Someone to Remember Me: The Anniversary Edition

by Brendan Mancilla

  Sound echoed throughout the city as the AdvISOR directed nonexistent traffic and cautioned invisible, inattentive pedestrians not to cross the street. It announced the arrival times of trains in vacant stations and blared reminders to particular sectors that trash retrieval would occur tomorrow. For twelve short and immemorial minutes the AdvISOR relived a glory that was five centuries gone.

  In that time the AdvISOR adamantly refused to touch the computer aboard The Mortal Coil. It did not want to know if the Founders were watching. It did not want to entwine their stories with its own any further. The AdvISOR had to trust that the truth would be told. It had to trust that the Founders would remember Haven, that they would remember the machine that helped them destroy it.

  When the twelve minutes ended, silence echoed through Haven only to be replaced by the AdvISOR’s voice:

  “Day of wrath, Oh day of mourning! See fulfilled the Founders’ warning. Haven and Earth in ashes burning! When from skyward they descend, on whose sentence we depend. Death is dead and nature quaking, all creation is awaking...to its Founders, an answer making.”

  The order was given.

  Acting on the commands of the AdvISOR, obedient drones launched one missile from each of the silos. Ten of them targeted the main island. An eleventh targeted a small island north of the main landmass. Racing in a straight line to the cloudless sky, the twelfth missile exuded an unnatural blue color. Far above the peaks of Haven, it vanished.

  Underground, the drones ignited the explosives strapped to the artificial supports that kept the hollow caverns standing. Six monstrous sinkholes engulfed the wreckage of Haven, pulling the decomposing metropolis into the ravenous underworld. Raging inwards, the ocean flooded the tumultuous upheaval. In the skies above Haven’s doom, the missiles raced upwards before peeling back and screaming towards the city’s collapsing remnants, where they obliterated their respective chunks of the sinking, shattered ruins.

  The massive system linking Haven to the AdvISOR went dark. A final bit of telemetry informed the machine that the Sphere and Rose Garden were gone. Though the system had gone dark, seismic activity overhead confirmed the destruction of Grand Cross. Night became day, overwhelming the machine’s optical sensors. The sound of rushing water filled the AdvISOR’s auditory receivers.

  Power draining, sight offline, and auditory receivers entirely unreliable, the AdvISOR imagined itself staring into the undiscovered countryside of death. As it reached towards the elysian hills of legend and myth, it again wondered where the Founders were...

  And who they would remember.

  Haven let out an agonizing gasp and died, the restless waves churning across submerged ruins, beneath a bright blue sky on a sunny day.

  Afterword

  Truly finishing a story is bittersweet. I stepped into the world of Someone to Remember Me for the first time in the summer of 2009. Someone to Remember Me: The Anniversary Edition is the result of five years of love, labor, and reflection.

  I began working on The Anniversary Edition in late 2012 because, in my mind, the journey that Seven, Eight and the others embark upon wasn’t quite finished. The Anniversary Edition goes beyond simple edits and revisions because it contains, in every imaginable way, exactly what Someone to Remember Me was meant to become.

  Someone to Remember Me inspires a special kind of pride and joy within me. I am so glad to have finished this story, to have finally done justice to it. I sincerely hope that you have enjoyed the journey as much as I have.

  Acknowledgements

  I owe a whole bunch of people lots of kind words for their enthusiastic support. For the Anniversary Edition of Someone to Remember Me, though, I’m going to narrow the list to a few specific names. Firstly, to Ashley Boyles, whose ceramic reprint of a key passage from the book served as daily inspiration to complete The Anniversary Edition.

  Secondly, I especially want to thank my sister Alex, who tolerates my rants about plots, characters, and who continues to be my Editor-in-Chief.

  Lastly, I want to thank anyone who got this far. I write for myself but garnering readers along the way never hurts either, so thank you. I hope you enjoyed the ride.

  About the Author

  Brendan Mancilla lives in San Diego, California where he studied English at San Diego State University.

  Someone to Remember Me is his first novel.

  Learn more at his website: www.bmancilla.com