Someone to Remember Me: The Anniversary Edition (21 page)

“What just happened?” she asked.

“I thought you could tell me. I thought Seven was crazy, rambling on about those memories of his…” Nine chuckled nervously.

“You know Seven?” Null inquired, surprised.

Keenly aware that something was amiss, Nine answered, “Yes. I know him. And you. And all the others.”

“The others?”

“Well, there’s you and me, and the other ten,” Nine explained but his own curiosity forced him to ask, “Did you hit your head?”

“Maybe when you tackled me to the ground,” Null answered sharply.

“Right. About that: I can see how you might get the wrong idea,” Nine began sheepishly.

“How is there a right idea? You attacked me.”

“I had good reason to!”

“Such as?”

“Is this a joke?” Nine asked, reeling in his disbelief. “Do you honestly not remember anything?”

“What happened? Why did you assault me?” Null bellowed. “Who are you?”

“I was trying to restrain you because I woke up about thirty minutes ago on the third floor!”

Null blinked. Then she cried out: “What does that mean?”

“You
killed
me!” Nine shouted.

“In the helicopter crash?”

“No! For me that was two deaths ago. After the helicopter crash we woke up here and, without so much as a hint of a reason why, you killed me! At least…I think it was you. I suspect it was the five of you,” Nine meandered. “I wanted to restrain you in case you tried to contact your friends on the first floor to have the air sucked out of the chamber.”

Null curiously tilted her head to the side.

“Why would I do that?”

Nine put his hand to his forehead.

“Tell me: who else is with you? Are you all like this?”

“Me, Eight, Twenty, and Ninety-Nine are here and none of us remembers a thing before three days ago,” Null admitted.

“Okay,” Nine breathed uneasily, wondering if this was an elaborate ruse. He needed to meet the others to be sure that this wasn’t some kind of trick. What reason would they have for faking amnesia? What purpose did that serve? Nine conceded and said, “Maybe we should go upstairs. I can’t tell you what happened three days ago but I know exactly how it began five centuries ago.”

None of them were lying. That much became clear when surprise and suspicion flooded the expressions of Eight and the others as if they had reason to fear him and not the other way around. Nine foolishly introduced himself, half expecting Eight and the others to announce the joke’s punchline at any moment. When the revelation did not come, when the presence of genuine distrust continued, Nine was convinced of their story’s authenticity.

“Then you know who we are?” Eight barked. Some things never changed. A bossy Eight was, apparently, one of them.

“Yes. When I checked last, you knew me too,” Nine said.

“Not well enough to keep me from killing you, apparently,” said Null.

“That’s a complicated story. It’s not black and white,” he replied defensively.

“Isn’t murder generally black and white?” Twenty said with pungent derision. Being without their memories hadn’t exactly stopped their personalities from resurfacing. A domineering Eight. A sarcastic Twenty. A calculating Null.

“Not here. Not for us,” Nine corrected him. “I’m desperate to hear about you four. How did you wind up in Rose Garden without a single memory?” He prodded them and each recounted their experiences. Eight was particularly resistant to discussing Seven, revealing that there had originally been five of them. “How did Seven die?” he asked, poking the sore spot that Eight wanted to avoid.

“Where to start? He touched the Sphere, ventured into a structurally questionable school, beat back the monster multiple times…” Twenty listed off, rolling his eyes.

“The monster?”

“You know, the giant dust cloud terrorizing the city,” Twenty drawled.

“Oh. That.”

“What is it? The Unimatrix at the Great Library could only give us bits and pieces,” Ninety-Nine urged.

“You want a history lesson?
Now
?” Nine gawked.

“Why not? You know it. We don’t. Make with the knowledge,” Twenty insisted.

Nine scratched his head and wondered where to start.

“Start from the beginning,” a compassionate Null advised him. It was strange to hear her speak to him, completely unaware of their relationship. The woman’s body was the same but her mind was different. Maybe if her personality was the same then she might be able to feel the same things that the original Null felt? Maybe the things she felt towards him before losing her memories could return…

He began: “Haven itself was a fairly prestigious society. Almost noble, in a way. They established themselves as a hardcore meritocracy where you had to be a scientist, doctor, or mathematician to even consider running for office. Being an island civilization came with certain growing pains. When the city consumed the island and required more manpower and attention than the government could dedicate to the task, the scientists at Grand Cross invented Artificial Intelligence. You’ve already met the last remaining prototype, the Great Library’s Unimatrix. The AdvISOR was the final goal: one sentient program, restrained by certain software laws, to administer the everyday operations and to safeguard the citizenry.”

“Which did not happen,” Twenty intoned. “The AdvISOR killed everyone. It purged the city.”

“Maybe, but the AdvISOR didn’t become a problem until the very bitter end,” Nine recounted with the memory of the city’s fall still fresh in his mind. “The AdvISOR ran the everyday operations of the city. Anyways, we can speed forward a few hundred years after the AdvISOR was created until we reach the next major crisis: labor. Haven’s people had to dig deeper and build higher in order to keep their introverted civilization running. More and more of the dangerous jobs went undone until a man by the name of Tobias Clay had the idea to
create
a workforce,” Nine paused casually, his eyes lingering on Eight. The woman gave him no indication of interest or familiarity but she never had before, either, and so he continued. “From what Tobias shared with us, we learned that he could produce clones one at a time but he needed to
mass produce
them and Tobias was...unscrupulous...when necessary. And he had heard some of the old legends about the Founders.”

“What did he do?” Ninety-Nine whispered in anticipation, her voice strained.

“‘
Beloved, touch not the forbidden lore
,’” Nine quoted.

“He went into the Sphere, didn’t he?” Eight asked, figuring it out.

“Tobias correctly surmised the secret nature of the Founders: they had been clones, the Sphere their prison. They threw down their masters and abandoned the Sphere. They left their warning to the subsequent generations to stay away.”

“I also remember something about a curse of the flesh,” Twenty said, his voice stiff and uncooperative.

“The curse of the flesh doesn’t have an explanation. Not a scientific one, at least. The inside of the Sphere is radioactive, sure, but whenever
we
go near that thing…there’s always unintended side effects.” Nine didn’t want to mention Seven’s death or the unbridled foolishness that the dead man had shown by touching the Sphere. Hoping to avoid causing any distress, he said, “The curse became a metaphor as the ages passed. By using pillaged technology to create a new generation of clones, cruelly enslaved and purposefully underdeveloped, Tobias sealed Haven’s fate. Those first clones, the NX Series, were sent to the mines and the agricultural towers to do the backbreaking work that their luxurious society detested. When those clones proved to be a success, Tobias created thousands more.”

“And like the Founders before them the enslaved clones revolted,” Null guessed, her eyes meeting Nine’s and igniting a fire in his chest.

“Overnight, as the story goes, the Rebel Clones stole Grand Cross from Tobias. Grand Cross was Haven’s foremost scientific facility and the most dangerous one at that. With it lost to the hands of the enemy, Haven’s war efforts were devastated. Tobias retreated here and built Rose Garden while the War of the Begotten began in earnest.”

“How did a city of millions fail to squash a rebellion of, what, a few thousand Rebel Clones?” Ninety-Nine inquired. “Statistically speaking a Descendant victory was guaranteed even in a war of attrition.”

“Haven never fully unified behind their police-force-turned-military, HARM, and the citizenry splintered into similarly violent factions. It wasn’t just Rebel Clones against a solid block of Descendants. By the time we were created Haven was a dictatorship, singularly governed by the vengeful Ilana Robbins.” Nine shivered at his mention of Ilana, whose barbarity was rivaled only by the most vicious acts of the Rebel Clones.

“Why didn’t Ilana order the AdvISOR to snuff out the clones?”

“Because the AdvISOR couldn’t tell the difference. To the AdvISOR a human is a bipedal mammal distinguished from other animals by superior mental development and articulate speech. It had no grounds upon which to act against the Rebel Clones, especially since it was bound by the Laws.”

“Well, somehow, the AdvISOR worked up the nerve to kill people,” Twenty insisted.

“I wasn’t at Grand Cross when I died during the purge, so I don’t know how the AdvISOR managed to break the Laws. I was coming back with Null from your art exhibition at the Imperial Galleria when it rebelled against everyone, and killed us in the process.”

“Then where did we come into the story?” Eight probed, suddenly very curious.

“After being exiled, Tobias built Rose Garden for the singular purpose of creating a new set of clones. A superior set, so to speak, that would command the respect of Descendants and Rebels alike. We were created after the beginning of the War of the Begotten to find a way to finally end it.” Nine shook his head. “Eight was the first to come into this world and, with her help, Tobias created the rest of us.”

“Why would we help him? What kind of sellouts were we? Why would we help the slave master subdue his rampant slaves?” a disgusted Twenty snarled at Nine.

Nine hesitated. There wasn’t an easy answer to Twenty’s question; not one that would alleviate his misgivings. Slowly, Nine answered, “Tobias Clay was not a good man. We all knew it, but we also knew that he was prepared to do anything to save the Descendants and the Rebel Clones. That, at the time, was enough.”

“And yet, we weren’t able to end the war, were we?” Null asked.

“Seven negotiated the truce, that much was accomplished. None of the Rebel Clones trusted any of us as much as they trusted him but they did show us the horrors of Grand Cross.”

Ninety-Nine inquired, “Horrors? What horrors?”

“Weapons. Experiments. The Lore Chambers...” Nine refused to allow his memories of the underground secrets at Grand Cross to resurface. If Null and the others were spared from that particular recollection, then he would protect their ignorance just this once.

“What makes us so special? Why would Tobias expect the Rebel Clones to negotiate with us rather than the Descendants?” Eight casually asked Nine.

He smiled at her as he answered the question, suspecting that she might have already guessed it. “We are called the Rose Twelve because we were cloned from the DNA of twelve Founders.”

“We’re the Founders?” Twenty challenged Nine.

“From a certain point of view,” Nine replied.

“It makes sense, doesn’t it? I have memories from before the city was built. Memories with Eight and Nine in them,” Null unwittingly defended Nine, much to his amusement, and explained in perfect detail her memory from the night of Haven’s founding. Only then did Nine’s amusement vanish, replaced by shock and speechlessness. In her prior life, during Haven’s twilight, Null had never recounted such a specific memory. It was, in his opinion, impossible. “What do you think?” she looked to him for confirmation. Nine took notice of Eight’s intent gaze, fixed squarely on him, and he began to understand that his answer would reach past Null to Eight.

“I’ve always believed that we’re physical copies of the Founders but, technically, it’s impossible for us to inherit memories from the Founders. So, on a spiritual level, as far as the soul is concerned, I don’t think we’re them. Our experiences are unique to ourselves and define us as a result.” Nine’s theory slipped away from him with ease because he had shared it with each person present numerous times in the past. Yet, without their memories, it was an entirely new conversation and concept to them.

“Get back to your story. Tobias came here, built Rose Garden, created us, and Seven negotiated the truce. What then?” Eight demanded of him.

“I thought things were getting better,” Nine felt helpless when he said it aloud.

“Clearly…things did
not
get better,” Twenty snorted.

“Like I said, it ended abruptly. I went to the art exhibition at the Imperial Galleria with Null. Afterwards, around dawn, we were aboard our helicopter on the way here when the city began shutting down. The AdvISOR sunk our entire naval fleet. It crashed every flying machine. It cut off power, sucked out oxygen, killed every car, unlocked every door, collided every train, and contaminated the agricultural towers. The assault culminated in the detonation of the allergen cloud, the monster, but I think you knew that already. In short the AdvISOR made life unbearable and survival impossible.”