These pieces are built to protect. They are shields, force fields, and talismans, each custom-made to safeguard against a particular threat. One will ward off an impending storm, another will scatter demons, a third will hold tight to your heart while you do something ridiculously, recklessly brave. Some are combative, others just resolute, meant to hold a person up in a moment of great uncertainty. And then, when the coast is most certainly clear, they can be hung, quietly, carefully, back on the wall.

If these shields actually worked—if, like Spiderman’s suit, they fused to the body of the vulnerable and awakened superhuman strength and courage, if there were actually something that I could build to give a kid wings, to amplify a small voice, to distill anger into forgiveness—then I would be obliged, and you would be obliged, to stop whatever it is we were doing right now and massproduce these things.