Human Sister

that was to become my bedroom as soon as Michael was born, and the main room, which was to contain the hydroponic garden and Michael’s and my study and living area.
    Throughout Michael’s ten-month gestation, I was not permitted even to peek into the third room when Grandpa entered it. He didn’t want me to see how Michael was being made. As with Lily, I was to accept Michael whole, as an incomprehensibly complex and wonderful person, not as so many nerves and muscles and organs connected in such and such a way.
    But as the months passed, the itch of curiosity grew too intense for me to keep from scratching it. One day in the eighth month, when Grandpa appeared to be concentrating on some problem and his hands were busy carrying a particularly large container, I stealthily followed behind him as he walked toward this mysterious third room. As the door slid open, a whoosh of warm air escaped, bringing with it the smell of something antiseptic. The light inside was blue and dim. In the center of the room sat a shiny metallic platform covered with a transparent cylindrical hood. Under the hood lay what looked like a headless, fully grown man whose chest had been carved open right down the middle. Off in a corner, on top of another metallic platform, stood a large tube filled with liquid. Suspended in the liquid was what appeared to be a brain with blood vessels and white cords leading down from it to lungs, a stomach, a liver—
    The door whooshed shut.
    Though that was the only time I got a peek inside Michael’s gestation room, I often stood outside that room and wondered about my new brother growing in there. What would he be like? In what ways would he change my life? Would he really be all that I wanted him to be? All that First Brother had not been? And would he be happy in these three rooms, with only the scenescreens as his windows to the outside world?
    On the morning of Michael’s birth, I sat on one end of the sofa in the main room and watched as Grandpa and Grandma, wearing matching bamboo-leaf-patterned kimonos, carried my new brother out of the womb and laid him on the sofa, his head lowered gently onto my lap. His eyes were closed; he appeared to be sleeping. He had neatly combed, short black hair, like First Brother’s, and wore only a white diaper. His body stretched out over the full length of the sofa. In the center of his tummy, where a navel might have been, was a socket with three rectangular holes—for the electricity to charge his many internal batteries and capacitors, I presumed. At 1.73 meters tall and weighing 51 kilograms, he was nearly twice as big as I. On the outside, he appeared to be First Brother’s twin, but I knew that on the inside he was different.
    “Look what has blossomed from the richly endowed encyclopedia of your cells,” Grandpa said. I felt a surge of pride and caressed the cool, smooth skin of one of Michael’s arms. Never would I give him away to someone else, as Mom and Dad had given me away. Never.
    “Pass your hand over his eyes, and he’ll wake up fully for the first time,” Grandma said.
    “Turn his head toward you so that the first thing he sees is your face,” Grandpa added.
    I carefully turned his head toward me and passed my hand over his eyes. His eyelids opened, revealing hazel eyes that appeared surprised as they gazed up at me.
    “Oh, Grandma, he’s beautiful!”
    His mouth began opening and closing in an O shape, reminding me of a fish, and his fingers and toes repeatedly flexed open and closed.
    “Yes, honey, isn’t he though? Here, I think he’s hungry already.” She handed me a warm baby bottle, light blue with a tan nipple.
    I put the nipple in his mouth and he began sucking. His fingers and toes relaxed. He lay quietly while I stroked his hair. In my mind, I finally had the brother I’d dreamed of, but I was aware that Grandpa and Grandma had a different view of things: I was to be Michael’s mother. They had repeatedly explained from the beginning of the project that this meant it would be my responsibility to feed him, change his diapers (with Grandma’s or Grandpa’s help, as it turned out, since he was too big and heavy for me to change him by myself), keep him amused, and as time went on, discipline him and educate him, as they had me.

    In addition to feeling sensory pain when he bumped something too hard or tore his self-healing skin, Michael had a “hard-wired inclination,” as Grandpa said, to develop a strong