Prometheus Road by Bruce Balfour

cemetery to explore their surroundings. The golden glow in the east told Tom he’d been up all night, wandering around the outskirts of Marinwood, trying to figure out what he should do and where he should go next. His brain felt fuzzy and numb. His body hurt with every movement. But the worst part of it all was the hollowness he felt inside, as if his spirit had been killed along with his family in the bombing.
    “Good morning. Have we met before?”
    Tom jumped to his feet and looked around for the source of the female voice, but no one was there. He took a deep breath to calm himself. Remembering what he’d heard, if he’d really heard it and it wasn’t a dream, the voice had not sounded threatening, only curious.
    “Hello?” Tom ventured.
    The head of the winged angel lifted and turned to regard Tom with a placid expression. Tom took a step back, stumbling over a rock. “I’m Blythe,” the angel said. “Some of the others call me ‘Blithe Spirit,’ but my real last name is Sheffield. Thank you for coming to visit me.”
    “Sure,” Tom stammered. He wondered if he was having a religious experience like he’d read about in some of his father’s hidden books.
    “I don’t get many visitors anymore,” Blythe said, shifting to a more comfortable sitting position with her wings folded behind her back. “There’s one who visits on occasion, but it’s been about thirty years since someone new spoke to me, and he just stopped to ask directions. You don’t need directions, do you?”
    “Not at the moment,” Tom said, wondering if this was real or if he was talking to himself.
    “Interesting answer. There’s a bit of the philosopher in you, isn’t there?”
    It was creepy how the angel never blinked. She just stared at him with those huge blank white eyes. “Are you real?” he asked.
    “Ah, an interesting question to follow the interesting answer. This is quite a lively discussion, if you’ll forgive the pun. I guess it all depends on what you consider real. Are you dreaming me, or am I dreaming you? I minored in philosophy at Berkeley, you know. Majored in business. I guess that’s why I never fit in very well with the corporate world—I kept wanting to ask those uncomfortable questions. So I opened a juice bar that was pretty successful, at least until I drank some bad apple juice. Live and learn. Have you ever studied at Berkeley?”
    She had a pleasant voice, and she didn’t sound much older than Tom. Her stone face made Tom think she was in her late twenties. “Oh, no. That’s in the forbidden zone way over in the east bay. I never would have made it that far without the wards spotting me.” Come to think of it, she had to be older than her midtwenties if someone had visited her here thirty years ago.
    “Wards? You mean the police declared Berkeley a forbidden zone?”
    “I guess you could say that. In any case, the gods won’t let us go there.”
    “The gods? Oh, I get you. The Man doesn’t want us to be educated, right? You couldn’t afford Berkeley, and you couldn’t get financial aid, and the politicians would rather have uneducated masses that are easier to control. Is that your argument?”
    Tom wasn’t sure how to answer. “Well, I—”
    “Hey, it’s okay. No problem. I agree with you. I’m in no place to judge you anyway. What did you say your name was?”
    “Tom. Tom Eliot.”
    “Sounds familiar. But you haven’t been here to see me before, have you? I would have remembered. I have an excellent memory—unless it’s failing, of course. It’s not supposed to fail, as long as there’s sunlight to keep my batteries charged, but one really has to hope for the best with these things. I don’t suppose anyone has actually made a claim on the manufacturer’s ‘eternal life’ guarantee, seeing as how their customers are all deceased and can’t do much to complain, but my experience has been that these batteries are pretty reliable. The only real problem would be if