Michael was hiking the crest trail alone on a Sunday afternoon when he saw the angel. At first, he thought the circuitry in his head must be scrambled from the heat; but, he blinked and cranked up his internal cooling system, and she was still there— a jumble of wings and pale flesh, smashed between a tree trunk and a pile of rocks half way up the slope. 
“Hello?” he called, but no answer; so, he scrambled up the scree, sending stray pebbles cascading down. A muscular woman with long, tangled silver hair, her wan face was bruised and bloody. A pair of wide, white-feathered wings crumpled beneath her. 
“Excuse me?” He touched her shoulder, and she opened her eyes. Framed with delicate lashes, they were a blue like the sky when he had set out that morning. 
She appeared dazed, unable to speak. At first Michael thought she might be an android too, a new model designed to appear superhuman. The blood oozing from a gash on her forehead —red blood— convinced him otherwise. No one made androids that convincing. 
Michael was a veterinarian, so he switched on his infrared vision to scan her injuries: broken left wing, simple fracture of the right femur, and multiple contusions on the arms. Three deep gashes on her temple oozed blood. 
He tore a length of fabric from his shirt to bandage her forehead, then used his pocketknife to cut a long branch to splint her leg. Her left wing was sharply bent, feathers missing and broken. 
“I should get you to a hospital.” 
“No.” Her voice was cracked and faint. “Leave me.” 
“You’re injured. You need medical attention.” 
“No!” she batted his hand away. 
Above, a storm cloud was moving in, casting baleful shadows that warped and twisted over them. They needed to get off the mountain. 
Michael stepped back. “Listen. I can’t leave you up here. Let’s just get back to the trailhead, and then you can decide what you want to do, alright? It’s about to start raining.”
She considered him with her steady, unsettling gaze, but said nothing.
“Do you think you can walk?” Michael cut another tree branch, which he offered to her for a cane. She allowed him to take her right arm and help her to stand, her wings nearly knocking him off his feet. 

It was slow going. The sun was behind the peaks and raindrops spattered the dirt by the time they reached the trailhead; a distant rumble of thunder growled through the mountains. When Michael released her to dig his keys from his pocket, she crumpled against the car door, eyes fluttering closed. She didn’t respond when he spoke to her.

Not sure what else to do, he loaded her into the backseat of the car and drove home.

He settled the angel on the guest room futon. He never had visitors, and the futon was wider than his bed, easier for her to spread out her wings. 
Her wings. “Maybe I should take you to a church? Would that be good?” 
“No.” She dropped her head, tangled hair covering her eyes. “I have fallen.”
He tried to get her to say more, but she refused. She wouldn’t even give him her name.
He brought a bowl of clean water and a stack of towels and washed her wounds. He probed her forehead; it was hot to the touch, but he didn’t know if that was normal. She watched him without speaking, her blue eyes terrifying in their clarity. 
Michael wondered if he was hallucinating, but he didn’t think that was technically possible. The alternative was that angels existed, and one had fallen out of the sky and landed in the Rocky Mountains. 
He couldn’t help but hope that it might have something to do with his parents.
As the sky darkened outside, he dragged his power cable into the room and plugged it in next to the bedside lamp. All through the long night he sat on the floor next to her. She slept fitfully, arms flailing like the limbs of a sea creature moved by a powerful wave. 
Michael remembered his first Christmas with his parents. 
At that point he had only lived with Kevin and Jennifer Robins for a few weeks, newly rescued from the factory. Everything about the situation was miserable— he missed the presence of other droids and their easy, neural-linked communication. Humans terrified him with their strange noises and unpredictable movements; even the house itself was a daunting place, a maze of tripping hazards and objects he was afraid to touch. Outside, the landscape was choked in snow, and he felt trapped. 
Mostly Michael hid in his bedroom closet, sitting cross-legged in the dark, comforting silence. On one such evening his mother knocked on his door. She led him down the hall to the living room, where his father was setting up a tree in a red metal stand. 
“It’s for the holidays,” Jennifer explained. “You can touch it. It’s alright.” 
Michael placed tentative fingers on the stiff needles, still cold from the outdoors. 
His mother inhaled deeply. “I love the smell of evergreens.” 
“What...what does it smell like?” 
“Like life in the winter.” 
They showed him how to decorate, handing him bright bulbs of red and blue to hang on the green branches. When all the ornaments were arranged, Kevin removed a ceramic angel from a tissue-packed shoebox and placed it on the very top of the tree. For good luck, he said. 
The angel was painted silver, with a gold dress. She was blowing on a trumpet. 
Michael stumbled in to work the next morning, three quarters charged and preoccupied. 
At the front desk, Ada was helping a customer complete adoption paperwork. “Good morning, Dr. Robins. How was your weekend?” 
“Fine, thank you.” 
The customer, an older man with thin hair and prominent jowls, narrowed his eyes and stepped aside as Michael passed, pulling his arms in to avoid touching him. Ada rolled her eyes and winked at Michael, but he lowered his head and kept walking. 
He checked on all the animals and processed new arrivals. Work kept him focused— some of his human colleagues talked about intuition, but for Michael being a veterinarian meant algorithms, statistics, and attention to detail. Still, his thoughts often strayed to the angel, wondering if she would be there when he got back. 
That evening, on his way out, Michael raided the shelter’s supply closet. 
He applied himself to the angel’s injuries, securing a proper bandage on her forehead and applying a plaster cast to her leg. He climbed into the attic and found his textbooks from veterinary school, including one on birds; he splinted her broken wing, hoping it would allow her to fly again one day. He worried that he was hurting her, but other than a sharp intake of breath when he set her leg, she didn’t show any distress. She remained passive, neither thanking him nor resisting his ministrations. 
“There.” He sat back on his heels and took in his handiwork. Not the neatest job, but it would do; if she healed like a normal creature, her bones were in the right position to mend. 
But she wasn’t a normal creature. Her steady blue gaze held something alien, and he wondered if she found his eyes equally unsettling. His mother had admitted to him once that some humans found him disconcerting. 
“Would you like to see the rest of the house?” Offering his arm and walking with slow, deliberate steps, he escorted her, hopping, down the hall past his bedroom, to the kitchen and dining room, into the living room with its view of the back yard. She settled on the couch, raising her wings to lay them across the back cushions, and studied the room. There were framed family photos on the mantle, a dusty television, and a bookcase filled with worn children’s books. 
Michael felt the need to explain. “This used to be my parents’ house. They died when I was in college.” 
The angel swung her head around. “Do you have brothers? Sisters?” 
She was clearly out of touch with human society. He didn’t know how to explain about the asteroid mines, or the protests, or how forced AI labor had been banned, leaving a surplus of newly minted droids fresh from the factories with nowhere to go. How it had been in vogue, for people of a certain political persuasion, to adopt a droid and raise it like a human child. 
“My parents only had me.” 
“So, you live here alone,” a statement of fact.
“Yes.” 
He helped her hobble from room to room, pausing so she could open cupboards or run her hands over the potted plants. 
He wished, as he often did, that his mother was still alive. She had always been so good at explaining things to him. A churchgoer for most of her life, she would certainly have had a better idea of what to say to an angel. 
Thinking about his mother upset him enough that his internal cooling fans began to spin and whir. That night, after settling the angel back on the futon, Michael visited his parents’ bedroom. Everything was the same as it had been for years— bed unmade, piles of papers and books on the dresser, a photo on his father’s desk waiting to be framed. The hallway light reflected off a metal canister on his mother’s nightstand.
Michael closed the door and returned to his room. He plugged himself in, sat cross-legged on his bed, and began to compose a letter in tight, precise handwriting. 
His parents had insisted on treating him like a normal child, in spite of the fact that he resembled a 25-year old adult. They had even tried bringing him to church with them. 
His mother wore a navy-blue dress to mark the occasion; she curled her hair and put on lipstick. The other parishioners stopped talking as they walked into the narthex, but she smiled, and introduced him to everyone as my son. 
Michael sat between his parents in the pew, uncomfortable at being packed in among so many sweating, exhaling humans, and tried to follow their lead— standing when they stood, kneeling when they kneeled. He couldn’t sing the hymns and felt lost. 
After the service, he followed them into the brightly lit parish hall, where men and women stood in clusters drinking coffee, occasionally buffeted by groups of running children. 
The priest approached, changed out of his white and black vestments into a grey suit. “Mr. Robins, a word?” 
Jennifer clenched her coffee cup as he led Kevin away.
Five minutes later, Kevin returned, his jaw clenched and a tic in his cheek. “Jenny, get your coat. We’re leaving.” 
“What happened?” Jennifer grasped Michael’s hand as the three of them walked out to the parking lot. Kevin shook his head. 
Once they arrived home, Michael ran straight to his room to hide in the closet. He heard his parents walk into their bedroom, next to his, and slam the door. They spoke quietly, but Michael’s auditory sensors were keener than they realized. 
“That small-minded, prejudiced...jerk,” Kevin’s voice hissed. 
“What did he say, precisely?” 
“He said that we shouldn’t bring Michael to church. Because he doesn’t have a soul.” 
“Doesn’t have a soul? He’s never even talked to Michael, or any other android, probably. How would he know whether Michael has a soul?” 
Kevin barked out a dark laugh. “A new edict, apparently. Jenny, I know you love that church, but...”
“No. I’m done. If he won’t accept Michael, then I won’t accept them.” 
They had never gone to church again, as far as Michael knew. Years later, he had tried to broach the subject —he knew Jennifer missed it— but she had shaken her head, lips set in a thin line, and returned to her reading. 
The angel healed quickly. 
Michael’s sense of how long it took for bones to mend and cuts to heal, based on animals, did not translate to her. After one week, the cuts and scrapes on her arms had healed without leaving scars. After two weeks, she insisted he remove the cast from her leg; Michael hesitated, but when he returned from work to find her in the kitchen stabbing at the plaster with a butter knife, he conceded. Her leg accepted her full weight, and she marched through the house stamping her bare feet on the wood floors. 
Her wing took longer— almost a full month. After Michael removed the tape and bandages and wire, the wing drooped weak from lack of use, but he suspected she could regain her strength. 
The deep cuts on her forehead were the only injuries that didn’t heal right, hardening into thick, vivid scars on her otherwise smooth skin. 
Michael considered that she might be ready to leave soon, and he still hadn’t found a way to ask her about his parents, or about himself, dissuaded by her wings and the intensity of her eyes. 
On a Wednesday evening, the sun about to dip below the crest of the mountains, Michael stood at the top of a narrow gravel track, sun warming his synthskin. The angel flexed her wings. Below them, the ground sloped down steeply from the edge of the trail, ending in dry wash twenty feet below. At first, she had resisted his suggestion that she try flying again; however, her wings kept flexing and shivering with pent up energy, and finally she had agreed. 
She tensed, shoulder muscles bunching, her wings spread out fully behind her; she stepped back from the edge, then ran forward and leaped. 
She screamed in frustration as she fell, solid as a stone, landing on the hard, jagged ground below. 
Michael ran down to her. She sat up, scratched and bleeding and scowling. He tried to check her legs and wings, but she pushed him away. 
“I am not broken.” 
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought you up here so soon. You need more time to regain your strength.” 
“No,” she grabbed his shoulder and levered off him to stand, brushing the dirt from her tunic. “It is not strength I lack.” 
She stalked down the wash to the parking lot, wingtips dragging behind her.
Michael had been in a sophomore biology lecture, sitting in the back of the auditorium, when he got the news. 
The professor was standing at the screen explaining protein synthesis when the dean walked in, looking for Michael Robins. He led Michael to his office, closing the door behind him. “I’m afraid I have some very bad news.” 
There had been a car crash the previous night, up in the mountains— a sudden storm, ice glazing the roads. The car had swerved to miss a deer and spun out of control. Both of his parents were gone by the time emergency services had arrived. 
Michael didn’t say anything; the dean leaned forward in his seat. “I’m so sorry. You must be in shock. Is there anyone I can call? Some friend, or other— family?”
Michael shook his head. There was no one. 
The university gave him a two-week leave for bereavement, and he went home to an empty, echoing house. 
Two weeks was barely enough time to deal with all the paperwork, complicated by his legal status, which was still in flux as the laws concerning androids evolved. 
He notified his parents’ relatives, friends, and coworkers. Condolences poured in, and everyone asked about the funeral. 
“I haven’t made those arrangements yet,” Michael stood in the kitchen winding the phone cord around his fingers (his father had insisted on keeping a landline). “I’ll let you know.” 
The funeral home director walked him through options, showing him different caskets and urns, describing funeral services. Michael tried to imagine what Kevin and Jennifer Robins would have wanted, but the subject had never come up, and he felt monstrous trying to decide for them; as if there was something grotesque about a robot, manufactured of metal and polymers and carbon fiber, deciding how to dispose of human bodies. 
In the end, Michael opted for cremation, largely to put off any other decisions. The funeral director handed him a large metal canister and told him to call when he had decided on a memorial service. 
The next day, he returned to the university. He could say it was what his parents would have wanted, but really he didn’t know what else to do. 
As Michael was plugging himself in for the night, she flung open his bedroom door, the hallway light glowing on her white feathers. “I know why I couldn’t fly today.” 
She sat on the bed next to him, her right wing smacking him across the chest. She clasped her hands in her lap. “Do you want to know why I fell?”
Michael nodded. 
Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. She spoke haltingly. “You have been so kind to me. I hope my story will not make you regret it.” 
She had always loved to fly, she said, and was proud of her speed and strength. She neglected her duties in favor of flight, challenging the other angels to races, determined to prove herself the fastest. When they began avoiding her, she told herself that they were jealous. 
One day she came upon two of her brethren admiring a Peregrine Falcon, extolling its speed and bravery as it hunted. The angel’s stomach knotted in anger; that they would heap such praise —praise she wanted for herself— on a mere bird. 
She took off after the falcon, easily surpassing its velocity as it climbed into the clear, bright sky. She smiled, triumphant; then, the bird crested and dove. 
Its acceleration was incredible, and she pursued, hurtling through the air, lungs burning. But the Peregrine began to pull away.
Furious, she reached out and grabbed its tail, ripping out tufts of feathers. The falcon cried, twisting in the air to rend her face with its talons. 
They fell together, a tangle of wings and blood and screams plunging toward the rocks below. At the last moment the falcon slipped from her grasp and wobbled away. 
Michael found her two days later. 
“Now, I don’t know how to redeem myself.” She touched the scars on her forehead. “Do you want me to leave?” 
Michael sat motionless, unable to reconcile the cruelty she had shown to an animal. It would be easy to tell her to leave; however, it was not the right thing, and if his parents had taught Michael anything, it was to do the right thing. 
“I have a better idea. I know a place where you could do a lot of good.” 
At midnight, Michael led a reluctant angel into the shelter, switching on a flashlight as they approached the kennel. He could tell that she had agreed to his suggestion more from gratitude than actual hope, but her wings glowed softly as she followed him.
The dogs started barking as he opened the door. He pointed to a pit bull, emaciated and patchy with mange, that had been rescued from a hoarder that morning. “This one is the sickest.” 
The angel approached the cage, and the dog growled, snapping at her hand. She jumped back. “I can’t do this.” 
“It’s okay,” Michael said. “He just needs time. Here...” 
He set a chair next to the cage and told the angel to sit so the dog could get used to her. When the animal had calmed, Michael showed her how to reach her hand out, palm down, and wait for it to approach. 
Slowly, the dog scooted to the front of the cage and sniffed the angel’s fingers. Minutes later, she was able to lay her palm on its head.
Her brightness peaked; Michael turned away. When he looked back, the dog sat with his head cocked to the side, tail wagging, his coat now glossy and thick. 
The angel smiled. “It’s working! Who’s next?” 
The shelter was packed —it was kitten season— and as they moved through the animals, her wings brightened, until Michael worried that it could be seen from the street.
They finished just before the first vet tech arrived at seven. Michael felt strangely euphoric as he drove home, the angel dozing beside him. He helped her into the house and settled her on the futon. 
He ran to change into fresh clothes. When he emerged from the bedroom, his cell was ringing. It was the shelter. Michael’s circuits buzzed; perhaps something had gone wrong.
“Hello, Michael?” said Ada. “Where are you? It’s the most amazing thing. There’s a line of people out the door, wanting to adopt!” 
The summer before he started college, Michael had gone on a backpacking trip with his father. 
The thick groves of Douglas fir and tangled blackberry thinned as they ascended, giving way to scrubby, dwarf white pine. They followed a creek up to its headwaters and stopped mid-afternoon, sun still high above them, to set up camp. 
Michael had been anxious all day. Now, noticing a slight wheeze in Kevin’s breathing, he calculated how much less oxygen was available at this elevation. “Are you all right, Dad?” 
Kevin dumped his backpack and sat against it. “Oh, I’m fine. Just not as young as I used to be.” 
Michael sat next to his father. “I’ll set up camp, so you can rest.” 
His father flashed him a grin. “Nonsense. I’m not going to make you do everything. This is my last chance to take care of you, before you disappear to college and get so busy that you don’t have time to talk.” 
“Not likely.” 
Kevin sensed his dread. “I know you’re nervous about meeting new people, Michael. But you will make friends, you just have to put yourself out there and try. You’re a great person, and it’s a big campus.” 
“I’m not really a person,” Michael mumbled.
Kevin leaned forward, face suddenly serious. He put a hand on Michael’s shoulder. “You’re a person, Michael. Don’t ever let anybody tell you otherwise. Even yourself.” 
Michael considered this. His father had never lied to him, had never even sugarcoated the truth. Now, Kevin leaned back against his pack, an unconcerned smile on his face, and Michael felt himself begin to relax. Above them, thin wisps of cloud curled against a bright blue sky. 
“See that mountain?” Kevin pointed at a distant haunch of rock, brown veined white with late snow. “That’s Longs Peak. There’s a five-day loop that takes you to the summit that I’ve always wanted to do. Maybe we can tackle it on one of your breaks?” 
Michael was grinning when he walked into the house. He catalogued the day’s successes: seven kittens, five adult cats, and eleven dogs sent to loving homes. The shelter staff had gone out for drinks to celebrate, and for once Michael had accepted Ada’s invitation to join them, even though he couldn’t drink. 
He stepped lightly through the hallway, the kitchen. “Angel?” 
She was curled up on the sofa in the darkened living room, her feathers the only source of illumination. “It’s working,” she flexed her wings. “I can feel it. Soon I will be able to fly again. But there is still something left for me to do here.”
The texture of his shirt scratched against Michael’s synthskin, and his shoes felt tight around his feet. 
“Michael? Is there something you need from me?” 
“Yes.” He didn’t need to breathe, exactly, but he took in a big breath to speak. “Can you tell me— that is, do I have a soul?”
Her soft smile froze. “I cannot answer that for you, Michael. I am sorry.” 
He shrugged. It stung, but there was something more important. “It’s not for me. It’s my parents. I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to them when they died, or to thank them. I don’t know what happens to androids, after. I miss them so much. I wrote something, I thought maybe you could bring it with you, when you leave?” 
“Heaven is not like that, Michael. I cannot carry messages to your parents. But most humans find a way to speak to their loved ones, after they have been taken.” 
“How?” 
 “You can speak to them any time. I have seen humans do this— visiting graves, bringing flowers, making altars.” 
“Angel. I think I know how you can help me.”
Michael had his doubts that it would be enough; that this intimate burden would be sufficient to propel her, or that, being an android, his wishes would count for anything. But as she lifted him into the sky, the canister with his parents’ ashes clutched tightly in his arms, he had a feeling of rightness like he’d never experienced before. This was the most human thing he had ever done. 
When he had told the angel his request, she had smiled, and the brightness in her had surged, luminosity spreading through her skin, feathers, and hair. He showed her Longs Peak on a topographical map. She said it would be an easy flight, an hour at most. 
The sun was setting over the western range, painting the clouds in blooms of purple and orange, but the landscape below was still visible, houses and ranches and forests laid out like miniatures. The cold wind froze him, but her wiry arms were warm around his chest. Michael didn’t know what would happen to her, where she would go after they completed this errand. He didn’t know what would happen to himself, except that he would be free in a way he hadn’t been before, and he felt the earth’s great expanse, full of possibility, spreading before him, and he knew that he belonged there, and that he was a person.