Someone to Remember Me: The Anniversary Edition (12 page)

“I want off this ride,” he snarled. “I didn’t ask to wake up here. Hell, I didn’t ask to survive what happened, and knowing it would come to this, I’m not sure I’d want to be spared what happened.” His savage rant filled the empty silence.

“It makes sense from an engineering standpoint,” Null agreed with Eight, ignoring Twenty. “Put the supplies in the same room you want people to visit. My only objection is that this room is empty.”

“It is not, in fact, empty. There are five pillars of an unknown material and the crystalline device embedded in the roof,” Ninety-Nine reminded the others sternly. “If we can discover this chamber’s purpose then we can discover our purpose for being in this chamber.”

Earlier today the Library embodied answers; but at this particular moment it symbolized a thousand new questions. Seven wanted to contribute something helpful but when his colleagues were scientists and mathematicians and engineers, what could he contribute?

“I think we should sleep on it,” Eight decided, trying not to sound defeated.

“That’s the best idea I’ve heard all day,” Twenty agreed. “If the monster should kill us in our sleep, I want you each to understand: it was not a pleasure knowing any of you.” Twenty ventured to the far side of the room and laid down on the ground, his back towards the others.

Seven considered objecting to Twenty’s move. Strategically, he feared it would cause the others to break away when he wanted them as close together as possible. There was a safety in numbers that Twenty was flagrantly rejecting. Ninety-Nine shrugged and Null shook her head but neither left Seven’s proximity. In the interest of peace Eight kept her silence.

Of the millions who once lived in this immense city, five were alive. As the day caught up to Seven a rush of emotion brought back the fear and uncertainty that lay ahead. After some reflection those sensations were replaced by other, more potent feelings.

Knowledge, so central a preoccupation of his during the journey to the Library, had become an unbearable thing by the time his first day in the ancient city became his first night. Too much of it had come too quickly and yet, paradoxically, not enough and far too slowly.

Seven knew that once, buried in the rubble of another time amongst the ashes of another life, the city had glittered at night. Remarkably alive but in the throes of a dying peace, it had relied on Seven and the four other survivors to see it to safety. As evidenced by the dead city, they had failed.

Seven laid down against the dusty, cold floor. Null and Ninety-Nine had claimed blankets from the supply containers and were settling as comfortably as they could manage, which was likely not at all. Eight elected not to accept anything from the supply container, suspicion gleaming in her eyes, her voice silent. In the past she had hated him, he knew that much from his memory, and he wondered if she resented him in the present?

Eight’s final gesture that evening, was to produce a smile that was weighed by concern. Laying down, close enough that Seven was self-conscious about it, she slipped her hand over his, the one that she had cleaned and bandaged. How could she be so cold towards him one time and be so caring, so generous in another? One set of feelings, one set of emotions, had to be accurate.

As Seven drifted to sleep he wondered which was true.

The next morning Seven’s eyes creaked open when strong light shone through the glass plates in the walls. Overhead, the diamond sparkled with its own peculiar light and the room glittered like the jewel itself. He was still on his back and still in the same spot he had laid down in hours before. To his elation, Eight’s hand was safely anchored atop his.

He tried not to move or breathe too quickly because he feared that the slightest change might wake Eight, that this treasure of a moment might end. Eight seemed deep asleep and Seven pretended that it was because she felt safe around him; that the modest physical touch allowed her to sleep more soundly than she might have otherwise.

Sudden movement and a loud squeaking noise summoned Seven’s attention and he lurched upright while the others awoke to the commotion. Twenty stood in the empty space between the five bronzed pylons, the two discarded flowers in his hands, and he was mumbling something quietly.

“What are you doing?” Seven asked, getting to his feet.

As if caught in a crime, Twenty threw a worried glance over his shoulder at the others.

“Where did these damned flowers come from? We’ve been moping around this island for a whole day and I didn’t see one living thing.” He stood, still at the center of the pylons, a place from which Seven wanted him to step away from. “There must be a rose garden on this island, or else where are these things coming from?”

“Twenty!” Null shouted, her warning soon enough that the man leapt from the space between the pylons as the diamond fell from the roof. It spun wildly and cast beams of multicolored light across the Inner Sanctum, issuing an ear-splitting whistle. Seven pulled Twenty from the floor as the chamber rumbled beneath their feet. Light flowed out of the diamond and leaked across the floor; the fluidity of the movement smooth enough to make the visitors feel as though they were standing in a pool of bright liquid.

Seven pulled Twenty to where he, Eight, Ninety-Nine and Null stood. Regrouped, the five survivors stared in fear and the thought came to Seven to run, but the doorway had vanished as the roof above receded into the walls until it was completely gone. An empty black space beckoned to them and their knees buckled when the floor lifted towards the exposed darkness.

With the original walls gone, the five stood on a flowing river of white mist that appeared to reach on forever in every direction. Charged by the diamond, the bronze pillars activated and blazed a golden light into the darkness as jubilant lightning jumped from one pylon to another. A crackling noise synchronized the behavior until the lightning and the sounds settled into unison.

“Welcome to the Inner Sanctum of the Great Library of Haven,” a synthetic female voice greeted the visitors. The pylons cooled so that they were glowing dimly and the mist on the floor evaporated so that, except for the five golden pillars, the survivors were surrounded by darkness on all sides.

Null cried out when floating images, suspended in the air and made from lambent orange light, appeared around the visitors. Seven deciphered maps of the city, pages of poetic prose, and three-dimensional recreations scattered throughout the vacant expanse.

“Identify yourself,” stammered Ninety-Nine, mesmerized by the transformation.

“I am Unimatrix Zero-Zero-Zero-One,” the voice answered. Its matter-of-fact tone imbued the synthetic quality with a more organic nature.

Ninety-Nine stepped to the front of the group and she continued to interrogate the voice.

“Identify your purpose, Unimatrix.”

“As the Artificial Intelligence for the Great Library, my primary purpose is to afford visitors immediate access to over five million yottabytes of information regarding the city of Haven.”

“Identify our location!” shouted Twenty.

“The Great Library of Haven.”

“Identify Haven!” Twenty pressed on.

“Haven: an island chain composed of a central mass surrounded by two dozen smaller outlying units. Founded one and a half millennia ago as a confederation of townships, Haven has since developed into a federal democratic republic encompassing the totality of the landmass and ten million inhabitants therein.”

“Ten million? Has this thing looked outside recently?” Twenty addressed Seven.

“Have you looked outside recently?” Ninety-Nine piped up, addressing the disembodied voice.

There was a pause.

The Unimatrix answered pointedly, “I can not look.”

“Unimatrix, when were you last activated? Haven is empty; its occupants are gone; this island is uninhabited except for the five of us,” Ninety-Nine’s compassion for the oblivious computer kept her description in check. How could she tell an artificial intelligence that the people it served were dead? The Unimatrix, for distrust or other reasons, kept quiet as it verified the claims.

The Unimatrix spoke at last.

“There have been developments.” Seven commended the people of Haven for their technical abilities because the Unimatrix pumped its vocal projections full of uncertainty as it made the proclamation. “Haven’s power grid is operating at point-zero-four percent efficiency.”

“Can you tell us what happened?” Eight asked.

Another pause. “Yes.”

“Then what happened?” Null demanded irritably.

“A weapon of previously unknown biological capabilities was deployed against the entire population,” the Unimatrix explained, and all the floating images winked out of existence around the survivors. Replacing them were streams of security footage and detailed scans of the biological weapon: a great mass of dust.

“The monster,” Null whispered.

“Sensor logs indicate that the biological weapon terminated all bio-signs on Haven while the city experienced a widespread shutdown of municipal control programs.” One of the three dimensional video feeds replayed a group of people taking shelter inside the first floor of a building. They locked the doors and waited, assuming the sealed entry would protect them from the mayhem. Since glass lined the outside of the whole first floor, they watched the monster bellow towards them.

The people in the video believed themselves to be safe behind the locked door but as the monster approached, the glass doors swung open in welcome. In one fatal minute the cloud swamped the building’s first floor where it suffocated the people on screen and continued along its warpath. For the first time Seven experienced another emotion besides fear and horror: grief.

Haven’s death had been brutal and terrifying on a scale that Seven’s mind could not begin to comprehend. Eight wiped away her tears and Seven wondered if they each felt the same violent stab at their hearts. Until now the notion of surviving, of being Haven’s last survivors, had haunted them but hadn’t meant anything beyond an ambiguous idea. Seeing innocent people die made it so cruelly specific.

Null pressed her hand to her mouth as if to suppress a scream. Even Twenty’s normally cocky expression was pale and nauseated. The Unimatrix, disregarding whatever its audience might be feeling, played another dozen videos eerily similar to the first: people running, people trying to hide, and people dying.

“Who would want to kill everybody on Haven?” Seven’s query trembled past his lips.

The Unimatrix was blunt and immediate in its response. “Their slaves.”

Seven blanched. “Slaves? These people owned slaves?”

“Haven was engaged in civil war at the time of the weapon’s deployment. To unfairly summarize a rapid succession of events: the slaves revolted against their masters and each side adopted a policy of total annihilation of the enemy,” the Unimatrix finished.

Ninety-Nine asked, “Which side used the weapon?”

“That information is unknown,” replied the Unimatrix.

“Which side could make it?”

Again the Unimatrix answered, “That information is unknown.”

Silence greeted the holes in the knowledge of the Unimatrix. Their hopes nearly dashed, Seven spoke next. A thought had come to him, called up by a sudden reminiscence of the previous day. He asked, “What is the Founders’ warning?”

“The Founders did not leave any specific warning to their Descendants that I am aware of.”

“Are you sure?”

“Not conclusively. Adopting a metaphorical lens, one might infer that a warning from the Founders could refer to the fact that the Founders themselves were slaves who overthrew their masters and, after winning their freedom, established Haven.”

“Ironic,” Twenty snorted.

“Extremely,” the Unimatrix agreed. “Though their vision of a place to call home came to pass, the Founders eventually died, leaving their message to their children, and then to their children’s children, until all that remained of the Founders of Haven is the Round of Heroes encircling the Great Library.”

“And history repeated itself,” Eight sighed.

“Who am I? Who are we? Can you tell us that?” Seven pleaded with the computer.

“I do not know who you are.”

“How long has the monster been out there? How long were you deactivated for?” he pressed on, unrelenting.

“Internal chronometers and environmental scans suggest that Haven was purged five centuries ago.”

Seven’s chest constricted, the air left this lungs and he thought he might collapse. Similarly, Eight might have lost her balance if Seven hadn’t discreetly moved to her side.

“Five centuries? Where have we been hiding all this time?” Twenty failed to tame his hysteria.

“I do not know.”

“Well then do something! Do another scan of the city! Connect to whatever it takes to find out.”

“I can not. It is not within my ability.”

“But why?” Null begged.

“It is a combination of hardware and software limitations,” said Ninety-Nine, surprising the others. Her back was turned to the pillars and diamond. Using her hands she manipulated a floating display constructed entirely of orange light. “This Unimatrix is an immortalized human brain, a flash copy hooked up to databanks of information. Is that correct?”