“I don’t want to.”
Nan pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and sat down. She tousled Lily’s dark curls, pushed one wayward spiral back behind the little girl’s ear. “I know, dear. But you have to go outside. Just for a while, okay? Then you can come back in.”
“Can I have some more?” She indicated the half-empty (half-full?) glass before her, even though she knew the answer already. She could always have more. She could not, however, persuade Nan to let her stay inside today. Or any day.
“Of course, dear. Let’s go.” Nan’s face was as warm and kind as a first-generation projection could muster. If Lily squinted her eyes just enough, she could see the flicker. If she reached out far enough with her mind, she could feel the cool surface of the silver projector sphere at the center of Nan’s being. Sometimes, she resented being ordered outside for this daily ritual by a loose collection of photons revolving around that marble-sized machine.
Lily slid down out of her chair, walked toward the door, her hand on the doorknob before she felt Nan’s motherly touch, draping her coat around her shoulders. She turned the knob and went outside for her daily ration of reality, all-too-aware that her every move was being recorded by a veritable universe of machines.
A typical summer day, cold wind blowing over dead tree limbs, weak sunlight falling on her face, not warming but simply illuminating. That clatter of sound from above always chilled her to the bone even more so than the wind or the air or the growing realization of her isolation. She walked the avenue alone…Well, not entirely alone. Nan walked behind her, watching. She was always being watched. Even the suffocating trees above seemed to watch her with their interwoven cemetery embrace.
Lily sat down on the bench at the end of the lane, as she always did. Nan stopped several hundred paces behind her, as she always did. The bench was at the center of what had once been a beautifully-landscaped courtyard, before the Troubles, before the Discovery, before the Birth. Now, it was a haphazard collection of brown and dead shrubbery, leaves blowing in the wind, collecting at the foot of the wrought-iron fence that surrounded the courtyard and faced the street.
She sat, a confused and moody child with her chin resting contemplatively on her fists, elbows resting on upper thighs. The wind seemed to be the only presence interested in playing with her today, fluttering her hair into a tangled mess that Nan would painfully brush out tonight before bedtime.
They walked by on the street outside the gate as they always did, the people of the city, the last city, walking and watching and simply surviving in the winter days that summer had become in the last decades. They resented her, and she could feel it in their gazes, especially the empty gazes of the mothers, holding the small hands of their toddler sons as they passed. Sometimes the little boys would smile and wave at her. Some of the mothers yanked their children along then, past the little girl on the other side of the fence, past that deceptive metal barrier and the deadly, invisible energy shield that accompanied it. She noted the looks of confusion on the faces of the little boys, and was sad to see them go.
A rumble from the west and a transport lifted off above the horizon with fiery liquid speed, propelled out of the atmosphere from the trebuchet built into the other side of the planet. Lily knew that all across the city, people were looking at that dark sliver, wondering when it would be their turn to join the jihad. Most would die before it was time. Most were simply raising their sons to be good warriors. Most would look at the little girl on the other side of the iron fence with hatred, for being the cause of all of this. For being the last little girl ever born to the human race.
She turned away from the transport, or the contrail thereof, for that was all that was left of it now. Two tiny tears slid down her cheeks. She hated being outdoors almost as much as she loved chocolate milk.
They walked by then, the first Mommy and Son of the day, the mother’s face turned down to the sidewalk. She was holding a shopping bag with one hand, filled with that day’s allotment of nutrition, and with the other, she held the hand of a little boy, maybe five or six, wearing a knit cap that covered his ears against the biting cold of summertime. The woman walked faster as she felt Lily’s gaze, and the little boy tried hard to keep pace. Unlike most of the mothers, who would stare in at Lily with a sharp look of resentment and fury, this woman just looked down with a mixture of grief and defeat.
Lily stood then, uncertain in her movements, outstretched her right hand in a wave. The little boy smiled widely and waved back with his free arm. They were already almost out of the limited line of sight into the city that the break in the shrub periphery of the fence would permit. She ran to the fence, grasping the bars, just out of reach of the energy field that would instantly kill any other human. He was far away now and getting farther away, but the little boy still looked back, still smiled. He waved one last time before his dragging mother led him around the corner and out of Lily’s life.
Her face pressed between two of the cool metal bars, her hands each grasping the fence, Lily closed her eyes, let the wind dry the tear-tracks from her face. She inhaled deeply, the inhalation barely masking the sob that snuck out of nowhere as they so often do in the upset child. She spoke, because she knew that Nan was there. She knew that Nan would be there until it was time for Lily to leave this planet.
“Can we go inside now, Nan?”
“Yes, dear.”
“Can I have some more chocolate milk?”
“Of course, dear. You may always have more chocolate milk.”
Lily released the bars from her grasp, turned to find Nan standing at her side, hand already outstretched. She reached up, tried to find comfort in that grasp, which felt enough like her own flesh, but still maintained an alien coolness. It had been explained to Lily, how the angels were not exactly like her, or even the people who walked by the compound and stared at her through the break in the shrubbery. The angels were special because they were made of light, not blood and bones and other nasty naughty things. The angels would always be there to look after Lily, long after all of the others had died.
She squeezed Nan’s hand, and Nan looked down at the little girl with a quiet smile. Lily knew that no matter how hard she squeezed that artificial hand, she would never be able to break it, burst it, invade it in the way that she would have been able to destroy a true hand made of flesh. The trillions of tiny machines that now swam through the air were much stronger than Lily could ever hope to be, and no matter how hard she squeezed, they would maintain the shape that the little silver ball told them to hold.
Nan could sense the question on the tip of Lily’s tongue, and she slowed her pace, eventually stopping completely and bending down on one knee in front of the child. Lily studied the ground intently, and Nan levered her head into an upright position by placing one finger under her chin. The girl’s cold eyes were tear-wet. Nan wiped one of the escapees from Lily’s cheek.
“What is it, little flower?”
She exhaled, breath stippled with those involuntary sobs. “They all hate me.”
The projection before her performed a very good rendition of sorrow, not that Lily would have recognized the difference. Nan leaned forward and embraced her. “No, little one. They don’t hate you.”
“They do. I killed their babies.”
Nan released Lily from her embrace then, her face suddenly sober and bereft of an attempt at empathy. Lily could almost see the communication between the angel and whatever controlled her, the faint flicker of thought between the light sculpture and the entity at the center of the planet. The wind seemed to pick up then, swirls of dead leaves skittering about the paved avenue that led to the main complex, skeletons scratching across brick and mortar.