Guardian Angels and Other Monsters by Daniel H. Wilson

Author:Daniel H. Wilson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2018-03-06T05:00:00+00:00

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The old man grasped the cool, black handrail of the slidewalk with his right hand. He curled his left hand under his chin, pulling his woolen coat tight. Finally, he limped to the decelerator strip and stepped off. He had to pause and breathe slowly three times before he reached the house.

Inside the dim gonfab, he hung his coat on a transparent plastic hook. He wet his rough hands from a suspended water bag and placed cool palms over his weathered face.

Without opening his Eyes™, he said, “You may come out.”

Metal rings supporting a curtained partition screeched apart and the boy emerged into a shaft of yellow dome light. The ragged wound in his cosmetic chest carapace gaped obscenely. His dilated mechanical irises audibly spiraled down to the size of two pinpricks, and the muted light illuminated a few blond hairs clinging anemone-like to his scalded plastic scalp. He was clutching the photograph of the blond boy and crying and had been for some time, but there was no sign of this on his crudely sculpted face.

The old man saw the photograph.

“I am sorry,” he said, and embraced the boy. He felt an electrical actuator poking rudely through the child’s T-shirt, like a compound fracture.

“Please,” he whispered. “I will make things the way they were before.”

But the boy shook his head. He looked up into the old man’s watery blue Eyes™. The room was silent except for the whirring of a fan. Then, very deliberately, the boy slid the glasses from the old man’s face, leaving the Ears™.

The old man looked at the small, damaged machine with tired eyes full of love and sadness. When the thing spoke, the shocking hole opened in its cheek again and the old man heard the clear, piping voice of a long-dead little boy.

“I love you, Grandpa,” it said.

And these words were as true as sunlight.

With deft fingers, the boy-thing reached up and pressed a button at the base of its own knobbed metal spine. There was a winding-down noise as all the day’s realization and shame and understanding faded away into nothingness.

The boy blinked slowly and his hands settled down to his sides. He could not remember arriving, and he looked around in wonder. The gonfab was silent. The boy saw that he was holding a photograph of himself. And then the boy noticed the old man.

“Grandpa?” asked the boy, very concerned. “Have you been crying?”

The old man did not answer. Instead, he closed his eyes and turned away.

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