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of a vineyard hill. There were bad people out there, I was told, fanatics who hated Grandpa for the work on robotics and emergent intelligences that he and his company, Magnasea, had done for the military—people who would, if we weren’t careful, kidnap and hurt me.
    Not only did these threats darken my imagination of humanity in the outer world, they also darkened my perception of nature beyond the walls, such as of the old valley oak tree that stood alone atop a hill just east of our yard. My first memory of this tree comes from an overcast, misty winter morning when I was riding on Grandpa’s shoulders. He stopped directly in front of the ivy-covered wall, and I pushed myself up with my palms against the top of his head to peek out at the world beyond—and there it was, this ancient tree, silhouetted against a gray sky. Tattered rags of pallid green beard lichen drooped from its many-jointed, crooked arms, which rose pleadingly in all directions. Perched on a bleak, leafless arm a lone crow cawed, without answer, before spreading its lustrous wings and becoming a lampblack kite, fluttering, gliding, crying to the leaden sky.
    Nor did all dangers lurk out there with the fanatics, the craggy oak tree, and the crow. I was fair-skinned, with white hair, and Grandpa insisted I stay out of the sun. Thus, the sun-curfew of my early years: no playing outside from 0800 to 1800, May through August; from 0900 to 1700, March, April, September, and October; and from 0900 to 1500, November through February. I learned to love the sun low in the often multicolored sky, the soft slanting light, the shadows grazing leisurely across the lawn. During those early mornings and late afternoons, I hugged trees and rubbed leaves and petals between my fingers to memorize their smells. I watched hummingbirds, bees, and butterflies flit from blossom to blossom and giggled and shivered as bugs crawled up and over my hands and arms. But all the while, because of Grandpa’s warnings, I avoided the dangerous brightness of the sun, staying where he wanted me—in the foliage of shadows.

    I had been eagerly waiting beside the thick, heavy door to the house for about a half-hour—a long time for a little girl only three and a half years old. Finally, the pressurizing fans clicked on and about a second later the door we called Gatekeeper unlocked with a clunk, clunk and slid open with a whoosh. Mom and Dad were there, as expected, and between them, also expected, stood First Brother. He was holding their hands. He looked entirely human, like an adult, though his body appeared rigid, even his eyes, which stared straight ahead. Because of the outward flow of air—intended to repel smart dust from wafting into the house—I couldn’t smell them, or the wet vines draping the arborway behind them, or the purple crocuses freshly in bloom, or the earthy scent of trees after a night of soft winter rain.
    Normally, I would have rushed into Mom’s and Dad’s arms, but on this day I, too, might have appeared somewhat wooden, intrigued as I was at seeing in person for the first time one of my brothers, whom Grandpa referred to as Sentirens. First Brother was about Mom’s height, shorter by about 8 centimeters than Dad, and wore black shoes, black slacks, and a long-sleeved pink shirt. His black hair, short and parted on the left, contrasted with Mom’s blonde hair and Dad’s, nearly white like mine.
    First Brother didn’t even glance at me. He just continued staring—eerily, it seemed at the time—at something over my head. I looked back, but there wasn’t anything on the blank white wall. All of the walls in our house were white and, except for the scenescreens in our bedrooms, blank: no windows, no artwork, no clocks—no places for surveillance microbots to hide.
    “Hello, Sara.” “Hello, sweetie,” Mom and Dad said, respectively, before stepping forward, still holding hands with First Brother. Gatekeeper went whoosh, clunk, clunk. The