Human Sister

year. During those visits, Grandpa devoted full attention to his dear old friend, and so those visits became mini-vacations from study for me. I especially enjoyed listening to the senator talk with Grandpa and Grandma about unsavory characters he’d recently met in Washington, D.C.—usually members of the Ecumenical Reform Party. “Urps,” Senator Franklin called them (for ERP), often with a slight gagging gesture.
    The day before Labor Day, about three weeks before my operation, Grandpa returned home from Senator Franklin’s annual summer party at the senator’s beach house on Cape Cod. He gave Grandma and me a hug, then excused himself, saying that he wanted to go to his study to think. He appeared tired and distracted.
    He was also wearing the same clothes—white socks, tan pants, and long-sleeve white shirt with red and blue stripes—that he’d worn when he left to visit Senator Franklin. In fact, they were the same clothes he’d been wearing every day for at least a month. I noticed this because usually Grandma would get after him to put on something different after he’d worn a particular shirt or pants continuously for about a week; and when she would, Grandpa would comply, often grumbling to me in private that my grandmother was a bit old-fashioned, having grown up before outer garments were available that no longer actually needed washing. As for the recommended nano-laundry after thirty wearings, Grandpa said he didn’t care for the so-called laundry-fresh scent; he preferred the unique scent of each person’s body.
    Wearing the same clothes was only one of Grandpa’s many rigid routines. Except for infrequent meals taken away from home, he ate the same breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day, year after year, occasionally adding a different fresh fruit or vegetable from our garden that Grandma would insist he try. Every day, he ate at the same time, worked with me on my studies at the same time, exercised at the same time, went to bed at the same time. Years later, Elio would tell me that he thought my grandpa was slightly autistic. When I questioned Grandma about this, she said, “Honey, as you experience more of the world, you’ll find that to be male is to be at least slightly autistic.”
    After Grandpa disappeared into his study on this day that he returned from Senator Franklin’s, I tattled on him, pointing out to Grandma that I thought he’d been wearing the same clothes for a very long time. She said he’d been working extra hard lately and that at such times it was best just to let him be in whatever he felt most comfortable.
    The next day, Mom and Dad arrived earlier than usual and immediately went to join Grandpa in his study, where the three of them stayed until lunch. Grandma had told me earlier in the morning that First Brother would not be coming along because Grandpa wanted to talk privately with Mom and Dad about some important matters that might take all day. I’d complained that First Brother could have played with me while Grandpa talked with Mom and Dad, but Grandma had merely shrugged.
    After lunch, Mom and Dad left, and Grandpa took me to his study, where he had me sit beside him on the sofa. He began by telling me that Senator Franklin had convinced him it was likely that, for the first time, the ERP would achieve a plurality in both the House and Senate in the next year’s election and that, with their increased power, they almost certainly would pass a law banning the creation of new androids and possibly even ordering the destruction of all existing androids, even First Brother.
    “Kill First Brother?” I said.
    “Yes, honey, but don’t worry. Your mother and father have just told me they’re going to send both of your brothers to live with a trusted associate in Canada as soon as possible. Your brothers will be safe there.”
    “They won’t live with Mom and Dad anymore?”
    “Not for now, but your parents plan to follow your brothers to Canada if the ERP succeeds as well as Senator Franklin predicts.”
    “They’ll still come to visit me, won’t they? And First Brother will, too.”
    Grandpa sighed. “You simply have to accept that your brothers will be leaving soon, that next year your mother and father probably also will leave, and that if we are to create a new type of android—a bioroid, actually—we must do so quickly, before the chance is forever snatched from us.”
    He paused, as though waiting for me to grasp the subject he’d just