Human Sister

HUMAN SISTER

Kindle Edition

Copyright © 2010 by Jim Bainbridge

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

All characters in this publication
a
re fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Printed in the United States of America

Published in the United States by Silverthought Press

www.silverthought.com

Cover artwork by Paul Hughes

www.paulevanhughes.com

ISBN: 978-0-9841738-2-2 (print edition)

Acknowledgements

I am deeply grateful to the following readers who supplied encouragement and insightful comments along the way: Paulette Alden, Jean Bainbridge, Dan Fingarette, Jennifer Itell, Benjamin Matthew, Laura Pritchett, Amanda Rea, Jim Song, and Mark Wisniewski.

Many thanks to Paul Evan Hughes for his sensitive, wise, and enthusiastic editing.

Thanks also to the editors of the following journals in which portions of this book have appeared:
LIT
,
Roanoke Review
,   
Santa Fe Literary Review
,
South Carolina Review
,
Thin Air
, and
Two Review
.

* * *

The quote from Martin Luther on page 261 is from Luther’s
Werke
, Erlanger ed., as quoted in Johannes Janssen,
History of the German People at the Close of the Middle Ages
, Vol. III, 211-212, trans. A. M. Christie (London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1900).

To my closest friend, Dan Fingarette,

whose contributions to this book have been invaluable.

HUMAN
SISTER

Sara

O
n the morning of what turned out to be a foreboding New Year’s Eve, the man to my right on the flight home from Calgary began a friendly conversation as soon as I took my window seat. He was attractive, polite, articulate, and well-dressed in a light blue suit with red pinstripes. During the course of our short flight to San Francisco, he asked how old I was (he said that in three months his son would be sixteen, too), what I was studying in school (he thought that Grandpa’s style of homeschooling me was interesting, but didn’t I think I was missing something by not having any classmates?), where I lived (he seemed especially curious as to why I was being raised by my grandparents on a vineyard in Sonoma’s Russian River Valley rather than by my parents in Canada), and so on. But as the plane began its descent into the Bay Area, his questions became more pointed.

Why was my finger in a cast?

“I broke it.”

What kind of work did my parents do?

“They design robotic instruments, primarily for medical use.”

Did I think it possible that there still were some androids in Canada?

Here, I felt the conversation was veering off into dangerous territory. “If you don’t mind,” I said, “I’d like to listen to my voicemail before we land.”

I adjusted the earphones and immediately heard the rhythmic push and glide,
schzz… schzz… schzz…
, of Elio’s blades on the smoothly frozen surface of Keizersgracht in Amsterdam. It had been ten days since I last hugged him as he was about to board a plane in Calgary, and after what seemed like such a long separation, merely the thought of him sent a brief
schzz
through my body.

Elio began describing the frozen canal and the many people, old and young, who were out skating, bundled up in brightly colored winter clothes. His words “I miss you so much” and his heavy breathing came through heartwarmingly clear over the background sounds of children’s laughing and squealing in delight.

The plane shuddered as it touched down. I clicked off the recording I’d listened to repeatedly during the past couple of days and looked out the window. San Francisco was overcast, wet, and cold on New Year’s Eve morning, but Elio had called about an hour earlier to say that he had just arrived from Amsterdam, and I imagined that inside the terminal he and Grandpa waited with warm arms.

I had just begun to raise my hands to remove my earphones when I noticed that the man to my right was staring at me. I feared that he was intent on starting up our conversation where it had left off, so, trying not to be too impolite, I quickly turned my head to look out the window and clicked the recording back on.

Elio said that winter in the Netherlands had so far been quite cold and everyone there was excited about the possibility of having the 200-kilometer Elfstedentocht ice-skating marathon in Friesland, a traditional event that hadn’t been held in over thirty years due to global warming. His former schoolmates wanted him to stay for the race, but he’d declined. “I’ll be home to celebrate New Year’s Eve with you, Sara,” he said, “Elfstedentocht or no Elfstedentocht.”

People began standing in the aisle and reaching into the overhead bins to retrieve their belongings. I again clicked off the recording and, without looking in the direction of the man beside me, began packing my earphones into my carry-on bag.

It was then I noticed the man wasn’t moving. I fumbled with my bag, arranging and rearranging its contents, all the while avoiding eye contact with him. When people from rows behind us began walking past our row and he still hadn’t made any effort to stand, I turned to him and said, “May I get up, please?”

“There’s no rush, is there?”

I clenched my carry-on in my lap and watched as the last passengers walked past our row of seats. “Please, sir. Grandpa will be waiting for me. Please let me out.”

“Is Elio waiting for you, too?” A thin smile appeared on his face.

I turned toward the window with a start. Elio’s name had not been mentioned during our conversation. Blood throbbed in my neck. Was I being kidnapped?

As I’d rehearsed many times when I was a child, I pressed the “5” key on my teleband five times, then the “enter” key five times, all within five seconds. A tiny green light appeared above the time display, indicating that the band was signaling Sakato (our private security service), Grandpa and Grandma (on their telebands), and Gatekeeper that I perceived some immediate grave danger. Within seconds, Gatekeeper would alert Michael, who would deposit a catalyst along the invisible seams of the door in my bedroom wall. The door would open. Michael would quickly gather up everything indicative of his existence—his computer chips, nutriosynthesizer, bedpan—and with this cache in hand, he would crawl into the wall, and the door would close into its self-healing seams, ensuring his safe immurement until the threat was resolved.

My teleband would also activate a transmitter that had been implanted in the fleshy part of the backside of my knee before I was first permitted to venture into the vineyard beyond the security wall surrounding my grandparents’ home. The transmitter would emit tracing signals until I was rescued—or until it was discovered by my captors.

I reached up and pushed the red “call” button on the ceiling above my seat. The man didn’t move to stop me or to turn it off. Instead, he said, “You seem anxious. Are you hiding something?”

“Who are you?” I asked, trying not to appear frightened. “What do you want?”

“My name is Randy Smith. I’m an agent with the FBI.”

“May I help you?” asked a flight attendant, who came from the back of the plane.

“This man is holding me against my will.”

The man smiled, calmly took a badge out of his suit coat pocket, and handed it to the flight attendant. “Randall Smith, Special Agent. A colleague and I would like to question this young lady about an important matter.”

“Don’t believe him! I think he’s trying to kidnap me!”

“Please check with your security people,” the man said. “There should be another agent at the gate.”

“Oh… well… I guess—” the attendant stammered. “Please. Both of you remain seated while I check this out.”

“Take your time,” the man said in the same friendly, assuring voice he’d used at the beginning of our conversation.

The flight attendant walked away, turning several times to glance back at us as she made her way to the front of the plane. The man beside me sat calmly, his hands folded in his lap. The flight attendant spoke with another flight attendant, pointed toward us, then disappeared behind a partition.

“We’ll wait here until everyone figures out what’s what,” the man said. “Then we’ll go to a more comfortable place inside and talk.”

I stared out the window, my mind spinning with questions: Where was Grandpa? Elio? Were they safe? Were they coming for me? What was happening? Then I heard sirens and, within seconds, saw flashing lights of several airport and private security cars racing toward the plane. Guards jumped out of the cars and crouched down, guns drawn. One man reading a scanner pointed up toward me. I put my face against the window, hoping to be seen.

“I see your grandfather can still raise quite a ruckus when he puts his mind to it,” the man beside me said. “It’ll be interesting to trace how you alerted him.” He reclined back into his seat, and I began to fear that he was who he claimed to be—which meant, I knew, that he was someone from whom not even Grandpa could rescue me.

I again pressed my face to the window and tried to control my anxiety by focusing on what was happening outside. Through the far right edge of the little window, I noticed a barrel-chested man in a dark gray suit descend narrow stairs leading from the jetway to the tarmac. Grandpa was right behind him, followed by Elio. The man in the suit headed toward the security car. He walked robustly, giving the impression of strength and conviction of purpose. He waved his arms and shouted something I couldn’t hear at the guard who held the scanner.