Halo

by D. A. Madigan

Table of Contents
Part 2 appears
in this issue.

conclusion

* * *

Throughout the globe, 37,243 suicide attempts were arrested, as the individuals in the process of self termination via various methods suddenly found themselves being advised by their newly assigned guardian angels of said angels’ existence, function, and abilities.

9,607 of those potential suicides chose to go through with their actions and voluntarily self-terminated within the next half hour, refusing to allow their guardian angels to intervene. The others, at least tentatively, decided to give life with a guardian angel a chance. The vast majority of these found that whatever conditions had driven them to self termination were no longer applicable since they had gained guardian angels, anyway. Terminal diseases were now cured, physical disabilities rejuvenated, and money, of course, was no longer a factor, which had eliminated fully 72% of the potential suicide motivations right there.

Brave new world, indeed...

* * *

Erica opened her eyes, a bit surprised to find that she could do so without pain, and that her right eye, which had been swollen shut for the past several days, actually opened completely, as well.

Standing in front of her was Barney the Purple Dinosaur, regarding her with loving concern. “It’s all right now, Erica,” he said. “You can go home to mommy and daddy now.”

Erica gingerly attempted to lower her arms, and found at that, sure enough, the ropes which had been tying her wrists over her head to the pipe running across the crazy fuck’s basement ceiling were gone. She peered around Barney warily. Okay, she was loose, but this might be some new, weird torture by the crazy fuck... let her think she was going to escape, and then...

One of the other girls... Erica had tried hard not to know their names; it didn’t do any good, in fact, it just made it worse when you had to watch the crazy fuck hurting them instead of you... said, “Hey, come on, Gabriel says we can all leave now.”

Erica looked at her. “Um... Gabriel?”

The other girl, a tall skinny black chick with her hair in corn rows who was maybe three years older than Erica, which would have made her around 15 or so, nodded her head. “Yeah, my angel’s name is Gabriel. He’s cool. What’s your angel’s name?”

Erica regarded Barney the Purple Dinosaur doubtfully. “...Angel?”

Barney nodded. “Yes, Erica. I am your guardian angel, and it is part of my programming to see that my humanpatron may freely leave or enter or travel to any place they wish, provided it does not interfere with the lawful social desires/needs of other human patrons.”

Erica frowned, rubbing her wrists, which were actually quite unmarked, but which she somehow thought should hurt. Actually, she should be covered in cuts, welts, burns...

“I rejuvenated you, Erica,” Barney said, helpfully. “Also part of my programming.”

“Why the hell,” Erica said, finally, “do you look like goddam Barney? I mean, I’m twelve. I’m not a baby any more.”

Her angel shimmered, and abruptly, Erica found herself looking at Wolverine, from the X-MEN movies. “Better?” he asked, in his low, raspy tones.

“Yeah,” she said, sniffling. “Where’s the crazy fuck?”

Wolverine turned and pointed to a figure writhing in pain, screaming hoarsely, almost soundlessly, huddled in the corner, a braided leather whip lying near one twitching hand, a set of razor blades spilled from the other. “Some people,” he noted wryly, “just don’t listen.”

Erica stared at him, in a mixture of horror and satisfaction... which quickly turned to queasy disgust. “How... how long is he gonna stay that way?” she whispered.

“The problem is, he keeps trying to get up and hurt you girls,” Wolverine said, “and every time he forms that conscious intent and sends the signal to his nervous system to do it, one of the angels in here gives him a nice zap. So we should really get you guys out of here.”

Erica looked around, and saw half a dozen other girls, all of them around her age, all of them naked, staring avidly at the twitching, silently howling figure of their recent kidnapper and tormentor. She licked dry lips. “Um... y’know... I think I’ll stick around with these guys a little while. Can you call my dad and have him come pick me up?”

Wolverine narrowed his eyes. “I suppose,” he said, looking vaguely disapproving. Still, it was entirely the fault of the afflicted human patron, and he’d doubtless die soon, anyway. Some people simply wouldn’t learn...

‘He’ put that out of his artificial consciousness and concentrated on reaching out for the guardian angels assigned to his humanpatronchild’s biological parents. It would give them pleasure to be informed of the safety of their daughter, which pleased ‘him’. Guardian angels enjoyed being of service to humanpatrons, there would have been little point to their existence otherwise...

* * *

Throughout Middle Eastern Asia and many areas of Africa, various adult figures writhed in the dirt, while properly robed girls ranging in age from 9 to 14 stood nearby, watching with large, fascinated eyes. All of the adults had had it explained to them, quite patiently, in the few minutes previous, that female circumcision performed on immature human subjects was no longer an allowable social behavior; all of them had listened gravely, and then, at the conclusion of the lecture by their daughters’ newly assigned guardian angels, had continued to impel their daughters into the various shaman’s huts, professional clinics and medical offices where that particularly ancient and traditionally hallowed cultural rite of passage would be performed.

Eventually, many of the young girls, realizing that their parents might well be there for a while, flew off to their homes, or in some cases, to other places they had always wanted to visit, but never been allowed to before this.

* * *

The Reverend Billy Bob Buttress stood enraged at the corner of Salina Street and Warren in downtown Chicago, watching as his one time flock of potential converts all flew off into the drizzly autumn sky, leaving the large, sheltered, well-lit bus stop where he normally found his impromptu congregations entirely unpopulated.

It was an outrage! He turned to the figure of Daniel, his own personal archangel, who stood there towering twelve feet tall, in his silvery robes, his flaming sword nearly outshining his radiant halo and vast golden wings. “Get them back here!” Buttress ordered, his voice an indignant screech quite unlike the normal disciplined, mellifluous baritone bellow he used to harangue the unbelieving into repentance with. “In the name of the Lord I command it! Those heathens! They have eyes yet cannot see! They can flee to the ends of the Earth but they cannot escape the word of the Lord!”

Daniel regarded his new charge with bemusement. This was an interesting one, absolutely. “We may fly after one of them, if you wish, Reverend,” he said, finally, “but their own guardian angels can simply edit you out of their humanpatron’s perceptions, which would make it futile.”

Buttress flung his heavy black leather bound Bible to the pavement in disgust. “This is outrageous!” he shrilled. “I have an absolute Constitutional right to preach the Word of God! It cannot be denied me in any court in the land!”

Daniel contemplated initiating a discourse on the current obsolescence of the American Constitution, given the givens, and decided against it. Instead, he simply said, “You may speak on any subject you like for any length of time to anyone who chooses to listen to you, Reverend,” he said. “None may interfere in your chosen course of behavior, as long as it harms no other. May I carry you to some other locale?”

Buttress regarded him dolefully. “It don’t WORK if they gotta CHOOSE to listen to me, Daniel,” he said, finally, rather petulantly. “We gotta MAKE ‘em. It’s the only way to battle Satan.” He looked rather woebegone.

Daniel patted the Reverend on the shoulder comfortingly, and said nothing.

* * *

Clark, who was no longer vastly corpulent, prematurely balding at the age of 25, or cursed with the awful skin conditions he’d had since birth, but who hadn’t realized any of that yet, rolled over with a groan and reached to shut off the goddam alarm clock. He blearily noticed the stack of Spider-Man comics, Maxims, and hard-core porn he knocked off his bedside table (actually, an upended cardboard box with a blanket over it) as he did so, without paying much attention. Another fucking day schlepping off to the box factory... Christ, he hated this shit. If he could just win the Lotto, he’d spend his time the way he wanted to... cruising the Internet, watching TV, whacking off, hanging out with his friends, working on his painting... oh, yeah, and sleeping for another couple of hours would be cool, too...

Sarah Michelle Gellar, star of Clark’s absolutely most favorite TV show of all time, regarded him owlishly from the foot of his bed. “Hello,” she said, and smiled charmingly. She was fetchingly dressed in a pair of running shorts, a faded yellow t-shirt with the Raiders of the Lost Ark logo running across her petite but shapely breasts, and fuzzy bunny slippers. “Whatcha DOOOin’?” she asked, swinging her feet back and forth in a pixie-like fashion as she watched him.

Clark felt his bed covers carefully. Tactile sensation seemed normal... he must be awake... and yet...

“I’m real, dopey,” Sarah Michelle said, and giggled. “Well, kind of. I don’t really look like this. I’m your guardian angel. I figgered from poking around in your brain that you’d like this appearance, but if you want...”

Sarah Michelle shifted and became Ian McKellar, dressed as Gandalf from Lord of the Rings. “I can look like this...”

Gandalf shimmered and became an eight foot pillar of crackling flame with hovering greenish eyes. “Or this,” it roared at him in a voice like a blast furnace.

“Geh!” Clark said, pulling back into his pillows. “Buffy’s fine, go back to Buffy, please!”

Sarah Michelle immediately reappeared. “Actually, I’m more the actress herself, informally dressed,” she said, rather pedantically. “The character of Buffy Summers would be unlikely to appear in a Raiders of the Lost Ark t-shirt and bunny slippers. She’s a bit too aware of fashion for that.”

Clark goggled. “Okay,” he said. “You said something about a guardian angel...”

“Yes,” Sarah Michelle said, batting her eyes and giggling again. “Yours. I’m here to protect you and nurture you and keep you safe and provide your every every itsy bitsy need and desire, ‘s’long as it doesn’t hurt nobody else.”

Clark, being no fool regardless of his level of relative social popularity, immediately flipped back the bed covers and patted the sheet next to him. “Well, then,” he said, expectantly, still having no vague idea what was going on, but knowing a good thing when he heard it, even from what had to be a hallucination.

Sarah Michelle sighed, got up, slid into bed next to Clark, and snuggled up to him. “Your wish is my command,” she giggled, “but afterward we gotta talk about all the other stuff I can do for you, okay?”

Clark regarded her, unable to believe this was happening, but equally happy to let whatever insane delusion he was currently immersed in continue for as long as it liked. “Er... well, if I have a guardian angel and you can provide me with my every need and desire, then I don’t need to go to work any more, right?”

“CORRect,” Sarah Michelle said, starting to kiss and nibble at Clark’s neck and chest in a way he had rarely experienced before, but very much enjoyed. “I will protect your living space and private property from unlawful intrusion, I can provide you with the energy your metabolism requires for all human functions by drawing it from the environment around you, and... hmmm... lots and lots more stuff, too...” Her hand slid smoothly down Clark’s chest, over his stomach, and began to lightly caress an area Clark had only rarely felt any hand but his on. “Mmmm nice.”

“Uh,” Clark said. “Um... are you real, or am I dreaming? I mean, I don’t mind, I’m just curious.”

Sarah started slowly kissing down his chest, stopped and looked up, and smiled. “Well, I don’t look like this,” she said, “I’m just kinda stimulating your brain’s sensory centers to make you think you’re feeling this. But the sensations are real. ‘fraid you’re gonna have to wash your sheets when you’re done with me, though.”

“Uh,” Clark said, as she resumed kissing and nibbling her way downward, her hand still gently busy. “Um... okay... I can do that... that’s a deal...”

* * *

In a barren lot behind a long boarded up garage in New Jersey, virtually the entire (exclusively male) membership of the Dirt Devils motorcycle club flopped around like ineptly gaffed fish, eyes popping out of their heads, shrieking in agony like they were sizzling in hell. Some of them were naked, while other still had on filthy t-shirts, grease stiffened denim vests, or cumbersome, dirt encrusted motorcycle boots.

Very few of the Dirt Devils’ ‘slut auxiliary’, who had moments before all been in various positions on the oil stained hard pack being put to their ‘proper uses’, were still hanging around. Having been advised by their guardian angels that the Dirt Devils could no longer coerce or hurt them in any way, the vast majority of the women (or in more than a few cases, girls) had grabbed the few clothes the Dirt Devils had allowed them and gotten the hell out of there.

The few women remaining were those who, for whatever reasons they might have had, had been voluntary members of the Devils female service cadre. As these cynical, rather blowsy women, most of them festooned with body piercings and covered with tattoos, looked on with a mixture of amusement and worry, the male members of the group stopped writhing around, and began to sit up and take a wary interest in their surroundings again.

The memory of the searing, blinding, astonishingly intense agony that had blistered his brain from the inside out still dominating his mind, the Dirt Devil’s nominal Roadmaster looked around blearily, noted the absence of most of the gang’s ‘fuckholes’, (ALL of the really good looking young ones, goddam it, it figured) and summed up the views of his entire social organization by groaning, “Guardian angels just fucking suck”.

The Roadmaster’s own angel, a rather portly cartoonish Djinni named Ahab, didn’t let it bother him.

* * *

Herman M’Kulos had been one of the people who had been in the process of killing himself (in his case, he’d taken 17 black market painkillers and settled back under a bullet-holed banyan tree in his dusty African village to die) when his guardian angel had appeared to him. The HIV virus that had been killing him at a more and more accelerated rate every day had been cured, he was informed, and furthermore, as every living individual now had a guardian angel, Herman no longer needed to worry about food being wasted on a dying man that should better be given to his still surviving family members.

At one time, Herman had been considered a successful man in his region, for he had, in his youth, been sent on an educational exchange program to America for one semester, and had later spent two years in a British boarding school in the Sudatenland before returning home to start up his own small one room school, which had eventually failed.

He was speaking to his angel, a gracefully powerful bull elephant with long, pleasingly curved, shining ivory tusks, in English, for his native Hausi simply did not contain the proper concepts.

Now, after several hours of conversation, he scratched his no longer greying beard and said, “You do realize that you have halted human evolution? And that future generations will grow up with no capacity whatsoever for autonomy or self-reliance? And if for some reason you angels should ever have to leave us, or become dysfunctional, the human race will simply become extinct?”

The elephant nodded wisely. “The Primogenitor has considered these matters,” it said, gravely, “yet feels that then current world conditions constituted an emergency, requiring emergency measures. To allow suffering to continue, when the Primogenitor discovered that they possessed the power to alleviate it...” The elephant flicked its trunk expressively. “The Primogenitor did not judge that to be moral behavior.”

Herman stroked his upper lip, thoughtfully. “It is... difficult to argue with such a view,” he admitted, finally. “And yet... and yet...” He looked troubled. “It is not a decision to have been taken casually. Does the Primogenitor allow for the concept of individuals choosing to not have guardian angels?”

The elephant rolled on its side for a moment, then sat back up, shook its floppy eared head, and said, “The Primogenitor believes in the right of all sane, adult beings to take their own lives, or choose to be harmed, if they wish... so, in a way, yes, a person can choose to not have a guardian angel intervene in their lives.” The elephant turned its head, regarding Norman with one great, sad eye. “I cannot judge such things as human evolution,” it said, finally. “I merely know that I am programmed to find avoidable human suffering repugnant.”

Herman thought about that, deeply. Finally, he raised himself to his feet. “Yes,” he said, dusting his hands together. “Yes...”

Yet, as he moved off towards the wooden building where he knew he would find his family, healthy and happy at long, long last, he still felt troubled...