You see a lot of strange things with a job like mine - but then, you can't really live in this world and avoid things like that. I don't know what our ancestors would have thought of us; we're so different, all of us, even and maybe especially those playing at normality. And maybe there's no such thing as normal.

But I see more than most, I think; you learn to pick up on every little detail when you've spent every day of your life watching. The knowledge that you are responsible the safety of your country weighs heavily, true, but it's a burden that I'm proud to bear. So you live each day as it comes and you find that each breath comes easier and you can believe that because of a hundred, a thousand like you, there is peace on earth.

The title "police" is misleading, I guess - you might think that it would mean an enforcer of the law, a protector of the people, and you'd be right. But from what do we need protection now?

And maybe your thoughts would stop there, because the reasons just aren't something we talk about - nothing the people need to know and they're better off not knowing. Of course we can't go dropping words like war - surely you can see the panic that would rise in the cities, suffocating and inflaming and undoing everything we've worked for...

Yet a thousand years ago, words like that were commonplace, dropped with more ease than your name, and no one seemed to care, and they didn't feel the horror than the human race walked the thread of extinction and held the shears with their own hands.

I'm sorry, I'm not being too clear. Just so hard to talk about something like that, so difficult even to think of a time when we could have come so close to destroying everything for no clear reason and didn't even care. But I do this, though, for just that reason - if thinking about issues like this is so hard for one trained, then - surely you see? Someone has to think for the people; someone has to be here, knowing the signs of war and watching for them, because we can't make our ancestors' mistake ever again.

So you have the true explanation, now, the right I've been taught all my life. But you know, sometimes - and forgive me for saying this - I think that I only do this for Caelis...

She can't know that, of course - really so much she doesn't know, and I'll tell her if she asks but she won't - she doesn't think like that. She's a child, really, and I mean that not as censure or compliment but truth - because sometimes I think that's why we're still together. How can you leave someone who needs you so much?

Cae wouldn't remember how we met, but I do - of course I do, but there's another thing she shouldn't know - or maybe she already does. And yet how can you know that you were being watched and not care?

No, she can't, she couldn't have, not Caelis.

Watcher would be a much better word, really. We have to watch those who look too deeply; questioning leads to discussion to argument to war, and there must be peace and peace and - you must understand.

So Caelis one of those we were watching because she was searching too hard for things that least need to be resurrected - we can't have religion here, not when such convictions lead people to kill. No, I don't understand - I believe in myself and my country and my race and what is there beyond that?

But you know, I think Caelis might. If your life is defined by questions you must find everything an answer and what better solution to the unanswerable than another mind that holds the pattern of anything and everything and you don't have to worry... So easy to see thoughtless revolt down that path.

She doesn't think like that, I hope, I know. Meet someone like Caelis and you can't believe them capable of anything wrong...

I set out to speak of myself and I could be telling her story.

What does that say of me?

Maybe I'm obsessed, maybe I shouldn't love her, but you don't make choices about things like that. And I believe, I believe I have to that this must be right, that the only peace is unquestioning and unfeeling and undoubting but sometimes you must know that someone cares and someone loves. If love is a weakness we destroyed it with hatred...

But I learn from Caelis.

And some days you have to admit weakness to yourself and breathe and breathe and hold on.

How else can you live?