Thunderhead (Arc of a Scythe #2)(19)

“No,” Greyson told him flatly. ?“I was given the opposite of an assignment.”

“Lucky you.”

Somehow Greyson didn’t feel all that lucky.





* * *




I rely on the bureaucracy of the Authority Interface to handle the governmental aspects of my relationship with humankind. Nimbus agents, as they are called, provide an easy-to-understand, physical form to my governance.

I don’t have to do this. I could handle it all myself if I wanted to. It is fully within my power to create a robotic body for myself—or a team of robotic bodies—that could hold my consciousness. However, long ago I determined that it would not be a good idea. It’s troubling enough that people imagine me as a storm cloud. If people pictured me in some sort of physical form, it would distort their perception of me. ?And I might enjoy it too much. For my relationship with humanity to remain pure, I must remain pure. ?Mind only; sentient software with no flesh, no physical form. I do have camera-bots that roam the world to augment my stationary cameras, but I am not present in any of them. They are nothing more than rudimentary sensory organs.

The irony, however, is that with no body, the world itself becomes my body. One might think this would make me feel grand, but it doesn’t. If my body is the Earth, then I am nothing more than a spec of dust in the vastness of space. I wonder what it would be like, then, if my consciousness were to someday span the distance between stars.

—The Thunderhead



* * *





9


The First Casualty


The Terranova family always had a four-breasted turkey for Thanksgiving, because everyone in the family preferred white meat. A four-breasted turkey had no legs. So not only couldn’t their Thanksgiving turkeys fly when they were alive, they couldn’t walk, either.

As a child, Citra always felt bad for them, even though the Thunderhead took great pains to make sure such birds—and all livestock—were raised humanely. Citra had seen a video on it in third grade. The turkeys, from the moment of their hatching, were suspended in a warm gel, and their small brains were wet-wired into a computer that produced for them an artificial reality in which they experienced flight, freedom, reproduction, and all the things that would make a turkey content.

Citra had found it both funny and terribly sad at the same time. She had asked the Thunderhead about it, for in those days before being chosen for the scythedom, she could talk to the Thunderhead freely.

“I have flown with them over the green expanses of temperate forests, and can testify to you that the lives they experience are deeply satisfying,” the Thunderhead had told her. “But yes, it is sad to live and die without knowing the truth of one’s existence. Only sad to us, however. Not to them.”

Well, whether or not this year’s Thanksgiving turkey had lived a fulfilling virtual life, at least its demise was purposeful.

? ? ?

Citra arrived wearing her scythe robe. She had been home several times since becoming a scythe, but coming home was one of the few times she felt she needed to be Citra Terranova, so before today, she came in her street clothes. She knew it was a childish thing to do, but in the bosom of her family, didn’t she still have the right to play the child? Maybe. But it had to stop sooner or later. Now was as good a time as ever.

Her mother almost gasped when she answered the door, but embraced Citra anyway. Citra was stiff about the hug for a moment, until she remembered that there were no weapons in the robe’s many secret pockets. It made the robe feel unusually light.

“It’s lovely,” she told Citra.

“I’m not sure if you’re supposed to call a scythe robe ‘lovely.’?”

“Well, it is. I like the color.”

“I chose it,” her younger brother, Ben, proudly announced. “I was the one who said you should be turquoise.”

“Yes, you did!” Citra smiled and gave him a hug, refraining from telling him how much he’d grown since her last visit three months ago.

Her father, an enthusiast of classic sports, watched an archival video of a mortal-age football game, which looked much the same as the sport did now, but somehow seemed more exciting. He paused the game to give her his undivided attention.

“How is it living with Scythe Curie? Is she treating you well?”

“Yes, very well. We’ve become good friends.”

“You sleeping okay?”

Citra thought that an odd question, until she realized what he was really asking. “I’ve gotten used to my ‘day job,’?” she told him. “I sleep fine at night.”

Which wasn’t entirely true, but the truth about such things wouldn’t do anyone any good today.

She made small talk with her father until they couldn’t find anything more to talk about. Which was all of five minutes.

There were only four of them for Thanksgiving dinner this year. ?Although the Terranovas had hordes of extended family on both sides, and many friends, Citra requested that they neither accept nor extend invitations this year.

“It will create a lot of drama if no one is invited,” her mother had pointed out.

“Fine, then invite them,” Citra said, “but tell them that scythes are obliged to glean one of the guests at Thanksgiving.”

“Is that true?”