Guardian Angels and Other Monsters Read online

  DANIEL H. WILSON

  GUARDIAN ANGELS & OTHER MONSTERS

  Daniel H. Wilson is the bestselling author of The Clockwork Dynasty, Robopocalypse, Robogenesis, and Amped, among others. A Cherokee citizen, he was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and earned a B.S. in computer science from the University of Tulsa and a Ph.D. in robotics from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

  ALSO BY DANIEL H. WILSON

  The Clockwork Dynasty

  Robogenesis

  Amped

  Robopocalypse

  A Boy and His Bot

  Bro-Jitsu

  The Mad Scientist Hall of Fame

  How to Build a Robot Army

  Where’s My Jetpack?

  How to Survive a Robot Uprising

  AS EDITOR

  Press Start to Play

  Robot Uprisings

  A VINTAGE BOOKS ORIGINAL, MARCH 2018

  Copyright © 2018 by Daniel H. Wilson

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. for permission to reprint “Future Tense: Garden of Life” by Daniel H. Wilson, originally published in Communications of the ACM (Vol. 57, No. 10) on September 23, 2014. Reprinted by permission of Association for Computing Machinery, Inc.

  Several stories first appeared in the following publications: “The Blue Afternoon That Lasted Forever” in Carbide Tipped Pens (Tor Books), “The Executor” in The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination (Tor Books), “Helmet” in Armored (Baen Books), “Foul Weather” in Nightmare Magazine (December 2012, Issue 3), “The Nostalgist” as a Kindle Single on Tor.com, “Parasite: A Robopocalypse Story” in 21st Century Dead (St. Martin’s Press), and “God Mode” in Press Start to Play (Vintage Books).

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Wilson, Daniel H. (Daniel Howard), 1978– author.

  Title: Guardian angels & other monsters : stories / by Daniel H. Wilson.

  Description: New York : Vintage Books, 2017.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017028673 | ISBN 9781101972014 (pbk.)

  Classification: LCC PS3623.I57796 A6 2017 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2017028673

  Vintage Books Trade Paperback ISBN 9781101972014

  Ebook ISBN 9781101972021

  Cover design by Henry Steadman

  Cover machine wing illustration © visualgo/Getty Images

  www.vintagebooks.com

  v5.2

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Also by Daniel H. Wilson

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Miss Gloria

  The Blue Afternoon That Lasted Forever

  Jack, the Determined

  The Executor

  Helmet

  Blood Memory

  Foul Weather

  The Nostalgist

  Parasite: A Robopocalypse Story

  God Mode

  Garden of Life

  All Kinds of Proof

  One for Sorrow: A Clockwork Dynasty Story

  Special Automatic

  Acknowledgments

  For Judy & Mark

  Thanks for Maniac Mansion.

  Character is destiny.

  —Heraclitus

  MISS GLORIA

  He taught me to go with him through pathless deserts, dragging me on with mighty stride, and to laugh at sight of the wild beasts, nor tremble at the shattering of rocks by rushing torrents or at the silence of the lonely forest.

  —The Achilleid (94 CE)

  The fairy house sprouts from a moss-covered tree trunk, small but perfectly formed, sheltered by the spotted cupola of a fey toadstool.

  Nestled in dewy curls of turf, the miniature house has been carefully pieced together from a stockpile of twigs organized by diameter and broken to the same length. Tiny flat stones form a path leading to its door.

  On his knees in the dirt, Chiron, named for the mythical Greek centaur, tutor to Achilles, leans over the mossy landscape.

  The robot moves gracefully, limbs and torso plated in contoured pads over an economy of smooth silver strutwork. Sculpted into lines of classic musculature, each pale plate is comfortable to touch, devoid of pinch points, and easy to clean. Chiron is often smeared with spaghetti sauce or flecked with waxy streaks of crayon by the end of the day, though his infinite patience and love never waver.

  The girl beside him, her knees dirty under a maroon sundress, is called Miss Gloria. She is six years old, weighs thirty-nine pounds, and is forty-six inches tall. As a specimen of little girl, she is largely unremarkable. Instead, the incredible aspects of her life come from the intersection of power and politics that finds its locus in her family. As a powerful man surrounded by enemies, Gloria’s father entrusts his daughter only to an ally he has built himself.

  To that end, he has spared no expense.

  Chiron’s most amazing attributes are not manifest in his elegantly sculpted form, but in the curious patterns of the mind. His thinking and memory are infinitely adaptable, self-preserving, and capable of extracting meaning and wisdom from whichever hardware happens to be available.

  Of primary concern to Chiron is, of course, Miss Gloria’s physical safety. After that comes her emotional development, confidence, and self-esteem. He intends to ensure that Miss Gloria someday realize her full potential as a grown woman.

  Chiron is well aware that he will be discarded long before reaching this goal, and he is content. He knows that before a sculpture is completed, the scaffolding must fall away.

  Crouched at his side, shoulder to shoulder, Miss Gloria knows only that Chiron is an excellent playmate. Not a friend—not exactly—but a presence whose measured voice is steady and constant, if a bit stern. Gloria loves her mentor purely—he is as much a fixture in her life as the rising of the sun and the sight of the constellations each night. In his own way, the machine also loves the girl. Miss Gloria is his life’s work, and she is coming along wonderfully.

  A bright red holly berry tumbles from the little girl’s cupped hands.

  “Look, Ky,” she says with conspiratorial flair. “Poison berries.”

  Slipping, she drops the rest of the berries. They plummet like cannonballs, knocking twigs from the hut’s roof.

  “Careful, Miss Gloria,” advises Chiron. “The fairy kings and queens won’t appreciate a broken castle.”

  “Then fix it,” demands Gloria.

  “Is that a kind way to ask?” asks Chiron.

  “Now,” says Gloria, and she plants a small fist against Chiron’s padded thigh.

  “I think you should try on your own,” Chiron says, crossing his arms and standing up. “And then I will help.”


  “But I can’t do it,” she says, eyeing the slender twigs. Gloria wraps an arm around Chiron’s calf. “They’re too small.”

  The machine does not budge.

  With a sigh, Gloria crouches closer to the fairy house. Tongue peeking from the corner of her mouth, she succeeds in picking up a twig. Dropping it, she knocks down the rest of the hut, twigs tumbling from their perches.

  “I told you, Ky,” she says, sitting up. “Now will you fix it?”

  Chiron does not respond.

  “Do it for me,” she insists. “It’s your job.”

  “I am your teacher, Miss Gloria,” says Chiron, closing his eyes and turning away theatrically. “My job is to let go.”

  Gloria rolls her eyes and punches the leg again, a little grin squirming into the corners of her mouth.

  “Fix it,” she begs. “I’ll give you candy.”

  “Someday you will be alone and will have to rely upon yourself,” says Chiron.

  “Please, Chiron,” begs Gloria. She pronounces his name in exaggerated syllables, Ky-ron. “Pretty please?”

  Chiron opens one eye, looking down his long nose at the little girl. He is scanning her face for any trace of deceit. Her growing smile remains contained for the moment, though it threatens to escape.

  Satisfied, Chiron leans over and reaches for her.

  A man in black walks around the corner of the yard, a long weapon held high, stock tucked into his armored shoulder. Staring down the length of the kinetic battle rifle, the man’s face is wrapped in a flat tactical mask studded with pinhole cameras and striped with mesh. Chiron pauses, still leaning over the little girl, arms extended to swoop her up.

  The man pulls his trigger.

  Three electromagnetically accelerated slugs hiss from the barrel and flicker across the yard. Lancing into Chiron’s chest, the armor-piercing rounds make a sound like pennies hitting a glass countertop, spraying wreckage as they eviscerate the dumbstruck robot.

  The little girl is still smiling up at her best friend, reaching for his neck and not understanding why his features are frozen in place.

  Staggered, the machine sags to his knees. Arms slack, his hands lie palm up on the ground. Chiron blinks once, head weaving as he loses power.

  “Run away now, Miss Gloria,” he says. “Please.”

  But Gloria doesn’t obey. Hurt on her face, she watches Chiron topple over and collapse across the remains of the fairy house.

  “Ky?” she asks. “Chiron?”

  The gentle expression of concern never leaves the machine’s face, even as his body slumps to the ground. Thin wisps of smoke curl from the scattered holes in his chest carapace.

  Chiron dies at Miss Gloria’s feet, there in the little backyard.

  The girl shakes the fallen machine, panic in her voice, urging Chiron to wake up as a trotting shadow grows behind her.

  A black-sleeved arm wraps around her chest and lifts her away.

  Through a gauze of long hair and fear, Gloria does not see the bodies of her perimeter security detail, the men and women who are sprawled where they fell, their complicated armor melted to their bodies in glistening stripes of heat. The laser strike took place from a distant hill. The necessary equipment was expensive, but effective.

  The mercenary designated “Alpha” is relieved the mentor robot succumbed so quickly to a straight kinetic loadout. An unknown model with unknown security capabilities, the machine called “Chiron” represented a potential quandary.

  You never know what these military contractors put into their machines.

  Surveying the scene through the tactical battle visor over his face, Alpha scans for body heat or vibration or electromagnetic interference. He pauses at the sight of a flickering pulse guttering in the shell of the robot, but dismisses it. His subordinates Bravo and Charlie are arriving in a black SUV, their identities cloaked by thermally shielded balaclavas.

  Alpha shoves the squirming child into the back of the vehicle. Charlie takes the girl in his sinewy mechanical arms—robotic replacements after some mission gone terribly wrong. Meanwhile, Bravo clambers into the passenger seat to make room for Alpha.

  In the back, Gloria is shouting the name of the dead machine. She is kicking, fighting to reach the window. As a hand goes over her mouth, she glimpses her friend’s body, eyes open, still lying on its side in the yard.

  The vehicle speeds away, tires spraying clumps of manicured turf.

  In the damp grass, an equation is unfolding. An algorithm wends its way through Chiron’s failing mind, collecting his vital processes. The experience, memories, and personality of the machine gather in a cocoon of mathematics. And consuming the robot’s last spark of electricity, the code tenses itself to leap….

  * * *

  —

  *** Reboot. ***

  * * *

  —

  Chiron opens his eyes.

  Something is wrong. Very wrong.

  The pain of dying is great, but this world has not let go so easily. Though he has suffered a mortal wound, Chiron lives. The ground seems far away now, the entire city sprawling in a blur under a taut horizon.

  In front of him, a column of red strutwork spears away into blue sky.

  Diagnostics are offline. The usual stream of data is missing from Chiron’s peripheral vision. Instead, he sees a simplistic array of wind speed and temperature and force vectors applied to various parts of a body he does not recognize. Within the data, Chiron resolutely picks out the contours of his now gargantuan physique.

  A construction crane.

  Chiron tries to blink and nothing happens. A seagull lands on his strut, pecking at its wing and leaning into a sporadic breeze. The quivering red arm supports a pallet of dense concrete tubing by a steel cable. Chiron lowers his gaze to see the city spread out in miniature, like one of Miss Gloria’s wooden train sets.

  Miss Gloria.

  The strut begins to swing—slow at first, but gaining speed. Disturbed, the seagull flaps against a growing wind, feathers ruffled. The city scrolls past. Far below, Chiron spots a familiar backyard. And though his silver body is lying dead there, the coiled equation of Chiron’s intellect has hurled itself into the void.

  Below, a black vehicle speeds down the block.

  Miss Gloria, thinks Chiron. Her physical safety is compromised. There is no time to consider what has happened.

  Focusing his thoughts, Chiron-crane wills his arm to slow its turn. The pendulous load swings wildly. Far below, a smattering of brightly colored construction workers streak away like beads of Miss Gloria’s milk used to spill off Chiron’s soft plastic arm.

  Not my arm. Not anymore.

  Trundling forward like a beetle, the SUV slows and stops at a red light under the shadow of the crane. Ten meters above the street, delivery drones flicker along their routes in stuttering lines. The stoplight changes and the SUV creeps forward.

  Chiron-crane makes a decision.

  Now.

  The seagull leaps into flight.

  Springing back, the crane arm releases its heavy load. A pallet of concrete tubes sails through the air. It collapses across the intersection with a mushrooming explosion of gray dust and debris. Seconds later, the jarring smack of impact echoes up.

  Delivery drones scatter like bathtub toys under Miss Gloria’s pudgy fist.

  The weight differential was too much. Vector readouts appear and spin crazily in Chiron-crane’s peripheral vision. The horizon is leaping up and down as the camera shudders. Struts are popping. Metal is screaming.

  The cars below are stuck in a sudden snarl of traffic and panicked pedestrians, some of them watching the spectacle and others running, diving for cover in the shadow of the bucking crane.

  Chiron-crane watches without emotion as the sky fills his vision. The moan of wind grows ove
r the tortured squeal of metal.

  I am falling, thinks Chiron. Too fast.

  The world vibrates as the back of Chiron-crane’s head plows into another building. His colossal body shudders as it slouches against the side of the half-built skyscraper. Abruptly, his sight goes black.

  And for the second time today, Chiron dies.

  * * *

  —

  *** Reboot. ***

  * * *

  —

  Reeling, Chiron tries to find himself.

  In the darkness, he hears a small sound that causes great consternation. It is the sound of a little girl sniffling, trying to contain sobs. Chiron recalls that Miss Gloria has a habit of pressing her hands over her mouth when she is crying but does not want to be crying, as if she could push the emotions back inside.

  The world appears, upside down, flattened and smeared into a dish. Above a black plain, elongated shapes of traffic flicker past in candle wax streaks. Emergency lights flicker, and Chiron recognizes the receding image of a fallen crane as it is left behind. This is the eye of an omnidirectional camera—a conical mirror showing a 360-degree view around the black SUV. The vehicle is moving fast, speeding through city traffic.

  Like some kind of exotic insect, Chiron-car opens a multitude of eyes and observes the street, curbs, and, finally, the interior of the vehicle.

  Miss Gloria.

  She is crying but unhurt, sitting beside an armored mercenary in the backseat while two more soldiers sit in the front. The driver is still wearing an armored tactical visor. His hands are tight on the steering wheel.

  This is the one who killed me, thinks Chiron.

  “What the fuck was that?” asks the passenger. “How could that happen? Cranes don’t just fall—”