Human Sister

unexpectedly play at 110 decibels the radiant, beaming first three eighth notes and sustained tone of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony?
    There were hours of such questions. I mention those two simply as examples of questions into which I later gained insight from discussions with Michael. Other questions, such as how it feels to have a laser knife cut through integumentin or how it feels to have one’s hand placed in a microwave oven, I didn’t discuss with Michael, concerned that they might frighten him.
    With regard to the question about being interrupted while calculating quantum states, Michael, after performing the experiment, said, “When I was performing the calculations, I felt very pure, very crystalline. The shock of the loud sound was followed by a feeling that every cell, every metallic structure, every regularity in me had suddenly been shattered. It was a disturbing and frightening experience. I felt as though I was a diamond breaking.”
    With regard to experiencing multiple foci of conscious attention, Michael said he experienced no difference of feeling between thinking about one thing or about many things at once. He said he simply did what seemed most natural and appropriate at the time. He likened the mental state of thinking about many things simultaneously to watching four or five different events on a split-screen display or to letting his mind expand to take in the whole as well as each of the parts of complex polyphonic music. There still is one main, perhaps composite, observer, he explained, though that observer is continuously aware of many things at once.
    I wondered at the time, and still do, whether there wasn’t something more behind these tests. Were my brothers trying to humiliate me to see how I would react? Or was there something deeper, something more important that I failed not only to achieve but even to become aware of? Were they trying to introduce me to their world? Did they finally lose patience?

    The following morning, I was surprised at breakfast when Mom told me that Dad had already left. “On business to Vancouver” was all she would say. Looking back, I think it likely that he, being of a kind and gentle disposition, didn’t want to be a part of what Mom and my brothers had in store for me that day.
    I was again left alone with Second Brother, who, before we began the testing, commented on my performance of the prior two days by stating that I was “hopelessly human, so gaudy with emotion” and that I had demonstrated not even the slightest degree of Sentiren feeling or intelligence. This was not unexpected, he added, since he and my other brothers were products of our parents’ minds, whereas I was merely a product of their loins.
    Trying not to show my irritation, I told him he was wrong, that I was also a product of their minds, knowledge, and culture. He responded by saying it was time to begin our work for the day. A few hours later, in the midst of an exercise that seemed to be testing the reaction time of my fingers to various visual cues, he placed his thumb on one side of the bone at the base of my right ring finger and his index and middle fingers on the other side of the bone and began to squeeze. The pain quickly rose as he increased the opposing force of his grip.
    I was faced with a choice of asking him to stop or of concentrating on the sensation and showing him I could tolerate the pain. I foolishly chose the latter, and before a minute had elapsed, I heard a crack as the bone broke. Though I don’t know what my face expressed, my mind was busy being amazed at discovering how well the real pain of the bone’s breaking conformed to the corresponding sensations induced by the algetor.
    “The proximal phalanx is broken,” Second Brother dryly said.
    A spark of anger flashed through my mind, but not wanting to appear gaudy with emotion, I suppressed it. “I think we should tell Mom.”
    We walked across the hall to where Mom and my other brothers were working on a scanner for large animals at the Calgary Zoo. Though my finger continued to communicate painful sensations, I was, as Grandpa had taught me, able to keep my mind from converting the sensations into physical suffering. I was disappointed, however, in Second Brother’s hurting me. Since when was physical damage part of a test?
    “The fourth proximal phalanx of her right hand is broken,” Second Brother announced.
    “What is?” Mom asked, turning to us.
    I held up my hand, showing her