Someone to Remember Me: The Anniversary Edition

by Brendan Mancilla

  A synthetic female voice, unmistakably familiar to Seven, remarked, “Nighttime protocol activated. Please, for the safety of this vessel and its passengers, follow the illuminated walkways. Thank you. Nighttime protocol activated. Please, for the safety of this vessel and its passengers, follow the illuminated walkways.” The AdvISOR’s voice continued on a loop, polite but firm, as its instructions echoed through the navigation center.

  “What’s happening? Where are we supposed to go?” Null asked Nine in a voice that trembled. Nine grabbed her hand tightly and offered a weak smile in answer.

  “No chairs…” Ninety-Nine mumbled, studying the navigation center with extraordinarily vacant eyes. She paced its length and width, circling the room several times, and with each pass the defeat that roiled away from her intensified. Gathering her thoughts, she insisted to the others, “We should follow the AdvISOR’s instructions. I’m certain that the ship won’t move again unless we do.”

  “I don’t like this…” Twenty protested loudly, announcing the group’s shared misgivings. “The AdvISOR promised us a free ride to safety. Doesn’t anyone else remember that part?”

  “What’s the nighttime protocol that it keeps rambling on about?” asked Nine.

  Eight shrugged. “I don’t know. The AdvISOR didn’t say anything about this at Grand Cross. Apparently it didn’t want us to know that there were conditions until we were out at sea.”

  “We need to follow the instructions. There’s no way of knowing what’s going to happen if we don’t,” Ninety-Nine asserted and gestured at the darkened screens. The Mortal Coil was depriving them of all stimuli except for the AdvISOR’s repeated instructions and helpful lighting.

  No other options available to them, Seven led the way out of the navigation center.

  Orange lighting strips built into the floor guided them out the back of the cabin and into the body of the ship. Earlier, when he had boarded with Eight, Seven had noticed that the vessel’s sterilized white hallways shone with a phosphorescent blue that pulsed along the corridor walls. In the aftermath of the ship’s halt, that light had transformed into a strobing orange. Helpful, if somewhat alarming as well.

  “What’re we doing in here?” Nine demanded, annoyed that the guidance lights had escorted them directly into the cargo-hold of The Mortal Coil. Gathered ahead of Seven and his companions were the hundreds of aisles of stasis tanks in which the Rebel Clones and the remainder of the Rose Twelve slumbered. Whatever new world the ship wanted to sail towards, they would remain oblivious to the trip until after it had happened.

  “The Mortal Coil is only one kind of ship: a sleeper ship,” Eight announced to the group from Seven’s side. Her hand clawed into his and he bit his lip against the pain.

  “Sleeper ship? What are you talking about?” Nine demanded.

  “The ship doesn’t need our input. The AdvISOR built it to follow an autopilot program. The nighttime protocol must be part of that program. Everyone aboard goes into stasis. That’s why there aren’t any proper bedrooms or chairs aboard The Mortal Coil,” Ninety-Nine’s explanation was level but pained.

  “But why wait until now?” an almost hysterical Null raged.

  “Because night is falling,” Ninety-Nine answered, unsatisfactorily to everyone except herself. Ninety-Nine alone understood the true reasoning behind the implementation of the AdvISOR’s nighttime protocol and why it required their unwilling relocation to the ship’s rotund cargo bay. Noticing her confused friends, she added, “The AdvISOR doesn’t want us to see the stars. To the right eyes, their positions and movements, if charted correctly, could guide us back to Haven.” What went unspoken in that moment was the fact that Ninety-Nine implicitly meant herself; that she had intended to chart the night skies in an effort to retain at least a basic understanding of the path they were to travel.

  “Are you saying that—” Null was interrupted by the sudden dimming of the cargo bay’s lights as another set of guidance lights in the floor blinked on. Again, they were orange, and again the AdvISOR’s synthetic voice spoke to them.

  “Please, for the safety of this vessel and its passengers, follow the illuminated walkways to your stasis tubes. Thank you. Please, for the safety of this vessel and its passengers, follow the illuminated walkways to your stasis tubes. Thank you,” the voice continued on another loop, goading Seven and the others down to an aisle of unoccupied stasis tubes.

  “This must be a joke, right? Are you kidding me?” Twenty shouted at the vaulted ceiling.

  “We have to sleep through the journey? Why do we have to sleep through it? What if we don’t wake up?” Null chattered.

  Seven wasn’t sure that he understood the reasons, either. How could the AdvISOR think that this was necessary? Especially after everything they had endured to get away from Haven? Why would they ever want to go back? Seven’s gaze happened across Ninety-Nine, who obviously felt guilty for understanding the AdvISOR’s intent, and the meaning began to reach him.

  It came down to the consequences of pursuing dangerous knowledge. The Builders, the Founders, and Tobias Clay had each allowed terrible knowledge to present a very real danger in their respective times. While Ninety-Nine only meant to sate her sense of curiosity and wonder by plotting their journey, what damage might be done by the knowledge of Haven’s location a hundred generations from now?

  “We have to do it,” Seven concluded. He reached out and squeezed Null’s shoulder to reassure her of their safety. “If the AdvISOR wanted us dead then we’d be dead already. It wouldn’t go to these lengths for it.”

  Eight spoke next. “If the Founders had destroyed the Sphere, really destroyed it in the first place, then none of this would have happened.” Her eyes examined the row of empty stasis tubes, full of distrust, but her voice was conciliatory.

  “…the last trial of the Rose Twelve,” Null said, her resentment apparent to all. “What is the AdvISOR risking? What is the AdvISOR doing while we’re out here being asked to entrust it with our lives?”

  “This isn’t about the AdvISOR. It’s about us and what we’re willing to do to keep the past from repeating itself again,” Seven asserted. “We’re the Founders. It’s our responsibility to do what it takes to keep…” his voice faltered at the sight of thousands of stasis tubes that contained just as many slumbering clones. Did he mean what he was about to say? Did he understand the scope of the responsibility he was about to assume? Seven’s resolve hardened as he continued, “It’s our responsibility to keep our people safe. From us. From themselves. From the future, if we have to.”

  He saw that his words had the desired effect. Bitter resignation set in across the waking members of the Rose Twelve, an unhappy acceptance of what must be done to keep the cycle of enslavement from starting anew. Seven didn’t like the way this felt; how going to sleep had come to feel like an ending rather than a beginning. A separation rather than a reunion.

  “Recession commencing,” the AdvISOR’s voice announced. One by one, the stasis tubes lowered themselves into the floor. In seconds the cargo-hold was empty except for the six machines left standing upright, their glass tubes lowered so that they could step inside.

  “It’ll fill with an anesthetic-nutrient bath. Once you’re in, it’ll sedate you and keep you from starving to death,” Nine explained in an earnest attempt to comfort Null. “Our spare bodies were kept in machines like these. Nothing to worry about.” But Null wasn’t interested in talking. She clamped her face against Nine’s and Seven looked away, trying to afford them whatever privacy was possible in the massive, empty cargo-hold.

  “See you on the other side,” Null whispered to Nine, gracefully stepping into the first of the remaining stasis machines. Glass rose and sealed Null inside as a murky green liquid filled the interior and obscured her from view. Then, the machine lowered itself into the deck so that it was indistinguishable from the surrounding floor. It was all that Seven could do to hope that she wasn’t being drowned to death.

  “Eight-F
our-Two-Zero. Hibernation status: Active,” the AdvISOR’s voice echoed through the empty hold. Seven wondered when it had stopped verbally harassing them into using the stasis tubes. An uncomfortable silence overtook the remaining survivors, who exchanged increasingly strained glances with one another.

  “It was worth it, if only for that,” Nine said with a longing stare at where Null had been seconds earlier. Without ceremony he stepped into the machine that was closest to Null’s. “It’s certainly been…interesting,” he said in parting. He closed his eyes and balled his fists as the nutrient bath rushed up around him.

  “Two-Eight-Eight-Nine. Hibernation status: Active,” the AdvISOR chimed.

  “I’ll go next,” Ninety-Nine sighed. “I know I shouldn’t feel this way but I am…disappointed that we won’t ever know where Haven was,” and, for the briefest moment, Seven thought he saw Ninety-Nine regard Twenty with the slightest accusatory gaze.

  “Smart girl like you? I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” Twenty drawled. With dramatic chivalry he escorted her into an empty tube, the glass cutting her off from them. When the nutrient bath started filling the tube Seven could see her mind at work; analyzing and cataloging the experience for further examination upon her return to the waking world.

  “Fascinating,” she whispered, her head dipping beneath the liquid’s surface and vanishing from sight. Her machine lowered into the deck, gone. Seven knew she was asleep before the manufactured voice announced it.

  “Eight-Eight-Nine-Nine. Hibernation status: Active.”

  Twenty regarded the cargo-hold of The Mortal Coil with the utmost spite “We were promised a new world,” he muttered beneath his breath. “It had better be worth it.”

  “It already is,” Eight answered for Seven. “Your turn?” she asked Twenty, even though the three of them knew it wasn’t a question. He shrugged.

  “I guess it’s all relative in the end. We could be asleep for months but, to us, seconds will have passed when we wake up.” He rubbed his forehead. “And everyone else will be awake, too, can you imagine that?”

  “Something tells me we’ll manage,” Eight chuckled. Twenty considered her answer.

  “We will,” he agreed at length. Looking at Seven as if the other man had won a longstanding argument, he added, “We’re the Founders, after all.”

  Seven nodded. There was so much that he wanted to say to Twenty; the morose artist who was also his closest friend through multiple lives. What thanks could Seven offer that would possibly do his friend justice? Twenty didn’t wait, he couldn’t wait, the separation was as bothersome for him as it was for Seven. With an unceremonious and suitably awkward motion, Twenty hopped into the empty stasis tube that awaited him, the glass sealing behind him and the thick, gelatinous green liquid claiming him.

  “Real graceful,” Seven mumbled.

  “Two-Five-Two-Zero. Hibernation status: Active.”

  The journey ended as it began. Together but alone. Seven and Eight enjoyed a brief silence in the immensely empty cargo-bay of The Mortal Coil, relishing the momentary privacy before, in what would feel like seconds at the most, they woke up with everyone else.

  Seven found it hard to believe that the only thing left to do was rest. To sleep. To wake to another world and another age. Perhaps, without her, it might have been an intimidating prospect. Seven crossed the short distance between them and wrapped his arms around her.

  Not until they were holding each other tightly did Seven realize that they were both shaking.

  “I’m a little scared,” he admitted to her.

  “So am I,” she whispered into his chest. “How many years has it been, Seven? Two thousand? Null told me that in her memory, you died after defeating the Builders. I was alone. Then, five centuries ago I kept you away. Are we finally together? Or is this just…another obstacle?”

  Seven kissed her for as long as he could, finally surfacing for air and asking, “What do you think?”

  She pondered his question. “Maybe the curse that destroyed Haven wasn’t cloning but immortality itself? How can you truly live if you never die?” Eight ran her hand through his hair and his skin crackled at her touch. As if the ages had waited patiently, but anxiously, for every touch and every kiss they shared. Eight kissed him on the cheek and whispered, “I’m done living forever, but I’m not done living.” She backed away from him and he knew he had to let her go. One last time, one last parting, and they would be together until the end of their finite and priceless mortal lives. “I love you, Seven.”

  Eight, who had broken the world for him, who had rescued him from death, and was venturing into a new world at his side. Seven opened his mouth to say something, he wasn’t sure what but he was compelled to try, and she smiled at his speechless countenance as she took her spot inside the machine. He gathered enough sense to process it; to realize it.

  She loved him.

  She said it out loud.

  Eight vanished into the nutrient bath, gone to her slumber after the tube sealed itself shut. Seven let his smile broaden across his face as Eight’s stasis pod receded into the floor and left him, and his machine, completely alone.

  “Two-Six-Five-Eight. Hibernation status: Active.”

  That left Seven dazed and alone in the empty cargo-bay. He hadn’t been this isolated since waking up in the middle of a Haven street, sick and amnesiac, almost four days ago. Had that been only four days ago? Twenty was right when he said that time was relative. With a wry smile he wondered if, forty years from now, it would feel as if only four days had passed?

  His empty stasis pod sat exposed above deck. Each of the others, Eight’s included, were retracted and hidden beneath the floor. As he slipped into his, the glass seal rising up to meet the top of the machine, his mind wandered.

  Could two thousand years and three separate lifetimes have built up to this? To life and death, immortality and rebirth, friends and family? This, he reminded himself again, was not an end but a beginning. One part of their lives was over and another would soon commence on the shores of the farthest land.

  The nutrient bath filled the tube and raced up against his body. It pressed against his arms and legs and chest, thick and compacted, and his skin tingled from its cool, gelatinous touch. Not in the lively and charged way that accompanied any contact with Eight but a dull, numbing sensation that came with being drugged. Slipping into unconsciousness, he embraced the space between two worlds, trying to reach the place he had once been connected to.

  A place that resided between life and death.

  Music played in his ears; the lyrics ancient but enduring. Light filled Seven’s consciousness, even if his eyes were physically closed, and his entire being was luminous with victory. His connection to the machines that made him immortal were severed, he knew that, which meant that this powerful force came from somewhere else. From the same place that the music originated.

  His soul? Could something more than memory, flesh, and sentience be speaking to him? Despite, or perhaps because of, the deep sleep of stasis, Seven basked in the brief pause between the past and the future. His essence, the part of him that was aware of each Seven that had existed before him, sang the joys of mortality. When Seven stirred, after weeks or months passed in what felt like seconds, the ancient lyrics remained in the wake of the melody.

  All creation is awaking…

  And Seven opened his eyes.

  Chapter Fifteen:

  Someone to Remember Me

  Somewhere, beneath a night sky filled with stars, a blue cube sat on a grassy field.

  It looked as if it had been dropped on the ground as the result of carelessness. Of a moment’s oversight. The simplicity of the cube’s position underscored its importance. How it came to be there mattered little to the cube itself or to the device’s builder.

  Descending from the starry sky, the angelic body of the AdvISOR regarded the cube with utmost pride and affection. As it hovered near the device, the angel machine marveled at its power and t
he purpose it might fulfill. A whole civilization’s hopes condensed into something the size of a human fist.

  “Memories encoded in DNA; preserved and enshrined by generations. In our future is our past,” the AdvISOR began, the lofty voice carried across the chamber, though the primary audience was the cube itself. “We hope for naught but delineation and in our search find none. Vessel of Haven’s memories, testament of our dying wish...seek for us the farthest land.”

  Opening a connection to the square construct, the AdvISOR savored the few moments of direct exposure to the contents of the device. Limited by the restraints of hardware processing and software response times, the AdvISOR severed the link before the effects became fatal. Floating near the cube, the AdvISOR reflected on the images and the sensations, which were themselves quickly fading from its computational systems. The realm of human emotion and memory existed beyond the AdvISOR’s reach; the machine could only afford glimpses or risk being destroyed.

  The AdvISOR lifted away from the cube, returning to its dominant position in the midnight sky. During centuries of reclusive exile the machine had reconfigured its servers, added unnecessary algorithms, and developed new technology to simulate the human ability to feel. As its software analyzed the situation and tendered the appropriate emotional response, the AdvISOR acted on the recommendations.

  Longing and loss flickered through the AdvISOR’s software as it summoned a modified aerial MoNITOR. Retrieved, the cube was carried out of Grand Cross and flown to a safe location. Once the cube was safe, the AdvISOR’s consciousness touched the drones stationed around Haven and mobilized the fleet for its ultimate task. Most of the drones went underground and were divided between the six hollow caverns that spanned the underside of Haven. Others went to the twelve ballistic missile silos scattered across the island. Steeling itself, the AdvISOR refused to touch the computer aboard The Mortal Coil.

  Haven, the dead city of creators and created, came back to life. Five hundred years fell away in five seconds. Street lights, advertisements, park lamps, and skylights erupted in luminance. Some shattered from the sudden awakening and showered sparks across empty avenues and streets in the dying light.