Scythe

by Neal Shusterman

  “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.

  I do not regret the decision, but I often wonder if the Thunderhead would have done a better job.

  —From the gleaning journal of H.S. Curie

  * * *

  5

  “But I’m Only Ninety-Six . . .”

  While a trip to the market should be an ordinary, everyday occurrence, Citra found that food shopping with a scythe carried its own basket of crazy.

  The moment the market doors parted for them and the three of them stepped in, the dread around them was enough to raise gooseflesh on Citra’s arms. Nothing so blatant as gasps or screams—people were used to scythes passing through their daily lives. It was silent, but pervasive, as if they had just accidentally strolled onto some theatrical stage and fouled the performance.

  Citra noticed that, in general, there were three types of people.

  1) The Deniers: These were the people who forged on and pretended the scythe wasn’t there. It wasn’t just a matter of ignoring him—it was actively, willfully denying his presence. It reminded Citra of the way very small children would play hide and seek, covering their own eyes to hide, thinking that if they couldn’t see you then you couldn’t see them.

  2) The Escape Artists: These were the people who ran away but tried to make it look as if they weren’t. They suddenly remembered they forgot to get eggs, or began chasing after a running child that didn’t actually exist. One shopper abandoned a cart, mumbling about a wallet he must have left at home, despite an obvious bulge in his back pocket. He hurried out and didn’t come back.

  3) The Scythe’s Pets: These were the people who went out of their way to engage the scythe and offer him something, with the secret (not so secret) hope that he might grant them immunity, or at least glean the person to their right instead of them some day. “Here, Your Honor, take my melon, it’s bigger. I insist.” Did these people know that such sycophantic behavior would make a scythe want to glean them even more? Not that Citra would want to level a death penalty for such a thing, but if she were given a choice between some innocent bystander and someone who was being nauseatingly obsequious about their produce, she’d choose the melon-giver.

  There was one shopper who didn’t seem to fit the other three profiles. A woman who actually seemed pleased to see him.

  “Good morning, Scythe Faraday,” she said as they passed her near the deli counter, then looked at Citra and Rowan, curious. “Your niece and nephew?”

  “Hardly,” he said, with a bit of disdain in his voice for relatives Citra had no interest in knowing about. “I’ve taken apprentices.”

  Her eyes widened a bit. “Such a thing!” She said in a way that made it unclear whether she thought it a good or bad idea. “Do they have a penchant for the work?”

  “Not the slightest.”

  She nodded. “Well then, I guess it’s all right. You know what they say: ‘Have not a hand in the blade with abandon.’”

  The scythe smiled. “I hope I can introduce them to your strudel sometime.”

  She nodded at the two of them. “Well, that goes without saying.”

  After she had moved on, Scythe Faraday explained that she was a long-time friend. “She cooks for me from time to time—and she works in the coroner’s office. In my line of work it’s always good to have a friend there.”

  “Do you grant her immunity?” Citra asked. Rowan thought the scythe might be indignant at the question, but instead he answered:

  “The Scythedom frowns upon those who play favorites, but I’ve found I can grant her immunity on alternate years without raising a red flag.”

  “What if another scythe gleans her during the off-years?”

  “Then I shall attend her funeral with heartfelt grief,” he told them.

  As they shopped, Citra chose some snacks that the scythe eyed dubiously. “Are these really necessary?” he asked.

  “Is anything really necessary?” Citra responded.

  Rowan found it amusing how Citra gave the scythe attitude—but it worked. He let her keep the chips.

  Rowan tried to be more practical, picking out staples like eggs, flour, and various proteins and side dishes to go with them.

  “Don’t get chickenoid tenders,” Citra said, looking at his choices. “Trust me, my mother’s a food synthesis engineer. That stuff’s not actual chicken—they grow it in a petri dish.”

  Rowan held up another bag of frozen protein. “How about this?”

  “SeaSteak? Sure, if you like plankton pressed into
meat shapes.”

  “Well then, maybe you should pick your own meals instead of grabbing sweets and snacks.”

  “Are you always this boring?” she asked.

  “Didn’t he say we have to live as he lives? I don’t think cookie dough ice cream is a part of his lifestyle.”

  She sneered at him, but switched out the flavor for vanilla.

  As they continued to shop, it was Citra who first noticed two suspicious-looking teens who seemed to be tracking them through the store, lingering behind them, trying to look like they were just shopping. They were probably unsavories—people who found enjoyment in activities that bordered on the fringe of the law. Sometimes unsavories actually broke the law in minor ways, although most lost interest eventually, because they were always caught by the Thunderhead and reprimanded by peace officers. The more troublesome offenders were tweaked with shock nanites in their blood, just powerful enough to deter any scoffing of the law. And if that didn’t work, you got your own personal peace officer 24/7. Citra had an uncle like that. He called his officer his guardian angel, and eventually married her.

  She tugged on Rowan’s sleeve, bringing the unsavories to his attention but not to Scythe Faraday’s.

  “Why do you think they’re following us?”

  “They probably think there’s going to be a gleaning and they want to watch,” suggested Rowan, which seemed a likely theory. As it turned out, however, they had other motives.

  As the three of them waited in the checkout line, one of the unsavories grabbed Scythe Faraday’s hand and kissed his ring before he could stop him. The ring began to glow red, indicating his immunity.

  “Ha!” said the unsavory, puffing up at his strategic triumph. “I’ve got immunity for a year—and you can’t undo it! I know the rules!”

  Scythe Faraday was unfazed. “Yes, good for you,” he said. “You have three hundred sixty-five days of immunity.” And then, looking him in the eye, said, “And I’ll be seeing you on day three hundred sixty-six.”

  Suddenly the teen’s smug expression dropped, as if all the muscles that held up his face failed. He stuttered a bit, and his friend pulled him away. They ran out of the store as fast as they could.

  “Well played,” said another man in line. He offered to pay for the scythe’s groceries—which was pointless, because scythes got their groceries for free anyway.

  “Will you really track him down a year from now?” Rowan asked.

  The scythe grabbed a roll of breath mints from the rack. “Not worth my time. Besides, I’ve already meted out his punishment. He’ll be worried about being gleaned all year. A lesson for both of you: A scythe doesn’t have to follow through on a threat for it to be effective.”

  Then, a few minutes later, as they were loading the grocery bags into a publicar, the scythe looked across the parking lot.

  “There,” he said, “you see that woman? The one who just dropped her purse?”

  “Yeah,” said Rowan.

  Scythe Faraday pulled out his phone, aimed the camera at the woman, and in an instant information about her began to scroll on screen. Naturally ninety-six years of age, physically thirty-four. Mother of nine. Data management technician for a small shipping company. “She’s off to work after she puts away her groceries,” the scythe told them. “This afternoon we will go to her place of business and glean her.”

  Citra drew in an audible breath. Not quite a gasp, but close. Rowan focused on his own breathing so he didn’t telegraph his emotions the way Citra had.

  “Why?” he asked. “Why her?”

  The scythe gave him a cool look. “Why not her?”

  “You had a reason for gleaning Kohl Whitlock. . . .”

  “Who?” Citra asked.

  “A kid I knew at school. When I first met our honorable scythe, here.”

  Faraday sighed. “Fatalities in parking lots made up 1.25 percent of all accidental deaths during the last days of the Age of Mortality. Last night I decided I would choose today’s subject from a parking lot.”

  “So all this time while we were shopping, you knew it would end with this?” Rowan said.

  “I feel bad for you,” said Citra. “Even when you’re food shopping, death is hiding right behind the milk.”

  “It never hides,” the scythe told them with a world-weariness that was hard to describe. “Nor does it sleep. You’ll learn that soon enough.”

  But it wasn’t something either of them was eager to learn.

  • • •

  That afternoon,  just as the scythe had said, they went to the shipping company where the woman worked, and they watched—just as Rowan had watched Kohl’s gleaning. But today it was a little more than mere observation.

  “I have chosen for you a life-terminating pill,” Scythe Faraday told the speechless, tremulous woman. He reached into his robe and produced a small pill in a little glass vial.

  “It will not activate until you bite it, so you can choose the moment. You need not swallow it, just bite it. Death will be instantaneous and painless.”

  Her head shook like a bobblehead doll. “May I . . . may I call my children? Scythe Faraday sadly shook his head. “No, I’m sorry. But we shall pass on any message you have to them.”

  “What would it hurt to allow her to say good-bye?” Citra asked.

  He put up his hand to silence her, and handed the woman a pen and piece of paper.

  “Say all you need to say in a letter. I promise we shall deliver it.”

  They waited outside of her office. Scythe Faraday seemed to have infinite patience.

  “What if she opens a window and decides to splat?” Rowan asked.

  “Then her life will end on schedule. It would be a more unpleasant choice, but the ultimate result is the same.”

  The woman didn’t choose to splat. Instead, she let them back into the room, politely handed the envelope to Scythe Faraday, and sat down at her desk.

  “I’m ready.”

  Then Scythe Faraday did something they didn’t expect. He turned to Rowan and handed him the vial. “Please place the pill in Mrs. Becker’s mouth.”

  “Who, me?”

  Scythe Faraday didn’t answer. He simply held the vial out, waiting for Rowan to take it. Rowan knew he wasn’t officially performing the gleaning, but to be an intermediary . . . the thought was debilitating. He swallowed, tasting bitterness as if the pill were in his own mouth. He refused to take it.

  Scythe Faraday gave him a moment more, then turned to Citra.

  “You, then.”

  Citra just shook her head.

  Scythe Faraday smiled. “Very good,” he told them. “I was testing you. I would not have been pleased if either of you were eager to administer death.”

  At the word “death,” the woman took a shuddering breath.

  Scythe Faraday opened the vial and carefully removed the pill. It was triangular with a dark green coating. Who knew death could arrive so small?

  “But . . . but I’m only ninety-six,” the woman said.

  “We know,” the scythe told her. “Now please . . . open your mouth. Remember, it’s not to swallow; you must bite it.”

  She opened her mouth as she was told, and Scythe Faraday placed the pill on her tongue. She closed her mouth, but didn’t bite it right away. She looked at each of them in turn. Rowan, then Citra, then finally settled her gaze on Scythe Faraday. Then the slightest crunch. And she went limp. Simple as that. But not so simple at all.

  Citra’s eyes were moist. She pressed her lips together. As much as Rowan tried to control his emotions, his breath came out uneasily and he felt lightheaded.

  And then Scythe Faraday turned to Citra. “Check for a pulse, please.”

  “Who, me?”

  The scythe was patient. He didn’t ask again. The man never asked a thing twice. When she continued to hesitate, he finally said, “This time it’s not a test. I actually want you to confirm for me that she has no pulse.”

  Citra reached up a hand to the wom
an’s neck.

  “Other side,” the scythe told her.

  She pressed her fingers to the woman’s carotid artery, just beneath her ear. “No pulse.”

  Satisfied, Scythe Faraday stood.

  “So that’s it?” Citra asked.

  “What were you expecting?” said Rowan. “A chorus of angels?”

  Citra threw him a half-hearted glare. “But I mean . . . it’s so . . . uneventful.”

  Rowan knew what she meant. Rowan had experienced the electrical jolt that had taken his schoolmate’s life. It was awful, but somehow this was worse. “What now? Do we just leave her like this?”

  “Best not to linger,” Scythe Faraday said, tapping something out on his phone. “I’ve notified the coroner to come collect Mrs. Becker’s body.”  Then he took the letter she had written and slipped it into one of the many pockets of his robe. “You two shall present the letter to her family at the funeral.”

  “Wait,” said Citra. “We’re going to her funeral?”

  “I thought you said it was best not to linger,” said Rowan.

  “Lingering and paying respects are two different things. I attend the funerals of all the people I glean.”

  “Is that a scythe rule?” Rowan asked, having never been to a funeral.

  “No, it’s my rule,” he told them. “It’s called ‘common decency.’”

  Then they left, Rowan and Citra both avoiding eye contact with the dead woman’s coworkers. This, both of them realized, was their first initiation rite. This was the moment their apprenticeship had truly begun.

  Part Two

  NO LAWS BEYOND THESE

  * * *

  The Scythe Commandments

  1) Thou shalt kill.

  2) Thou shalt kill with no bias, bigotry, or malice aforethought.

  3) Thou shalt grant an annum of immunity to the beloved of those who accept your coming, and to anyone else you deem worthy.

  4) Thou shalt kill the beloved of those who resist.

  5) Thou shalt serve humanity for the full span of thy days, and thy family shall have immunity as recompense for as long as you live.