Human Sister

by Jim Bainbridge

  “Michael can’t leave here?”

  “Not until it’s safe for him to go outside. But we can make a comfortable world for him here. Grandma has plans for a beautiful hydroponic garden. Michael will have at least one of the three of us with him at all times, and we can import any information he might desire. I doubt he’ll miss what he never experiences. Let me show you our plans for these rooms.”

  I wonder whether Grandpa thought much the same about me: that I wouldn’t miss the parents I saw so little of, that I wouldn’t miss the playmates I didn’t have, and that even if I did miss other children, the desire would be transformed into one for a new brother. I wonder about all this now, but you—you little girl who once was I—you never wondered about such things, did you?

  We moved to Grandpa’s desk chair. I sat on his lap, and while he showed me on a monitor what he and Grandma had planned, I leaned my head back onto his firm, warm chest, where the endearing mustiness of his long-worn clothes reminded me of autumn leaves. The back part of the house in level 3 security was twenty meters wide and fifteen meters deep. At the time of this discussion, it contained Grandpa’s study, library, and research lab; but by the time of Michael’s birth (planned for the following September), Grandpa’s things would be moved out, and two bedrooms, a play and study area, and a hydroponic garden with flowers, shrubs, and miniature trees would be installed.

  Gatekeeper 3 was to be upgraded to include a small monitoring enclosure with heavy doors on each end. To enter the security area through Gatekeeper 3 after the upgrade, I would have to undress, leaving my clothes in a small antechamber in front of Gatekeeper’s door. After an initial optical identification that would allow me to enter the monitoring enclosure through the first door, my skin and hair would be optically examined to ensure that no micro-devices were attached to me. Then the second door would open to let me into another small antechamber—this one inside the level 3 security area. To take anything other than my naked self into this area would require a special security procedure supervised by Grandpa.

  Grandpa explained that within the thick carbon nanofiber-reinforced walls, ceiling, and floor of the level 3 security area there was a layer of microactuators that scrambled into gibberish all sounds that were made in the area. Even silence was converted into gibberish, leaving no way to detect from outside the walls what was said or done within the area. No plumbing or communication links with the outside world were available in the area. Batteries installed in the level 2 area provided all the power. There wasn’t even any plumbing, so to use the bathroom I would have to go through Gatekeeper to the level 2 area, and Michael would have to use a bedpan.

  Most of Michael’s nutritional and oxygenic needs would be met by air scrubbers and by the hydroponic garden. Everything necessary to complete the plans would be purchased, moved, and constructed over the ten-month gestation by Grandpa, Grandma, Mom, and Dad.

  “But Grandpa, Michael can’t leave? He can’t see the sky and hills? What about the vineyard? These rooms will be like a cage.”

  “A cage! Oh my, no. Nothing like a cage. There will be scenescreens on which we can play recordings of the sky, hills, vineyard, and anything else you or he might want to see. He’ll have you and Grandma and me and any and all information products available. His world will be a rich, interesting, and love-filled world, not a cage.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. In fact, I believe you have things quite turned around. Out there, in the big world, his activities would, at best, be severely restricted. He would not be free. He would not be loved. And his life would be in great danger from people who hate androids. Indeed, for most of us, it is the outside world that is a cage. Can you understand this—that these three rooms we have planned can be made into a wonderful and free world, whereas the outside is a vicious, dangerous cage in which most of our actions are severely circumscribed by others?”

  I studied the finished space displayed on the monitor. It did appear to be a comfortable home for Michael, and I turned again to what was for me the most difficult issue.

  “I understand about the phone and about not talking about Michael outside of here, but couldn’t I whisper in Elio’s ear next summer when I see him?”

  “First, I don’t think the two of you could whisper softly enough to defeat sophisticated monitoring devices. Second, we can’t trust that Elio will keep—”

  “He would, Grandpa! How can you not trust Elio?”

  Grandpa became silent again, waiting for my emotional intensity to subside.

  “I know he would,” I said more calmly.

  Grandpa remained silent.

  I searched his face and found that he was no longer simply waiting for me to calm down; he appeared perplexed and deep in thought. He raised one of my hands to his lips and kissed it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t consider the seriousness of this problem. I am, of course, aware that you and Elio have become close friends. I believe I can appreciate how painful it must be for you to keep an important secret from him.”

  Grandpa sighed and tapped his fingers lightly on his desk. “I want to tell you about an experience I had with someone who was a close friend when he and I were both medical students at Stanford. We shared many interests. We double-dated. Even after we graduated and went our separate ways, we stayed in close contact with each other. But then seminars and protests led by a coalition of social egalitarians and religious conservatives began to spring up around the world. These activities culminated in the United Nations passing the International Human Genome Protection Act. I felt it was foolish to think humans were the pinnacle of the wonderful process of evolution, which had been going on for billions of years and would continue for billions more, whether we tried to stop it or not. I believed then and I believe now that we will either be a dead end or a stepping-stone to new beings better capable than we in dealing with a world of ever-increasing complexity.”

  “What about your friend?”

  “Along with most other people, he felt it was wrong to genetically enhance human offspring to make them super-intelligent, super-strong, or super-anything. Alterations to make a fetus healthy and normal were acceptable, but anything else was proclaimed to be a crime against humanity. I thought, and still think, that the law is a crime against nature—a nature of which man, his aspirations, and the products of his toil are as much a part as are bees and their drive for nectar and the building of hives. But I was wrong when I failed then to appreciate that intelligent and good people disagree on this law and on many other significant issues.”

  “Is he your friend again?”

  “I see him a couple of times each year at seminars where we make a point of having lunch or tea together, but that’s all. It has never been the same between us.”

  “I don’t want that to happen to Elio and me.”

  “Exactly. I told you about my old friend for two reasons: first, so you won’t make the all-too-common mistake of thinking that people who disagree with you on issues you take to be important are necessarily less intelligent or less good than you are. Take the Human Genome Protection Act, for example. I have no doubt that without it, significant changes and stresses would have already been introduced into our civilization. Wealthier people would have, generation after generation, produced more intelligent, better-looking, stronger children. They could have and would have produced super-basketball players, super-musicians, super-mathematicians. But until our techniques became inexpensive and generally available, the vast majority of people could only have had children who were normal humans.”

  “Did you ever break the law?”

  “No. I disagreed with it. I think the law is a travesty that will be unable to hold back the forces of human curiosity and greed and the desire for better children, but I never broke it. The penalties for violating the Genome Act are severe. All babies are tested at birth, and any proved to have been genetically enhanced without prior authorization are sterilized if the modification extends to the germ line. The parents an
d all co-conspirators are given minimum ten-year prison sentences, and all of their personal property is confiscated. You were tested when you were born, as were your father and mother when they were born.

  “I have always abided by the Genome Act, but I can’t believe that everyone everywhere has. Genetic enhancement technology will take root somewhere, and when it does we will have a choice: mass extermination of an incipient super-race or a mass stampede to jump aboard the evolution bullet train.

  “But that’s a discussion for another day. Today, we’re concerned about whether we should keep everything about Michael secret from Elio—which brings me to my second reason for telling you about my friend. There is no doubt in my mind that he was and is an intelligent and fine man. There is no doubt in my mind, or in yours, I’m sure, that Elio is an intelligent and good boy. I’m happy that the two of you are close friends, and I don’t want to do anything to harm your relationship. But here’s the problem: Let’s suppose I’d violated the Genome Act, and suppose further that my friend had found out. Would he have turned me in?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Grandpa sighed. “Nor do I. But my guess is that he would have, for he believed that much death, misery, and destruction would result from violations of the law.”

  “But what about Elio?”

  “As I’ve said, I fully expect that he’ll grow up to be a wise and good person, but we can’t deduce from that that he’ll agree with our views on androids or on religion or on a thousand other issues. You see, honey, regardless of how close you and Elio become, there will always be some mysterious core of a wonderful other about him. Like all of us, he is too complex to ever fully understand. And one of the things we cannot know is whether he’ll become one who feels that androids are thinking, feeling, conscious beings who should be treated with love and respect, or whether he’ll feel otherwise. In either case, I hope he’ll love you and you’ll love him, but because we can’t know now what he’ll feel about the android issue, I’m afraid this secret about Michael is an unfortunate pain you will have to accept until Elio becomes more mature.”

  “When will that be? When may I tell him?”

  “Probably not until he goes to university and experiences nonhuman conscious intelligences, if there still are any around then. In the meanwhile, you can be as close to him as you want. But remember, you’ll always be a 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 events. But all I find is an ineluctable tide of circumstances well beyond the abilities of a little girl to hold back. I’d desired to become the heroine who would have succeeded—where Grandpa, Mom, and Dad had failed—in helping First Brother acquire a richer emotional life. But I’d not known what to do other than to accept First Brother as a unique individual with interests different from my own, and to fantasize that when I became older and more learned, I would be able to teach him to laugh and love. I’d thought I had plenty of time. Now, I was eight years old, and First Brother had never laughed—or loved, as far as I could tell—and he was leaving, taking away with him my dream of being a heroine for him.

  First Brother bent over and picked me up. I held him tightly, consciously desiring to retain my every sense of him. He was tall, strong, and firm; his hair was soft and black; his skin olive brown; eyes hazel; lips full, but tightly closed and still. His clothes smelled laundry fresh. Times that we’d been together flashed through my mind. Except for Elio during two weeks of each of the three prior summers, First Brother had been my only childhood playmate.

  Holding back tears, I caressed his smooth face, kissed his cool cheek, and said, “I love you, First Brother.”

  He stiffened, as he always had in response to my emotion, and put me down.

  As the car disappeared beyond the perimeter gate I turned and ran back to the house,
where I requested Gatekeeper 1 to let me in. I ran to the entrance to the bedroom area and requested Gatekeeper 2 to let me in. I ran to the entrance to Grandpa’s study and, barely able to choke back tears, requested Gatekeeper 3 to let me in. Then I dove onto Grandpa’s sofa, where I cried and cried, no longer even conscious of what I was crying about, and cried on until Grandpa came and held me.

  “Shhh… shhh,” he whispered, stirring up in me images and sounds of the ocean breathing on the shore. “Shhh… Everything is all right. You were a good and brave girl.”

  First Brother

  She pulls the raft up onto the narrow strip of gray-brown sand that separates the ocean from the Jenner Estuary. The beach is littered with driftwood. Mist rises from wet sand into air vibrating with the screeching of gulls and the sibilant sound of waves breaking near the shore.

  She begins walking toward the sailboat. She is within 50 meters of the boat. A dog (highest correlation: golden retriever) emerges from the shadow of the listing boat and trots toward her. She smiles. She pets the dog. The dog sniffs, licks, and paws her. She expresses fondness in a manner humans are wont to express with their pets and young children.

  Outside the space of probable behavior, she cries as she holds the dog. By increasing magnification through the pigeonoid’s eyes, I conclude that she is unharmed by the dog, which barks, struggles to escape from her grip, and, succeeding, lunges forward. Her image rapidly diminishes in size. The distance between her and the dog increases. She is heard to shout: “No! Come back! Don’t chase the pigeonoid. He’s our friend.”

  The dog stops running and turns. It looks back at her and pants. She wipes at both of her eyes with the back of her gloved right hand. “Come here, boy. Come.” She pats her legs just above her knees. “Come. That’s a good boy. Come here.” The dog runs back to her. They meet and she hugs the dog. “Oh, yes, yes. That’s a good boy. Yes.”