Human Genome Protection Act?”
    “All of this is top secret, for now. They don’t want the public to panic. You don’t plan on having children any time soon, do you, Sara?”
    “No.” I felt numb.
    “But someday,” Michael said, “someday, when all this is over, maybe in a year, they’ll want to sterilize her.”
    Grandpa closed his eyes and shook his head. “I don’t know.”
    When Elio finds out, I thought, how will he respond to this? We had often talked about having children as soon as we were secure in our professional lives. An empty feeling began growing deep in the center of my body where I’d thought that something that was Elio’s—that was ours together—had been lying dormant, waiting for the right moment to blossom into life.
    “Sara, I’m sorry,” Grandpa said. “I’m so very, very sorry. I keep thinking that things will straighten out if I cooperate in just one more scheme. But it keeps getting worse.”
    “Did you have anything to do with the transfection?” I asked, feeling my face flush with anger.
    “No! No, honey. I was shocked and devastated to find out. Please believe me. Please.”
    As I watched his deeply creased face quiver and his eyes brim with tears, my anger cooled. I knew he would never intentionally hurt me, and I reached for the calm place inside that many years before he had taught me to go to when I needed to control my emotions.
    Anchored in that calm, I said, “I believe you about the transfection. But it’s not right for you to play with our lives and our trust as you have. I think it’s reprehensible to tell someone she has a potential liver problem when something else, something much more serious, is going on. And all this about destroying the androids and attacking China—I know good things can come from bad things and vice versa, but it isn’t right for us to be mixed up in such matters: people killing each other because they’re convinced they’re right. It’s not us, Grandpa. We’re not capable of holding such fervid