Someone to Remember Me: The Anniversary Edition (24 page)

“Sitting around will accomplish nothing!” Eight shouted back.

“Both of you need to calm down,” Ninety-Nine counseled them. “We came here to confirm that five centuries have gone by and, before we do anything else, we need to go back to Rose Garden. Where we’ll be safe. Where we can think.”

“No! I don’t want to calm down or think or be safe!” Seven spat, barreling past them.

Ninety-Nine exchanged a wary glance with Eight and they chased after Seven. She gestured at the others to remain behind, pursuing Eight a moment later. Not that Twenty needed instructions: he absently poured a handful of ashen dirt onto the ground.

Ahead of her, Seven slid down the park’s embankment to the beach, out of sight of the others. Ninety-Nine idolized the steady feet of Seven and Eight as she bumbled down the hillside, nearly throwing herself into the sand when she made it to the beach. Being technologically inclined had robbed her of any fondness for the outdoors.

Seven stopped just short and Ninety-Nine put a healthy space between herself and, Seven, and Eight. She didn’t believe that Eight contained the ability to bring Seven back into the fold, that ability was reserved to Twenty, but Ninety-Nine knew they had to try.

Ninety-Nine envied confidence. Her restraint.

She said to him, “Seven, we need to go. We can’t stay here.”

He let a moment pass, ignoring Eight and Ninety-Nine while he stared at the motionless black sea. When Ninety-Nine’s eyes moved to the blackened, immobile water she felt a new hopelessness crash down on her. She desperately wanted to know: what else had happened to the island besides the extermination of Haven’s population?

“There was a time when I would have given anything to have you talk to me like a normal person,” Seven began. “Not this, though. I don’t think I wanted this,” he whispered, his voice low and baleful. His face was contorted by misery and pain yet the words echoed with ferocious sincerity. “When the memories started they were more like pictures than anything else. They got so strong that some nights my dreams would be memories. You can’t imagine what it was like to be enslaved by the thought of
you
. To be so hopelessly enthralled by
you
.” He faced Eight and took a dangerous step towards her. She held her ground. “You despised me for it. Where was your compassion then, Eight? Did I really have to be the last man standing? Did nine million others need to die first?”

Ninety-Nine marveled at Eight, whose stoic expression remained steadfast in the heat of Seven’s rage.

“I know that I haven’t always been fair to you...” Eight began.

“Stop. Please stop.” He put both of his hands on her shoulders. “You win. I’m done. I failed. You and the others should leave and, when you do, I’ll shut down Rose Garden and stay behind.”

Alarmed, Ninety-Nine yelled, “The AdvISOR killed Haven, not you! Don’t punish yourself for something that you couldn’t have stopped!”

“Stay behind? You mean you want to die
permanently
?” There was no containing Eight’s rage as it spilled forth. “What will that accomplish? Everyone else might be dead but we are still alive! Don’t be a coward, Seven!”

“I am not a coward! I’ve fought wars across two lifetimes and I have a right to not come back again! I have a right to end the cycle forever!”

“The cycle is already broken! Haven is gone. The technology will stop working when we leave. Everything will begin anew with us.”

“That’s the problem! When the Sphere crashed it was damaged but not destroyed. The technology was still there,” Seven ranted. “And when we leave here, when you and Null and Ninety-Nine still know how to build it, can still tell stories about it…”

In that moment something came loose in Ninety-Nine’s head. Terrifyingly real, the knowledge of the cloning process and the secrets of eternal life would be carried with her for the rest of her life. She understood Seven perfectly. What good was escape when the nightmare came with them? She began to run calculations and simulations, her brain theorizing midway through Eight’s next sentence.

“A premature and permanent death isn’t the way to silence those fears,” Eight consoled him, perfectly aware that she was losing the argument. “Trust me, running away from what you feel will not solve anything. It makes your problems worse. There are other solutions. We can get through this together.”

Seven’s rejected the overture. “I became valuable to you when there was literally nobody left. How do you think that makes me feel?”

“No, Seven, you don’t understand what I feel because it took me years to figure it out for myself!” Eight’s voice trembled.

“Take your newfound compassion and show it to the others. Share it with the people who care.”

Stepping forward, Ninety-Nine cleared her voice and the act served to remind Seven and Eight of her presence. In Seven’s eyes she saw devastation, fatigue, and the dilated signs of instability. In Eight’s eyes she saw despair, depression, and the utter loss that accompanied a disaster’s wake.

“If you come back to Rose Garden with me then I’ll do it.” Her soft voice managed to cross the distance between herself and the shadow of a man by the water. “Come back with us. I can do it. I know how.”

“Do what?” Seven demanded tersely.

“I can kill you…permanently,” Ninety-Nine said, as good a guarantee as any. Her knowledge of Rose Garden was absolute and she could bend it to meet her needs. Buying Seven’s temporary cooperation was as simple as that. With one sentence Ninety-Nine witnessed the hope leave Eight’s eyes and step into Seven’s.

Being in the dark made being alone with Nine much less awkward. Null coughed and asked, “Was Ninety-Nine always that odd?”

“And worse…” Nine confirmed. “I actually think the whole blank slate experience seems to have calmed her down tremendously. Don’t get me wrong, though, she’s brilliant beyond comparison. Easily the smartest of the Rose Twelve.”

“Thanks…” Null drawled.

“You know what I mean,” Nine sighed. “When Tobias created us, Rose Garden was rudimentary compared to what it is now. I doubt it could have survived five centuries of neglect is not for the upgrades that you, Eight, and Ninety-Nine performed across the facility.”

“Upgrades?”

“Eight overhauled the process behind biological production and reclamation. She brought the original forty-eight hour production time down to the current eight. Ninety-Nine rewrote most of the facility’s software and you oversaw the mechanical upgrades to the hardware.”

“Wow,” Null offered. It was appropriate that Command was pitch black while they discussed events she didn’t remember. Being told of achievements she couldn’t recall was like discussing last year’s weather. Her part in redesigning the technology that granted them immortality should have hit her deeper than it did.

A small light blinked on and Null saw that Nine was on the floor underneath one of the computer alcoves. He slid out from beneath the machine and sat up, setting the flashlight on end so that it offered them both its helpful glow. She couldn’t deny that there was a connection between, tenuous and fragmented, but present. Just like the connection to her former self that persisted despite her amnesia.

She felt safer asking questions and showing interest in Nine when the others were present, as if it gave her a shield to protect herself while she plumbed Nine for information.

“Why aren’t you angry?” Null asked, succumbing to her curiosity.

“Angry about what?”

“You know...about me killing you,” Null felt odd saying it, admitting a crime she didn’t remember committing.

“You and I were always the functional couple. I doubt that I would have pushed you to murder without a good reason,” he joked. “Besides, have you bothered to ask yourself why none of the others woke up when you got here? Why it was only me? From what I’ve gathered the system was rigged to wake me and only me. Who would go through the hassle of making sure that happened? Whatever plan you five enacted was meant to show you something through eyes unclouded by bias, by memory or identity. Sure, you might not remember me, but
somebody
cheated and made sure I’d wake up when you got here.”

Null presented his carefully nursed theory to her, hoping that her affirmation would give it validation.

“You think it was me?” she asked.

“It had to be,” Nine’s hopeful eyes traveled to hers.

“It had to be,” Null repeated the phrase. Disenchanted by the idea that things simply had to be, Null was unsettled by the constantly diminishing control that she had over her life.

The Rose Twelve simply had to be clones. They had to be reincarnations of the mythological Founders. They had to fix the system. They had to save Seven. How much choice did she actually have in any of it?

“I think you knew that you would need help when you got back,” Nine pushed.

“You think that you were excluded from the ‘no memories’ plot on purpose?” Null guessed.

Nine shrugged. “I still don’t know why the other seven of us had to die so that the five of you could go joyriding around Haven with amnesia,” Nine reminded her, irritated. “Even if we get this system running and Seven comes back, we may never know.”

“And you’re not bitter about it?” Null said.

“Not in the least. I know the death thing sounds morbid but, from my perspective, you knew who I was a very short while ago. Since this morning, however, you’ve been staring at me like I’m a stranger,” Nine admitted, pained.

“That’s because I don’t remember you,” Null insisted in her defense.

“You’ve made that clear.”

“And you’re sure you’re not bitter?”

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“Because for better or for worse I believe that you’re my Null. I used to think that starting over fresh, with no memories, meant you would be a completely different person. After seeing how obsessed Eight is with Seven, and after seeing you like this…I can’t help but think that there are specific certainties. You are brave. You are smart. And I’m talking wicked smart…” Nine’s eyes beamed with pride. “I look at you now and I wish I was like you. I wish we both could be meeting each other again for the first time,” Nine admitted, his voice diminishing. “So I don’t think I’m bitter as much as I’m envious.”

A part of Null felt disarmed by the time that Nine finished speaking. Being suspicious suddenly felt absurd as she stared at Nine. She wished that he would say that phrase that went unspoken between them in that moment.

“I have to admit that it sounds like I left you out because I trusted you,” Null relented. “It seems to me that I was right. Here you are…trying to fix Rose Garden when nobody really asked you to.”

“You never had to ask. They’re your friends. They’re mine too.” Nine made the declaration with surprising humility.

“Then I guess you’re right. I rigged it so that you’d be here to take care of us,” she offered as an apology for her earlier distrust. “…to take care of me,” she added. Nine’s smile, weighed by sadness, desperately tried to reassure her.

“I hope so,” Nine replied. He reluctantly reached into his pocket, and withdrew a clenched fist. “I found this on me when I woke up. I think you wanted me to keep an eye on it for you.” Nine held his fist out to her. Null’s hands wrapped around his and unfurled it. She choked back a gasp.

A small golden ring sat in his palm, dimly illuminated by the lonely flashlight. The ring was dirty and scratched, battered by the type of person who put it on and never took it off. At the same time her eyes traveled to Nine’s left hand, where a twin ring resided.

“We were...?”

“Like I said,” Nine was grinning, “We were the functional couple.”

The lights in Command abruptly popped back into existence. As the seconds passed and affirmed that the lights would not go out again, Null realized how tightly she had grabbed Nine’s hand in surprise.

“There must be more to the cloning process than just the transfer of memories,” Null joked, trying to clear the air. Nine didn’t bother challenging her, he had no intention of tainting the show of affection. Instead, he went back to tinkering with his computer as Rose Garden spun back to life. A little irritated by how quietly he handled the affair, Null crossed her arms. Nine saw the gesture in the reflection on his screen.

“I’m not complaining,” he said quickly. “There’s only one thing I want out of this nonsense and she’s standing next to me.” Null afforded herself a smile. She didn’t know if Nine saw that as well. “Success,” Nine sighed.

One by one the computer alcoves blinked awake, the amount of active screens more numerous and colorful than before. Exhaling her relief Null silently celebrated the one thing going their way.

“Did Ninety-Nine do it? Will the Artificial Intelligence program run?” she asked Nine, daring to lay her hand on his shoulder.

“Only one way to find out,” Nine answered. He looked up at the roof, offering Null a sideways smile, and declared: “Provence, are you active?”

A digital representation of audio wavelengths appeared along the great video display spanning the far wall. It gave Null and Nine something to focus on as the wavelengths fluctuated in accordance with a synthesized male voice.

“I am.”