Someone to Remember Me: The Anniversary Edition (40 page)

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 the 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.

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.

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