How long?

You won't hear that question voiced, of course; wrong to think of the past, a gross social breach to mention it, a crime in the eyes of your neighbors to admit to possession of a book. They'll look at you with wide eyes shocked and horrified and concerned for you and they're already calling the nearest police station, lips moving just enough to shape words to their phone-implants, words that you can't hear but it doesn't matter because you know what they're saying. Crazy, she's insane, a danger to herself...

Danger, yes, that's it. Dangerous to think about the past, dangerous to remember. Who wants to remember someone who might die that night, vanish and the next day the world never knows their passing, and those who remember mourn tight-lipped and drown themselves in music from surgically attached head-phones and images flashing on view-screens too fast for comprehension. Don't think. Don't remember. Don't grieve that if you die tomorrow, no one will know.

How do I know?

I haven't been there yet, not quite, not that far; I'd like to say I'm not that stupid but I'm afraid to admit to myself that I'm really not brave enough to step through the door.

But I've read, call me crazy but I have, and maybe I've found the answer to the question that I swear is engraved in my brain, the questions no one's asking.

How long.

If you're lucky enough that they pause to answer, humoring you, and then make the call, they'll say "Always" or "Never" as their own denial suits. Always, say those who remember but try not to, try and try and try until they're successful in losing their minds to the throng of Nevers who don't remember and don't know what they're forgetting and don't care. And you know, I don't know who's right. Would you rather remember and fear your memories and fear that they'll find out and know that you're dying? Is it better, then, never knowing you're alive, forgetting fear and forgetting you ever knew, or maybe never knowing? There's death in the night, but you aren't aware. It doesn't matter. Death has no prejudice, doesn't care if the lives it reaps have not been lived.

But I think I have an answer, The answer, even. And it was born of books and of one book in particular, the books the scholars wrote who realized we were falling. They didn't know, of course, that we'd fall so far that we'd turn from the only source of the answer - or did they? There's a certain irony in that, I guess, because the one piece of knowledge that could save my race is embedded in a place they'd never look. But then, does the answer matter if no one's questioning?

Three thousand years ago, we nailed a man to a tree. His crime? No murderer, no thief; he'd suggested only the unthinkable: that maybe we should try being nice to each other.

He died childless, and the children who could have seen the folly of this time died with him, unborn. But his killers fathered our race. My race.

Am I like them? I'd like to say no, their race, their folly, but my feelings prove that wish untrue. I wouldn't care so much if it was someone else.

Maybe I'm not starting in the right place. This is all so hard...

... no, I have it now.

Do you believe in angels?

Our ancestors were wiser than we; they recognized the presence of the winged ones: messengers, miracle workers, those with the power to save. In this day those who remember tend to lump them in with the demons as equally evil and equally good.

But that can't be right. If they were essentially the same, on the same side, they wouldn't be fighting...

Maybe the man we killed millenia ago was one of them, but I think not. How could you kill an angel, the purest, the unborn? He was human, I think, one of those wise enough to help them. He was their first attempt to bring the world into light.

But they moved a little too boldly, a little too fast, and he attracted more attention than they'd intended. And the demons noticed.

They'd learned from the mistake the angels made; they moved quietly, such a small change that no one noticed until it was far too late. Just a little change, what they did to us - only the will to kill an innocent man...

One action, one life, and it set us irrevocably on this path, slipping into darkness that clouds out the light, into nothing, and not caring. I think we've fallen too far to save ourselves...

Had we been alone, the war would never have continued so long. A century, perhaps, or two? before the demons exterminated the human race.

I don't know what ended the first massacre, but the deaths are fewer now, farther between, and you could almost believe that the threat is gone.

No - but restrained, chained into security that's dangerous because no one remembers to fear.

But each night, a number of lives are claimed by the demons; each night, the angels may choose to save the same number. And if they choose well, no one disappears to darkness in the night...

Difficult to find any place, now, where city and buildings needle-like against the sky have not ground away all memory of earth. But find this place if you can, a patch of grass, maybe, brittle and dying-gold but still of Earth, still real, still true. Look up into white clouded brilliance and cold November wind and let the sky fall around you. And catch a snowflake, crystalline and beautiful and fragile but alone, alone and dying. Your life, or mine - one spark in a storm of uncountable millions.

One snowflake - your life, hinging on the chance that you, you of the billions of Earth will be the one chosen an angel smiles upon. A lone snowflake, and it's melting in your hands into icy water that pools and falls into forever. But before you tilt your hand to brush the water away (suddenly unremarkable, only part of the cold-damp seeping into your body)... do remember that you have lived.