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what to expect, and still they walk forward into the unknown every day.
    Kalyx’s voice comes from directly behind me, far closer than she usually gets.
    “I fear for you. I understand it is logical for you to want to join them, to explore your human half, but it is distressing.”
    The topic has been an invisible entity living with us for a while, but she’s never brought it up directly before. Always it’s been which guild and when, never if.
    “I don’t have to go for long,” I say. “Certainly not so long that I won’t be able to return.”
    “It is not that simple. Do not make the journey until you can be sure that if you are unable to return, the choice was worth it.”
    I can go to the human world and live among them, but eventually my angel powers will fade, making it impossible to take my angel form and pass through a portal to return home. And if I die in my human form, there will be no Angel of Death coming to usher my soul away, no Angel of Life to pair me with a new body. I will meet only the specialized sect of warriors who guard the place that most in Euphoria don’t ever have cause to speak of.
    The Wasteland represents the failures of the angels to effectively elevate souls.
    “When will it ever be enough?” I ask, watching the man and woman walk through a field of grass so green I long reach out and touch it, to understand what it would feel like beneath my human fingertips.
    “When will what be enough?”
    “When will we have cultivated enough souls that we can stop? That we can just leave them be? There was a time before the angels came to this world and the humans managed to live and die just fine without our help.”
    “We came from a place to which we cannot return. This is what we must do to survive, Caleb. The eternal flame energizes us, just as souls drive humans. There will not be an end. This is the way it is now.”
    Through the portal, the vibrant green of the field has a hypnotic effect on me. I want to taste food and experience laughter. To touch and smell and feel. I do not want to record the lives of others — I want to live my own.
    I want to be like these two and fall in love. Find my one.
    Kalyx disappears, leaving me to stare through that window to another world.
    She would prefer I not leave, but she accepts my choice. It is really only a question of when.
----

Now
    The clatter of a tray onto a nearby cafeteria table startles me. Caleb sits across from me, his eyes dreamy.
    “So angels are just using us? For power? We’re just batteries, like in The Matrix ?”
    “Perhaps.” He draws the word out into three syllables as he considers. “I don’t know what the matrix is, but, yes, your soul is an energy source, comparable to a battery. It moves through the lifetimes, growing and changing, becoming stronger and more powerful … the grand journey. Angels are tasked with cultivating souls, leading them into new bodies over and over, affecting their destinies and futures so that eventually they’re strong enough to join the eternal flame — the driving force behind Euphoria.”
    My fingers are shot through with pinpricks, like when I’m out too long in the winter without gloves. The chill extends through my whole body. I can almost feel my soul cooling, hunkering down, reflexively rebelling against any attempts to manipulate it.
    “That’s kind of fucked up.”
    Caleb looks down. “It’s just the way it is.”
    “Well, at least you get to avoid being cultivated. ” The word sounds dirty in my mouth.
    “Yes, but without a soul, I can live in this world only once. When the soulless die, we face the Wasteland.” The despondent note in his voice is an icy finger down my spine.
    “So, hell, basically?”
    “There isn’t any torture, no burning, fiery pits. But it’s bleak and empty. An eternity without any real hope of coming back here.”
    “Sounds like a place you never want to visit.”
    “No, I don’t ever want to go back.”
    I spit out the soda I’d