Someone to Remember Me: The Anniversary Edition

by Brendan Mancilla

  Eight recalled that in a past life she had been married. What if, by entering her room, she found traces of that? By embracing her own past she might invalidate her feelings in the present and that was a risk she was unwilling to take. Eight left her door behind her and went from door to door until she found the one she wanted.

  Seven’s door opened for her even though she was not Seven. That in itself was curious.

  Seven’s room was the least decorated of the rooms that she had seen. A certain austerity emanated from his plain belongings. His bed was unmade, dirty clothes were dropped at random on the floor. Eight picked up a shirt and clutched it to her heart. In the corner was a camera, its bulky mass shattered beyond repair, as if thrown in a fit of rage. Eight sat down on the side of his mattress, studying his room with a sweeping grief.

  Eight swung her legs onto the bed and laid her head against an odorless pillow. She imagined that she could smell Seven. She told herself that he was nearby. She did these things to lessen the pain that threatened to burst back into her heart. Eight quietly whispered her regrets to the past and she drifted to sleep.

  Chapter Seven:

  Origins

  The kitchens were thoroughly stocked with supplies, as if Rose Garden’s designers expected it to be isolated from the mainland for extended periods of time. Food consisted of protein packs and powdered beverages. Eight gathered some on a small tray, ate alone in the common area, and returned to the first floor that she discovered was labeled as ‘Command’ in the elevator. When she walked the polished halls of Rose Garden, she felt like a ghost wandering the corridors of another person’s home and understood that the facility had a significance but could not yet decipher why.

  Ninety-Nine was at one of the computers when Eight arrived, neither of them the least bit surprised to discover the other. Their initial conversation was about the strange experience of sleeping in a bed for the first time that they could remember. Ninety-Nine confessed that she had slept very little, instead playing with the computer in her room. She claimed to have obtained enough rest and Eight thought that she looked better for it. Eight kept her stay in Seven’s room to herself. Their conversation took a turn that only Ninety-Nine could have produced, given her ruthless attention to detail.

  “I assume that you realize what happened? I began to put the pieces together shortly after our arrival last night. I thought you were too but I didn’t have the chance to ask,” Ninety-Nine remarked. Eight knew without elaboration what the other woman meant to imply.

  The convenience of finding rooms tailored to each of them in Rose Garden went beyond being merely coincidental.

  “As soon as Twenty’s door opened, I was certain of it. We are clones of the people who lived here. They, or perhaps I should say us, placed our unconscious selves out in Haven and created a trail that would guide us back.” Eight paced along the twelve separate workstations and set her half-emptied mug on the floor by her feet. Ninety-Nine continued by saying, “The real question is: where did our creators go? Why did we need to trek through Haven to get here?”

  “I stand by what I said earlier. We were meant to see something out there. I think the journey through Haven was meant to teach us something. Something we couldn’t learn for ourselves here at Rose Garden,” Eight finished, her expression grim.

  Ninety-Nine slouched over her computer. “I’ve been studying this installation’s database but everything is written in a code I can hardly understand. I found something interesting though,” she waved Eight over to her side. “There’s a program installed throughout the facility that’s identical to another that I’ve seen: the Unimatrix at the Great Library.”

  “There’s an A.I. here?” Eight asked.

  “Most certainly.”

  “Can you turn it on?”

  “I think so.” Ninety-Nine met Eight’s gaze. “First, though, check out this trick of mine,” she leaned forward and spoke at the computer. “Good morning Rose Garden occupants. If you could please join us upstairs in Command, Eight and I would appreciate it. Also, if you can hear me Null, would you get my notepad off the desk in my room? I’ll open the door from here.” Each word that Ninety-Nine spoke boomed across the command center. Eight assumed that the same effect occurred on the lower levels as well.

  Even though Seven’s death still hung heavy on her mood, Eight offered a diplomatic “Neat,” and slipped back into silence.

  When the disembodied voice rang through the dormitories, Null was celebrating her discovery of the shower. With warm water rinsing away the accumulated terror of three days, Null acknowledged that their discovery of Rose Garden had entailed at least a few fortuitous elements. Once finished, a dried Null studied her bedroom anew. It may have been that she was unaccustomed to it but the bed itself felt too large for her.

  She dressed by fishing out new clothes from drawers embedded in the metal walls, rejecting many before settling on her selection. When she was ready she stepped out into the hallway and walked to where she thought Ninety-Nine’s room would be.

  Ninety-Nine’s bedroom was the only one whose doorway stood open. From outside Null could see the computer and the desk. A notepad sat atop a cluster of papers. She felt intrusive going into Ninety-Nine’s bedroom, if it could be called that, but swallowed her intimidation and entered.

  Between the moment she stepped through the doorway and the moment she landed on the floor, pinned by another body on top of her, Null’s mind collapsed into a heap of survivalist instincts. Fear and uncertainty, spurred by the events of the past three days, overwhelmed her and her rationality was drowned by alarm.

  Null fought like a wounded animal.

  Her attacker struggled to keep her pinned down. Screams filled the room. Null wrenched her wrist out of a clasped hand and blindly punched as frequently as possible. The pressure against her lessened but remained firm. She kicked her assailant, who was definitely a man, square in the crotch.

  He fell off of her to the side gasping and as the swirling room steadied Null could hear him speaking.

  “What was that for?” he shouted indignantly. Doubled over in pain, the stranger gasped for relief. Null dragged herself onto the mattress. Her eyes searched the room for anything she could use as a weapon. “If anyone deserves a beating it’s you,” he seethed. Paranoia held Null firmly in its grasp. She wanted to speak. To cry out. To demand answers from her attacker.

  Instead her voice caught in her throat. How could she contact the others? She would have to get by the man that had her pinned against the floor moments ago. Null realized that she had wasted her advantage by sitting still, paralyzed by fear. Composed enough to meet her gaze, the man looked up at Null.

  And a flood of memories, bursting out of the empty places at the back of her mind, knocked Null unconscious.

  As the helicopter lurched forward, swooping low across the city’s skyline, Two-Eight-Eight-Nine felt the contents of his stomach gurgling anxiously. With his right hand gripping the support handle bolted to the ceiling, he laid a conciliatory left hand on his stomach. Thrown open, the helicopter’s doorway offered the occupants an easy view of Haven’s busiest downtown districts.

  Haven’s lights shone against the deep orange and blue of the approaching dawn as a new day quickly spread across the city. On the streets, the city’s citizens were insignificantly small and Nine observed that they were moving in frantic throngs.

  Thunderous whirring sounds emanated from the chopper’s spinning blades and made it impossible to hear anything else. It was a testament to the rate and volume of the gunfire enveloping Haven below that the two sounds competed to be heard. Haven’s lights flickered menacingly, unreliably, in tandem with the echoes of gunfire. Seconds later a sizable portion of the city beneath their helicopter plunged into darkness as the lights blinked out.

  The resulting screams announced the terror of the citizenry. No doubt they wondered what the darkness could mean in the city of endless light. Nine’s stomach gave another unpleasant heave. His c
onfidence broke and he reached his hand out to gladly take the one resting on the seat at his side.

  He turned Null’s hand over in his, feeling the cool metal band on her finger. It renewed his strength in the face of the ongoing plight below.

  “How is this happening?” Nine screamed. They needed to yell in order to be heard by one another and the effort of it resulted in the slightest shrug of Null’s shoulders. Nine marveled at her remarkably calm reaction to the unfolding catastrophe that busied itself with consuming Haven.

  “Ninety-Nine is trying to figure out what went wrong,” Null hollered back. Her voice sounded distant.

  “Any ideas?” he suspected that she knew more. Her reticence proved it.

  “She knows it’s not a malfunction!” Null shouted back, lobbing a mournful gaze at the chaotic city below the chopper. As the last words left her mouth a chilling, almost mechanical roar echoed through Haven and rippled into the brightening sky.

  “It must be rebelling!” he announced, reaching the only conclusion. “The AdvISOR is rebelling against Haven!” How could the AdvISOR have done this? Was it allying with the rebels or was it simply tired of the ailing truce? “Where are Seven and Eight? Where are the others?” he asked Null.

  “I don’t know! Most of them were at Twenty’s exhibition at the Imperial Galleria last night, but now…” Null’s gaze became fearful as she studied Haven. Did she think that she might be able to see them from this altitude? Why did it feel like she wasn’t being truthful with him?

  An explosion ripped a hole in the street below and unleashed a tremendous mass of dust into the air. The cloud flooded out of the sewers and collected around the base of an office building and another ferocious roar bellowed into the sky. Quivering in the air, the chopper’s stability became questionable. Nine turned his head and peaked in the space between the seats of the pilots. He could see through the front window, watching other helicopters lift into the air from the city’s rooftops.

  “What’s going on, gentlemen? You’re upsetting the lady,” he called.

  But the answer was already there, just waiting to be seen. The controls were shrieking, the meters were spinning out of control, with the lights blinking on and off. The frantic pilots scrambled to regain control of the aircraft but Nine was pulled back against his seat by Null, who whispered in his ear, “The AdvISOR is shutting down air control.”

  Nine followed her gaze out through the open door to where other flying machines were experiencing a rapid descent towards Haven. Reduced to blinking lights against an orange-blue sky, helicopters across the city eagerly plummeted towards the streets far below.

  Quite abruptly, the noise from the helicopter’s spinning blades disappeared. No more loud whirring, no more engine vibrations, no radio static. Only silence. A moment’s peace, carried on the momentum of gliding, embraced Nine and Null.

  Then came the tightening sensation in Nine’s stomach that announced the start of a long drop. He could see the dread in Null’s expression as she clenched her eyes shut. Her grip on his hand became a welcome pain.

  “Don’t worry! Don’t worry!” Nine assured her. Null leaned back against her seat, bracing herself, eyes still closed. “Rose Garden is safe! We’ll make it! We’ll be okay!”

  “I have to tell you something!” Null gasped but she couldn’t speak against the pressure.

  Distraught, Nine shouted, “Don’t worry! We’ll be okay! I love you—” but everything turned to black.

  Nine returned to the conscious realm first, where he sat up on the bedroom floor, groggy and disoriented, as he wondered how it was possible for a memory to overcome him. He saw Null stir in her spot on the mattress and leapt to his feet. At her side, crouched next to the mattress, he willed her to return to him.

  She opened her eyes, saw him recovering, and reacted immediately. Null scrambled away from the bed until the two stood in direct opposition of one another.

  “I know you,” Null whispered.

  “Well…yes,” Nine replied, confused.

  The woman who stood in front of him scrutinized him.

  “What just happened?” she asked.

  “I thought you could tell me. I thought Seven was crazy, rambling on about those memories of his…” Nine chuckled nervously.

  “You know Seven?” Null inquired, surprised.

  Keenly aware that something was amiss, Nine answered, “Yes. I know him. And you. And all the others.”

  “The others?”

  “Well, there’s you and me, and the other ten,” Nine explained but his own curiosity forced him to ask, “Did you hit your head?”

  “Maybe when you tackled me to the ground,” Null answered sharply.

  “Right. About that: I can see how you might get the wrong idea,” Nine began sheepishly.

  “How is there a right idea? You attacked me.”

  “I had good reason to!”

  “Such as?”

  “Is this a joke?” Nine asked, reeling in his disbelief. “Do you honestly not remember anything?”

  “What happened? Why did you assault me?” Null bellowed. “Who are you?”

  “I was trying to restrain you because I woke up about thirty minutes ago on the third floor!”

  Null blinked. Then she cried out: “What does that mean?”

  “You killed me!” Nine shouted.

  “In the helicopter crash?”

  “No! For me that was two deaths ago. After the helicopter crash we woke up here and, without so much as a hint of a reason why, you killed me! At least…I think it was you. I suspect it was the five of you,” Nine meandered. “I wanted to restrain you in case you tried to contact your friends on the first floor to have the air sucked out of the chamber.”

  Null curiously tilted her head to the side.

  “Why would I do that?”

  Nine put his hand to his forehead.

  “Tell me: who else is with you? Are you all like this?”

  “Me, Eight, Twenty, and Ninety-Nine are here and none of us remembers a thing before three days ago,” Null admitted.

  “Okay,” Nine breathed uneasily, wondering if this was an elaborate ruse. He needed to meet the others to be sure that this wasn’t some kind of trick. What reason would they have for faking amnesia? What purpose did that serve? Nine conceded and said, “Maybe we should go upstairs. I can’t tell you what happened three days ago but I know exactly how it began five centuries ago.”

  None of them were lying. That much became clear when surprise and suspicion flooded the expressions of Eight and the others as if they had reason to fear him and not the other way around. Nine foolishly introduced himself, half expecting Eight and the others to announce the joke’s punchline at any moment. When the revelation did not come, when the presence of genuine distrust continued, Nine was convinced of their story’s authenticity.

  “Then you know who we are?” Eight barked. Some things never changed. A bossy Eight was, apparently, one of them.

  “Yes. When I checked last, you knew me too,” Nine said.

  “Not well enough to keep me from killing you, apparently,” said Null.

  “That’s a complicated story. It’s not black and white,” he replied defensively.

  “Isn’t murder generally black and white?” Twenty said with pungent derision. Being without their memories hadn’t exactly stopped their personalities from resurfacing. A domineering Eight. A sarcastic Twenty. A calculating Null.

  “Not here. Not for us,” Nine corrected him. “I’m desperate to hear about you four. How did you wind up in Rose Garden without a single memory?” He prodded them and each recounted their experiences. Eight was particularly resistant to discussing Seven, revealing that there had originally been five of them. “How did Seven die?” he asked, poking the sore spot that Eight wanted to avoid.

  “Where to start? He touched the Sphere, ventured into a structurally questionable school, beat back the monster multiple times…” Twenty listed off, rolling his eyes.

 
“The monster?”

  “You know, the giant dust cloud terrorizing the city,” Twenty drawled.

  “Oh. That.”

  “What is it? The Unimatrix at the Great Library could only give us bits and pieces,” Ninety-Nine urged.

  “You want a history lesson? Now?” Nine gawked.

  “Why not? You know it. We don’t. Make with the knowledge,” Twenty insisted.

  Nine scratched his head and wondered where to start.

  “Start from the beginning,” a compassionate Null advised him. It was strange to hear her speak to him, completely unaware of their relationship. The woman’s body was the same but her mind was different. Maybe if her personality was the same then she might be able to feel the same things that the original Null felt? Maybe the things she felt towards him before losing her memories could return…

  He began: “Haven itself was a fairly prestigious society. Almost noble, in a way. They established themselves as a hardcore meritocracy where you had to be a scientist, doctor, or mathematician to even consider running for office. Being an island civilization came with certain growing pains. When the city consumed the island and required more manpower and attention than the government could dedicate to the task, the scientists at Grand Cross invented Artificial Intelligence. You’ve already met the last remaining prototype, the Great Library’s Unimatrix. The AdvISOR was the final goal: one sentient program, restrained by certain software laws, to administer the everyday operations and to safeguard the citizenry.”

  “Which did not happen,” Twenty intoned. “The AdvISOR killed everyone. It purged the city.”

  “Maybe, but the AdvISOR didn’t become a problem until the very bitter end,” Nine recounted with the memory of the city’s fall still fresh in his mind. “The AdvISOR ran the everyday operations of the city. Anyways, we can speed forward a few hundred years after the AdvISOR was created until we reach the next major crisis: labor. Haven’s people had to dig deeper and build higher in order to keep their introverted civilization running. More and more of the dangerous jobs went undone until a man by the name of Tobias Clay had the idea to create a workforce,” Nine paused casually, his eyes lingering on Eight. The woman gave him no indication of interest or familiarity but she never had before, either, and so he continued. “From what Tobias shared with us, we learned that he could produce clones one at a time but he needed to mass produce them and Tobias was...unscrupulous...when necessary. And he had heard some of the old legends about the Founders.”