The Gift of the Angel

I step out of the doorway of my building onto the morning street under the grey ash-toned sky.

A woman is jogging down the sidewalk, her feet leaving footprints in the ash film which covers everything. A man who I see so often on my street (yet whose name I do not know) waves to me and enters a darkened car. Then he silently goes on his phone, while sitting in the driver’s seat. A couple walks by walking a brown dog. A nanny pushes a green stroller with a blonde child down the street. The number 7 bus comes by and lets off an older woman carrying two grocery bags. Then another number 7 goes the other way, not stopping at its stop this time.

A man who sleeps on the sidewalk wakes, gets up, collects his blanket and waves to me as he trundles off to his daily duties.

“Good morning,” he says to me.

The people here are fine.

Life recreates itself in its daily melody.

Everyone has a role to play in this ever-changing world.

I step down the stained marble landing to the street. The street, the sidewalk, buildings, houses, cars and benches and all else are covered in a thin film of ash. It is everywhere. You can see footprints on sidewalks where people and dogs have walked by, and on the streets, car skid marks. The ash keeps drifting down from the sky in a gentle rhythm. Sometimes we sweep it up, and sometimes we don’t.

I take a few steps down the street and look up. Sometimes the sky is a grey haze, a sepia haze, sometimes umber, even blue. It can remind me of sketches by the artist Vincent van Gogh. But today the sky has a green tint. It makes me smile, because green is my favorite color, so vibrant and full of life. And green is the brother of blue, which I know is the color of the sky, but I can’t remember the last time I saw the blue sky.

I sit down on a bench to light a cigarette and am jolted. I remember something. I had a beautiful dream last night. I usually do not remember dreams, but I remember this one. I was lying in a park under the bright sun reading a book. The sky was a clear cobalt blue, and I was under a tree, branches and leaves above me, the muted silver bark edged in black, the moss green blobs of leaves swaying in the breeze like in a Paul Cezanne painting. A fly landed on my book, then it flew off, then a butterfly alit in its place. But I did not brush it off and it became part of the story.

In my dream, I was reading about a girl chasing butterflies in a field outside a city while her mother read a book nearby while sitting on a picnic blanket. Her mother wore a long dress and a black hat with long black hair. The girl picked a butterfly off a bush and held it admiringly in her hand. At that moment I also picked the butterfly off my book and it gently allowed me to hold it. Then both butterflies flew off and I woke up. The dream was over.

I think about this as I smoke on the bench. I close my eyes to try to remember more, then I realize there was a crispness in the scene that defied the hazy, electric logic that envelops dreams. Maybe it was not a dream, I think. It felt too lucid. Maybe it was a memory.

I hear a flapping sound above me and look to see one of our city’s angels flying overhead. It alights onto a nearby castle turret. Then the angel sighs, and rests. I am too far away to see if it is a man angel or a woman angel.

No one knows where the angels came from. Or if they actually came from anywhere. They have just always been here. They are like birds to us, although birds have largely disappeared because the bad air is toxic for them.

Some of the angels are sickly and seem tired. We find them panting on the ground sometimes. But that angel is healthy.

People start going into the subway to go to work. The city comes alive despite its shroud. The man sitting silently in his car with his phone packs up and drives away, laughing. I get up and head to the metro to go to work myself.

The car is packed with people, but no one says a word. The carriage sways and rumbles. Everyone is looking straight ahead or into their phones. It is amazing. Everyone is the center of the world. Energy radiates from them. I can feel its strength, but it is muted. If you don’t look, you might miss it.

The train empties until I am the last one left. I get out at Zooliualtrope, the last station on the edge of town. The station is small and made of concrete, like most of them, but it is easy to find your way in and out.

I walk a block or two past run-down tenements then turn into an open, burnt field. A few stumps of burnt trees, shapeless husks, really, dot the field but there is really nothing there. I am planting seedlings today with many others. This has been the only work I could find since The Shift occurred.

The Shift is the nomenclature we use to describe when everything changed. The Great Primordial Volcano, whose still smoking red clay crater can be seen in the Southwest distance, exploded some time ago, creating a massive cloud which spread across the land and descended in a toxic blanket that choked the forests and the agriculture to death, and covered the cities in its grip. Crowds moved as refugees into the cities, food became short, mass vandalism broke out, and vigilante groups formed. Then martial law was declared, the Overseers moved in, universities and libraries were closed, books were banned, and the Internet became the internet. They said they needed to do this for our security, that it was in our best interests, and that everyone had to work, which they would assign to us. The government used the environmental crisis as an excuse to curtail freedom and take people's power away.

Planting seedlings is the only work I can find, but I don’t mind as I like the exercise and can look up and fantasize a blue sky.

I get in line with the others and check in with security. Someone pulls on my jacket from behind.

“Hey, Gabriel, good morning.”

It’s Lily, a girl who lives here in town. I have seen her here before. Sometimes we chat.

“Hi, Lily, good morning to you too.”

Lily is a nice girl. I like her. She holds eye contact when she speaks with you and seems genuinely interested in what you say. Which is nice because so many people are evasive or dismissive. I don’t know much about her, but it sounds like she lives alone. She once mentioned that her mom lives in town but never talks about her dad. The only things we talk about are shopping, our families, and the crummy videos we can watch on the approved internet channel. She is really nice, but I am not sure how to talk to her, so I usually let her lead the conversation.

We pick up our tools and two crates of seedlings and trudge off into the muck.

After a minute Lily speaks up.

“Gabriel, what did you do last night?”

“Hmm. I don’t remember, so it must not have been worth remembering. What about you?”

“Oh, playing cards. Solitaire, stuff like that.”

We keep walking for a minute in silence.

“Gabriel, can I ask you a question?"

“Sure.”

“It’s a little weird,” she says.

“OK. Ask me anything. Just don’t ask me about girls,” I say, and we both chuckle.

“Do you remember your dreams?”

“Do I remember my dreams? Sometimes, yeah, I remember my dreams. Sure.”

“I remember my dreams sometimes too,” she says.

We have reached our area in the field. We have been told to plant the seedlings in star patterns. No one knows why. Today, she and I are planting the top of a star. We take sticks and mark out our triangular plot before we plant our seedlings.

“Do you think that dreams are something our minds make up, from our imagination, or are something that really happened that we are remembering?” Lily asks.

She ties a string to a stake at the top point of our star.

“I’m not sure. But most people think your mind is making things up. That’s what we learned in high school.”

“Right,” she says. “Like your mind is compensating for a deficit.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” she says, wiping her brow, “if, for example, you’re thirsty, you might dream of drinking a big glass of water. Or dream of the ocean or a big lake. I know that’s kind of simple, but, for example.”

“So, what does it mean that last night I dreamed of reading a book in the park on a sunny day?” I ask.

“It doesn’t mean anything, it’s just the way your mind works.”

Lily pauses, stands up and looks at me. We finished marking the plot. I go to grab a handful of seedlings then come back and give a few to her. Lily takes off her black framed glasses.

“Is that for real? Did you really have a dream like that last night?” she asks.

“Yeah. I did,” I say. “I could really feel it,” I continue, leaning down to dig a hole for a seedling, “and a butterfly landed on my book, which was...awesome.”

“That’s bizarre,” she says.

“Why?”

“Because last night I dreamed I was reading a book too. On an island. There were a lot of green trees with fruit. Then a tiger came out and sat next to me.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

I put my seedling into my hole and mush dirt around it.

“It might have just been my mind, or maybe it was a memory. But it could also be a premonition. Like fortune telling, you know,” she says. “A vision of the future.”

“Really?” I say, stopping and standing to look at her.

“Why not?” Lily says, standing up and looking at me.

She smiles, then puts her glasses back on.

Later that night I am in my kitchen making dinner, bean soup and toast and an apple which I had managed to find in the market, when my phone beeps. Lily had texted me.

I am a little surprised because I just saw her. We came back from the fields together and took the subway because we live in the same neighborhood, although I am not exactly sure where she lives. What can she want?

“Gabriel, are you there? It’s Lily.”

So, I text back.

“I’m here. What do you want?”

“Can you come to my place? Please? It’s an emergency.”

“What is it?”

“JUST COME.”

“OK. What’s your address?”

“117 St. Augustine Way.”

“OK. I’ll be there in a minute.”

I am at her door in a few minutes and she lets me in.

She puts her finger to her mouth to shush me. We are in her dimly lit hallway. Her jacket hangs on a coat hook.

“What is it?” I ask quietly.

“There’s an angel in my bathroom,” Lily whispers.

My eyes grow wide and I step back. Then she gestures and leads me down the hallway to her bathroom with quiet steps. Then she opens the door.

An angel is sitting on the toilet in her bathroom. It is a man angel. His feathers are grey and splattered with mud. He has long brown hair and is sleeping. Her bathroom is small, with a sink, a small shower and toilet, so the angel takes up most of the room.

Above the angel, the bathroom window is open.

“What do we do?” she says quietly.

“I don’t know,” I say.

I decide to lean forward, place my hand on the angel’s wing, and shake it.

The angel stirs and opens its eyes, yellow, with black pupils. Lily and I step back.

He looks at both of us, moving his eyes from me to Lily then back again. Then he moves to sit up straight on the toilet.

“Water. I drink water,” the angel says, in a quiet, raspy voice, which though gritty has an inner strength. The angel is formidable and impressive, even though he seems tired. Lily and I are spooked.

“Would you like some water?” Lily manages to say.

“Please. Yes. Drink water.”

“OK. Let’s go to the kitchen. Can you walk to the kitchen?” Lily says, although she trembles. I look at her huge eyes as she says this.

“Yes, but can help me,” the angel nods for us to come forward.

We support the angel under his wings, and he gets off the toilet and gingerly steps out of the bathroom with us. He is carrying a book under his right wing. Lily and I both see it.

We walk to the kitchen and set the angel in a chair by the small wooden table. Lily goes to her stove where a pot of tea is on. She pours a cup and brings it to the angel.

The angel takes the cup of tea in his wings and brings it to his mouth. He grimaces and spits the tea on the floor, then throws the cup to the wall.

“Water. I can only drink water."

Lily is frightened but goes to the sink and fills a green glass with water then gives it to the angel.

The angel drinks the water slowly, then looks around the room, then back at us. We are petrified, yet we stay calm. He places the glass on the table.

“Is now daytime or nighttime?" asks the angel.

“It is nighttime,” Lily says.

The angel reaches under his wing and shows us the book he is carrying, with a brown cover. Then the angel puts the book on the table.

“You can read this book,” the angel says.

Lily carefully picks up the book and looks at its cover.

“The Gift of the Angel,” she reads out loud.

Thank you very much,” Lily says and looks at the angel.

The angel nods to Lily with a slight smile. Lily puts the book back on the table.

I am astonished and do not know how to react. I just stand there like a big dummy. So, we need to read this book?

“I need to fly,” the angel says. “Help me go to the window in the bathroom.”

We grasp the angel under his wings and slowly walk him into the bathroom. The angel climbs up onto the toilet and tries to crawl out the window. We help by pushing him from behind. The angel falls out the window, and Lily and I jump to look out after him. He flaps his wings, not very well, but manages to gain altitude, and disappears into the night.

Lily and I return to the kitchen and sit at the table. We look at the book.

We are shocked. Lily is pale as a sheet.

I don’t know what to say. There is an awkward bulge between us, then it grows and envelops us in a bubble.

We are together, we are the same, I realize.

“What should we do?” she says, slumped in her chair. “Books are not allowed. I can’t remember the last time I read a book.”

“Except in your dreams.”

She does not react. Then I have an idea. It is bold, but it could bring us closer.

"Let's look at the book,” I say.

“OK,” she says after a moment, looking at it on the table. Then she asks “Now?”

“Sure.”

Lily looks up from the table to me. We stare at each other. For the first time I notice her blue eyes.

“Why not?”

Lily hesitates, then picks up the book and pulls a chair beside me and sits. She holds the book up so we can see it together. We are touching. She flips through to the first page. We look at the book together.

The book is short. It has few pages.

There are drawings in the book. We look at the drawings together. One shows an angel sitting in a room with a woman lying in a bed and another woman sitting in a chair. The woman in the bed is older and the woman sitting is younger. There is a big window on the back wall. Another drawing has an angel flying through clouds in a clear blue sky. A third shows an angel digging with a shovel in a field on a sunny day.

Lily looks at me.

“The story has an angel in it,” I say.

“We should read it,” I continue.

“Now?”

“Sure, why not?”

“I’m too tired.”

“Then we can read it another time.”

“Sure.”

“Why don’t we read it outside?” I ask.

“Like in your dream?” Lily says, with big eyes.

“Sure. Like in your dream too. You said you had a dream where you were reading a book outside also.”

“Well, yeah, I was on an island, so it must have been outside, even though I...don’t remember a sky very well, or anything like that.”

“We should read it outside. There might be a connection."

“A connection? What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. But we could find out.”

Lily puts the book down and rubs her eyes.

“I’m tired,” she says. “I need to go to bed.”

“OK,” I’m going.”

“What should we do?”

“About what?”

“About the book,” Lily says, gesturing to The Gift of the Angel on the table.

“Bring it to work tomorrow,” I say. “We can read it outside.”

“OK...but we need to be careful.”

“We will.”

“Books are illegal. A friend of my mom was caught with a book and she disappeared. No one knows what happened to her. Not even her own daughter. They told her not to talk about it.”

“We will be careful. No one will see us out in the field.”

Without a word Lily walks me to the door and lets me out. Our hands brush as I pass by her.

“See you tomorrow,” I say.

“See you tomorrow.”

The next morning, I wake up, wash, have breakfast and go out. The sky is ashen as always and the sidewalk is littered with footprints. The guy who sleeps on the street is collecting his things. He sees me and waves. “Good morning to you, my friend."

I take the metro to the worksite and Lily is already there. We get in line for our assignment.

When we get to the front of the line, the chief Overseer for the morning speaks to us. Clad in black glasses and an oxygen mask, he says "We have a special task for you two. We want you to start a star near an old riverbed. Take this compass and walk Northeast for an hour. You will see a dried up riverbed just before the hills. Make the star on this side or the riverbed with the point of the star pointing across to the hills. Here are some provisions. Be back by 6. Got it?”

We look in a backpack he has given us. It has bottles of water and canteens of porridge.

“Got it.”

We begin to walk. I’m grateful for this assignment. We will be away from the others, and unseen, can read the book that the angel gave us.

After fifteen minutes or so a light rain begins to fall. This is good because the rain can clear the dirty air.

After some time, we are upon the riverbed. It is about thirty feet across.

“Why do they want us to be way out here?” gripes Lily.

“Who knows,” I say. “But no one will be watching us. So, we can flake out and read the book. Did you bring it?”

“Of course.”

We set down our pack and begin to work. First, we pull up dried reeds and a few burnt branches to set the poles for the star. Then with some string we set the parameters. The air is chilly and there is a slight rain, but we keep moving and stay warm. Being away from the other workers, I feel relaxed and even enjoy myself. I like the exercise. Soon we are planting seedlings in the soil, which is easy to dig into because, being near the riverbed, it is sandy. After an hour or so, one star arm is almost completely planted.

“Let’s take a break,” Lily says.

“Good idea,” I say. “Let’s read the book.”

We sit next to each other, and Lily opens the pack, takes out a water bottle and opens it.

“Hey. This is tea, not water.”

“Really?” I ask. “Check the others.”

She digs out another bottle and opens it. “One tea and one water,” she says, and drinks some of the tea and passes me the bottle. It’s getting colder, so we sit together; Lily spreads her shawl over both our shoulders and pulls out the book.

Lily stops reading and looks up, then turns her head and looks around. She is pretty with raindrops on her glasses, water dripping off her nose, and down her cheeks. But something is weird. Something is off. I look up. The rain has stopped.

We stand up. It is not raining. I mean, it is not raining on us, but we can see the rain falling about twenty feet from us. We are standing in a circle of no rain.

“What the...”

Then something else happens. The colors are changing. The burnt umber of the ground in the detritus of branches and reeds begin changing color. It becomes a deep green and then a lighter green.

We look up and Lily screams.

A blue circle is over us. We can see the sky, which we cannot remember the last time we had seen it. The sky has opened into a circle over us.

“What’s happening?” Lily says.

We are standing in a circle of open blue sky while it is dark around us.

Then I see something. Something is moving in the riverbed.

“What is that?”

Something is moving up and down, flapping on the ground. We walk back together into the dirty air and rain towards it.

We flinch and hug each other when we get to the riverbed. We see a man angel lying on the ground on his side, his left wing flapping listlessly. We move closer. His eyes open and he sees us.

“Please help me.”

“Water and something to eat, please, I am very weak.”

I wordlessly run back to get our backpack and return. Lily is kneeling by the angel, massaging its left wing. I give her the backpack, and she takes the water bottle out and squirts water into the angel’s open mouth.

“Ahhhh...” the angel breathes.

We help the angel sit up and Lily feeds him porridge with a wooden spoon. Slowly, the angel comes to. Then the angel stands up.

“Thank you. Thank you so much. Please, get on my back.”

The angel crouches down onto all fours.

“Hop on. I want to show you something. Do not be afraid.”

“You want us to climb on your back?” I ask.

“Yes, hop onto my back, both of you. I want to show you something. You will not be harmed, I promise.”

“We need you,” the angel continues.

I get on the angel and hold onto his feathers, and Lily gets on behind me, her arms around my waist.

We take off and lift into the air. Soon we are high in the toxic clouds going somewhere. The air is bad so we hold our breath. Soon we are descending, and below I see greenery which shocks me. Then we slow down, and I can see a green forest ahead. The angel gently lands, and we are on the ground.

Lily and I are in shock. We look around and see we are on the edge of a forest, surrounded by green and a clear sky enveloped in blue. The air is clear, and we inhale it with deep joy.

“You can get off,” says the angel.

We climb off and the angel stands up straight.

We see other angels. Some of them are walking, some sitting and some just standing there.

“Please. Come,” says the angel.

The angel walks off into the forest and we follow it.

“Where are we?” says Lily.

“We must be in The Land of Angels,” I say.

We hug each other in fright and follow the angel up a pathway into the forest. We see an angel lying on the ground wrapped in a blanket. He gets up and begins to collect his blanket. “Welcome, you are welcome,” he says, gesturing with his wing.

Soon we come to a clearing. There is a dilapidated two-story building with angels milling about, some sitting on benches. It is quiet. There is a sign over the front door on a landing.

The sign reads, “Angel Library.”

The angel walks up the steps, and, worried yet not fearful, we follow him into the library.

Even though libraries have been banned, I remember them vaguely from my youth in the time before the Big Shift. All different types of books, free to read: stacks of books and angels doing what we people usually do in libraries. There is a counter and we walk up to it.

A female angel comes out from behind the stacks. She has dyed pink hair, pink lipstick, brown penciled eyebrows, blue eye shadow, pink blush and a nice figure. This is mind-boggling. Lily stares at her.

The two angels start speaking, at least I think they are speaking, but I do not recognize any of their sounds. They sound like clicks, but they are looking at each other as they make the sounds. It must be some sort of click-language.

“Click-click-clackety-clack. Click click click.”

“Clickety-clackety clack. Click-clickety-click. Clack.”

“Click-clack. Clackety-clickety. Click click click. Clack.”

The female angel nods to us, turns back into the stacks, and then returns with an armful of books. She places them on the counter face up towards us, one by one.

“Please look at these books,” says the male angel.

We look at the books.

Treasure Island

The Tale of Genji

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Infinite Jest

Green Eggs and Ham

Nervous Conditions

Wuthering Heights

Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-tung

Winnie the Pooh

1984

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

1Q84

The Prophet

The female angel looks up at us.

“OK,” says Lily, blinking in disbelief.

The female angel hands the male angel a canvas bag.

“Take these books. We want you to distribute them to people in the city. It must be done,” says the male angel.

He puts the books in the canvas bag then hands me the bag. I take it.

“I will take you back to where I found you.”

“You’re welcome,” says the female angel, nodding her head to us.

We walk outside and the angel that was lying on the ground waves to us. We mount the angel and a few minutes later we are back in the field.

Dumbfoundedly, we finish planting the star that was our work for the day.

The next day I go to distribute the books, which is very easy for me to do as I have two days off. But as I leave my apartment, I wonder. Who or what are the angels? Where did they come from? Why do they want us to read books? Do books have a special power?

I’m nervous that I may have gotten into something over my head. What if I get caught? But my dream of reading the book in the park, with the sunlight, the trees and the butterfly was, I don’t know, was delicious. It felt so good I could cry. Why can’t we do that every day? I’m tired of living in a crummy world. Lily is tired too. Besides, the angel said we needed to do this.

I see the homeless guy across the street and give him Treasure Island.

At first, he is surprised, and, eyes wide, refuses to take it.

“Are you sure?” he asks. “I don’t want any trouble.”

“The angels say it’s OK.”

“Really? They do?”

“Yes. They do.”

“Well, OK. I remember reading but it was a long, long time ago. I remember enjoying reading very much.”

“Enjoy,” I say.

I decide to walk through town giving the books away. Some people gladly accept them after looking around nervously. A few say they are not interested. A  guy in a suit and tie says it’s illegal. An old woman looks up at me from her cane and stares at me.

“You’re crazy,” she says.

I head downtown towards the main square in front of the Overseers Head Quarters. I see the number 7 bus driver taking a break next to his parked bus and give him a choice of books. He takes Wuthering Heights and thanks me. We laugh together.

I give away all my books but decide to keep Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? to read. It sounds interesting.

I find a park bench and sit down as I am bushed. I see a few people reading books. So, I think Lily must have gotten to them, or maybe there are other angels involved in distributing the books? This is curious and I can’t figure it out. I look up and see two angels sitting on the top of a building, which they often do, just keeping still. I’m tired and decide to take a snooze.

After an hour of deep snoozing, I wake up. I yawn, then really come to when I notice everything is different. The square even smells different. I notice many people reading in the square. At first, I cannot pinpoint what is different, but then I look up.

The sky is blue.

I sit up alarmed. The sepia toxic air is gone and all I can see is the sky. Other people in the square notice this and look up and marvel that, a crowd has formed, and they all have books in their hands. A boy is dancing while looking up to the blue. The world is beautiful! People are reading books in the sunlight enjoying themselves! A woman is taking pictures of the sky with her phone. What is happening? How did this happen? Has our world been healed? And how has it been healed?

A minute later I hear a screeching sound and turn to look. Square brown trucks have rushed around the corner and stopped at the square. Doors open and Overseers in brown uniforms and helmets with truncheons jump out and run at the crowd. The people are too shocked to react. The Overseers rush the crowd like crazed samurai in their final battle. Soon, the Overseers are upon the people, beating them mercilessly. They hit them in the head with their truncheons and stomp on them with black boots as they fall. Then they take away the books from the people lying on the ground, who are moaning and crying. They attack the number 7 bus driver and beat him to a bloody, throbbing, pulpy mess. They take away his Wuthering Heights and incinerate it with a blow torch. More trucks pull up, I come to my senses and run the other way, I run through an alley. I hide in a dumpster for some time; I don’t know how long. Soon the sounds die down and the air is dirty again. It is night and in the dark I scatter like an insect down dark alleyways and go back to my apartment, slamming the door shut. I am trembling. I drink some water. I sit. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is still in my hands. What power do these books have?

My doorbell buzzes. I am petrified that they have found me. The doorbell buzzes again. They will beat me to death. I turn off all the lights and push a dresser to block the front door. I go into the bathroom and shut the door quietly. I drink more water. My doorbell buzzes again. Then my phone beeps. I look at the message. It is Lily.

“Gabriel. Are you in there?”

“Yes. Is that you Lily?”

“Open up. Come outside.”

“Are you serious?”

“Something's happening.”

I open the door and go out to the landing with trepidation. Lily is standing there.

"Let's go,” she says, and starts walking quickly down the street.

I catch up with her. We are heading towards the main square.

In a few minutes, I notice others are quickly walking in the same direction. Soon I hear something and look up.

Angels are flying down to the square too.

We are joined by more people and angels overhead. Soon we turn a corner into the square where a few hours ago Overseers were beating people to death.

There are hundreds of people looking up, awestruck. I look up too. I am astonished. Angels are assaulting the Overseers Head Quarters. Dozens of angels.

The HQ is covered with angels crawling all over it. They are moving through the windows of the HQ. We hear screams and gunshots. The Angels are attacking the Overseers in their HQ. Some Overseers crawl out open windows onto ledges and then are viciously attacked by angels that rip them to shreds with their talons. The screams are terrible. Their corpses fall to the ground, with a soft plump. A few Overseers jump to their death as Angels fly out of windows holding Overseers in their talons, flapping their wings into the air and drop the wriggling Overseers to the square where they smash into the ground and lie without movement. A fire starts, as seen through the windows, and the Angels are massacring the Overseers. Over an hour or so we watch transfixed as the angels wipe them all out. Every last one. Some record the carnage on their phones. In time, it becomes quiet. Lily and I and the crowd watch in shock. Then, there is no sound and the angels fly away en masse. The Overseers are gone. The crowd is transfixed. They are gone. They are all gone.

A week later...

Lily and I walk down the street holding hands. The sky is a beautiful blue, it is very warm  and the ash has been swept off the streets. People walk down the street happily. It is a very beautiful day. Some of the people are reading books. A teen girl with headphones is reading a manga. An elderly woman reads Gulliver's Travels while sitting at a bus stop. A young man walks by engaged in Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, completely absorbed. I have learned to recognize Quotations by its bright red cover. I had tried to read it, but it was a little too much for me.

I am carrying a backpack with picnic food and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Lily has The Tale of Genji in her hand. We are heading to the main square.

“My mom was really impressed with the engagement ring you gave me.”

I feel the ring on her finger as we continue walking and holding hands.

“That’s a good sign, isn’t it?”

“A very good sign,” she says.

In a few minutes we are in the square and find an isolated place on the grass in the direct blue sunlight and lay out our picnic. I look around, there are a lot of people, many are reading books, but not all. Some are going to work. On top of a building three angels sit. The square has been cleaned from the madness of a few days ago.

I am so, so, so happy. Our world is beautiful again. It is a miracle.

I have tears in my eyes looking at all the beautiful people conducting their daily lives without fear or want. We are conscious, living beings. Shouldn’t life be like this all the time?

We sit on the blanket and Lily pulls out a bottle of tea which we drink. Then she lies down with her book.

As I look up at the sky, I wonder, what is the connection between everything that has happened? The angels, the books, the clear skies. What does this mean?

I give up. I can’t understand anything.

“Hey. You. Stop daydreaming,” Lily says, pulling me to her. I lie down beside her and we open our books in the beautiful sunshine.