Human Sister

frightened by watching me endure the extreme and gruesome forms of pain generated by the algetor. Nor did he want me to let Michael into my memory of the sessions.
    Of course, Michael was curious about these secret algetor activities. After some of the sessions, I became aware while brainjoined with him of the murmurings—the rustling around of algetor memories, like wind playing with autumn leaves—as he attempted to sneak into forbidden territory. “No!” I would think, or even say aloud, as if he were a bad boy caught stealing fruit from a neighbor’s tree.
    “But it’s not fair,” he’d whine.
    One day, about a month into these algetor sessions, I stubbed one of my toes. The next day, I made a “discovery”: The pain of yesterday’s stubbed toe could, in a limited sense, be remembered, but it couldn’t be felt. I was astonished to find that I was nearly as separated from my own past pain as I was from another’s current pain. This loss of sensation in the memory of physical pain seemed doubly remarkable to me, given that I could reproduce sights and sounds—and sometimes even tastes and smells—as freshly as if they were being experienced anew.
    I ran to Grandpa with this discovery, telling him that past physical pain is no longer even as faint as earthlight reflected from a crescent moon; it’s only a shadow that gallops along beside us as we ride certain of our memories into the past. Grandpa chuckled at my enthusiasm, then explained that physical pain, existing as it does only in the present, is one of the conscious qualia that help us separate the present from the past, the real from the remembered or imaginary. Then, after giving due consideration to the fact that Michael was no longer an infant and that the sensations of past pain are irrecoverably gone, he said that though he still didn’t want Michael present during my algetor sessions, it would be all right for Michael to sample my memories of the sessions.
    As far as I know, Michael fully entered the memory of an algetor session only once. He screamed, pulled the braincord back into his head, and began to cry.

First Brother

    S he removes the backpack from her shoulders and kneels on the sand. The dog sniffs at the pack. She opens the pack. In it is some brindled material (highest correlation: synthesized food) wrapped in thin, transparent material (highest correlation: polyethylene) and one cylindrical object (highest correlation: insulated bottle) tapered and capped at one end.
    “Okay, now. We can’t tear into this like a couple of famished dogs.” She shelters the pack with her left hand and arm and attempts to push the dog away with her right hand and arm. “Sit! Sit down, Rusty. Sit. Good boy. Now, stay. Stay!”
    The dog sits on its hindquarters. It exhibits a high level of attention directed both at the pack and at her. “Stay,” she says, pointing at the dog with her right index finger. The dog licks the finger. “Stay,” she repeats, directing a stern facial expression at the dog while she slowly withdraws her right hand toward the pack. She keeps her eyes directed at the dog as her right hand searches in the pack.
    She retrieves the brindled bread-like material, unwraps the clear film from it, pulls the brindled material into four roughly equal parts, and places three of those parts on top of the pack.
    “Okay, boy,” she says. “Lunchtime. Come!” The dog jumps up, sniffs, licks, then scoops up the food whole in its jaws, chomps, and swallows. While it does, she stuffs the other section of food into her mouth and chews.
    Still chewing, she forms a concave depression in the sand and lines the depression with the thin transparent film. She unscrews the cap from the cylindrical object and pours bluish-brown liquid from the bottle into the lined concave depression in the sand.
    The dog licks once at the surface of the liquid, looks up toward Sara, and extends its tongue out of its mouth three times.
    “Go ahead,” she says. “It’s not that bad. See?”
    She lifts the bottle to her mouth and appears to swallow twice.
    The dog licks the liquid again, then begins to lap rapidly. She watches the dog and smiles.
    The dog completes lapping up the liquid in the makeshift bowl. She pours the last of the liquid into the bowl, saying: “That’s it, Rusty. That’s all I have. We’ll have to see what we can find on the road home.”
    She screws the cap back onto the bottle, pushes the knuckles of her right hand into