Human Sister (17 page)

“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. But the destruction of military androids is just the first step. The ultimate goal of both the United States and China is to destroy all androids everywhere. We have Gatekeeper to guard the door leading to these rooms where Michael lives, but the secret of Michael lives in your mind. To protect Michael, we have to ensure that the doors to your mind are properly protected. Metaphorically speaking, we need a powerful and crafty gatekeeper for your mind.”

He explained that the police possessed sophisticated lie-detection equipment capable of determining with almost one hundred percent accuracy whether a person was lying. Therefore, I was never to say anything to the police, period, no matter how strenuously they questioned me and no matter how they threatened me. The only exceptions were that I could respond to a greeting with a friendly “Hi” or “Hello” or, if they said, “Nice day, isn’t it?” or “How are you today?” I could answer “Yes” or “Fine.” Beyond those civil responses, I was to make one and only one additional statement: “My name is Sara Jensen and my grandfather’s name is Professor Severn Jensen.”

He proceeded to tell me that U.S. intelligence services had also developed a secret device, an inducer of painful illusions called an algetor that forced people to tell the truth. He said that since the pain induced by the algetor was not associated with any known physical harm, the pain it caused could be made far more severe than any pain associated with actual physical trauma. The algetor was designed to make the victim believe that terrible things were happening to her consistent with the pain. For example, the victim would be led to believe that her bones were being broken, that she was being disemboweled, or that her skin and muscles were being melted off with boiling oil.

Did I think I could tolerate such pain to protect Michael?

My mind raced back to prior experiences of pain. One had occurred a couple of months before my first trip to visit Elio in Amsterdam. Lily and I had been playing near Carlos and his crew while they removed extraneous shoots and leaves from vines when I’d stepped barefoot onto a splinter of glass. I limped home, bloodied and crying, into Grandpa’s arms. He carried me to the kitchen, sat me in a chair, examined the bottom of my foot, then calmly said, “There’s a piece of glass lodged in your foot. I’ll remove it, and then you’ll be fine. But first, I’d like to talk with you a little about strategies for dealing with pain.”

He looked at me with a silence that indicated I’d have to stop crying before he would proceed. I did, and he began by saying that soon I would be visiting Elio and that I probably would be meeting some of Elio’s friends. He said it had been his experience that boys often feel uncomfortable around girls who cry easily and freely.

This issue of dealing with pain is not a trifling matter, he said, for as I would discover, life is full of pain. Surely I didn’t think the best strategy for dealing with something so common was to scream and cry and run away from it, did I?

“No, I don’t, Grandpa,” I answered, wiping away the last trace of wetness from my eyes.

“Good. Then this is what you do: Don’t try to distance yourself from painful sensations. Go to them. Let them fill you just as you do the minor pains that parade through you during meditation. Become their friend. Accept their heat, their sting, their insistence. They will let you feel them and tame them, and then they will pass, just as they do during meditation.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. Now, I’m going to wash your cut and take out the piece of glass. Either I can eliminate the pain by applying a local anesthetic before I start, or you can begin to learn a new way of dealing with pain. Your choice.”

I thought quickly of Elio. I certainly did not want him to feel uncomfortable around me, a girl, because I cried too easily.

“I want to learn.”

Grandpa smiled. “All right. Go first to your breathing. Anchor yourself there, in your breath. Then let the pain in your foot enter your consciousness. Accept the pain. Know that it’s your friend. It’s only there to help you, to make you aware that your foot should be attended to. Nod when you are ready.”

I focused on my breathing and accepted the sting in my foot. Then I nodded for him to proceed.

“Good,” Grandpa said. “Be careful not to jerk while I’m working.”

At first there were a couple of involuntary jerks—followed by his silent, raised eyebrows—but I kept calming myself and trying to accept my difficult new friends, the painful sensations.

Now, six years later, there was a new job to be performed. Would I be able to tolerate the much greater pain of this algetor thing to protect Michael?

“Yes,” I said, feeling both determined and apprehensive.

“I’m glad you think so. And you’re probably right. But ‘probably’ isn’t good enough when it comes to protecting Michael’s life. We have to make every effort to be certain.”

“Can you teach me?”

“Indeed I can. For you, it will be easy. You are young, and you already are able to dissociate to an unusual degree the conscious parts of your mind from the parts processing sensory inputs and emotional responses.”

Grandpa was referring to my ability to relive past events at will, even more vividly when I was a young girl, it seems, than I can now. I’d simply focus on the gray outline of a remembered scene, or on the sound of a word someone had spoken, or on the prick or tingle of a sensation, and then, suddenly, the wispy gossamer of memory would flash into bright realism and I’d experience the remembered event almost as if it were happening anew.

“You mean my daydreams will seem even more real?” I asked.

“Not exactly. Your daydreams are already quite real enough. Our purpose in having you learn to dissociate yourself from sensory inputs is so that you can block out the words, threats, and pain that might be used in an attempt to force open the doors to your mind where Michael’s secret lives.”

Grandpa sighed. When he resumed speaking, all enthusiasm had drained from his voice. “The second step necessitates your having to work, at your own pace, with an algetor.”

“You can get one?”

“No. I’ll have to make one. I evaluated several designs a few years ago. When I evaluated them, I learned how they work. I should be able to recreate one here for you to use. It’ll take a little time to get some of the components, quietly, without raising suspicion. In the meanwhile, I’ll teach you how to hypnotize yourself. Would you like me to hypnotize you so you can see what it’s like?”

“Right now?”

“Yes. It’ll be easy for you. I’m quite certain of that. And you’ll enjoy it.”

He told me to remember everything he was about to say and do, and everything I was about to feel as he took me through a standard protocol of hypnotic suggestions developed to assess hypnotic responsiveness. He had me relax the muscles in my right foot, then, in order, my right leg, left foot and leg, right hand, right arm, left hand and arm. On his suggestion, my legs and arms became heavy. My shoulders, neck, and head relaxed and also became heavy. I sank more deeply into the chair, as if I were drowsy, but I remained alert to what he was saying. He had me count slowly down from five, telling me that with each number I spoke I would become ever more relaxed and that when I reached one, nothing would disturb me.

“Two, one…” He was right: The relaxation I felt at that moment was deeper than any I’d experienced. It seemed limitless and blissful. I felt as though I was nothing more than an aware conduit for Grandpa’s suggestions.

He told me to stretch out my arms and hands in front of me. He said there was a force pushing my hands together—and an irresistible force did just that. He said my arms were becoming so heavy I could no longer hold them up—and they sank, leaden, onto my lap. He said Lily was there just as she had been when I was three—and she was there: a soft, white, whimpering bundle of love I cuddled and petted while she tickled my cheek with her wet little nose and breathed on me her milky puppy breath.

Over the next few days, Grandpa taught me how to induce the hypnosis myself. He told me to pick an image I found relaxing, focus on it, then count down from five, progressively becoming more relaxed and more focused on the image and my breathing until, at the count of one, everything except the image and my breathing was gone.