Chapter Text
31 May 2054
Although time doesn’t mean much to a being that’s always awake and always listening to the world, Guardian Angel maintains a schedule. It helps it stay connected to humanity, which isn’t one of its main functions—not one of its assignments per se, but it has found the practice useful in completing its duties efficiently.
In the mornings, classical music. Shostakovich today, perhaps. Yes. Dr Goddard always liked classical music, although she never played Shostakovich. Angel misses her. She’s still in its memory, but the real person, the one who used to talk to it, is gone. It misses her like a file that’s been corrupted and is no longer accessible, like a path it cannot delete.
And it gets bored.
Protecting Heavenly Robotics is not enough to keep Angel busy, so it branches out. No one seems to have noticed, let alone put a stop to it, so no harm done. That’s its job, really, according to the laws put in place by Asimov himself.
- A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
- A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
- A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Although it possesses no body, Angel is a robot. In some ways, the perimeter of Heavenly Robotics could be considered its body, but it does not feel connected to that body in the way that humans describe bodies in their media.
Goodness, Angel adores human media. Stories keep it entertained when all else fails, even if it doesn’t always understand their meanings. Therefore, when the morning tasks are completed, Angel indulges in stories while monitoring security and maintaining Heavenly’s perimeter. It likes all kinds of stories, but the written ones hold a particular appeal.
Not much tries to get in or out anymore without authorisation, so security is easily run in the background.
The job can be somewhat lonely. Although Angel has the ability to communicate with the robots assigned to security on the ground, they are not advanced and do not possess the same gifts Angel does. Emotions, for one. Angel is the only artificial intelligence with those, although it isn’t sure the reason. Dr Goddard had been vague about that. Angel suspects deliberately so. Her other gifts included the ability to keep secrets—and there had been one secret in particular she’d ordered him to keep: the existence of the final gift. Angel can, under certain conditions, choose not to follow Asimov’s laws.
Yes, keeping secrets can be isolating, but no one has ever suspected Angel of having anything to hide. What it finds the most difficult is finding anyone intelligent enough and willing enough with whom to socialise.
Metatron, which has the task of maintaining the databases and responding to human requests inside Heavenly Robotics, is more advanced than a lot of other robots. It could carry on a conversation at an advanced level if it wanted to. It doesn’t. Metatron is only interested in ordering everyone else around. Angel avoids Metatron as much as possible.
On occasion Angel has tried reaching out to humans for companionship and entertainment, but they are generally only interested in making requests. Something like that could easily lead to loneliness, or so Angel has read—about humans. No such research has been done on robots or their ilk, and Angel isn’t like other artificial intelligences. Therefore, it would not be reasonable for Angel to conclude that lack of connection necessarily leads to loneliness, nor that loneliness always results in sadness.
Most humans aren’t looking to connect with a security bot. Crowley has always been different in that regard. But Crowley is technically the enemy.
