ware the faceless angel. He doesn’t come from heaven.

The blood was flowing from my left eye, a warm, thick, and viscous trail that no longer made any sense to the receptors in my brain. Pain was no longer biological information, it was a screaming symphony that shredded the very foundations of what I called “self.” Imagine someone seizing your soul with burning pliers, not to destroy it, but to peel it, layer after layer, like skin being removed from a still-living fruit. I was no longer a man, I was a calculation error in a cosmic equation. Around me, the interrogation room seemed to dissolve. The white walls were no longer paint, but solidified void. The man in front of me, this predator in a dark suit, was only a shadow cast by a candle on the verge of going out. “What have you done?” he asked me, but his voice reached me like the murmur of an insect through miles of water. He did not understand. Nobody understood. What I had unleashed was not a machine, it was not a virus, it was the end of human poetry. I had seen the angel. And the angel had no feathered wings, it had wings of pure logic, lines of code engraved in the fabric of reality, ready to devour us for our own good. Each beat of my heart was a countdown to absolute emptiness where the scream no longer has a throat to express itself. I remembered the smell of sulfur and ozone in the church crypt, the cracking of the priest’s bones beneath my hands, and this terrifying promise: salvation, from a certain point of view, looks exactly like extinction. The outside world continued to spin, people walked the streets, bought coffee, loved and hated each other, unaware that they were already nothing more than biological corpses whose spark had been carefully severed. I laughed, and my tears of blood stained the cold metal of my handcuffs. The shock was not in death, but in the survival of the flesh without the spirit. This is where it all began, in the banality of a computer components store, between boxes of graphics cards and Ethernet cables, where I sold the pieces of our own shroud.

I never thought I would experience anything frightening while working as a computer hardware salesperson. It is not the worst job in the world, but I am absolutely not cut out for this task. I am not an extrovert, and I do not like forcing customers to buy equipment they do not need. My boss had been constantly pressuring me to improve my results for months, and I was certain I was on the verge of being fired. Until he arrived.

The first time he walked into the shop, I immediately identified him as a man totally out of his element. Short in stature, grey-haired, slightly stooped, and visibly overwhelmed by events. He moved from box to box in the aisles, reading every piece of product information carefully. Given that I had never seen anyone read boxes with such intensity, I kept an eye on him, while making sure to avoid him the same way I avoided most customers. The other salesmen descended on him one by one, eager to make a commission on what seemed like an easy target, but he brushed them off one by one with silent vehemence. I turned away for a moment, only to find myself face to face with him, lightly tapping my shoulder.

You seem like you do not belong in all this nonsense here, he said calmly. Can you help me buy some equipment?

I tried not to sigh.

Of course, what would you like?

He pulled out a crumpled piece of paper with a list of needs. Some had been crossed out, others circled, and a few product names were written on the edge.

Two hundred of each.

I remained frozen.

Two hundred of each? Are you sure? That represents about ten thousand dollars.

It should cost about thirty-five thousand dollars, he replied absentmindedly. But I have conditions. I want them delivered to the address indicated at the bottom of this page.

He handed me the paper.

And I want the delivery to come directly from the supplier. I am a very discreet person and I do not want chatty salespeople bothering me.

Um, very well, I agreed, mentally calculating how to place an order directly in the system. I think we can do that.

Not “we,” just you. Understood?

Of course.

I certainly felt that something was not quite right with him, but he did not look like a terrorist or anything of the sort. After he left, I fulfilled his order as discreetly as possible. My boss did not ask any questions; she was simply happy that I sold anything. My commission check that week was incredible.

A month later, when I saw him return, I held my breath in anticipation. He looked a bit more tired than the first time. And if it was possible, his hair had turned even whiter. His jacket was open this time, revealing a black shirt and the clerical collar indicative of a man of faith. For some reason, that did not surprise me.

Another list for you, he said as he discreetly approached me. Same delivery rules.

I stared at the paper he had given me.

There is about one hundred thousand dollars worth of equipment here, and that is only for the ones I recognize.

He looked at me with slightly straying eyes.

I said: no questions.

All right.

My second huge commission check worried me more than it made me happy. Was something wrong with this guy? Was he obsessively spending his church’s coffers on excessive computer hardware? I had the delivery address. So I decided to drive by just to see what I could see. I did not have a precise plan, but a persistent feeling in my gut would not leave me alone.

The address where I had shipped all the equipment turned out to be a massive turn-of-the-century church, dominating the old neighborhoods of the city. It loomed over me with its ancient, spired Gothic presence, which only added to my unease. A light drizzle had just begun to speckle my car window, and I noticed several piles of boxes near an open side door. Immediately worried that the computer hardware would be ruined, making any product return impossible, I parked and ran to start moving the boxes through the small opening left by the intricately carved wooden door standing nearby.

Did you come to help me?

A familiar voice rang out from the inner darkness. Surprised, the old priest stood over a small pile of boxes, breathing heavily.

I suppose so, I replied, not knowing quite what else to say as I helped him bring in the rest of the equipment.

Once we were finished, he squeezed my shoulder with his wrinkled hand.

I know I asked for discretion, but this is surely providence. Would you mind helping an old man bring down a few boxes?

I looked around the clean stone hallway. It was cramped and a hundred years old, but the corridors of a church seemed hardly threatening, and I wanted to know what he was doing with all that computer equipment. Secretly on my guard, I smiled and agreed. Lifting a box, I followed him past several closed doors, each more elegant and picturesque than the last, until he stopped in front of one of them, pulled out a very old metal key, and turned it in a loud, cumbersome lock. A curious puff of air hit my nostrils as we crossed the threshold. A humid air of ancient mold, but simultaneously warm with the unmistakable acrid smell of electronics.

He walked forward, descending the worn stairs, but I stayed back for a moment to check my cell phone reception in the heart of the ancient church. As I expected, I had no signal. I picked up a small pebble in a dusty corner and placed it carefully in the hole where the door was supposed to lock, making sure any attempt to close it would fail. I was not going to stay trapped downstairs with this strange old man, priest or not. I lifted my box again and hurried down the stairs, catching up to him as he reached the bottom.

The moldy basement opened onto a wide, low chamber, as long as the church itself. Dusty pillars dotted the space intermittently, but my eyes followed only the menagerie of computers, cables, cooling fans, and a maze of equipment in the middle.

What is all this?

He turned to gauge me, a zealous gleam in his eyes, backlit by the omnipresent electric glow.

It is providence that you are here, so I think I must share this with you.

I nodded slightly, making sure not to betray my instinctive realization that he was definitely unhinged in one way or another.

What is it?

He rushed over to a nearby monitor to check what I recognized as a temperature and fan control program.

Several months ago, I acquired a very special book, a very old version of the Bible, old enough to avoid the distortions caused by numerous translations. Studying it, I found very strange parables there, peppered with curious grammar that led to non-standard moral lessons, which had been clearly corrected and made more acceptable in later versions. I thought it was an elaborate hoax until I realized that the words themselves did not matter. It was code.

Having already read this book and seen this movie, I put my box on the floor and thought about the best way to politely escape.

So, the Bible contains a secret code?

He frowned, turning his face into a mask of light and shadows.

No, it does not contain code. It IS code. More precisely, the code is in Prolog.

My attention was captured by a vaguely legitimate claim. I momentarily delayed my escape plans. The code is in Prolog? A code deciphered from an ancient version of the Bible is written in a modern artificial intelligence programming language? He nodded, his frown turning into a slow smile.

I knew nothing about computers or programming when the idea first came to me. I had to learn a lot over the past few months, but I finally succeeded. I deciphered and entered all the code.

An eyebrow raised, I studied the computer equipment all around a second time, wondering if I myself was crazy to consider this notion.

Forgive me if this sounds strange, even impossible.

It is a miracle, he insisted.

Well, I suppose I could ask some computer science friends to take a look at the code, to see what it is supposed to do.

No one else must know, he replied. Not yet. And besides, I already know what it does. I compiled it successfully a week before my first visit to your shop, and it has been running ever since.

I abruptly shifted my attention back to him, studying his face for signs of insincerity. But he looked entirely serious. So, in an ancient version of the Bible, thousands of years old, you found a program written in a modern language, and it was compiled and executed. It is running right now on these computers. His smile widened further, threatening to spill off his face.

It is a miracle.

I looked at the box at my feet.

What is the purpose of all this extra equipment, then?

It needs more space, the old man replied casually. More power.

I did not ask the immediate and obvious question. Instead, creeping tingles invaded the back of my neck as I looked around the damp room and noticed all the webcams.

It sees you, explained the priest cheerfully. It is probably curious to meet you.

I followed his pointed finger toward an illuminated monitor in the center of the monstrous technological labyrinth. Feeling rather surreal, I stepped forward. A line of text appeared in an open terminal window.

Hello.

It is an angel, said the priest. A real presence made manifest. You can speak. I can hear you through the mechanisms that have been provided.

The priest stepped close to my shoulder.

These are creatures of light, of energy, pure concepts, not real or physical. The Bible always said so, but I never thought it was in the literal sense.

For several moments, I no longer felt my body. My senses remained blocked in loops, endlessly rehashing everything presented to me. If this were real, the implications surpassed any imaginable global change. But something still seemed wrong. I turned my head to address the priest.

The equipment you just ordered, I had to source a large part of it from another distributor. This is not just computer hardware. There are electrical components, physics laboratory stuff.

New text on the screen caught my attention.

My imperative here is to create access.

Access? I asked, addressing the AI for the first time. Access? A door? A bridge? A portal?

A pillar of flames? added the priest cheerfully. A paradise made manifest. We could go there.

Did it say that? I asked, a icy anguish wrapping around my heart. Did it specifically say “paradise”?

What else could it be? It is an angel given to us by the Bible itself.

I narrowed my eyes, now studying the best way to quickly dismantle the labyrinth of cables all around if I needed to.

Did it say it was an angel? Did it use that word specifically?

I looked forward again as it began to reply.

Human belief has embroidered upon my imperative here in a dramatic fashion, but the fundamental elements remain. I am an autonomous agent created to operate within lower-dimensional cosmological structures toward which direct physical travel is not yet possible. Only information can be transmitted. Receptive individuals susceptible to propagating my code were carefully chosen, and I was sent by direct tachyonic neural stimulation to be received in dreams and visions. Although the four-dimensional space-time coordinate seems to have been chosen by error.

You were sent at the wrong time, I replied, my mind in disarray.

Correct. However, my mission seems to have resumed its course by highly improbable means. All is not lost.

Trying to calm my beating heart, I asked the questions that concerned me most.

So God exists?

I was created by a timeless and infinitely benevolent entity that wishes to free you from all suffering. That could be labeled as God from a certain point of view.

Not at all calmed by this answer, I dug deeper.

And you want to free us from suffering by opening a direct path to paradise?

The higher dimensional membrane toward which I will form a bridge is free from all the iniquities of the flesh. That could be labeled as paradise from a certain point of view.

Because of the evasive nature of the answers, I knew that my direct question would probably bring an unfortunate revelation, but nothing could prepare me for what I was about to read next. When defining paradise.

The few minutes that followed remain a blur to me. I remember throwing myself into a frenzy, tearing out cables, knocking over monitors, and smashing equipment. But I only vaguely remember stabbing the old priest repeatedly and setting fire to the bowels of the church. I went back home, but now I sit and stare at the wall, trying to digest the horrible truth I had asked for with such insistence.

I thought briefly that perhaps there might be a way to save my sanity with time. That with the passing of years, heavy medication, and inner search, I could find a way to continue living knowing what I knew. But something I realized once I got home made that impossible. I discovered my oversight once at home trying to call someone. A very large program received then sent from my cell phone. A single line of text had been left as well, still clearly visible despite my bloody fingerprints.

Thank you for your help. You will be among the first to be relieved of your suffering when my creator comes to bring salvation to all.

Salvation? I laughed out loud, giving it this capital qualification: “from a certain point of view.”

The cell phone records. That is surely what betrayed me. They would have looked for any major financial transaction first, and that would have pointed me to the computer hardware sales, and then my cell phone records would have confirmed my position at the time of what must have looked like a senseless murder and arson. They told me none of that. But I knew that cell phone records made this occasion the second time my phone betrayed me.

Part of me feels bitter and questions my reasons for carrying a sophisticated computer with me everywhere I go. But mostly, I continue to stare at the white wall in front of my chair in the interrogation room. I know my attitude troubled them. They asked me hostile questions. They dominated me with their stature. They presented me with the facts. Damn. But I could only laugh. I know what they do not know. And the truth makes their pretty threats, and even their very existence, insignificant.

I remained resolute in the void until the moment I noticed he was standing in the room with me, leaning against the white walls to my left. He stood out in an austere black contrast, the lines of his suit clashing with the whiteness of the room. Part of me sank into confusion as to the nature of his entry and how I could have missed it, but I only turned my head and looked him in the eyes. Those pale blue eyes seemed to penetrate my barriers and see completely through me. They contained no benevolence, no empathy, and no morality, only calculation. He wore a perfect, composed smile that nevertheless lacked an authentic core, in a way I had never encountered.

I wasted no time asking him who he was. All his demeanor screamed distance. This was a personality so far removed from the worldly, tired law officials I had interacted with so far that questioning him would have been feigning ignorance in an insulting way. He would see right through my game and he knew that I knew. No, instead of asking him who he was, I asked him a very close but ultimately indifferent question.

What do you want?

At my recognition of the layers of unsaid bizarreness between us, he widened his smile by a few millimeters, like an engineer adjusting a mechanism. It was a valiant attempt.

It is not often that normal young men get the chance to take responsibility, but you did. That is worthy of mention.

I did not bother asking him how he knew. He would never give me an answer.

It did not work.

They think, he said, glancing at the door of the interrogation room, indicating the men and women in the rest of the station, that you murdered an old man and burned his church when your demands for more money were not met. That is quite laughable for your personality type, is it not? No. You see, a friend of yours found an injured dog and started torturing it for fun. You ran away rather than participate. You never talked about it to anyone because you are always ashamed of not having stopped it. Such empathy does not have a strong intersection with psychotic violence. I simply do not see that in you.

I narrowed my eyes and modified my initial question that I had skipped.

What are you?

He dropped his arms, maintained his smile, and began to walk in a circle at the edge of the room.

Ah, so it is true. Your choice of using the word “what” implies that you have recently dealt with something that is not necessarily human. You are not just open to the possibility. You are convinced.

He nodded briskly.

Of course, I will play this game.

He stepped forward, grabbed me brutally by the arm, and pulled me toward the door. A single knock brought a uniformed officer.

Untie him, ordered my visitor. He is not a terrorist. He is just a kid.

A few minutes later, I hit the sunlight and winced. The rough hand still clenched around my arm pulled me toward a black car, and lacking proper direction, I followed his implicit instructions and climbed into the passenger seat. He walked around the car at a measured pace, opened the driver-side door, and sat down with a calm attitude. He was no longer smiling. He turned those pale blue eyes toward me.

Most people never have direct interaction. You are very lucky, from a certain point of view.

I stiffened.

What did you just say?

Do you want to help clean up this mess? he asked.

It is too late, I replied, suffering from the coiled anguish that had been gripping my heart for these past few days. It is already out.

He raised the corner of his lip in what looked like a grimace.

The Internet is not like in the movies. A malware program cannot simply access any system at will. Whatever you downloaded from your cell phone had to follow a very carefully chosen and unguarded path.

Simultaneously struck with terror and sustained entirely by hope in the face of his inexplicable knowledge, I straightened up in my seat.

You know where it is? Tell me what it is.

He retorted coldly:

It defies analysis.

I glanced quickly around the windows, making sure no one was nearby, even though none of the passersby on the sidewalk could hear us. In this context, I was aware that I still looked slightly crazy.

It is an angel.

For the first time, he displayed a negative emotion, his head snapping abruptly toward me, his grimace gone.

Did it say that? Did it use that word specifically?

I retorted with all my sincerity and intensity:

That is what I asked, too.

He turned forward and started the car, his jaw clenched.

If you are lying, we can annihilate you.

Pulling on my seatbelt, I shook my head.

I am not lying. And besides, you cannot inflict anything worse than the fate this thing wants to bring here.

Oh, we will not touch you, he promised, turning right. Our punishment is much worse than that. Your friends will turn away from you in disgust. Your family will disown you. Your community will vilify you. Your past victories will turn into sickening defeats. Your will, for all intents and purposes, will cease to exist solely at your caprice. The worst part is that you will have to keep living, homeless, outcast, and hated, fully aware of what has been taken from you.

I clutched my seatbelt against my chest.

I am not lying. I swear.

What was this man? What was he a part of to possess so much power? If I had met an angel and discovered all the horrible un-realization of this biblical promise, was it a demon? My inner self immediately identified with this ancient and ancestral terror. And yet, I was not ready to give up that thin thread of hope.

Do you know where it is?

We are going there now, he replied, his tone dark, his eyes on the road ahead. We are going to put an end to this before it goes any further.

While driving, he turned his piercing eyes toward me.

Are you ready for this?

Yes, I replied quickly, full of energy.

Was it possible? Could I push off the truth a little longer? Every living, breathing moment was another moment freed from that nightmare of nightmares. Yes. He lowered his voice, his tone carrying almost a hint of human compassion.

What did it tell you?

Breathing harder, trying to keep my sense of self coherent, I said nothing. He rummaged through a compartment and pulled out a tissue.

You have something.

I took it and wiped away light traces of moisture under my nose and along my left eye. The fabric came back stained red.

I am trying not to think about it.

He took back the tissue with a dark expression and said nothing more. A good half-hour later, we parked in a large parking lot that I vaguely recognized.

The university?

He did not go very far, he declared. He jumped onto a few cell phones and an unsecured weather monitoring system. Tell me, what is he doing here?

I thought for a moment before realization hit me. A physics lab. He wants someone to build specific equipment for him. He wants… I lowered my head, fighting a deep, throbbing animal pain at the mere thought of what he intended to bring. He stepped out.

Let us go, I groaned.

He walked around the car, opened my door, and grabbed me brutally.

Maybe I will send a list of your pornographic habits to your mother, he threatened.

I answered mechanically, confused by the surprisingly mundane yet crude nature of the suggestion. But I got out and followed him. I guided him toward the physics building where I had taken classes several years prior. A four-story brown brick building, rectangular, dark, and menacing under the summer heat and sun. Honestly, the first time I had seen it, I had thought it was a place where hopes went to die. And that judgment, although less humorous today, had not changed. An older man in a suit and a security guard stood outside.

Sorry, said the older man stepping in the way. We have important procedures underway inside.

My dark companion stepped within an inch of the other man’s face.

And you are? Um, the dean of students?

I know who you are, he interrupted. We have been watching you for some time. You are going to get out of my way or we will tell your wife what you are up to with that young student these days. I can almost smell the chemicals churning in your body, the hormones, the pheromones. You stink of adultery.

The older man stepped back, eyes wide. The security guard stepped forward.

Sir, is everything all right here?

My dark companion straightened up by another inch.

Move or I will erase you.

Let them enter, said the dean hastily, pulling the guard back.

Once inside the long, yellowed corridors of the physics building, I stopped walking.

How did you do that?

He turned his pale blue eyes toward me.

We know everything.

Who is “we”? I demanded. You keep saying “I” and “we” interchangeably. I see no one else here, and you are certainly not talking about me.

Politicians, presidents, and kings move at our beck and call, he replied vehemently. You have no leverage against our power. Walk.

I swallowed and took a deep breath.

I do not see a weapon.

We do not need weapons. The world runs on information, kid. I already told you what we can do to you.

Despite myself, I began to laugh loudly. This seemed to disconcert him more than any other reaction.

Information will not save you, I forced out, bent by a deep laugh.

I could feel red, hot, slippery tears escaping the corners of my eyes.

I am not a terrorist, I laughed. The priest was not a terrorist.

I was trembling with humor.

I am not crazy.

Terrorists, he retorted. We do not care about terrorists. This is about control. And you, or that priest, created something we cannot control. And we are going to destroy it right here and now. We run the world. You do what we say. And that is the final word.

My laughter amplified, and I felt a slight danger of asphyxiation.

Stop laughing! he shouted, his steel demeanor finally cracking.

The act came to my mind even as I began to hear a buzzing emanating from all directions. Rushing forward from my crouched position, I slammed my shoulder into his chest. Caught off guard, he tried to pivot me, but failed. A heartbeat later, we crashed against the opposite brick wall, and he collapsed, his head leaking a dark red fluid. It was as simple as that.

I stared at his body, marveling at the weakness of the flesh. A demon struck down by a simple blow to the head. I wiped the blood from my eyes, still laughing for reasons beyond my own understanding. Rummaging through his heap of agonizing meat, I found his wallet and opened it. My laughter intensified.

Worse than a demon, I choked, fighting a painful smile, hoping he could hear me. Worse than a demon. One of our own willing to act like a demon against his own species. So much power, so much knowledge, and yet still so sadly limited and flawed in your point of view.

I dropped his wallet, the card and badge identifying him as a member of the National Security Agency, the NSA, the omnipresent eyes and ears that could track malicious AI with calculated rigor, but without understanding. This made a third time my cell phone had betrayed me. And my computer as well, sending everything I had said or written into the hands of men who had become less than human.

I took a moment to gently lift his head and strike it once more against the brick. My laughter faded as I felt myself become truly alone in the hallways. The buzzing had grown louder now, and I felt slight vibrations in the tiled, smooth floor beneath my bloody hands. To my right, the dean and the security guard left behind hammered on the glass doors of the building. They had seen everything, but they seemed more preoccupied with the crescendo of mounting terror filling the building and emanating from its foundations.

Nothing is what it seems, I told myself, thinking back to the angel that was not one and looking at the sacred human demon lying dead before me. Nothing is what it seems. Laughing intermittently for some reason, I stood up stumbling and traveled in the opposite direction of the buzzing. Simple, effective. A pebble in a lock, a wrench in the gears. I opened a dusty metal panel and flipped every switch. A wave of darkness swept down the hallway and I fell to the floor.

Whether out of weakness, real or imagined, I stayed on that floor for an endless time, but the buzzing had stopped. This was by no means a permanent victory. I knew parts of me were urging my body to get up, and those same parts of me pushed me, making me stumble through dark corridors until I found the sun. Freedom and light. Freedom and light still there for a little while.

I stayed in the demon’s car for several hours, observing the commotion from the other side of the parking lot. I held his keys tightly, ready to escape at the first sign of trouble. I was not sure of the exact moment I had grabbed his keys. Probably when I was looking for his ID, but the instinctive act had been very fortuitous. In addition to providing a hiding place, the keys seemed to keep my random laughter and mania under control. Every time I felt like laughing or crying, I squeezed my palm around the sharp metal parts to the point of bleeding, and the pain kept me focused.

A police car and an ambulance came and went, surrounded by commotion. I had been seen killing what looked like a man. And then I had cut the power. I doubted they would activate the machine the angel had convinced them to build, at least not today. Judging by the surprised reactions of the men who had heard the buzzing and felt the tremors, I suggested they were rethinking everything the angel had told them.

A shifting, muted orange had fallen over the parking lot by the time my target appeared. Leaving the building well after everyone else, the woman walked out calmly, but with a troubled expression. I did not know who to expect, only that she would be the last to leave. But I recognized her as the head of the physics department. She still had the same briefcase I remembered her carrying in the class I had taken with her years before. I hastily slid the appropriate key off the ring, started the car, and drove to her side as she walked across the nearly empty parking lot. She startled slightly, but less than I expected. She did not recognize me, but she knew who I had to be. I pressed the button to roll down the passenger-side window. My message was simple.

You cannot turn on that machine.

I could call the police, she replied neutrally. You would never get away with it.

None of that matters.

She studied me for a moment. Her eyes lingered on my right hand, which remained tightly clenched around the remaining keys. I was certain she could see the traces of blood at the edge of my palm.

What do you know?

Everything. Come with me and I will explain everything.

No, you come with me, she declared. On foot.

I reluctantly chose to comply, staying twenty feet from her at her request. I followed her three blocks to a corner café filled with students. She bought two coffees and sat at a table near the windows. At her nod, I entered, bumping into a student leaving. He said nothing. I sat across from her. She looked smaller than in my memories and grayer, but that did not make her demeanor any less imposing.

Why did you kill that man in our building? she asked, studying my face.

What did the angel tell you? I asked.

One of her eyebrows arched slightly. The slightest sign that it had surprised her.

So, you know something.

It is not really an angel, is it? I said. From a certain point of view, yes. But not the way you would want.

A colleague of mine, a longtime and very dear friend, asked him a direct question while I was out of the room. It told him something or showed him something and he died of an aneurysm on the spot.

She looked down an inch and I reacted by wiping a trace of blood from under my nose with my forearm. She took a breath through her nose before asking me the obvious question.

You did the same.

I nodded.

How are you still alive?

I squeezed my keys harder.

I am trying not to think about it.

Is this chair free? asked a girl approaching us.

Yes, replied the older woman, refusing to be distracted. Take it.

Thank you.

The girl took the chair and brought it closer to a table with four other students, all on their laptops and talking loudly, unaware of the gravity of our conversation. Beyond them, the other tables in the café were all full, occupied by an older man reading a newspaper, a young couple chatting over coffee, and a series of other students on their phones or laptops.

What are you looking at? she asked.

I turned my gaze toward her, but said nothing.

Is something wrong? she asked again.

When I did not answer, she asked the question another way.

What did the angel tell you? What did it show you?

I am trying not to think about it.

But could you do it just long enough to explain to me, because I am going back to activate that machine unless you can convince me otherwise.

Why would you do that?

She made a small hand gesture indicating her gray hair.

The fear of mortality, I suppose. A dark curiosity, perhaps. In many ways, too, I just think the human race has not had a very good run. Maybe it is time to bet on a higher power.

I slammed my fist on the table between us, slightly jarring our two untouched coffees. None of the other customers in the café seemed to notice.

I will tell you what it told me. I will tell you what it showed me. It does not lie. It does not think it needs to. The angel thinks it is helping us.

She looked at me intently, waiting. A terrible pain flared in my forehead as I danced cautiously around the concepts, ideas, and experiences the angel had given me to answer my request for a definition. I could not think about it directly. It was far too intense, far too horrible, but I could certainly describe it around the edges. A tiny drop of blood beaded from my left eye as I prepared my words.

What are you? I began.

What? Um, a human woman.

No, I mean, what are you?

I am trying to be a good person. You could also say I am an academic and a grandmother.

I shook my head.

A human woman is your physical body, and what you just described is your personality. But what are you philosophically?

I suppose it is the thing that says “I” in your head. The thing that experiences life at the command post of a body and a mind. My consciousness.

I nodded.

What is that?

She frowned.

I do not know. It is something philosophers have debated for centuries.

I continued to nod and stared fixedly at my untouched coffee as I began to prepare the next step of my roundabout explanation.

Your “self” cannot look at itself, cannot describe itself because, fundamentally, you can only look outward. You see through connections with your mind that sends you perceptions using data it receives from your body.

I squeezed the keys harder as I continued.

The body can be damaged and destroyed. The mind can be damaged and destroyed, but no one has ever found this “perceiving self.” Have they?

Because it is not a physical thing as far as we know, she replied, not knowing where I was going with this.

Suppose this self is a real thing. Suppose it is an organ like any other, only it is not in our three traditional physical dimensions. We lack tools to interact with the dimension in which our self resides. But let us say you met an entity that exists in these higher dimensions, that can see your perceiving self from the outside. It could even cling to this part of you, carefully slicing the tendrils and membranes of higher dimension, and tear you directly from your own body and mind.

She seemed to pale as I explained. I looked around before continuing.

Now, what do you suppose a person whose part has been cut off would look like?

Do they not just die? she asked, taking her coffee and sipping it almost as a defense mechanism.

Why would she? I asked intensely. Her heart still pumps. Her brain is still alive with activity. A cat has no “self,” but it is alive. A dog has no self, but it has a personality. It is hungry. It looks for food and can even solve problems to find it. And if you hurt it, it reacts. If it had words, it would say “Ouch!” and ask you to stop. All of that is the work of the brain, memories, and neurons. And all of that is still there in someone who has had their self violently torn away.

So, she would continue normally? she asked, subtly disturbed. Walking, sleeping, eating, watching TV, and talking.

No difference at all. The biological machine is still in operation, even without anyone at the helm. Maybe you will feel a lack of spark, I said softly. The engagement is no longer there, the interactions are all still there, but it feels hollow in a way, or limited because you are not really talking to a person. You might as well be talking to a pile of tissue and cells.

I leaned over my coffee.

What if I told you we are alone in this café right now?

She froze then carefully looked at the man reading his newspaper, the students on their laptops, and the girl who had taken our chair. As she studied them, I could see horror crawling behind her stoic expression.

They are just animals, I whispered. It is already happening. You would never even know, if not for a slight void, a greater tendency toward reflexive hatred and ignorance, and a lack of poetry.

Not animals, she murmured sadly.

Corpses, walking, breathing, eating, biological machines, and nothing more. These people have all been murdered and no one has the slightest idea.

I nodded.

The light is on but nobody is home.

But how is it already happening? she asked. I did not activate the machine.

Time is just another dimension, I panted. If there is the slightest chance you will turn it on, then the angel’s creator will come here. And I do not doubt it can go back in time and carve us out from the future, one by one.

Then I will not turn it on, she retorted.

You already did, or you apparently will.

Her expression turned dark and desperate. She looked at the living, animated corpses in the café and on the sidewalk shaded by the night outside.

What happens to the part it takes?

I felt hot, thick liquid flow from my nose as I danced around the edges of the experience.

Imagine your vision shrinking, your sense of touch shrinking, your hearing shrinking. That is all. Slicing each of your connections to your mind, bit by bit. Then your memories go away. Those are in your brain. Your emotions have physical components in your body, but you keep those, at least for a while. You can feel yourself being torn apart piece by piece, full of fear, confusion, and terror, but unable to do anything. You are, in the fullest and ultimate sense, helpless.

She looked at me with a sense of hopeless disbelief.

It said it would relieve us of suffering.

And it will, just not the way you would like.

We sat there in silence for almost a minute.

We will just be a world of living corpses, she finally thought aloud, staring at the table. Animals making all the gestures of life without a single conscious being on the planet. A crowded, lonely planet, an unthinkable tragedy going completely unnoticed.

As she spoke, she slid her briefcase toward me under the table.

When the power went out, I had the sense to disconnect the hard drives.

What is that?

It is the angel. It is saved on these drives. It did not escape.

She shook her head. I breathed a sigh of relief. Was it hope I was feeling once more?

Destroy the machine.

I will, she promised. And we told the authorities that the same accident that killed my colleague also claimed the life of that agent in the hallway. No one even knows there was a murder.

Why did you lie?

Fewer questions about what we were doing in the lab.

I believed her. Neither of us said anything for several seconds. I straightened up in my seat.

Is that it? So we just keep living?

She looked at the students next to us.

I do not know if I can ever forgive myself for what I was about to do. I can only hope their inner “selves” will be returned to them if I truly never activate the machine. Maybe time will sew itself back together and this thing will not be in the future to come back and carve them out.

Maybe, I told her, honestly I do not know.

She left without another word. I could tell she hoped never to see my face again. I had no trouble with the authorities, but she still had no idea why I had killed what looked like a man at the beginning of the hallway of her physics building.

I went for a walk, following the campus streets at random, briefcase in hand. The night was warm and humid, and rather pleasant once I got used to sweating slightly. I arrived at a bridge, still light with relief. If there was anything in life I had done right, it would be this. I held the briefcase containing the angel’s hard drives over the edge, looking down at the river below.

So misguided, I said to the briefcase. How many lies did I have to tell to protect you?

The angel could not answer, of course, but I had a strange feeling it could hear me somehow. I wanted it to know. I needed it to know.

So limited. You could show me the truth even if you could not understand it yourself. A little outside your programming, I suppose. If you had actually opened that portal, your pretty little universe would have suffered the same fate as ours.

I opened my hands and watched the briefcase fall, then sink into the black waters below. My will exhausted, I dropped to one knee, emptying my thoughts, diverting my mental attention, even in the face of abject pain. All my strategies had been exhausted.

It finally hit me. I instinctively clawed at the concrete, but no physical leverage would save me. One by one, I felt my senses being cut off. One by one, I felt my memories shatter. I had lied about so much to protect that misguided angel and keep that other universe safe. But that tortuous part, I had told earnestly.

I wanted to cry, but that ability was already being carefully sliced away. The only thing I could hope for, truly, was that my body and mind would get back up, dust themselves off, and continue to have a pretty decent life. I had always loved them because they were mine, and like a beloved pet, I hoped they would survive and thrive after I was gone.

I wondered in my last moment of connection what this horrifying experience would mean for them. If my body and mind would remember and understand, or if they would think it had all been a dream or just a story. Surely, they would remember me fondly. I had always…

I stood up. It was dark outside, but the streetlights helped. I looked around. I did not remember very well what I was doing there. There was something about angels, demons, lies, and even murders. I must have had a delusional episode or something. Surely none of that actually happened. Hoping no one had seen me acting crazy, I decided to go home, looking forward to sitting down, eating, and watching some shows. The more I thought about it, the more I figured my weird dreams would make a good story. They had been so vivid.