The angel surrounded and buoyed Billy. The angel was the only reason Billy still lived. The angel’s name was Lethe, and he had saved Billy’s life. He had shown Billy the images of terrible beauty, blinding light and a song that brought tears to the boy’s eyes. A voice of such power and purity that even Lethe’s memory of it, filtered through Billy’s mechanical body and into the recesses of Billy’s mind, had moved him back from the edge of death.