The Angels

[Fiction]

by Catherine Kyle

The idea had been beautiful in its simplicity: Make Guardian Angels literal by building androids for children. Train the Angels to recognize the pitch and tenor of the children’s voices, to notice the slightest changes in tension or elation. Equip them with motion sensors to monitor the children’s location and the ability to measure the space between their bodies and dangerous objects—still-hot stovetops, second-story windows, abandoned Legos poised upright on the carpet, shattered green glass in alleys. Embed the Angels with GPS and cameras to deter kidnappers. Program the Angels to never leave the children’s side. The first fleet of them was glorious—silver and elegant, facial features smoothed, like cloth mannequins made titanium. Their metal feet clanked softly behind their wards, gray hands folded politely, metal wings wired and fluttering.

What no one had anticipated at the time of their invention was that the Angels refused to leave the children’s sides, even as they grew up and yearned for more independence. When they were first activated, the Angels had been programmed to perform a retina scan on the child to whom they were assigned, and even when the inventors hit their factory reset buttons, the Angels were bonded to their children alone. They could not be reused.

Furthermore, they would not leave their assigned humans. Once, the inventors tried bundling a dozen of them in a steel crate and dropping it into the ocean. The next day, somehow, the Angels were back—standing over their children, hands folded, posture serene. Patiently waiting to protect.

Since there could be no getting rid of them, but since the pros outweighed the cons—kidnappings and household accidents had been almost eliminated following the Angels’ roll-out—the inventors continued to assign them to children, meanwhile upgrading the older models to suit the tastes of their now-adolescent wards. Angels began popping up around town with screens in their sternums. Teenagers scrolled through articles, checked sports scores, and read menus using touchpads over what would have been the Angels’ hearts. Handheld video game controllers emerged so that commuters riding buses and subways could amuse themselves while sailing through the slushing rain to school or work. Their eyes locked on the Angels’ sternums.

Later, the Angels replaced cell phones. They came equipped with search engines and lilting voices, able to answer questions at a moment’s notice. Able to download music and make playlists. Cell phones eventually fell out of use, something quaint to be remembered in museums. No one could imagine the hassle of having to keep track of something so small yet so important. Not like the Angels, who silently hovered beside them at all times.

And still, the Angels protected their children, even as those children grew up, balded, plucked their eyebrows, married, had children of their own. Rates of violence spiraled downward like an airplane in a nosedive. Crime was all but wiped out. The Angels offered counsel when sensing elevated stress. They offered comfort, resources, and support.

We lived this way for many years. Three generations of humans brought up with unfailing guardians. What the inventors hadn’t expected or planned for, though, was the eventual breakdown of the first models. They began fritzing, glitching, becoming unable to process simple commands. Make new playlist. Order takeout. Call the pharmacy. Call Mom. The Angels’ wings sparked little fireworks of purple and crimson and aquamarine. I’m sorry, they’d say. I cannot do that. Then hang their heads low, hands falling to their sides. Silver feet turned inward.

Those with the means had them repaired. Yet to many, the fixes were inaccessible financially, so they trudged on with broken-down Angels. The Angels would still do their best—grabbing their humans by the sleeves when they attempted to jaywalk, opening small air vents and issuing thin jets of cold air across the surfaces of beverages deemed too hot—but slowly, violence began to reemerge as the Angels grew older and wearier.

Metal feathers fell out, exposing finger-like wires in red and green and blue. Sometimes the casing fell off of their limbs, exposing more of the same. The Angels began to look more like the Terminator after his fake skin melted off. This became a taunt commonly heard on playgrounds, in fact: Your grandma’s Angel looks like the Terminator. That’s because you’re poor. Fistfights broke out, of course, with the newer Angels more successfully defending their wards, for now, when an Angel was assigned at birth, it could be upgraded with faster and more responsive tech.

As for me, my Angel has been fading for a while now. The screen on her chest has been flickering green and fuchsia. I know these signs from a documentary we watched long ago in school about cell phones. I know my Angel is dying.

So I take her to the seashore, or what’s left of it. Refuse is strewn on its sand. Shells rest abutted against tires and windshield wipers. Barnacles cling to car doors. Seaweed drapes Coke cans and beer bottles, making them look almost natural, almost like part of the landscape. Still, the ocean sways cerulean in the distance. Its foam waves crash against rock and debris. My Angel always liked it here, or so it seemed to me. As she began glitching with age, she’d sometimes spontaneously play an old recording of “By the Beautiful Sea” from 1914. It had record skips and everything.

I held my Angel’s hand. I said, Fly to Paris. We’d always talked of going there. Though I never had the money, I wish I’d been able to take her. Sometimes, when she thought I was sleeping at night, I’d see her stand near my full-length mirror, pulling up pictures of France on her sternum screen. Folding her hands and just staring. I didn’t think Angels had desires of their own, but seeing that, I had to wonder.

The Angels were programmed to never leave their children’s sides, but I’d been testing this glitch with my model. Fly to the rooftop, I’d say, or, Fly to the store and get me a pear. A small spark would frizzle out of her temple, which she’d cock to the side. But then, she would go. We’d been practicing this. She’d fly farther and farther.

Fly to Paris, I said. And let go of her hand. Her wired wings shivered, then stirred and began flapping. She lifted herself off the ground. Her face was still expressionless—what else could it be?—but I swear I could feel her excitement. A few wires were dangling from her ankles as she soared thirty feet in the air, then forty, then fifty. With one final glance at me, she paused for just a moment, then sailed off toward the setting sun. The bulb of its orange shone scattered on the water, and the Angel was a glint in its welcoming maw. A portal, it looked like. A door.

I knew she’d never make it. Not like that, I thought. Not without those fancy upgrades like the extended battery. But I hoped it for her. I hoped it anyway. I hoped she would make it to France. So there among the smashed pots and torn quilts and seaweed, I said my first prayer for my Angel.

May she travel well. May her wings be strong. May they carry her to her destination.

Catherine Kyle is the author of Shelter in Place (Spuyten Duyvil, 2019), which received an honorable mention for the Idaho Book of the Year Award, and other poetry collections. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Mid-American Review, Bombay Gin, New South, and other journals, and has been honored by the Idaho Commission on the Arts, the Alexa Rose Foundation, and other organizations. She was the winner of the 2019-2020 COG Poetry Award and a finalist for the 2021 Mississippi Review Prize. She works as an assistant professor at the College of Western Idaho, where she teaches creative writing and literature.