For Darkness Shows the Stars

can’t fix them. We’re not allowed. How does that make sense?
    Your friend,
    Kai
        
     
    Dear Kai,
    It doesn’t always make sense to me, either. Is that what you want me to say? But it must be true. Everyone believes it. The protocols are there for our protection. We broke them once, and we got the Reduction. Isn’t it better that a few people die, as God wills it, than we risk destroying humanity all over again?
    Humans tried to play God once, and we failed. We tried to make over humanity in our own image. It’s forbidden. We have to accept that.
    Your friend,
    Elliot
        
     
    Dear Elliot,
    Not everyone believes it. That’s all.
    Your friend,
    Kai
        
     
    Dear Kai,
    I heard about your father. I’m sorry. Please let me come see you tonight.
    Your friend,
    Elliot
        
     
    Dear Elliot,
    I’ve thought it over, and I’ve decided I don’t care how much trouble I get in. Not now. My father is dead, and the rest of the people in the healing house are going to die, and they are going to die even though we know how to fix them. We know how to save them. And we don’t?
    No, not we. You. Luddites.
    I don’t believe in the protocols! It’s not right to let people die for them. You can use technology without risking another Reduction. There has to be a happy medium. And if we never challenge the protocols, we’ll never know if we even need them anymore! It’s like I said years ago—I’m a Post. How do you know I’m not immune to the Reduction? How does anyone know that every Post in the islands wasn’t born immune?
    Here’s what I think: The Luddites use the restrictions to make sure the Reduced stay that way. If it weren’t for the protocols, humanity might have found a cure, long before the Posts ever came. That’s human nature—to make our lives better. But the Luddites would rather let people die than risk giving up their control of the world. They’d rather let my father die.
    You say that the protocols are to keep us from playing God. But I think you have it backward. When we have the ability to save someone’s life, and we decide they aren’t worthy of being saved—isn’t that playing God as well?
    Your friend,
    Kai
        
     
    Dear Kai,
    I have tried and failed to write this letter four times now. Your father was a good man, and everyone here cared for him. He raised you, and that makes him a great man in my eyes.
    I know things are bad right now. I have heard from the servants at the house that all the Posts on the estate are getting together to hold a memorial service. I would like to attend, if no one thinks that is odd. My mother has given me permission.
    I am so sorry for your loss,
    Your friend,
    Elliot
        
     
    Dear Elliot,
    Honestly, Elliot? I’d rather you didn’t come. Everyone will stare. But after it’s over, I would like it very much if you came and visited the pyre with me. We can bring Ro as well.
    Is there any news about where I’ll go?
    Your friend,
    Kai
        
     
    Dear Kai,
    I understand. My mother told me that you will stay in the barn. We all want you to take your father’s place as a mechanic. My mother knows you are young, but you were your father’s apprentice, and you’re the closest thing we’ve got right now.
    I am so sorry, Kai. I’m so sorry about everything.
    Your friend,
    Elliot

Twenty-four
     
    AS SOON AS SHE could, Elliot escaped to the barn. She could not avoid discussing the accident with Tatiana, nor Benedict, nor her father. In her version, Olivia had accidentally slipped and fallen down the cliff face, though she doubted her ruse would last more than an evening or two, as the story spread.
    And when it did spread, how long would it be before people started to wonder how the Posts had done it?
    As she entered, Elliot’s gaze slid to the knothole in the door and she reprimanded herself. Would the ritual never die? For four years she looked, though she knew Kai was gone. And now she looked, even though he was home and he hated her. The habit had been imprinted on her brain for all of her life—she was doomed to stare at empty knotholes for eternity.
    Elliot went to the loft and sat before her work desk, but couldn’t push away the thoughts in her mind. Those two years she’d spent developing her strain of wheat, she’d deluded herself into thinking it was all right. It was safe. That what she’d created was not as bad as the abominations of the Lost. Tonight, she reread all of her notes on the wheat—each