Human Sister

marvelous mystery to him, too, no matter how close you and he become. This secret about Michael simply will be part of that mystery for a while.”

    Except for a slight irritation that seemed lodged in my sinuses, I woke feeling good the morning after my operation. Cartoon images no longer appeared and evaporated like little clouds on the roof of the tent above me. The air filter motors were silent, and Grandpa was sitting beside me. He told me the operation had gone extremely well: I was in excellent condition; enough cells extracted from every location were viable, so no part of the operation would have to be repeated; and the braincord junction implant looked good. First Brother had been an excellent surgeon.
    As usual, Elio called on Vidtel when he got home from school, shortly after I’d finished breakfast.
    As soon as I spoke, he asked, “Do you have an allergy?”
    It’s started, I thought. “No,” I answered.
    “You sound like you do. Is there anything you’re allergic to?”
    “Not that I know of.”
    “Have you been crying?”
    “No.”
    Mercifully, he moved on to tell me about his day at school.
    “Never lie, but never reveal the truth” is the old Roman maxim Grandpa had suggested I apply in conversations with Elio whenever anything related to Michael came up. But applying the maxim left me feeling estranged; and Elio, who’d become sensitive to my feelings, cut short our conversation, saying that he knew I had an allergy or something and wasn’t feeling good. When he exited Vidtel, I turned away from the image platform and cried into the back of the chair, thinking how very, very long it would be until he went to university.

    Two weeks after the operation, First Brother came to visit me. It was the day before Mom and Dad packed him and Second Brother into separate crates and shipped them, along with crates of fruits and vegetables, to Calgary, Alberta. First Brother examined me and concurred with Grandpa that bone and tissue around the braincord junctions had attached to the junctions and had healed perfectly. I was ready to begin the Focused Magnetic Driver (FMD) sessions, which, over a six-month period, would create neural pathways connecting the braincord junctions with every area of my brain.
    Grandpa had reminded me earlier in the day that outside of level 3, I couldn’t say anything about, couldn’t even allude to, the operation, the braincord, or Michael—and that though proper export papers and bills of sale had been drawn up allowing First Brother to be sent to Canada, I shouldn’t cry or say good-bye to First Brother or speak about his leaving; for if we were being spied on, it would be by a much more sophisticated and dangerous group of people than those who supervise the low-level expert systems that, in turn, supervise the movement of products being traded between the U.S. and Canada. Furthermore, to avoid suspicion being directed toward our home, which would be Michael’s home too in a few months, I would not be able to communicate with First Brother after this day, not by Vidtel or otherwise.
    The confluence of several distressing developments made that day, the last day I saw First Brother in California, the saddest of my childhood. His imminent departure was one such development, and it, together with my need to suppress any emotion related to his departure, served to catalyze other dark clouds in my mind: Mom and Dad probably also would emigrate to Canada; I had to stay on guard and hide the truth for many years to come whenever I spoke with Elio; there had been an ominous tone to Grandpa’s voice whenever he’d spoken about the ERP’s seemingly unstoppable rise to power; Grandpa had been spending less time with me and more time working on matters related to Michael; and finally, I was committed to spending four hours each day for the next six months strapped in the FMD.
    All that day, from the time Grandpa cautioned me in the morning until after First Brother left that evening, I suffered a foreboding that my happy childhood was ending, to be replaced by what I was unprepared for: the deceptions, losses, and responsibilities of adulthood.
    As First Brother was about to get into the car with Mom and Dad, I broke away from Grandpa’s hand, ran to First Brother, and, reaching up, said, “I want to hug you.”
    In my memories, I keep searching for the place where things went wrong, for where I might have done something that would have avoided or righted the coming