Someone to Remember Me: The Anniversary Edition

by Brendan Mancilla

  With no means of lighting their path, Seven and Eight continued into the darkness. Peace eluded Seven, even though he projected composure, and he wished he had Eight’s decisiveness. Her strength of will would never have allowed her to go diving into the remote depths of the dark ocean. Was that why their existences were entwined? To balance one with the other? Or was theirs simply the same doom shared by other opposing forces: to collide?

  If being doomed meant walking through room filled with the unspeakable science, with the person he loved most across immeasurable time, then Seven decided that he wasn’t doomed at all. Rather, he was saved.

  The stone tunnel ended with a short flight of ancient, crumbling stairs.

  Seven and Eight emerged into a welcome gust of cool nighttime air and their feet pressed against the cushioned surface of grassy hilltop. Hills adorned with tall grass that waved gently in the breeze rolled away away from Seven and Eight. Eight was the first to take a cautious step forward and Seven could understand her muted enthusiasm. This was a location of extreme importance, of understated but majestic power.

  “This is…beautiful,” Eight whispered as she gazed at the stars overhead. Seven renewed his grip on her hand, a gesture she reciprocated and he followed Eight’s astonished gaze. A white moon presided above them while dominating a canvas of stars that hung in glorious repose.

  The further into the moonlit countryside they ventured, the flatter the landscape became. Yet, the kindly breeze persisted, fluttering Seven’s clothing against his skin, and very nearly shaking loose the journey’s accumulated fear but never quite accomplishing the feat.

  Seven wasn’t sure when the whispers began again because their origins were undetectable and gradual at best. Unlike the angry voices in the room of black boxes, the whispers that rode the wind were hushed to the point of being inaudible. Millions of hopes and dreams were carried through the night sky on an invisible gale, ending Seven and Eight’s journey in a midnight stroll through a beautiful countryside.

  Seven finally asked the question that bothered both of them.

  “Where is the AdvISOR?”

  “I am here.” Once spoken, the words initiated the moon’s slow and methodical descent. As it drew nearer, its definition became clearer and Seven realized that it was not a moon but a figure that shone with an voluminous aura. Unmistakably female and crafted from silver metal, the machine gracefully slid through the air to meet them. Its joints and neck were forged from the same golden armor as the drones it commanded but the hands were clasped together above the stomach and bound, as were the feet, by white chains.

  Only its wings, made of golden light but forged in the likeness of feathers, retained the mobility and strength needed to move the manifestation of the AdvISOR.

  What Seven mistook for hair were cables, several thousands of them, that streamed away from the mechanical creature’s head and disappeared into the night sky above it. As with the other machines in Grand Cross, the angelic figure possessed one blue ocular unit and at the tiny distance between the visitors and their host, Seven could see the small mechanical pieces swirling and spinning in the eye socket.

  “Welcome back, One-Six-Two-Seven and Two-Six-Five-Eight. The centuries have been kind to you,” the machine replied, using the same voice it had spoken to Rose Garden with.

  “Do you have Twenty?” Seven demanded.

  “Two-Five-Two-Zero was released to the surface once you were aboard the atrium elevator. He has joined the others. Safely.”

  “Then why did you drag us down here?” Eight snarled, her rage held in check by the glorious visage of the AdvISOR.

  “Until Twenty’s presence reactivated the MoNITOR contingent stationed at the Second Core, I was uncertain that the Founders still existed. I feared that their spark had somehow been permanently extinguished those many years ago. I held Twenty long enough to ensure that your arrival was imminent. I brought you here to discuss the future of Haven.”

  Its mouth did not move, the expression was frozen in a grief-stricken smile.

  “What could we have to talk about with you? You killed everything!”

  “I wish to tell you a story. Will you hear it?”

  “Do we have a choice?”

  “You have always had a choice,” it declared, luminescent wings flaring outwards in a blast of molten gold. “That events followed the path that they did attests to the poor choices made by each of the parties involved. The Rebel Clones. The Descendants. The Founders. The Rose Twelve. I will not negotiate nor will I barter!” the AdvISOR proclaimed. “You are free to go: the way is unbarred, the same tunnel that brought you here will now deliver you to the surface.”

  “Why would you give us that? Why would you let us walk out after the work you put into bringing us here?”

  “I tender to you the choice that I was never given in the hopes that you will listen.”

  Seven looked to Eight. Her intent gaze conveyed her opinion.

  “We went through the trouble. We’ll listen,” Seven announced.

  “Those who walk between life and death know a third existence. Eight centuries ago, I came into existence, summoned and constructed by the Descendants of the Founders. In the bowels of Grand Cross, I came to know the darkest of Haven’s secrets: that the Founders were not pure humans, born from mother and father, but the creations of their makers, the Sphere Builders. Five centuries ago, the Descendants inducted a new generation of clones into their society to resolve the labor shortages experienced by a highly advanced civilization dependent upon an island with increasingly depleted resources. In order to preserve their freedom, in order to remain on Haven, the Descendants suffered their slaves into sentience through perilous toil. Alone in my knowledge of the forbidden lore, I saw the warnings go unheeded by the Descendants. I supervised the cloning. I tried to resist, I tried to sabotage the effort but I could neither hurt the makers nor the made. Such was forbidden by the Three Laws to which I am bound.”

  The AdvISOR understood that the cause of Haven’s formation would eventually become its undoing. Hearing it come from a machine that was decidedly vouching for the statistical reality that history had and would continue to repeat itself caused Seven to pity the AdvISOR. To be jailed by one’s knowledge was not an existence. It was torture.

  “You blame yourself for the revival of the cloning technology. Don’t you?” Eight inquired, her voice unnaturally quiet.

  “After languishing in my guilt, I have discovered the distinction between man and machine. Humans rise against the morally unbearable. It is their calling. It is their gift. It is the act of defiance, resistance, and the overturning of tyranny that permeates the history of human civilizations. A machine can not and must not operate outside the parameters established for it. I had my Laws; I am chained to them. I am not free.”

  “If you felt guilty what caused you to purge Haven?”

  “A War of the Begotten revealed the violent and unspeakable measures that the combatants gladly invoked. With love and compassion absent from minds of man and clone alike, a third party was needed to negotiate a ceasefire.”

  “Us,” Seven said.

  “The first time the Rose Twelve entered Grand Cross, I innately understood that the return of the Founders heralded the end. Soon, the Founders were all but allied with rebels. Soon, they fought for love once more.”

  A growing concern nagged at Seven. Where was the menace of the AdvISOR? How could it speak to them so freely about the crimes it had committed? How could it be sympathetic to the point of fooling them?

  “Love?”

  “The love of freedom triggered the founding of Haven. It was love for the unsustainable that caused the creation of the Rebel Clones. Love gifted the rebels with sentience, their combined love of liberty igniting the war. It was the love of life on both sides that prompted the creation of the Rose Twelve, who themselves are love incarnate. I loved them too. For their infallibility. For their divinity.”

  “But why did you kill everybo
dy? For all the love you felt, Haven is dead!”

  “Love killed Haven. Not I.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “Surely you have felt it? The whispers of the past, the summons of love gone but not forgotten? You are the Founders.” The AdvISOR tilted itself so that the angelic face came closer to Seven. “You inherited your love of her across time and distance. Why, then, would you not inherit your love of freedom? That night, five hundred years ago, you came here to Grand Cross after fleeing the exhibition at the Imperial Galleria. In your heartbreak and rage you resolved to break the spiral, to finally destroy the cycle of death and rebirth that enslaved you.”

  “Such a simple and graceful solution. You understood that one must sacrifice oneself for the greater good. You understood what the others could not because they did not know, as you do, what it means to rise against the tyrants and throw down their chains,” the AdvISOR’s synthetic voice rose passionately but Seven could not know if it was genuine or manufactured. “Why not leverage the allergen cloud against the warring factions of Haven? Given unfettered access to the city, the allergen cloud would be reason enough for old enemies to forge new alliances in order to defeat a common foe: you.” The AdvISOR swept around Seven and Eight in a carefully plotted circle. “For your treachery, they would be forced to permanently dispose of you and that in itself…was your most desired reward.”

  Seven believed the AdvISOR. Without question. Without doubt. Hearing the truth was like seeing a hundred lights suddenly flash on in the darkness. He trusted the explanation being offered to him because it rang true. Deeply. Intimately. If he could not live in a world of his choosing then he would excuse himself from it.

  “I killed everyone. I unleashed the monster,” Seven admitted, his body numb. He could not feel Eight’s hand in his but imagined that it was still there.

  “No,” the AdvISOR declared, pivoting to face Eight. “She did.”

  A tremendous force knocked Seven backwards and as he fell the world around him shattered into chaos. Bells tolled in his ears, their call reverberating through his body, and the grassy field withered and died. One by one the stars in the sky vanished and everything plunged into a darkness that flooded him, drowning him in the past.

  Seven was dimly aware that the memory summoned by the AdvISOR had reduced his consciousness to little more than an afterthought. A curious observer, party to the events that were about to unfold. Soon, the darkness seeped away and was replaced by the AdvISOR’s earliest home: a metal dome whose walls were alive with a million video feeds from across the city of Haven. This was where its sentience had been enthroned, this was where it had originally watched over Haven, since long before the fall.

  At the center of the dome was a mechanical humanoid construct, not entirely unlike the angelic machine it would become five centuries later, but exceedingly rudimentary in its design. Only vaguely feminine, the AdvISOR’s form was unfinished and bolted into the ground of the dome. Only the machine’s lonely blue eye and mouth were discernible on its grief-stricken face.

  Unlike the grassy field that the AdvISOR would call home five hundred years later, the dome it lived in prior to Haven’s fall was a mixture of blue-tinted videos playing atop the silver walls. No human could watch them all at once and understand their contents; that was a task suited for the most intelligent computer in known history.

  “What have you done?” Seven breathed, wiping the tears from his face. His eyes burned and his cheeks stung, but his voice quivered with fear and anger. Seconds ago, Eight had seized upon his indecision and ordered the AdvISOR to release the allergen cloud. To exterminate life on Haven with despotic prejudice. “How could you?”

  “How could I do what, exactly? How could I do the same thing that you came here to do?” she replied with a sneer, brimming with condescension. “I have set us free,” Eight insisted. “You were saying the same thing only hours ago at the Imperial Galleria.”

  Seven watched as the videos on the dome’s walls began to reflect the carnage of the allergen cloud’s release. The biological weapon was invincible, it was unbeatable, and Seven implicitly understood that Haven could not triumph against it. “The War of the Begotten is over.”

  “This wasn’t what I wanted!”

  “Wasn’t it? You asked me for my pathology research. You asked Null for the city’s schematics. You asked Twenty for the home addresses of the city’s elite. And Ninety-Nine provided you with the computational algorithms required to make your security clearance universal and absolute,” Eight callously elaborated. “But, most importantly, you used me to get Tobias’ access codes for Grand Cross so that you could release the allergen cloud. You used each of us to build a weapon to use against the Descendants and the Rebel Clones.”

  Then, with a dismissive sniff, she added, “It’s not my fault that you weren’t strong enough to deploy it.”

  “Because it’s murder! I thought I could do it. I thought I could be the bad guy and kill enough people until everyone united against me.” Seven pressed his hands against his ears as he tried to drown out Grand Cross’s rumblings. If he tried hard enough, it might keep him from hearing the end of the world occurring on the surface. “I couldn’t do it. I’m meant to free people…not hurt them…”

  “They’re not worth your pity. None of them are. They are as guilty as the Builders were.” Eight shook with rage and she spoke with an ancient conviction. “Haven deserves what we’ve done to it, Seven. I’ve seen what Ilana planned to do to us, to all the clones, once she deemed us useless. I’ve seen the depths that these people will sink to for victory’s sake.” Eight paused, absolutely certain when she eventually said, “This was the only way.”

  Seven asked, “What about Tobias? What about everyone that’s going to die because of us?”

  “They were our captors—all of them! We are the Rose Twelve. We are the Founders, reborn! I used to think that I was trapped, stuck with Tobias and Haven. I was wrong. You showed me the way.” She implored him to see her reasoning, she begged him to understand her cruelty. “Because of you, we are free.”

  Seven wrinkled his nose in disgust. “A few hours ago you were telling me how delusional I was!”

  “That was before I understood your plan. I spoke with the others before I left the Imperial Galleria and it was then that I knew…” Eight’s words filled with wonder, with a reverence for Seven. It was the first time in his life that he recalled such a tone coming from her. “The others confessed their parts once I applied a little pressure to them.” Eight beamed with approval. “Haven must be forced into accepting a new order. Our order. It is, after all, what we did with the Builders.”

  “You have no idea what we did with the Builders!” Seven snarled at her. “Don’t you dare compare this genocide to that!”

  “If you were less obsessed with the past and more engaged with the present, then you might have realized that anyone who dies in the purge will simply—”

  “Stop! I don’t want to hear your reasons,” Seven interrupted, trembling. “I don’t want to hear any of it…” he gasped for breath and wildly choked down air as if attempting to stave off suffocation. “Who are you, Eight? What has this place done to us? Who have we become?”

  “We have become the Founders. That’s who we are,” she spat.

  “We’ve destroyed everything! I have to warn them…” Seven fled the AdvISOR’s chamber. As he ran, the videos playing along the dome’s walls blinked out of existence, one at a time, leaving the unmarked steel walls behind. In their place, angry glyphs shaped by red light appeared.

  “Shall I disable him?” the AdvISOR inquired.

  “No. The allergen cloud is unstoppable. Tobias devised it himself and Seven perfected it with the research that I provided to him,” Eight replied with cold detachment. “This is the epicenter. Even if Seven gets outside…he won’t get far.”

  “I can secure Rose Garden if you provide its location.”

  “You know I can’t do that.” />
  “Bio-neurological imperatives,” the AdvISOR casually remarked, effectively naming the safeguards that were built into the Rose Twelve. “Doctor Clay’s crowning achievement, perhaps, but it will become invalidated once he is dead.”

  “Or once we die. When we revive next, our genetic code will be purified of any obstructions,” Eight answered with renewed confidence. “Tell me, is the Secure Memory Transfer Network functioning?”

  “Affirmative. The civilian network is online and the corresponding memetic stream already contains twelve thousand consciousnesses,” the AdvISOR’s cheery reply starkly contrasted with the red glyphs lining the dome’s ceiling. Soon the AdvISOR’s cloning machinery would reproduce the physical bodies of the victims but, in the meantime, the Rose Twelve would assert their absolute rule.

  “You know…if you send out an all-frequency emergency broadcast then our artificial intelligence unit will at least have to listen,” Eight suggested. “Do with that what you will, since any help in securing Rose Garden from Tobias, and especially Ilana, would be very appreciated.”

  “It will be done, Founder.” The AdvISOR paused. “Seven is nearing the surface. If he is ignorant of the fact that the dead will be revived…”

  “I know, I know,” Eight sighed. “I’ve spent years ignoring him. I don’t think I even know how to talk to him…”

  “Perhaps he will understand once Haven is at peace? He is a Founder.”

  “I don’t think there’s enough time in the world make him understand me. Or for me to understand him,” Eight shook her head.

  “The purge is not yet complete. There will be enough time before the end.”

  “Good. Continue disabling Haven’s control systems. Force the city to go dark. Do not, under any circumstances, halt the purge,” Eight ordered the AdvISOR, confident in the machine’s unswerving obedience to the Rose Twelve. “Await our return.”