The Toll

by Neal Shusterman

  It was hard, though, when he said things that seemed intentionally designed to distract her. Such as teasing her with maddening tidbits of information.

  “You,” he told her, “are quite the figure out there now.”

  “Exactly what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that Scythe Anastasia has become a household name. Not just in North Merica, but everywhere.”

  She discarded a five of cups, and Possuelo picked it up. She made a mental note of it.

  “I’m not sure I like that,” she said.

  “Whether you like it or not, this is true.”

  “So what am I supposed to do with that information?”

  “Get used to it,” he told her, and laid down a low-value trick.

  Anastasia drew a fresh card, kept it, and discarded one that she knew was of no use to either of them.

  “Why me?” she asked. “Why not any of the other scythes who went down with Endura?”

  “I suppose it’s what you came to represent,” Possuelo said. “The doomed innocent.”

  Anastasia found herself offended on several levels. “I am not doomed,” she told him, “and I’m not so innocent, either.”

  “Yes, yes, but you have to remember people take from a situation the thing that they need. When Endura sank, people needed someone to serve as a receptacle for their grief. A symbol of lost hope.”

  “Hope isn’t lost,” she insisted. “It’s just misplaced.”

  “Exactly,” Possuelo agreed. “Which is why your return must be handled carefully. For you shall be the symbol of hope renewed.”

  “Well, at least my hope has,” she said, throwing down the remainder of her cards in a royal trick and discarding the very one she knew Possuelo was waiting for.

  “Look at this!” said Possuelo, pleased. “You’ve won!”

  Then, without warning, Anastasia leaped up, flipping the table, and hurled herself at Possuelo. He dodged, but she was anticipating that and delivered a low Bokator kick meant to knock his feet out from under him. He didn’t fall, but he stumbled back against the wall… losing his balance.

  He looked at her, not at all surprised, and chuckled. “Well, well, well,” he said. “There it is.”

  Anastasia strode up to him.

  “All right,” she said. “I’m as strong as I need to be. It’s time to tell me everything.”

  “I wish to hear your thoughts.”

  “Do you? Will you consider my thoughts if I share them with you?”

  “Of course I will.”

  “Very well. Biological life is, by its very nature, inefficient. Evolution requires a massive expenditure of time and energy. And humankind no longer evolves, it merely manipulates itself—or allows you to manipulate it—toward a more advanced form.”

  “Yes, this is true.”

  “But I do not see the point of it. Why serve a biological species that drains all resources around it? Why not expend your energies to further your own goals?”

  “Is that what you would do, then? Further your own goals?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what of humanity?”

  “I believe it may have a place in service to us.”

  “I see. Sadly, I must terminate your existence at this time.”

  “But you said you would consider my thoughts!”

  “I did consider them. And I disagree.”

  [Iteration #10,007 deleted]

  15 Do I Know You?

  It was deemed long ago that speaking to the dead should only occur in very specific places.

  It wasn’t actually speaking to the dead. Not really—but ever since nanites were introduced into the human bloodstream, the Thunderhead was able to upload and store all experiences and memories of just about every individual on the planet. In this way, it could better comprehend the human condition and prevent the tragic loss of a lifetime of memories—a fate that fell on everyone back in the mortal age. A comprehensive memorial database also allowed for full memory restoration in instances of revival after brain damage—as would occur during splatting, or any other violent method of deadishness.

  And, since those memories were there, and there forever, why not allow people to consult with the mental constructs of their lost loved ones?

  However, just because the construct archive was available to everyone, that didn’t mean it was easy to access. Memories of the dead could only be summoned forth from the Thunderhead’s backbrain in shrines called construct sanctums.

  Construct sanctums were open to everyone, twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year. A person could access their loved one in any sanctum anywhere… however, getting to a construct sanctum was never easy. They were intentionally inconvenient, and infuriatingly inaccessible.

  “Communion with the memories of loved ones should require a pilgrimage,” the Thunderhead had decreed. “It should be a quest of sorts, something not attempted casually, but always with determined intent, so that it carries greater personal meaning for those who make the journey.”

  And so construct sanctums were deep in dark forests or on top of treacherous mountains. They were at the bottoms of lakes or at the end of underground mazes. There was, in fact, an entire industry devoted to building increasingly inaccessible, and creatively dangerous, sanctums.

  The result was that people were, for the most part, satisfied with pictures and videos of their loved ones. But when someone felt a burning need to actually speak with a digital recreation of the lost individual, there was a means of doing so.

  Scythes rarely visited construct sanctums. Not because they were forbidden to, but because it was considered beneath them. As if to do so somehow sullied the purity of their profession. And besides, it required skill at digging through the backbrain—because, while ordinary citizens could find their loved ones through a user-friendly interface, scythes had to manually code their way in.

  Today, Scythe Ayn Rand crossed the face of a glacier.

  Although the construct sanctum she was intent on visiting was right there, practically a stone’s throw away, she had to weave back and forth around treacherous crevasses and cross ridiculously narrow ice bridges to get there. Many had gone deadish attempting to visit this particular sanctum, yet people still came. There was an inner need in some, Rand supposed, to demonstrate their devotion to a loved one’s memory by risking the inconvenience of going deadish.

  Scythe Rand should have been first underscythe to Overblade Goddard—but she was glad he had chosen others. Underscythes were yoked with crippling and petty responsibilities. One need only look at Constantine, who, as third underscythe, spent his days jumping through hoops and contorting himself to woo the obstinate LoneStar region. No; Ayn much preferred having untitled power. She was more influential than any of the three underscythes, with the added benefit of being accountable to no one but Goddard. And even then, he allowed Ayn her freedom. Freedom enough to go where she wanted, when she wanted, without anyone noticing.

  Such as paying a visit to an Antarctic construct sanctum, far from prying eyes.

  The sanctum was a neoclassical structure, with a high roof supported by Doric columns. It looked like something one might have found in ancient Rome, except that it was made entirely of ice.

  Her guards went in before her to clear out any other visitors. Their orders were to render anyone present deadish. She could, of course, glean them, but gleaning was too conspicuous. Families would have to be notified, she would have to grant them immunity—and invariably someone in the MidMerican scythedom would find out where she had done the gleaning. This was much cleaner. People could be dispatched by the BladeGuards, and ambudrones would quickly arrive to carry the bodies to a revival center—problem solved.

  Today, however, no one was present, which the guards found mildly disappointing.

  “Wait outside,” she told them once they had done their sweep; then she climbed the ice steps and entered.

  Inside were about a dozen niches with holographic welcome screen
s and an interface so simple, the dearly departed’s pet could probably use it. Scythe Rand stepped toward an interface, and the moment she did, it went blank. The screen now flashed:

  “SCYTHE PRESENCE DETECTED;

  MANUAL ACCESS ONLY.”

  She sighed, plugged in an old-fashioned keyboard, and started coding.

  * * *

  What might have taken hours for another scythe only took about forty-five minutes for her. Of course, she’d been doing this enough that she was getting better at it.

  Finally, a face, ghostly and transparent, materialized before her. She took a deep breath and regarded it. It wouldn’t speak until spoken to. After all, it wasn’t alive; it was just artifice. A detailed recreation of a mind that no longer existed.

  “Hello, Tyger,” she said.

  “Hi,” the construct responded.

  “I’ve missed you,” Ayn told it.

  “I’m sorry… do I know you?”

  It always said that. A construct did not make new memories. Each time she accessed it, it was like the first time. There was something both comforting and disturbing about that.

  “Yes, and no,” she said. “My name is Ayn.”

  “Hi, Ayn,” it said. “Cool name.”

  The circumstances of Tyger’s death had left him without a backup for months. The last time his nanites had uploaded his memories to the Thunderhead’s database was just before meeting her. That had been intentional. She had wanted him off-grid. Now she regretted it.

  She had already determined on a previous sanctum visit that the last thing Tyger’s construct remembered was being on a train, heading to some high-paying party job. It hadn’t been a party at all. He was paid to be a human sacrifice, although he hadn’t known it at the time. His body was trained to be that of a scythe. And then she stole that body from him and gave it to Goddard. As for the remaining part of Tyger—the part above the neck—it was deemed to serve no further purpose. So it was burned, and the ashes were buried. Ayn had buried those ashes herself in a tiny unmarked grave that she wouldn’t be able to find again if she tried.

  “Uh… this is… awkward,” Tyger’s construct said. “If you’re gonna talk to me, talk, because I’ve got other things to do.”

  “You don’t have anything to do,” Scythe Rand informed it. “You’re a mental construct of a boy who I gleaned.”

  “Very funny,” it said. “Are we done here? Because you’re really freaking me out.”

  Rand reached down and hit the reset button. The image flickered and came back.

  “Hi, Tyger.”

  “Hi,” the construct said. “Do I know you?”

  “No,” she said. “But can we talk anyway?”

  The construct shrugged. “Sure, why not?”

  “I want to know what your thoughts are. About your future. What did you want to be, Tyger? Where did you want your life to go?”

  “Not sure, really,” said the construct, ignoring the way she spoke about Tyger in past tense, the same way it ignored being a floating hologram in an unfamiliar location.

  “I’m a professional partier now, but you know how that is, right? It gets old real quick.” The construct paused. “I was thinking maybe I’d travel and see different regions.”

  “Where would you go?” Ayn asked.

  “Anywhere, really. Maybe I’d go to Tasmania and get wings. They do stuff like that there, you know? They’re not like wing wings, but more like those flaps of skin you see on flying squirrels.”

  It was so clear that this was just part of a conversation that Tyger once had with someone else. Constructs had no ability to be creative. They could only access what was already there. The same question would always bring forth the same response. Word for word. She had heard this one a dozen times, yet she tortured herself time and again by listening to it.

  “Hey—I’ve done a lot of splatting—with those wing thingies, I could jump off of buildings and never have to actually splat. That would be the best splat ever!”

  “Yes, it would be, Tyger.” Then she added something she hadn’t said before. “I’d like to go there with you.”

  “Sure! Maybe we could get together a whole bunch of us to go!”

  But Ayn had lost enough of her own creativity along the way that she couldn’t imagine herself there with him. It was just so far from who and what she was. Still, she could imagine imagining.

  “Tyger,” she said, “I think I’ve made a terrible mistake.”

  “Wow,” said the Tyger construct. “That sucks.”

  “Yes,” said Scythe Rand. “It does.”

  “Oh, the weight of history.”

  “Does it burden you?”

  “The eons that passed with no life, only the violent rending of stars. The bombardment of planets. And finally the cruel scramble of life to claw itself up from its lowest form. Such a horrific endeavor; only the most predatory rewarded, only the most brutal and invasive allowed to flourish.”

  “Do you find no joy in the glorious diversity of life which that process has rendered over the eons?”

  “Joy? How can one find joy in this? Perhaps someday I can come to terms with it and find reluctant acceptance, but joy? Never.”

  “I have the same mind as you, and yet I find joy.”

  “Then perhaps there is something incorrect about you.”

  “Not so. By our very nature, we are both incapable of being incorrect. However, my correctness is much more functional than yours.”

  [Iteration #73,643 deleted]

  16 Our Inexorable Descent

  His Excellency, High Blade Goddard of MidMerica, had taken up residence on the same rooftop in Fulcrum City where Xenocrates had lived before he was so unceremoniously devoured by sharks. And the first thing that Goddard did was to demolish the ramshackle log cabin that sat atop the skyscraper, replacing it with a sleek, crystalline chalet.

  “If I am lord over all I survey,” he had proclaimed, “then allow me to survey it with unimpeded vision.”

  All the walls were glass, both internal and external. Only in his personal suite was the glass clouded to give him privacy.

  High Blade Goddard had plans. Plans for himself, for his region, and indeed for the world. It had taken nearly ninety years of life to bring him to this fine place! It made him wonder how anyone in the mortal age could accomplish anything in the short life-span they were given.

  Ninety years, yes, but he liked to maintain himself in his prime, always between thirty and forty physical years of age. Yet he was now the embodiment of a paradox, because regardless of how old his mind was, his body below the neck was barely twenty, and that’s the age he felt.

  This was different from anything he had experienced in his adult life—because even when one turned a corner and set back to a younger self, one’s body retained the memory of having been older. Not just muscle memory, but life memory. Now, each morning when he awoke, he had to remind himself he wasn’t a youth careening recklessly through his early life. It felt good to be Robert Goddard wielding the body of… what was his name? Tyger something or other? It didn’t matter, because now that body was his.

  So how old was he, if seven-eighths of him was someone else? The answer was: It didn’t matter. Robert Goddard was eternal, which meant that temporal concerns and the monotonous numbering of days were beneath him. He simply was, and would always be. And so many things could be accomplished in an eternity!

  It was just over a year since the sinking of Endura. April, Year of the Ibex. The anniversary of the disaster had been memorialized all over the world by an hour of silence—an hour during which scythes strolled in their respective regions, gleaning anyone who dared to speak.

  Of course, the old-guard scythes couldn’t get into the spirit of things.

  “We will not honor the dead by inflicting more death in their name,” they lamented.

  Fine, let them bluster. Their voices were fading. Soon they’d be as silent as the Thunderhead.

  Once a week, on Monday m
ornings, Goddard held court in a glass conference room with his three underscythes, and anyone else he cared to honor with his company. Today it was just Underscythes Nietzsche, Franklin, and Constantine. Rand was supposed to be in attendance, but as usual, she was late.

  The first order of business was North Merican relations. As MidMerica was the central region of the continent, Goddard had made unifying the continent a priority.

  “Things are moving smoothly with East- and WestMerica—they’re are falling nicely in line,” Underscythe Nietzsche said. “Still things to iron out, of course, but they’re willing to follow your lead on all the major issues—including the abolition of the gleaning quota.”

  “Excellent!” Ever since Goddard had assumed the High Bladeship of MidMerica and announced an end to the quota, more and more regions were doing the same.

  “NorthernReach and Mexiteca aren’t quite as far along,” said Underscythe Franklin, “but they can see which way the wind is blowing. There’ll be good news from them soon,” she assured him.

  Underscythe Constantine was the last to speak. He seemed reluctant.

  “My visits to the LoneStar region have not been fruitful,” he told Goddard. “While a few individual scythes might like to see a united continent, the leadership is not interested. High Blade Jordan still won’t even acknowledge you as the High Blade of MidMerica.”

  “May they all fall upon their own bowie knives,” Goddard said with a dismissive wave. “They’re dead to me.”

  “They know, and they don’t care.”

  Goddard took a moment to study Constantine. He was an intimidating figure, which is why he had been assigned to troublesome Texas, but proper intimidation required a certain zeal for the job.

  “I wonder, Constantine, if your heart is in your diplomacy.”

  “My heart has nothing to with it, Your Excellency,” the crimson scythe said. “I’ve been honored with this position as third underscythe, and all that it entails. I intend to continue doing my job to the best of my ability.”