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Hope in the shadow of fear is the world’s most powerful motivator.
The scythe stood. “An apology isn’t necessary. It’s refreshing to be challenged. You have no idea how tedious it gets—the pandering, the obsequious flattery, the endless parade of sycophants. A slap in the face is bracing. It reminds me that I’m human.”
Death makes the whole world kin.
What must life have been like in the Age of Mortality? Full of passions, both good and bad. Fear giving rise to faith. Despair giving meaning to elation. They say even the winters were colder and the summers were warmer in those days.
“You’ll have to get used to that,” Scythe Faraday had told her early on. “Scythes cannot speak to the Thunderhead, and it will not speak to us. But in time you’ll come to appreciate the silence and self-reliance that comes from its absence.”
“There are three reasons for it,” Volta told him. “The first is to connect you with our ancestors, reliving the pain, and the fear of pain, because that’s what led to civilization and humanity’s advancement beyond its own mortality. The second is a rite of passage—something sorely missing in our passive world. But the third reason may be the most important: Being made to suffer pain frees us to feel the joy of being human.”
“You felt some—but just a shadow of what it can be. Without the threat of suffering, we can’t experience true joy. The best we get is pleasantness.”
There had once been missions to colonize Mars, to explore Jupiter’s moons, and even to launch to the stars beyond, but every mission had ended in utter and disastrous failure. Ships blew up. Colonists died—and in deep space, death meant death, just as completely as if they had been gleaned. The idea of irrevocable death without the controlled hand of a scythe was too much to bear for a world that had conquered mortality.
promise I won’t tell anyone. And I don’t want anything from you.” Volta finally backed off. “I’m sorry. After you’ve been surrounded by so much scheming, you start to think that’s how everyone plays.” He sat back down on the bed. “I believe you, because I know you’re better than that. In fact, I knew from the moment Goddard brought you in. He sees you as a challenge—because if he can turn one of Faraday’s apprentices to his way of thinking, it proves he can turn anyone.”
“No, I wasn’t, thank goodness,” Scythe Curie said. “I never took life for sport. You see, there are some who seek celebrity to change the world, and others who seek it to ensnare the world. Goddard is of the second kind.” And then she said something that guaranteed Citra many a sleepless night.
“I think all young women are cursed with a streak of unrelenting foolishness, and all young men are cursed with a streak of absolute stupidity. He didn’t see my obsession with him as love, but thought I meant him bodily harm. It was, to say the least, a very painful comedy of errors. I suppose I can understand how my advances could be misunderstood in that way. I do admit that I was an odd girl. Intense to the point of being off-putting.”
“Efficiency must be in service to compassion!”
