Day 10 - Reaper & Son

“Morning Dad, what’s on for today?” Garth asked as he walked into the office.

Garry looked up from where he sat, behind his desk, a notebook held in one hand, quill in the other.  Garth had stopped just in the entrance, door held open, ‘Reaper & Son’s’ curved over his left shoulder, and although the sign, gave Garry a sense of pride, a shudder ran down his back as he took in his son's attire.

"What the bloody hell is that?"

"What?" Responded Garth, looking about frantically, over his right shoulder, behind him, at the door he held, the floor, "What?"

“The bloody clothes?  Where’s your hood, your cloak?  How come I can see your feet? What is that on your feet?”

Looking down, Garth responded “Shoes.” he returned his gaze to his father bewildered.

“Where’s your uniform, more importantly, where’s your Scythe?”

“Here!” Garth thrust his hand forward, holding up an iPhone-like device.  

Garry knew of these things, the Mortals carried them, and they’d become a blemish.  He’d even used them several times as he worked through his lists.  They were handy in that sense.  

“WHAT!” He boomed at his son, “What the bloody hell are you talking about, we don't need those, they’re useless.”

“Dad.  I told you I was changing things up, modernising the office.”

“We don’t need bloody modernising if it involves those things, they're a death prop at best. Look!” as he thrust his notepad towards his son.

Garth stepped forward, letting the door shut behind him, taking the pad and reading ‘Trist Birmingham, 10/05/2024 13:15 - Walk in front of the bus as distracted by Mobile’ followed by a hand-drawn box filled with a Tick.  All written in neat handwriting, not an ink blotch to be seen, in standard reaper font.

“Dad, that’s what I’m talking about, we’ve got to modernise.  Notepad and quill, just don’t run at the volume we need these days.”

“What do you mean, Garth, this is how we do it, we get given our numbers, and work the lists.”

The phone in Garth’s hand buzzed, the screen lighting up, and he looked down at it, and back to his father.

“Dad, the world's population grows by about 0.8% each year.  That’s going to be six and a half million people this year alone. We’ve got to update, gotta get faster.  The old way simply doesn’t have the capacity, we’ve got to modernise!”

“What do you mean capacity!” protested Garry, “This!” waving his notepad, “has capacity!  The Titanic, the Twin Towers, It’s got capacity.”

“Yes, Dad, but, wars, pandemics?” protested Garth, “What about those?”

“I’ll have you know boy, World War 1 & 2, even the Vietnam war, all done with These!” waving both quill and notepad at his son again.

“Seriously Dad, the population was about two point four billion in the 1940’s, it’s like four times that now.”

Spinning on his heel, Garry turned back towards his desk, walking behind it and flung himself into his high-backed leather chair, “What about the pandemic, I used the old methods all the way through that.”

“Seriously Dad, you know we weren’t the only ones working the pandemic, there were the harvesters and the Angels. Did you see their numbers, they exceeded the quotas!”

Garry mumbled under his breath, bloody harvester of souls my arse.  

“What have they got to do with any of this?”

“Well, their quotas, they were up, the Angels reported their methods to the council.”

Angels of death, Garry thought to himself. Seriously, they’re not angels, bloody corrupt is what they are.

“They showed them this.” again Garth held up his phone, “They call it a X-ythe.”

“X-ythe? And how is that meant to be better than our current scythe, our tools of the trade, that’s done us well for all these millennia.”  Said Garry as he took the phone from his son, turning it over in his hands.  He’d seen this often enough he had a general sense of how they physically worked, but that was it. 

"So how? how are these different."

“It’s in the disinformation, fake news, conspiracy theories that these things can spread.’

"Why X-ythe." asked Garry as his skeletal figure clicked as he tapped the screen.

"X, that’s the name of the main app." As Garth spoke, the screen lit up.

Garry read what appeared on the screen. ‘The vaccinations, are the government trying to control you, their implanting advanced trackers. DON'T VACCINATE!’. He turned the screen towards his son.

"Is this what you are talking about?"

"Yes, that’s it, disinformation."

"How’s that work though, it’s awfully vague, where’s the time, the date, the names? Look!" Garry ticked off the next name on his list.  Cici Mudil, 10/05/2024 13:21 - Sheltering under a tree, in a lightning storm’ and held it up to his son.

“Shees dad, I get it, your method works, but it’s simply not doing enough, the council says we’ve got to adopt these things, start to build our companies around X, generate disinformation, fake news, conspiracies, while we work on increasing the accuracy.”

Garry didn’t say anything, he placed his quill into the ink pot. And slouched back into his chair, flipping his notebook onto the desk.  Not quite resigned to what his son had been saying, simply piqued.

“OK son, tell me what you’re thinking."

Garth turned quickly grabbed the chair on his side of the desk, pulled it forward and sat down opposite his father.