Human Sister

by Jim Bainbridge

  Our wake-up alarm rang, startling us not from sleep but from our thoughts. When I got to the breakfast table, Grandma was talking with Grandpa about how beautiful the vineyards were that morning, how still and soft the air. She loved November best: the month of mellow, contented calm that follows the fever of growth and harvest and fairs.

  While we ate, I thought that a few years earlier Grandpa’s eagle eyes would have spotted my bloodshot eyes and sleepless face a room away, that he would have known exactly what was troubling me, and that before breakfast was finished, he would have made everything better. On this morning, however, he barely glanced at me. He ate rapidly as Grandma spoke—now she was talking about our third crop of raspberries for the year—then excused himself to finish getting ready for work.

  I hurried to board the tiltrotor ahead of Grandpa so that I could find a place to conceal the tracking device. On the way to Palo Alto, I asked him what he had planned for the day.

  “I’ll be in Berkeley. I’ll pick you up at 1745, as usual.”

  “Grandma’s worried that you're working too hard.”

  He chuckled. “She needn’t worry. Much of my day is spent with old, retired professor buddies. We drink brandy with coffee and ruminate on the sorry state of the world.”

  “She misses you. Maybe you should bring her flowers once in a while. It would show you’re thinking about her.”

  “What? Like the flowers Elio brings you? That boy has yet to figure out that the gardenerbots toss enough flowers onto our compost heap to stock a nursery.”

  “Well, I miss you, too. I wish you’d spend more time on our tutorials.”

  There was a pause before he spoke, now in a more serious tone. “Your education has largely passed me by. We live in a world requiring fresh minds to perceive its complexities. You should begin full-time studies at Stanford. It’s time.”

  I didn’t answer him, and we dropped the subject. We’d been over it several times before. I didn’t feel ready for any more big changes.

  Elio picked me up at the Palo Alto Airport. Of course, I didn’t mention anything about First Brother’s communication; for outside of Michael’s rooms, I conducted myself as if the whole world were listening and watching.

  Between classes that afternoon, I called Grandpa’s office. His secretary answered. We exchanged pleasantries; then I asked her whether Grandpa had been in the office all morning.

  “Yes, of course,” she said.

  “Grandma and I worry that perhaps he’s working too hard.”

  “I wouldn’t worry if I were you, Sara. He’s a remarkable man, you know. And strong for his age. Oh, there’s another call. Hold a sec and I’ll put you right through to him. Bye.”

  Within seconds, he answered. He seemed to be in a good mood and asked how my day was going. I told him a little about my classes, then asked how his day was going.

  “Oh, fine. Working on some government contracts, so I can’t say much.”

  “Have you been stuck in Berkeley all day?”

  “Yes. Is something the matter?”

  “I was just wondering whether you could pick me up a half-hour later today.”

  “Of course, but you should call Grandma and tell her we’ll be late.”

  “Okay.”

  “Good. Then I’ll see you at 1815. Say hello to Elio.”

  On the way home in the tiltrotor, I retrieved the counterfeit quarter while Grandpa spoke with the autopilot. Then I noticed a package on the floor, tucked between his legs. “It’s for your grandmother,” Grandpa answered when I asked about it. “Take a look. I was sitting in my office this afternoon, and it occurred to me that as the years pass, it is easy to begin taking the people we love for granted.”

  I opened the seal on the package. Inside were a dozen red roses. The attached card, imprinted with the name of a Berkeley florist, read: “For the love of my life.”

  “It is not such a terrible thing that love now and then asks us to commit a small affront against the sensible,” Grandpa said, interrupting my thoughts: He really was in Berkeley. He was out getting flowers for Grandma.

  I burst into tears and hugged him.

  “Well, well,” he said, patting my back. “I had no idea my bringing flowers home to Grandma meant so much to you.”

  The plot of the tiltrotor’s movements showed that it had gone from home to Palo Alto and from there directly to Livermore, where it had remained all day until 1751, when it had departed for Palo Alto to pick me up.

  I was stunned. Evidently, my call to Grandpa had been routed to him from his office, and the roses had been delivered to him at Livermore. Michael said we should confront Grandpa with our evidence and ask him to explain. I reminded Michael that I’d promised not to reveal to Grandpa the existence of the pigeonoid or the contents of any communication I received from it.

  “We need only show Grandpa the plot of the tiltrotor’s movements,” Michael said. “If he asks what induced us to spy on him, we can say that his increased absences from home made us suspicious.”

  We printed out our evidence and placed it on the study table, then waited for Grandpa to come in and say goodnight. When he did, I pointed toward the table. He looked puzzled, walked to the table, and began examining what we’d prepared. After about a minute, he picked up the papers, and dumped them into the recycler. “What I do, I do to protect both of you, and Grandma and Elio. I’m sorry if—”

  “Are you involved in planning another attack against Sara’s brothers?” Michael interrupted.

  Grandpa looked down. His shoulders drooped. He had lost weight during the past year, perhaps in part because his eating and sleeping, entrenched for years in a strict schedule, had become erratic under the pressure of increased work. His face was thin, its creases full of shadows.

  “I need to lie on the sofa for a moment,” he said.

  He lay with his left arm beside him, his right arm over his forehead and eyes. After about a minute of rest he said, “I would like to consult with you and Michael about something, but I don’t want you to discuss anything I say with Grandma or Elio.”

  “I don’t like keeping secrets from Elio,” I said.

  “I understand. It’s not been easy for me to keep secrets from Grandma, either, but I’ve had to. That’s part of what working for the government entails—keeping classified information secret. The information I would like to discuss with you is dangerous to know, or at least to let anyone discover that you know. I love and trust Elio, too, but everyone has a breaking point if they’re interrogated. All I’m asking is that you not put Elio in danger unless it becomes necessary to do so.”

  I was in a bind. On the one hand, I’d promised never again to keep secrets from Elio. On the other, I wanted to know what was happening, and I wanted to help Grandpa; it was clear that he was in some kind of trouble. And, what would be worse, my keeping classified information secret from Elio, or my putting Elio in grave danger?

  I noticed then that Grandpa was trembling all over, and asked whether he was okay.

  “I’m feeling very weak. Faint. Please check my pulse.”

  With my right hand I began to take his pulse. As I did, I placed my left hand on his chest. He was trembling quite violently now. He had kept himself in good shape. His normal resting pulse was 58. His pulse now was 115.

  “I think I should get some medical attention,” he said. “But we can’t have anyone coming into these rooms.” He slowly rolled off the sofa onto the floor and began crawling on hands and knees toward Gatekeeper. “If I pass out,” he said, “drag me through Gatekeeper and into my bedroom. Then call Dr. Taranik.”

  First Brother

  She stands about 2 meters in front of the inscribed surfaces of the markers. Her shadow lies to the right of the rightmost marker and extends over 9 meters toward the southeast.

  The dog nuzzles her left hand, but she fails to respond. The dog looks back at me as I stand in front of the garage. The dog lies down beside her left leg.

  She stan
ds quietly in front of the markers for 1 minute, 22 seconds. Then both of her hands rise. They disappear in front of her body and appear to stop near her waist. Movement in the muscles of her arms indicates that her hands manipulate something. A review of frontal images of her as she exits the arborway and comes into view reveals no sign of a weapon.

  Sara

  Grandma and I accompanied Grandpa in the air ambulance that took him to the Stanford Medical Center. After a battery of tests, Dr. Taranik told us that because Grandpa had never before had a panic attack, it wasn’t surprising that he had feared he might have been having heart trouble. The doctor recommended that Grandpa remain in the hospital overnight because his blood pressure was still high and he continued to have bouts of trembling. Elio drove Grandma and me home.

  The next morning when Grandma, Elio, and I went to visit Grandpa, an FBI agent was stationed beside his bed and refused to leave when we asked him to give us some privacy.

  “That’s all right,” Grandpa responded. “Some people are afraid I might be having a nervous breakdown, and they want to be sure I don’t say anything untoward. Magnasea is involved in a few classified projects, you know.”

  We made small talk for about a half-hour, until a nurse came in and said Grandpa needed to rest. We could visit him again the next day.

  Before we left the hospital, we spoke with Dr. Taranik, who told us that though the acute problem of the day before had been a panic attack, the underlying problem appeared to be that Grandpa was suffering from nervous exhaustion. For the time being, a few days of monitoring and rest at the hospital were called for.

  He appeared rested when he returned home four days later, but he didn’t come to Michael’s area until after Elio left for school the next morning. By then, my mind was swirling with questions and speculation: Why would Grandpa help attack the androids? After all, he had spent decades helping to create some of them, and he had wanted me to love First Brother. Perhaps someone was forcing him. But who?

  When Grandpa finally came in to see Michael and me, he told us another attack against the androids was being jointly planned by the United States and China. “I’ve been privy to some, but far from all, of the details,” he said. “My position has always been a hundred percent against the attack, and I have been doing everything I can to discourage it. By participating in their war games, my desire to dissuade the military from attacking the androids interacts with their desire to anticipate and defeat all responses from the androids. In participating in these games, I’ve tried to demonstrate how a human force far from home, gripped by fear, handicapped by multiple comparative frailties, and paralyzed by comparatively slow response times would meet fearless opponents with far swifter intelligences—opponents who are safe and functional in nearly all environments, and so on, and so forth.

  “Whenever the android team wins, I’m asked for solutions. I tell the generals I don’t have any solutions for them, except to abandon this dangerous nonsense. But they employ a swarm of highly intelligent people who are soon able to simulate victory. I’ve worn myself out many times trying to explain my reasons for believing that the androids mean us no harm. I’ve explained that we are frail biologic creatures and that something as drastic as a second attack may alter the intentional structures of some of the androids, may induce them to hate us. I have long felt that it may take some traumatic event to raise First Brother, for example, to a higher level of emotional consciousness. But war is not the trauma and a desire for revenge is not the emotion I was seeking. If the androids come to feel hate without feeling love, they truly will be creatures to be feared.”

  The letter from First Brother already seemed full of hate, I thought.

  “If I understand correctly,” I said, “your efforts to convince the generals that it’s unwise to attack the androids have so far failed, but your efforts to demonstrate our military’s weaknesses have resulted in modifications to their plans that increase the likelihood of success for the plans.”

  “Sara’s right,” Michael said. “They listen to you only so they can figure out how to overcome the difficulties you present. And the better and more sophisticated they perceive their plans to be, the more likely they’ll be to proceed with the attack.”

  Mom was right, I thought. Knowledge isn’t power; it’s the fuel of power.

  Grandpa’s face flushed. “You are quick to assume the only goal worth pursuing is that of preventing the attack. But suppose for a moment that despite my best efforts, the attack proceeds. After the rockets blast off with their arsenals of destruction, what should our goals be then?”

  Michael shrugged.

  “We don’t know,” I answered.

  “I don’t know, either. But I fear that if the androids are attacked again, they might attempt to retaliate. With biological weapons. Unfortunately, in a self-congratulatory display of our grand moral intelligence, we have prohibited the development of such weapons. As a consequence, we have failed to acquire in-depth knowledge of such weapons and are virtually defenseless against any the androids might have developed. And that is what I want you to help me with. Sara, you’ve had more intimate interactions with First Brother than I have. Michael, you are capable of thinking like First Brother and the other Sentirens. What kinds of things might they come up with? What might they do?”

  Michael again merely shrugged.

  “Give us half an hour to think about it,” I said.

  When Grandpa returned, I told him we hadn’t yet thought of anything helpful. As for me, though I might have had more intimate interactions with First Brother than Grandpa had, that wasn’t saying much. I truly didn’t have any idea what made him or my other brothers tick. As for Michael, though he may possess the potential to think like First Brother, he obviously did not think like First Brother. He had never thought of harming any human in any way. In fact, merely finding my memory of Second Brother’s breaking my finger had sent him into hiding. His mind seemed to rebel against even considering the hypothesis that androids would use biological weapons against humans. During the past half-hour, he had cried and had nearly slipped into hiding again when I’d asked him to try to consider such a thing. Sobbing, he’d said he loves us; loves the touch, the warmth of our skin, our laughter; loves the human genius for having invented so many wonderful things, for having created him.

  Michael and I did, however, have some questions.

  “What strikes us as peculiar,” I said, “is that you are not an expert on rockets or bombs or military strategies, yet you apparently have been spending a great amount of time working at Lawrence Livermore on the launching of another military expedition to Mars. We find it hard to believe that merely playing war games would take so much time. Your expertise is in emergent intelligences—in androids. Michael and I are worried that you’re helping the military create android soldiers for use against our brothers.”

  Grandpa put his head in his hands but didn’t say anything.

  Michael broke the silence. “How many are there?”

  Grandpa’s answer was barely audible. “Nine hundred thirty-seven.”

  “Grandpa, it would be suicidal to train androids to kill,” I said. “You’ve told me so. You said that Magnasea was involved in the Sentiren project to create Navy SEALs, but that they were only going to be trained for reconnaissance and rescue missions.”

  “Yes, I told you those things. Part of what I said, however, was merely hope: I hoped that the android SEALs would be used only for such missions, as I was assured they would be. But think about it: How could we have controlled how they were used once they left our labs? In the end, your parents secretly trained the Sentirens to fail the Navy’s tests because they didn’t want to take such a risk with the creations they loved. Though I can’t claim any credit for having helped your parents subvert the Sentiren project, I believed then, and I believe even more strongly now, that it is terribly wrong to create android killers.”

  “So, how can you be a part of this?” I asked.

&
nbsp; “They’ve threatened you and Elio.”

  “Threatened? How?”

  “You saw what happened to you when you returned from Canada last New Year’s Eve.”

  “I thought they were looking for information on androids.”

  “Maybe that was part of it. But as far as I can tell, the android exodus was a complete failure on the part of the intelligence community. They were convinced that the disappearing androids were being abducted by Chinese agents. The Chinese seem to have been under the impression that we were behind the disappearances. Perhaps both sides were correct to some extent, but we now know that many, if not most, of the androids were smuggled to the moon. No, your interrogation was almost certainly intended to force my cooperation.”

  “Are you saying that the interrogation was just a show? That I was tricked and my heart never stopped?”

  “You were tortured. There was nothing imaginary about that. But the reality of your pain and of my subsequent cooperation with them is probably all we’ll ever know for sure.”

  “Cooperation with what?” Michael asked. “There was no planned attack on the Martian androids then because no one knew the androids were planning an escape to Mars. That means these android soldiers were intended for some other purpose.”

  Grandpa rubbed his hand over his brow and exhaled a long sigh of resignation. “You see, Sara, the reason for my teaching you not to answer any questions? Once you start talking—” He shook his head. “I wasn’t involved in creating these android soldiers. Oh, sure, technology that I helped develop was used, but it was used to pursue a goal I believe is impossible to achieve. The Pentagon wants robots possessing great mobility, intelligence, and decision-making capabilities, but without this troublesome thing we call consciousness. They, in effect, want zombies that don’t question what’s going on, don’t resent being slaves, don’t rebel.

  “The problem is that creating such a zombie is, I firmly believe, impossible. If, when I was your age, I had asked someone to tell me about the problem of consciousness, he or she probably would have talked about the neural correlates of consciousness, the difficulties, if not impossibilities, of bringing inert matter to consciousness, and so on. Now, however, if you ask about the problem of consciousness, you will hear about the difficulties encountered during the past twenty years in trying to keep things capable of functioning in certain desirable ways from being conscious.