While she did not wear a ring, Citra was given an armband to identify her as a scythe’s apprentice. Rowan had one, too—bright green bands bearing the curved blade of a farmer’s scythe above an unblinking eye—the double symbol of the scythehood. That symbol would become a tattoo on the arm of the chosen apprentice. Not that anyone would ever see the tattoo, for scythes are never seen in public without their robes.
Citra had to tell herself that there was an out. She could fail to perform. She could be a lousy apprentice. She could sabotage herself so completely that Honorable Scythe Faraday would be forced to choose Rowan and return her to her family at the end of the year. The problem was that Citra was very bad at doing things half-fast. It would be much harder for her to fail than to succeed.
I will not tolerate any romantic notions between the two of you, so banish the thought from your mind now.
Citra had looked over at Rowan when the scythe said that, and Rowan had shrugged.
“Not a problem,” he said, which irritated Citra. At the very least he could have voiced some minor disappointment.
“Yeah,” Citra said. “No hope of that, with or without the rule.”
Rowan had just grinned at that, which had made her even more annoyed.
You shall study history, the great philosophers, the sciences. You will come to understand the nature of life and what it means to be human before you are permanently charged with the taking of life. You will also study all forms of killcraft and become experts.
Like Citra, Rowan found himself unsettled by his decision to take this on, but he was not going to show it. Especially not to Citra. And in spite of the blasé attitude he showed her, he was, in fact, attracted to her. But he knew even before the scythe forbade them that such a pursuit could not end well. They were adversaries, after all.
Like Citra, Rowan had stood beside Scythe Faraday as the man held out his ring to each member of his family, offering them immunity. His brothers, sisters, half-siblings, grandma, and her all-too-perfect husband, who Rowan suspected might actually be a bot. Each in turn knelt respectfully and kissed the ring, transmitting their DNA to the worldwide immunity database in the Scythedom’s own special cloud separate and apart from the Thunderhead.
The rule was that all members of an apprentice’s household would receive immunity for one year, and there were nineteen people in Rowan’s sprawling household. His mother had mixed feelings, because now no one would move out for at least a year, to make sure their immunity would become permanent once Rowan received his scythe’s ring—if he got the ring.
The only glitch had been when the ring vibrated, giving off a little alarm, refusing immunity to his grandmother’s new husband because he was a bot after all.
You shall live as I do. Modestly, and subsisting on the goodwill of others. You will take no more than you need, and waste nothing. People will attempt to buy your friendship. They will lavish things upon you. Accept nothing but the barest of human necessities.
Faraday had brought Rowan and Citra to his home to begin their new lives. It was a small bungalow in a rundown part of the city that Rowan hadn’t even known existed. “People playing at poverty,” he had told them, because no one was impoverished anymore. Austerity was a choice, for there were always those who shunned the plenty of the post-mortal world.
Faraday’s home was Spartan. Little decoration. Unimpressive furniture. Rowan’s room had space for only a bed and a small dresser. Citra, at least, had a window, but the view was of a brick wall.
I will not tolerate childish pastimes or vapid communications with friends. Commitment to this life means leaving behind your old life as fully as possible. When, a year from now, I choose between you, the unchosen one can return to his or her former life easily enough. But for now, consider that life a part of your past.
Once they were settled in, he didn’t allow them to brood over their circumstances. As soon as Rowan had unpacked his bags, the scythe announced that they were going to the market.
“To glean?” Rowan asked, more than a little sick at the prospect.
“No, to get food for the two of you,” Faraday told them. “Unless you’d prefer to eat my leftovers.”
Citra smirked at Rowan for asking—as if she hadn’t been worrying about that herself.
“I liked you a lot more before I knew you,” he told her.
“You still don’t know me,” she answered, which was true. Then she sighed, and for the first time since their night at the opera, she offered up something more than attitude. “We’re being forced to live together and forced to compete at something neither of us wants to compete over. I know it’s not your fault, but it doesn’t exactly put us in a friendly place.”
“I know,” Rowan admitted. After all, Citra didn’t own all the tension between them. “But that still doesn’t mean we can’t have each other’s backs.”
She didn’t answer him. He didn’t expect her to. It was just a seed he wanted to plant. Over the past two months he had learned that no one had his back anymore. Perhaps no one ever did. His friends had pulled away. He was a footnote in his own family. There was only one person now who shared his plight. That was Citra. If they couldn’t find a way to trust each other, then what did they have beyond a learner’s permit to kill?
* * *
The greatest achievement of the human race was not conquering death. It was ending government.
Back in the days when the world’s digital network was called “the cloud,” people thought giving too much power to an artificial intelligence would be a very bad idea. Cautionary tales abounded in every form of media. The machines were always the enemy. But then the cloud evolved into the Thunderhead, sparking with consciousness, or at least a remarkable facsimile. In stark contrast to people’s fears, the Thunderhead did not seize power. Instead, it was people who came to realize that it was far better suited to run things than politicians.
In those days before the Thunderhead, human arrogance, self-interest, and endless in-fighting determined the rule of law. Inefficient. Imperfect. Vulnerable to all forms of corruption.
But the Thunderhead was incorruptible. Not only that, but its algorithms were built on the full sum of human knowledge. All the time and money wasted on political posturing, the lives lost in wars, the populations abused by despots—all gone the moment the Thunderhead was handed power. Of course, the politicians, dictators, and warmongers weren’t happy, but their voices, which had always seemed so loud and intimidating, were suddenly insignificant. The emperor not only had no clothes, turns out he had no testicles either.
The Thunderhead quite literally knew everything. When and where to build roads; how to eliminate waste in food distribution and thus end hunger; how to protect the environment from the ever-growing human population. It created jobs, it clothed the poor, and it established the World Code. Now, for the first time in history, law was no longer the shadow of justice, it was justice.
The Thunderhead gave us a perfect world. The utopia that our ancestors could only dream of is our reality.
There was only one thing the Thunderhead was not given authority over.
The Scythedom.
When it was decided that people needed to die in order to ease the tide of population growth, it was also decided that this must be the responsibility of humans. Bridge repair and urban planning could be handled by the Thunderhead, but taking a life was an act of conscience and consciousness. Since it could not be proven that the Thunderhead had either, the Scythedom was born.