Scythe

Citra asks Curie how she knew that she was lying at the conclave. When Curie says that she has learned how to observe over the course of nearly 200 years, Citra tells her that the lie was not what she thought: Citra did not push the girl down the stairs but in front of a truck. She was killed instantly. No one knew that Citra had pushed her. Everyone, including the girl, thought she had tripped.

A girl named Rhonda Flowers is eating a snack when Curie and Citra arrive at her home and are let in by her mother. Citra tells Rhonda that she pushed her back when they were in school. Rhonda says she always suspected that she was pushed. Then Citra tells her that she wants Rhonda to push her in front of a truck. Rhonda considers it but says that she is too busy, although she would consider it another time. However, she says that she would prefer just going to lunch with Citra someday.

Citra pushed Rhonda because they were in the same dance class: Rhonda bragged about her dancing while mocking Citra’s. Curie tells Citra that the word for what she had done in the Age of Mortality was “murder.” Curie says, “[T]he penance you’ve given yourself is to be a scythe, forever doomed to take lives as punishment for that one childhood act” (199). Curie believes Faraday chose Citra because she has a conscience and says that most people would not have felt bad about pushing Rhonda years later.

Citra wonders why the Thunderhead didn’t see her push Rhonda: “The Thunderhead sees just about everything” (200). Curie implies that it saw Citra but chose not to impose penalties on her. The Thunderhead has a record of every human interaction since the time it gained consciousness. Citra wonders if Faraday actually self-gleaned and if she could use the Thunderhead to look.

Goddard writes that it is absurd that murder used to be considered a heinous crime given that it is now “humanity’s highest calling” (202).

Rowan knows that Goddard will not let him and Citra out of their competition even though Faraday is dead. He is determined to lose, which means he will die. He is riding in a car with Scythe Volta, who wears a yellow robe. Rowan asks Volta why he follows Goddard, to which Volta replies, “I’m much more interested in being a part of the Scythedom’s future than its past” (205). They arrive at a mansion and are let in by a servant. A massive dance party is happening inside. Goddard waves to Rowan from a lounge chair and gives him a class of champagne, telling him that the party is in his honor. Rowan asks if Goddard is violating the Eighth Commandment, which states that a scythe can’t own anything besides his robe, ring, and journal.

Goddard explains that everything has been donated. Rowan notices the pool boy (actually Easley) listening to their conversation. Then Goddard points out a young girl named Esme and says she is the most important person Rowan will meet today: “That chubby little girl is the key to the future” (208). A woman in a bikini approaches, and Goddard asks her to give Rowan a massage. He says he will let her kiss his ring and grant her immunity if Rowan is happy with her efforts. Because Rowan knows he will die in eight months, he goes with her, thinking that he has the right to some indulgences in what life he has left.

Curie writes of a time when people would dress up as scythes and impersonate them, short of performing gleanings. This is now punishable by immediate death. Curie wonders what satisfaction an impostor can get out of the brief time in which they pretend to be scythes.

Rowan tries to enjoy the party, but he is more of a participant than a reveler. When other scythes begin to wish him luck in his competition against Citra, he is chilled. When the party ends a day later, Volta tells him that it is time to begin his training. They go to the cellar, where Rand shows him a device called a “tweaker.” A tweaker can adjust the nanites (nanobots that alter people’s physiology) in a person’s system. Rowan had one used on him in the past to help with depression. The scythes remove their robes, and Chomsky punches Rowan. The pain is immediate, and Chomsky tells him that they used the tweaker to turn off his nanites, “so [he] can experience what [their] ancestors once did” (214).

They beat him badly. The next day, Rowan thinks he is dying. He has broken ribs and one arm has been wrenched out of its socket. Volta visits him and feeds him soup. He tells him Rowan his first name is Allessandro. The next evening Esme visits Rowan. She tells him the story of the gleaning in the food court but does not know why Goddard brought her here. She tells him that she thinks he’ll be a better scythe than the others and leaves.

Goddard visits on the third day after the beating. He shows Rowan his bruised body in a mirror and tells him that a man will emerge when he is healed. He takes a tweaker and activates Rowan’s nanites: He will be healed by morning but will still feel the pain of every injury from then on.

Citra continues to glean with Curie in randomly selected small towns, always looking for signs of people who have grown stagnant. Curie does not glean children, which is not against the rules but has gotten her admonished at the conclave. Faraday gleaned children because he worked off of statistics from the Age of Mortality, but Curie says that each scythe must find their own way.

One of Citra’s tasks is to notify the families that a family member has been gleaned and to invite them to dinner at Falling Water. The purpose of this is for Citra to “learn how to show compassion in the face of tragedy,” and she finds it “exhausting but rewarding” (221). One time she gleans a woman who has only a brother, an unusually low number of siblings given that people can reset their age and continue to have children for decades. When she goes to visit the brother, the address is at a Tonist monastery. The Tonists are a cult whose members blind themselves as an expression of religious freedom. She sees a monk and tells him she is there to visit Robert Ferguson.

She waits near an altar and a 6-foot-tall tuning fork—a bident—the symbol of the monastery. Ferguson appears, and Citra tells him that she has gleaned his sister. He comments, “That which comes can’t be avoided” (224). Then he tells Citra that death by scythe is unnatural and that the Tonists do not acknowledge it. Ferguson does not want immunity. Citra is frustrated by his apparent lack of emotion and strikes the bident with a mallet as hard as she can. When it stops ringing, she is calm. She asks Ferguson what the Tonists believe, and he explains: “We believe in the Great Vibration and that it will free us from being stagnant” (226). He points her to a bowl that is filled with dirty water and tells her that it contains Ebola, anthrax, and smallpox—diseases that can no longer harm anyone. Citra leaves.

Goddard compares the Thunderhead to a tree and himself to the shears that must prune it: “Shouldn’t branches that reach unreasonably high be the first to be pruned?” (228). He is writing to those who would question his methods.

Because she is an apprentice, Citra can access Thunderhead information that is not available to everyone—the “backbrain,” unorganized information that cannot be easily searched. Before her apprenticeship, the Thunderhead would try to guess what she was looking for, and its algorithms would intervene with suggestions and questions. Now it is silent, and Curie explains, “Scythes cannot speak to the Thunderhead, and it cannot speak to us” (229).

For a couple of hours each day, Citra tries to find footage of the day Faraday died. Finally, she realizes that “she [can’t] access other people’s private records, but anything she upload[s] [will] be available to her. Which mean[s] she [can] seed the search with data of her own” (230). She gets approval from Curie to visit her family, but her reason for going is to find information that will aid her in her search for the truth about Faraday.

Curie takes her to her family home. Ben recognizes Curie, who smiles at him and then leaves, saying she will pick Citra up that evening. Citra gets her camera out of her room and tells her family she wants to go for a walk. She feels distant from her family as they walk through the town; they cannot talk about scything details, and everything else feels forced. At every stop, Citra takes a family picture, positioning them as close to a public camera as possible.

On the way home, Citra asks Curie what her real name was. She tells Citra that when she was born, her name was Susan. Citra uploads her photos at home and then logs in to the backbrain. The Thunderhead automatically creates links to other photos of her family as well as to photos taken by the cameras that were in the range of the family photos Citra took on her walk. She narrows her results down from billions to millions and is determined to keep going.

Goddard scolds Rowan while watching him practice with a samurai sword. Rowan is accurate in his attacks, but Goddard says he does not attack with passion. He gives Rowan a bowie knife and tells him to start a new round on a group of cotton practice dummies: “Take great pleasure and satisfaction in this, Rowan, […] or you’ll be nothing more than a killing machine” (240). Rowan remembers that Faraday has warned him that if he lost his empathy, he would be nothing more than “a killing machine.”

Every day, Rowan runs with Rand, lifts weights with Chomsky, trains weapons with Goddard, and performs mental games and exercises with Volta. There are frequent parties, all as lavish as the one on the night he arrived. Rowan’s physique is now muscular and impressive, and he gets frequent compliments on his body. He continues to write in his journal but does not write the things he truly feels. He wonders if he would be a scythe more like Goddard or Faraday and realizes that he has started thinking about being ordained rather than allowing Citra to win.

Rowan still knows almost nothing about Esme, but he believes that she has a crush on him. She follows him around and asks him questions, and she often invites him to play games that he is obligated to indulge in.

One day during weapons training, there are no dummies to use. Instead, there are a dozen people on the lawn. Goddard tells Rowan that he will now practice killcraft on live people, who will then be taken to revival centers. Goddard tells him to take down all but one and to leave the last one alive. Rowan sees Volta watching, and he knows that the scythe believes in him. He also realizes that despite his revulsion, he doesn’t want to let the scythes down. He kills everyone on the lawn except for a young girl. He drops his blades and walks away as Goddard applauds. Rowan realizes that he is smiling.

Rowan writes in his journal that the next conclave is only weeks away. He has been told that this time his test will be more difficult, and he expects to perform well for Goddard.