Someone to Remember Me: The Anniversary Edition (22 page)

“What about us?”

“Our original bodies weren’t immune to the allergen cloud. Some of us died by it and the rest of us perished by other means. Meanwhile, something went wrong here at Rose Garden while the purge happened because, when the twelve of us finally woke up, almost five centuries had passed rather than eight hours.”

“Eight hours? Why eight hours?” Eight asked.

“That’s how long it takes for Rose Garden to create your new body. When the facility detects the death of your body, a new one is made and activated eight hours later.” Nine let the revelation sink in, with particular interest in observing Eight’s reaction. Her face was unreadable, an enigma.

“Then cloning is a physical process,” was Eight’s hollow reply.

“Not the way we do it.”

Eight took a threatening step towards him. “Not more than four minutes ago you were saying that inheriting memories from the Founders is impossible!”

“Yes, from the Founders. That’s impossible, or it should be! The technology we use is completely different from theirs; the same idea but different methods. Our memories, our souls, began when Tobias created us and are moved to a new body if the existing one fails. I died during the purge and woke up here, remembering who I am and what happened to me.” Nine paused, silently debating what to say next. “I was suffocated to death three days ago and, eight hours later, I woke up to an empty Rose Garden.”

“Fascinating. Rose Garden’s cloning system transfers a single consciousness from one body to another. Immortality, in a sense,” Ninety-Nine concluded.

“But
why
?” Eight gasped, expelling the question with fear and longing; a realization dawning within her that she didn’t dare accept.

“Why not? Why educate each new clone on how to do a specific job when Tobias reinvented the technology that could transfer memories from one body to another, from one clone to another?” Looking to Ninety-Nine, he reminded her, “You asked me why a few thousand rebels were able to revolt against an army of millions. The real answer is that a rebel could be shot in the head and, eight hours later, wake up at Grand Cross with all the knowledge of that previous life. That’s why you guys are an anomaly from my perspective, because the technology that Tobias built
must
transfer the memories as part of the cloning process.”

“Brilliant. That way there is only ever one Ninety-Nine. If my memories are here with me that means another Ninety-Nine isn’t running around out there,” Ninety-Nine exclaimed.

“Exactly,” Nine concluded.

“But that’s exactly what we are. Empty clones with nothing more than wisps of memories,” Twenty reminded the room. “Explain to me how we’re possible if the cloning system has to transfer memories when it activates a new body.”

“I have no idea! Remember, it’s supposed to be impossible!” Nine sighed, exasperated and at a loss to explain the amnesia-stricken survivors. “We need to go through the memetic stream. That’ll tell us a little more about what’s happened to each of you.” Seeing their confused glances he added, “The memetic stream is where our memories are stored before being transferred into a new body.”

“Wait.” Eight’s lonesome word silenced the room. A livid determination carried itself on her voice as she stepped forward and locked her gaze on Nine. Resignation was etched into her posture when she spoke again. “Are you saying we can bring him back? That we can bring back the Seven who...” she stalled. “Are you saying that we can bring back
my
Seven?”

During Haven’s twilight, in the years before the city’s fall, Eight had despised Seven. It was a poorly kept secret that Seven was enamored with her, despite her callous disregard for him. Nine wondered if Seven and Eight were doomed to repeat their courtship in this life and, if so, would it also end in heartbreak?

“Yes,” Nine answered. “Absolutely.”

Chapter Eight:

A Soul to Keep

The idea to end her life began germinating in Ninety-Nine’s mind when Nine, after several failed attempts to speak in a whispered voice to Null, eventually dispatched her to the second floor of Rose Garden. Rolling her eyes, Ninety-Nine accepted the task and found herself grateful for the opportunity to be excused from Command. Nine’s irritating lack of efficiency, compounded by his lack of familiarity with Rose Garden’s systems, only multiplied the amount of work that she needed to undertake to restore the facility to full operational status.

Her friends and their entanglements were becoming obnoxious. At first, Seven and Eight’s mutual attraction, had been curious. Almost entertaining. But now, with Seven’s fate dependent on the restoration of Rose Garden, Ninety-Nine found herself incapable of tolerating Nine’s failed attempts at subtlety. How could anybody contemplate romantic attachments when their survival was at risk?

Considering that her worsening disposition might be rooted in envy, Ninety-Nine tried to reconcile herself to her lonely station. If Null had Nine, and Eight would eventually have Seven, then who would she be left with? Twenty? She laughed at herself as the elevator lowered her deeper into the ground, grateful that Nine and Null weren’t around to hear it.

Still, she admitted to herself, the oppositional nature of the pairings suggested that opposites did, indeed, attract. Null was quiet but pensive while Nine was vocal but accommodating; Eight exuded confidence in thought and action but Seven was restrained and, sometimes, easily swayed. Ninety-Nine considered herself, wondering what attributes her companions saw in her? Intelligence, certainly. Perhaps introversion? At worst, indifference. When she contrasted that against Twenty, lose to his temper and sharp with his wits, he felt the most corporeal of her friends, the most logical and grounded. He seemed to be plugged into the greater scheme of things; able to discern the necessary, if unpleasant, course of action and act accordingly. Yet it was easy for her to affirm that they were not compatible, which was strange, since they were most alike in temperament.

Luckily, Twenty was a world away from her on the surface of Rose Garden with Eight, whose proficiency in biology did not equitably translate to an expertise in computers. Neither of them could be as much of a nuisance to her as Nine and Null were, leaving her to her own limited skills in her quest to repair Rose Garden.

She considered that her worsening mood was due to the rapidly approaching limit to her knowledge; the exhaustion being experienced by her instincts, upon which she had relied to accomplish as much as she had in the last few hours. Rose Garden’s vast internal software required a true master, not an amateur, to accurately repair. With power stabilized and environmental controls running optimally, her next task was the reactivation of the station’s Artificial Intelligence program.

Nine’s voice sounded in the air overhead as she exited the elevator and stepped into the Records floor. “I think that we mere mortals have gone about as far was can to fix Provence from here.”

Wrinkling her nose, Ninety-Nine replied, “Mere mortals?”

“Everything I know about computers, I learned from watching you.”

Ninety-Nine sighed and wondered if the sound transmitted to Nine. Without her memories, without the vast knowledge he claimed she once possessed, what practical use could she be? With her potential limited as it was by her amnesia, what benefit could she offer the others?

“Provence can revive Seven?” she asked, hoping to distract Nine.

“The two systems are entwined. Provence with the revival technology; the revival technology with Provence. We have to bring Provence back if we want to bring Seven back.”

Ninety-Nine nodded. She was passing through racks of servers, the dark towers marginally taller than her. Tiny lights along their lengths shone red and green, illuminating the otherwise darkened chamber. She continued along the walkway that split through the servers until she reached a double door. A metal panel, like the one embedded into the glass cube on the surface of Rose Garden, functioned as a security check.

“What time is it?” she asked loudly.

“Ten hundred hours. Midmorning. If we somehow bring Provence back online then Seven could be back with us by nightfall.”

“If Eight elects to resurrect him,” Ninety-Nine replied.

“Why wouldn’t she?” asked Nine.

“She appeared hesitant. I don’t think she believes that the Seven who will emerge will truly be ‘her’ Seven.”

“I’ve been through the process dozens of times and I can tell you that I’m the same person,” Nine tried to hide the defensiveness in his tone.

“We’re not the same,” Null’s voice came through the intercom suddenly.

“I don’t know what you bunch did to the system to make you forget, but whatever it was is the reason that it isn’t working at the moment,” Nine snapped back at her. “Before the war ended we would put ourselves through the process to transfer into improved bodies.”

“We knowingly killed ourselves for the sake of advancement?”

“Nobody said progress comes without a price,” was Nine’s quiet answer.

“Sounds morbid,” Null remarked.

Ninety-Nine agreed with Null but understood Nine’s perspective. Rose Garden created possibilities that were otherwise unheard of for those within its spell. Reaching out, Ninety-Nine placed her hands on the metal panel and felt the slightest suggestion of heat against her palms before the doors slid open to admit her.

“I’m here,” Ninety-Nine announced. “I’m at the Artificial Intelligence mainframe.”

“What do you make of all of this?” Eight asked Twenty.

Suppressing his groan meant that Twenty had to issue some other form of response and responding meant thinking. Thinking was an activity that Twenty preferred to avoid at the moment, given their ever-worsening predicament.

Tired of considering, replaying, and fearing the bizarre situation that he and his friends were trapped in, Twenty was nevertheless impressed by how Eight managed to ceaselessly dwell on it. Epiphanies had become such a mandatory part of their existence in the last three days that they had become more a headache than a force of enlightenment. Exhausted by the repeated intrusions of distant memories and the echoes of ancient music, Twenty’s interest in explaining the mysteries of the world had long since waned.

Why try to find more answers when the ones in their possession were unbearable? Why did the others not realize that? Why did they keep pressing ahead with new questions? That marked the difference between him and the others; they didn’t know when to stop asking and he did.

Twenty tried to manage an answer but found his mind uncooperative. His eyes were fixed on Haven. Reflections of its ruined and stagnant skyline haunted the water, immemorial in death.

Maybe the monster, the allergen cloud, longingly awaited their return? Did it linger by the buildings near the edge of the park? Did it stalk the empty streets in wordless anticipation of their return? How had the scientists at Grand Cross even designed that thing in the first place? To create the means of their own demise so blindly and then to let it fall into the mechanical clutches of the AdvISOR...

Did Haven and its denizens deserve the fate that befell them? Twenty didn’t want to answer the question. That wasn’t his problem. Survival was his problem at the moment and he seemed to be the only one of them concerned with it.

“Twenty?” Eight asked, snapping him into the present.

“What do I make of what?” Twenty asked, his lazy voice conveying his disinterest.

Eight snorted.

“I don’t know. Pick where you want to start,” she challenged him. He groaned loudly, conveying to her how annoyed he was with rehashing the obvious. Reviewing every tiny detail couldn’t improve their situation. Why bother?

“The immortality thing? The Founder thing? The murder of our friends and subsequent self-sabotage thing?” Twenty listed off, his voice dreary. “I stopped caring somewhere around being chased and nearly eaten by a giant monster made from dust,” he enunciated every syllable with the incredulity warranted by the story. “Can you be held guilty for anything that you did if you don’t remember it?” he asked abstractly. “Better yet: why feel guilty if you can’t remember the crime?” Eight didn’t respond. Twenty realized that his answer hadn’t been the one she wanted.

He guessed that her feelings of guilt stemmed less from the murder of six of their kin than with Seven’s inexplicable death. She was so selfish it made his head hurt.

“But I guess Rose Garden is a lucky break,” he begrudged her. He decided that she was a friend in need of consoling. “You get Seven back and then we can finally get the hell out of here like we should have from the start,” his voice rose as he made his point.

“If we had left, seven of our friends would have been left behind,” Eight observed, deflecting his main argument.

“We would’ve gotten here one way or another,” he dragged out the inevitably of the statement. Eight pondered the remark.

She finally asked: “You think bringing Seven back is a good idea?”

Of all the things for Eight to say that could have surprised Twenty, her inquiry shocked him the most. Why would he not think it was a good idea? What about Seven being dead made the immortality that Rose Garden provided sound like a bad idea?

“You mean you haven’t already decided to bring him back?” he said harshly. Eight not wanting to revive Seven deeply disturbed Twenty. It did not fall in line with her attitude. It made no sense. He tried to correct the error. “I thought the moment Nine said it could be done that you would have been on board. Bringing Seven back is the obvious choice to me.”