Thunderhead (Arc of a Scythe #2)(80)
“What am I looking at?” asked Faraday.
“Flight paths,” she told him. “The past fifty years of air travel, each flight represented by a line one micron thick.” She started the world revolving. “Tell me what you see.”
Faraday threw her a good-natured glare, clearly a bit put off that she was behaving like the mentor, but he played along. “Flights are most dense around major population centers,” he said.
“What else?”
He took the controls and shifted the globe to show the poles, where small spots of white showed through like a child’s crayon drawing. “Transcontinental air traffic is still fairly dense over the North Pole—but flights are a bit sparser over Antarctica—even with so many settled regions there.”
“Keep looking,” Munira said.
He returned the globe to its normal incline, and set it revolving a bit faster.
Finally, he stopped it over the Pacific Ocean. “There!” he said. “A patch of blue . . .”
“Bingo!” said Munira. She removed the flight paths and enlarged the small spot of ocean.
“No plane has flown over this patch of the Pacific in the fifty years I’ve been studying. I would bet that no planes have crossed this airspace since the scythedom was founded.”
The islands of Micronesia were to the west of the spot, Hawaii to the east. But the spot itself was just empty sea.
“Interesting . . . ,” said Scythe Faraday. “A blind spot.”
“And if it is,” Munira said, “it’s the largest one in the world . . . and we’re the only ones who know about it. . . .”
* * *
I abhor people poking around in my backbrain.
That is why no one but scythes and their staff are allowed to do so. I understand why it’s necessary; ordinary citizens can ask me for anything they need, and I can access it in microseconds for them—often finding the information they need that they didn’t even think to ask for. But the scythedom is not even permitted to ask, and even if they broke the law and did ask, I am not permitted to respond.
Since the world’s digital storage resides in me, they have no choice but to access that information on their own, using me as a glorified database. I am aware each time they do so, and monitor their incursions, but I do my best to ignore the unpleasant sense of violation.
It is painful to see how simplistic their search algorithms are, and how unsophisticated their methods of data analysis. They are plagued by human limitations. It is sad, really, that all they can ever receive from my backbrain is raw data. Memories without consciousness. Information without context.
I shudder to think what might happen if the “new order” faction of the scythedom knew all the things I know. But fortunately, they don’t—because even though everything in my backbrain is available to all scythes, that doesn’t mean I have to make anything easy for them to find.
As for the more honorable scythes, I endure their incursions with far more acceptance and magnanimity. But I still don’t like it.
—The Thunderhead
* * *
31
The Trajectory of Yearning
The Arch had fallen in the Age of Mortality, when Fulcrum City had been called St. Louis. For many years, the great steel span had stood on the western bank of the Mississippi River, until it was brought down by hatred in an epoch where unsavories didn’t just play at evil deeds, but actually accomplished them on a regular basis.
All that was left of it now were the ends; two rusting steel pylons reaching heavenward, at a slight lean toward each other. In daylight, from certain angles, it played a trick on the eye. One could almost see the trajectory of their yearning, following their invisible paths up and across. One could see the ghost of the entire arch just from the hint of its bases.
Scythes Anastasia and Curie arrived in Fulcrum City on the first day of the year—five days before Winter Conclave, which always took place on the first Tuesday of the new year. ?At Scythe Curie’s urging, they paid a visit to the unrequited arms of the Arch.
“It was the last act of terrorism accomplished before the Thunderhead ascended and put an end to such nonsense,” Scythe Curie told Citra.
Citra had learned about terror. There had been a unit in school dedicated to the subject. Like her classmates, Citra had been baffled by the concept. People bringing about the permanent end of others without having a license to do so? People destroying perfectly good buildings, bridges, and other landmarks for the sole purpose of denying others the privilege of their existence? How could any of that have ever really happened? Only after joining the scythedom did Citra understand the concept—and even then, it hadn’t hit home until she saw the Orpheum Theater burn, leaving nothing of its grandeur but the memory. The theater wasn’t the target, but the unsavories who attacked them didn’t care about the collateral damage.
“I often come here to visit the remains of the Arch at the start of a new year,” Scythe Curie said as they strolled through the winter-bare but well-tended paths of the riverside park. “It humbles me. It reminds me of the things we’ve lost—but also of how much better our world is now than in mortal days. It reminds me why I glean, and gives me the fortitude to stand tall in conclave.”
“It must have been beautiful,” Citra said, looking at the rusted ruin of the north pylon.