Human Sister

worried and shifted her gaze out the front window.
    I wonder now whether she actually did look worried. Was she so accomplished at deceiving her daughter? Or did my mind simply paint in something—in this case, worry—that it expected to be there under the circumstances?
    “That’s the reason your brothers never leave the lab,” Dad added.
    I fell silent. I missed Michael, and now I was worried about him. Evidently, Grandpa’s dire predictions were coming true.
    The snow had let up by the time we arrived at the greenhouse, but in his hurry, Dad braked late, and our car skidded, arriving sideways less than two meters from the door. I half expected Mom to say something, as I’d heard her say before, about Dad’s learning to drive in Berkeley’s bland weather, but she merely flung open her car door and rushed into the building. Dad hurried in behind her. Trying to keep up, I slipped and fell as soon as I got out of the car, but neither of them noticed. They would have noticed, I thought, if First Brother had fallen.
    Snowbound in the glass oasis, stands of hyacinths greeted me at the door. From somewhere deep inside the building, Mom and Dad were shouting, “Aita! Aita!” Lanterns of daffodils brightened the smiles of toy Santas; and farther along, yellow tulips, unaware of our dark concerns, appeared gleeful, having been forced up in pots around a model Dutch windmill slowly turning in the fragrant air.
    “Aita!” I heard Dad shout. I looked up and saw him walking briskly back toward me. I wanted him to hug me and tell me everything would be all right, but he walked past me without saying anything and opened the outside door for an elderly couple. They were the proprietors of the greenhouse. Mom rushed over when she saw the couple, and the four of them conferred at length. The elderly couple said Aita worked alone in this building on Sundays and they hadn’t seen anyone else come or go that day. They appeared sad to hear that Aita was missing and probably had been abducted. The man said Aita had a green thumb and had been far and away the best worker they’d ever had. They seemed genuinely fond of Aita. “She was like a daughter to us,” the lady said with a catch in her throat.

    When I returned home from Canada, I told Grandpa what had happened: that First Brother hadn’t changed, that I had four new brothers who didn’t seem at all interested in me, that Mom and Dad were part of an underground network, that androids were being kidnapped by U.S. agents and destroyed. I couldn’t help crying as I told him about this last bit of news. Was Michael safe here in the U.S.? Would he be kidnapped, too?
    Grandpa assured me that Michael would be safe as long as we kept him secret. Then he told me something that had happened a few months earlier, something I didn’t know about because he hadn’t yet given me access to the internet; nor had he allowed me to watch the news on WNN. The report that had been kept from me was about the first attack by the U.S. and China against sites in countries in the Middle East and Asia that had continued to pursue android defense programs despite orders from the United Nations Security Council to cease.
    “Not Canada, though,” I said.
    “No, the Canadians have been careful to allow conscious machines to work only in designated non-military areas.”
    “So my brothers are safe?”
    “We can hope so. But given the current political climate, we must be extra careful with Michael. He’s the only android, or bioroid, I’m aware of who has successfully developed a rich emotional life.”
    I didn’t respond to that comment. In my mind we had to protect Michael simply because he was Michael.
    “Did I ever tell you that when I was a medical student nearly sixty years ago I did some work at the Stanford Hypnosis Laboratory?”
    “No.”
    “Do you know what hypnosis is?”
    “You put people to sleep, and they do funny things you tell them to do.”
    Grandpa chuckled. “Who told you that?”
    “Elio.”
    “I’m afraid he doesn’t know much about hypnosis.”
    “Aunt Lynh took him to see a show in Amsterdam. A woman hypnotized people from the audience, and it was funny.”
    “Well, yes, I’m sure it was. But hypnosis can also be serious, powerful stuff. Listen, you know how important it is to keep Michael’s existence secret.”
    “Yes.”
    “And now you know that the U.S. and China have taken military action to destroy androids used in military defense programs.