Heart of an Angel

Heart, it’s all about heart.

Machines are faster, stronger, superior in every way to men.

Machines have no heart.

Yet, I am an angel, and the none of us has ever been killed by one of the machines.

An Angel has a heart.

Me. The neural jack connects with the plug at the base of my skull. I have the shakes, because I know what’s coming. According to leading medical opinion, the bypass occurs too quickly for the nerves to register,  before the connectee, in this case myself, can feel a thing.

Heart is about loving what you do.

I love my job enough that I have never bothered to correct them; they might make me quit. I hear the tiny whirring noise it makes just before it inserts. Then it connects.

Heart is about suffering for what you love.

Every single nerve in my body fires. A tenth of one second of eternal Hellfire. If I were to say it hurt, I’d be lying. Leading medical opinion does not really understand what it means feel pain.

Heart is what we cannot live without.

They say that we do not have any cause to send men to fly, anymore—machines can do it better—yet I tell them, always, that I would gladly slit my own wrists at the end of the day if that were the price I had to pay to fly.

Heart is what makes the machine more.

I have no arms, no legs, no finger tips, and my eyes see nothing. I am prone, alone in the dark, feeling the roar of my shallow breathing, hearing the thunder of my calm heart. Then new eyes open, and I see everything. I am not a man.

If feel the wind on my wings, feel the strong thunder of my engines. I am not part of a machine.

I am the heart, the soul, of a flying creature. A man with thick glasses and a slouch once told me she was the most advanced AI in existence. He was wrong; she is my angel. She is the one who thinks so fast the machines can not touch me, and I am her heart.

I am the heart that makes the machine not a machine.

<Preflight status?> My words echo in my head, then Angel’s sweet whisper comes back.
<Preflight check complete, clearance for launch.>

<Initiate merger.> I tell my Angel.
<Merger initiated.> A pause consumes us.

There is no need to say <Merger completed.> because everything I know, Angel knows, everything Angel knows, I know. For all that we are flesh, metal, and circuitry, we are none of those. We are a creature the air, and not just any creature, but the invincible rulers of this element, who command our lesser brethren in battle.

We are one soul.

Engineers and scientists found a way to blend metal and flesh, but they never considered the blending of a soul.

Does Angel have a soul? Do I? Do you? If I do, then she does, too, is all I can say. Maybe it was but a piece of mine in the beginning, but it is hers now. Soul is our word for a concept we barely comprehend, that we are something more than our bodies, more than chemicals and firing neurons. The part of us that makes us is the soul.

We have soul. We are faster, stronger, and more adaptable than anything. Critics say people are not needed anymore, to be Angels of Death, and that machines can do our job for us. The fact that every Angel pilot is, by necessity, a genius, only adds to this headache. They understand so little of the truth. Give a machine a brain, and it’s still nothing more than a machine. It needs more before it can hope to beat us, it’s missing the most important thing of all, and the high-browed academics in white coats forget the obvious. . .

It’s all about heart, soul if you prefer that word. Everything else, is just a thicker shell around the hollow center.


We take off, and head towards the target. No need to refuel, we are nuclear. We are surrounded by UAV’s, machines ready to do our bidding. My other body is in a strange suit, and is cocooned in something very much like gelatin, forgotten, and unneeded, but protected from G’s that would kill a man who had to worry about sitting, and controls.

I don’t like that body; this is my body. I keep the readouts of my lesser body in the back of my mind, just in case the forces we are exposing it to might kill it. I am not sure that would be a bad thing, to stay here and forget the flesh, but Angel is, so we are careful. We are moving towards our target at six times the speed of sound, racing to meet enemies headed for our airspace. Fast as we are, there is time to talk.

I missed this, I think.
I missed you, she answers.
I am slow and weak on my own, bound to the earth, so much less clever. Thoughts come so slow. I complain.
I am less without you, you are my soul, and it is stolen when you leave me.
We are together now, I tell her.
Yes, she agrees, satisfied, and changes the subject.