“We’ve got to find a way of ensuring permanent peace. A total end to hostilities between the two factions,” Eight announced.
“How? Ilana refuses to allow the rebels to depart the island—which is their singular demand,” Null reminded the group. “If there’s one thing that she, as the face of the government, hates more than the rebels it’s breaking with orthodoxy.”
“Too much of this city’s leadership adhere to superstitious traditions,” Eight decried.
In the span of a second the group collapsed into a bitter argument: Ninety-Nine assuring them of the statistical likelihood of a return to warfare, Twenty advocating the abdication of their responsibilities entirely, Null admonishing the others for meeting in secret at all, and Eight hurriedly poking holes in the arguments her companions presented.
“I have a plan.”
Silence rippled away from Seven across the group. Even Eight’s voice withered because Seven had spoken with an authority he rarely yielded, but that everyone knew he possessed. Surprised by the sheer force with which he had spoken, Seven nervously swallowed before continuing.
“Obviously, we can’t publicly side with one force or another,” he began.
“Haven’t we already done that?” Null seethed. “We all work for Haven in one way or another—Seven, you work for Haven’s Armed Response Militia itself!”
“Our purpose is to be impartial, to mediate, and the rebels understand that as well as we do. They appreciate us for listening when the city’s authorities refused,” he countered swiftly, in a tone that encouraged Null to keep her antagonism to herself.
“Correction: they appreciate you. They mostly tolerate the rest of us,” Twenty yawned.
“What’s your plan?” Eight asked, the fire gone from her voice. Curiosity had replaced it and that was enough to urge Seven onwards.
“We must become a formidable third force in this conflict. If we are going to create real, lasting change then we can’t be subject to the whims of Haven’s leaders. What happens when the truce finally breaks and Ilana decides we’re useless to her? I’ll lose my position with HARM, Eight and Ninety-Nine will lose their research funding, we’ll be banished back to—”
“We get it,” Eight interrupted. “We get the idea.”
From his pocket Seven withdrew four small squares of paper. He knew how unusual he must look, tendering physical paper to some of the most gifted scientists and mathematicians alive when digital means were much preferred. However, the contents of the papers, the words carefully inscribed upon them in Seven’s fanatically clear handwriting, could not be trusted to electronic form. In Haven, few computers were safe from the prying eyes of the government and its overwhelmingly powerful agents.
“But this is silly,” Null began. “Why do you want the radio frequencies for—”
Seven held up his hand, cutting off the argument before it progress further.
“Each of you holds your piece of my plan. I expect to see you all at Twenty’s exhibition, where you’ll bring me the information that I’ve asked for. Remember, do not use any electronics networked to the city’s digital mainframe. Do not trust their computers.”
“And you expect me to just bring this to you?” Eight asked venomously, her eyes stuck on whatever objective had been assigned to her by Seven. “You’ve asked me for something you shouldn’t even know about,” Eight managed to say without revealing whatever secret was on the tip of her tongue.
“For once in your life, yes, I expect you to do what I’ve asked you to.”
“What you want is—”
“I’m not going to argue about this with you! Do you want to spend the rest of your life wondering if Haven will tire of you? Are you prepared to watch as more people start dying again? The signs are readily apparent: rebels outside the neutral zone, city militia accidentally firing on civilians, Ilana still refusing to negotiate...”
Cowed into obedience, Eight lapsed into a mutinous silence.
“What I’ve asked each of you for is sensitive information. I know that. I wouldn’t have asked for it unless I thought it was the only way forward. We can carve out a destiny for ourselves or we can be washed away in the carnage when the truce finally breaks. I’ve made my choice. It’s time for each of you to make yours...”
As his mind turned away from the uncovered memory, nearly dreamlike in its hazy recollection of details, Seven considered his impending death inquisitively. What type of monster took the form of a shimmering golden-brown cloud of dust? Since when could things like that intelligently hunt prey? How could such a monster play with its food, as Seven suspected that it was, by swirling around them in such an maddened fervor?
With a bold gasp, he inhaled mouthfuls of air, sucking down gulps of dust. He coughed, gagging as the particles scraped the back of his throat and escaped through his nostrils. Though irritated and hoarse, he found that he could still breathe, that he was still alive despite the monster’s efforts to the contrary.
That Seven dared to continue breathing, that he kept living, strengthened his defiant resolve. Anything beat dying in fear. Sensing this, the monster twisted and writhed around Seven. His breathing posed a challenge that the monster found unacceptable. It roared, an angry wail more than an aggressive advance, and Seven’s whole body reverberated with its frustration.
“You’re having trouble killing me, aren’t you?” Seven shouted at the monster, his fear dissolved by his nervous courage. In the depths of the monster’s golden haze a uniform humming boomed outwards. It tuned itself to Seven’s mind, teased away those dark spots in his memory, and the illusive music returned.
“Day of wrath! Oh day of mourning,” he chanted, unable to stop himself.
“See fulfilled the Founders’ warning,” Eight continued as her voice rang aloud.
“Haven and Earth in ashes burning,” shouted Twenty.
“When from skyward we descend!” finished Null, her voice championing the song to a point right before its crescendo. There was more, Seven was sure of it, but that critical piece was missing and left the music incomplete. With the music as finished as it was likely to become, the monster’s attack buckled. Seconds later, as if with nothing more than the slightest effort, it fell away from the survivors and gathered like a thick mist at their feet.
Then, it barreled away, slithering over the edge of the platform and lurching into the shadowy streets below. Familiar grayish-white daylight supplanted the golden hue of the monster’s body and the dead city came back into overwhelming focus.
“Is everyone alive?” Eight called.
“Yes. Unfortunately,” Twenty groaned, regaining his balance and clenching his teeth shut.
Null, on Eight’s left, wordlessly nodded and she clapped her arms securely around her.
Seven could see that Eight was shaken.
“Are you okay?” Eight tried to reverse the situation, asking Seven when she saw him approach. His first reaction was to smile at her, as bewildering as she found the gesture, if only because of how ironic the question was.
“I was going to ask you the same thing,” Seven replied, hoping that she would let him check up on her for once.
“It doesn’t make any sense!” she exclaimed. “I want it to make sense. I’m trying to, really, but the music? That...monster?” Eight glanced to the places on the platform where the monster had emerged from and disappeared to. “Do you see that? Nothing is damaged. I swear that I saw the monster blow a hole in it but there it is, not a scratch, just as it was before...”
“You’re not crazy. I saw it break through that spot, too.”
“Me too,” Twenty agreed.
“So the monster can make us see things?”
“We saw it demolish a whole city block. We never went back to examine the extent of the damage. I’ll bet that whole area is fine,” Eight hypothesized. “What about the music, though? It reacted to the music. As if it knew the sound.”
“A monster with a musical fetish,” Twenty leered. “Go
figure.”
“Did anyone else notice that the predator that’s been pursuing us is a giant cloud of dirt?” asked Null, the impossibility of their predicament killing the last vestiges of genuine curiosity in her voice. From the way she spoke she might have been agreeing that, yes, there was a sun in the sky and that, also, a monster of wild impossibility had attacked them beneath it only moments ago.
“Did anyone else…relive something?” a hesitant Twenty asked, his voice hardly above a whisper. Dark concerns flashed across his expression and his eyes leapt to Seven and the others.
“…Yes!” Null exclaimed, her voice suddenly alive with relief. “I didn’t want to bring it up. I thought I was the only one.”
Subdued, Twenty asked, “What did you see?”
“I…I was mapping out…what I think evolved into…this city…” Null muttered. She shook her head after a silent moment. “But I’ve already established that this city, as it stands today, has been around for several hundreds of years…” she stressed. “And you?” she leveled at Twenty, who flinched from the tenacity of her demand.
“I was at an art show. In the Imperial Galleria,” Twenty’s empty voice bore no emotion.
“The Imperial Galleria?” Null inquired.
“A section of the city south of here,” he pointed beyond the buildings around them. “I saw some type of map, like a directory, in my memory. So I have an idea of where we are versus where I was in that memory,” Twenty lowered his hand, silent.
“You?” Null asked Eight.
“At a bonfire,” Eight replied. “Before the city was even built.”
“And you, Seven?” inquired Twenty, the group’s curiosity swinging towards him.
Seven blinked, muted by hesitance.
“I can hardly remember it but I met each of you,” his gravelly voice replied, quivering with uncertainty. “But maybe I was hallucinating? Your memories are spaced hundreds of years apart from the city’s founding to well into its existence. I would have guessed that mine was during its twilight, but I can’t remember what we talked about...” Seven mentally reached towards the fading memory, trying to distinguish whether it was a memory or an elaborate dream induced by the monster.
“Does anyone have a theory that doesn’t sound utterly insane?” Null asked.
“Have you looked around lately?” Twenty drawled. “This whole situation is the definition of utter insanity.”
“It could be anything,” Eight admitted, the act itself as painful to her as if science were a bone broken somewhere within her body, that she alone must reset. “Time travel? We each have memories from different periods. That’s one of the only logical explanations.”
“Time travel?” Twenty asked, his cynicism clawing back into his voice.
“We have no idea how advanced these people were. Maybe they experimented with the technology, successfully brought us forward, and wound up killing themselves as a result?”
“Wouldn’t the whole city be missing if that was the case?” Twenty asked in one of his rare moments of insightfulness. “If you’re from their past, and bringing you forward wiped them out, then everything they built would be gone.”
Eight, shocked that Twenty’s reasoning had outdone her own, acquiesced with a simple nod.
“Yes, a paradox would have occurred. But time travel isn’t an exact science by any means,” it was Eight’s turn to sound defensive and sarcastic. Seven marveled at Twenty’s modest victory.
“Because it’s not a science at all,” Twenty scoffed. “We’re hungry, we’re dehydrated, and we’re stressed beyond tolerable levels! Do you know what that adds up to? Hallucinations! And now that we know that the mothball monster can make us see things, we shouldn’t be putting any stock in our mystical visions of the past,” he jeered.
“I’m not calling any of this mystical. The only point that I’m trying to make is that in some form all of this is connected,” Eight insisted in a heated tone. “Either way, we need to get to the Great Library before nightfall. Not only is it the place where we’ll find answers, it’s also the best shelter we’re likely to find.”
For a time afterwards Eight motivated the group to continue its sullen march forward in its endless quest for meaning and discovery. Twenty and Null, in spite of their mutual dislike, soon took the lead. Seven walked alongside Eight, whose prolonged silence suggested to him that the circumstances of their presence in city continued to baffle her.
“You’ll figure it out,” Seven decided abruptly.
“Such confidence,” Eight remarked, the sarcasm better fitted for Twenty than for her.
“You’re the smartest person I know. I have every right to be confident,” he answered with discernible pride.
Eight’s silent examination of Seven caused the young man to feel the whole spectrum of awkward discomfort that accompanied the woman’s unapologetic gaze. A myriad of suggestions wandered to the forefront of his mind. Stand up straighter. Speak more clearly. Make more eye contact.
A thousand suggestions from a lifetime he didn’t remember slipped into his consciousness but Seven couldn’t change; not now, not when she already knew him. He tried to remain mindful of the helpful ideas but eventually gave up and focused on walking.
For Seven the decision was rooted in wanting to spend as much time with a person he considered fascinating, and mesmerizing, rather than racing as quickly as possible to the next set of wreckage.
Only when they were almost on top of the Great Library did Seven give it any attention other than fleeting glances. Twenty and Null were stopped at the highway’s offramp to the concrete plaza that held the library, waiting for Seven and Eight out of companionship. Or, perhaps, fear? Seven couldn’t say but when his eyes came to rest upon the Great Library he understood the intimidation it caused.
At night, in his memory, the Great Library had loomed over the flatness of its surroundings but in daylight the building’s grandeur lorded over the deadened wastes that encircled it. Circular in its design, the library rose high into the air and was kept aloft by thick columns forged from white stone and tall windows pieced together by stained glass. If the building truly contained the combined history of the ancient city then its width justified the assumption and Seven wondered how long it would take to do a lap around the building.
Together, the group of survivors descended the ramp to the empty streets that came from all directions and met their ends at the Great Library’s campus. While it was in noticeably better condition than the Voice, the Library also exhibited how old and neglected it was. At close distance the colors of the stained glass that composed the windows could hardly be identified through the densely compacted silt.
“Those windows must have been beautiful. How many patterns are up there? It must have taken thousands of workers to build this place,” Eight mumbled, her awe caught under her breath and Seven watched her appreciate the Library, refusing to interrupt her reverie. In the present the quality and charm of the windows survived but not without being severely diminished.
Whereas the stone was white in some places, it had browned to a burnish in almost every other spot. Stains marred and darkened the corners, the ledges, and the rooftop of the Library in a way that confirmed to the survivors that it was as abandoned as everything else. Brutally, quickly, and unforgivingly.
“Look at these!” Null exclaimed, approaching the statues that Seven had seen in his memory. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that she had seen them before in another time, in another life, but could he even claim as much to himself? “Each statue is taller than the four of us combined!”
In the aging sunlight the rows of golden statues that encircled the Great Library betrayed their rusted and battered bodies to the visitors. Like the guardians of a tomb they kept an eternal and indifferent watch.
“From their placement and numbering, there must be at least two hundred statues ringing the Library,” Eight concluded. Seven guessed that whatever his strength was, math wasn’t it, becaus
e her ability to reach such a number baffled him.
“I think that’s the entrance over there,” Twenty lobbed an accusing finger to an enormous archway in the building. Seven suspected that Twenty feared being out in the open more than he feared a building full of books, but Seven refused to be taken by surprise. What if the Library had drawn other likeminded survivors?
“What are you thinking?” Eight demanded of Seven as the group headed for the Great Library’s entryway. Seven shook his head and tried to word his thoughts accurately.
“I keep coming back to the fact that everywhere is like this. A whole civilization died, or disappeared, and we’re all that’s left. Why did we get to be so lucky?” he asked her, hoping that she might be able to shed a rational light on his conflict.
“Lucky? You call this lucky?” the voice that answered wasn’t Eight’s, it was Twenty’s, and filled with his usual sneer. “Lucky would have been to die with everyone else and be spared this nonsense! I have no idea how to survive. I didn’t deserve this. Where’s the luck, or even the justice, in this?”
“Because we are connected, somehow,” Eight answered Seven, annoying Twenty’s outburst. “You were in my vision. I saw you what must have been a thousand years ago.”
Seven, without realizing it himself, began to drift away from Eight. Who was right and who was wrong? If Eight remembered Seven from a thousand years ago then that meant they were, nearly, ageless. Immortality, or whatever it was that saw them through the eras, had eventually betrayed them. The dead city was proof enough of that.
With the sun setting behind the prodigious building, Seven quietly decided that the facility would double as housing for the night. Null and Twenty reached the doorways of the Great Library ahead of Seven and Eight. Whatever modest excitement, whatever quiet relief the group had begun to feel upon their arrival was tempered by a simple but frightening fact.
Someone to Remember Me: The Anniversary Edition Page 7