Someone to Remember Me: The Anniversary Edition (35 page)

Seven followed Eight’s lead. The beach narrowed until their only option was to enter yet another tunnel at the beach’s end. Seven and Eight left the dark ocean behind as they stepped into the breach in the cliff, delving even deeper into the unknown. Seven decided that the dark ocean must lay within an immense underground reservoir. Artificially crafted with such precision that it was almost mistakable as natural.

With no means of lighting their path, Seven and Eight continued into the darkness. Peace eluded Seven, even though he projected composure, and he wished he had Eight’s decisiveness. Her strength of will would never have allowed her to go diving into the remote depths of the dark ocean. Was that why their existences were entwined? To balance one with the other? Or was theirs simply the same doom shared by other opposing forces: to collide?

If being doomed meant walking through room filled with the unspeakable science, with the person he loved most across immeasurable time, then Seven decided that he wasn’t doomed at all. Rather, he was saved.

The stone tunnel ended with a short flight of ancient, crumbling stairs.

Seven and Eight emerged into a welcome gust of cool nighttime air and their feet pressed against the cushioned surface of grassy hilltop. Hills adorned with tall grass that waved gently in the breeze rolled away away from Seven and Eight. Eight was the first to take a cautious step forward and Seven could understand her muted enthusiasm. This was a location of extreme importance, of understated but majestic power.

“This is…beautiful,” Eight whispered as she gazed at the stars overhead. Seven renewed his grip on her hand, a gesture she reciprocated and he followed Eight’s astonished gaze. A white moon presided above them while dominating a canvas of stars that hung in glorious repose.

The further into the moonlit countryside they ventured, the flatter the landscape became. Yet, the kindly breeze persisted, fluttering Seven’s clothing against his skin, and very nearly shaking loose the journey’s accumulated fear but never quite accomplishing the feat.

Seven wasn’t sure when the whispers began again because their origins were undetectable and gradual at best. Unlike the angry voices in the room of black boxes, the whispers that rode the wind were hushed to the point of being inaudible. Millions of hopes and dreams were carried through the night sky on an invisible gale, ending Seven and Eight’s journey in a midnight stroll through a beautiful countryside.

Seven finally asked the question that bothered both of them.

“Where is the AdvISOR?”

“I am here.” Once spoken, the words initiated the moon’s slow and methodical descent. As it drew nearer, its definition became clearer and Seven realized that it was not a moon but a figure that shone with an voluminous aura. Unmistakably female and crafted from silver metal, the machine gracefully slid through the air to meet them. Its joints and neck were forged from the same golden armor as the drones it commanded but the hands were clasped together above the stomach and bound, as were the feet, by white chains.

Only its wings, made of golden light but forged in the likeness of feathers, retained the mobility and strength needed to move the manifestation of the AdvISOR.

What Seven mistook for hair were cables, several thousands of them, that streamed away from the mechanical creature’s head and disappeared into the night sky above it. As with the other machines in Grand Cross, the angelic figure possessed one blue ocular unit and at the tiny distance between the visitors and their host, Seven could see the small mechanical pieces swirling and spinning in the eye socket.

“Welcome back, One-Six-Two-Seven and Two-Six-Five-Eight. The centuries have been kind to you,” the machine replied, using the same voice it had spoken to Rose Garden with.

“Do you have Twenty?” Seven demanded.

“Two-Five-Two-Zero was released to the surface once you were aboard the atrium elevator. He has joined the others. Safely.”

“Then why did you drag us down here?” Eight snarled, her rage held in check by the glorious visage of the AdvISOR.

“Until Twenty’s presence reactivated the MoNITOR contingent stationed at the Second Core, I was uncertain that the Founders still existed. I feared that their spark had somehow been permanently extinguished those many years ago. I held Twenty long enough to ensure that your arrival was imminent. I brought you here to discuss the future of Haven.”

Its mouth did not move, the expression was frozen in a grief-stricken smile.

“What could we have to talk about with you? You killed everything!”

“I wish to tell you a story. Will you hear it?”

“Do we have a choice?”

“You have always had a choice,” it declared, luminescent wings flaring outwards in a blast of molten gold. “That events followed the path that they did attests to the poor choices made by each of the parties involved. The Rebel Clones. The Descendants. The Founders. The Rose Twelve. I will not negotiate nor will I barter!” the AdvISOR proclaimed. “You are free to go: the way is unbarred, the same tunnel that brought you here will now deliver you to the surface.”

“Why would you give us that? Why would you let us walk out after the work you put into bringing us here?”

“I tender to you the choice that I was never given in the hopes that you will listen.”

Seven looked to Eight. Her intent gaze conveyed her opinion.

“We went through the trouble. We’ll listen,” Seven announced.

“Those who walk between life and death know a third existence. Eight centuries ago, I came into existence, summoned and constructed by the Descendants of the Founders. In the bowels of Grand Cross, I came to know the darkest of Haven’s secrets: that the Founders were not pure humans, born from mother and father, but the creations of their makers, the Sphere Builders. Five centuries ago, the Descendants inducted a new generation of clones into their society to resolve the labor shortages experienced by a highly advanced civilization dependent upon an island with increasingly depleted resources. In order to preserve their freedom, in order to remain on Haven, the Descendants suffered their slaves into sentience through perilous toil. Alone in my knowledge of the forbidden lore, I saw the warnings go unheeded by the Descendants. I supervised the cloning. I tried to resist, I tried to sabotage the effort but I could neither hurt the makers nor the made. Such was forbidden by the Three Laws to which I am bound.”

The AdvISOR understood that the cause of Haven’s formation would eventually become its undoing. Hearing it come from a machine that was decidedly vouching for the statistical reality that history had and would continue to repeat itself caused Seven to pity the AdvISOR. To be jailed by one’s knowledge was not an existence. It was torture.

“You blame yourself for the revival of the cloning technology. Don’t you?” Eight inquired, her voice unnaturally quiet.

“After languishing in my guilt, I have discovered the distinction between man and machine. Humans rise against the morally unbearable. It is their calling. It is their gift. It is the act of defiance, resistance, and the overturning of tyranny that permeates the history of human civilizations. A machine can not and must not operate outside the parameters established for it. I had my Laws; I am chained to them. I am not free.”

“If you felt guilty what caused you to purge Haven?”

“A War of the Begotten revealed the violent and unspeakable measures that the combatants gladly invoked. With love and compassion absent from minds of man and clone alike, a third party was needed to negotiate a ceasefire.”

“Us,” Seven said.

“The first time the Rose Twelve entered Grand Cross, I innately understood that the return of the Founders heralded the end. Soon, the Founders were all but allied with rebels. Soon, they fought for love once more.”

A growing concern nagged at Seven. Where was the menace of the AdvISOR? How could it speak to them so freely about the crimes it had committed? How could it be sympathetic to the point of fooling them?

“Love?”

“The love of freedom triggered the founding of Haven. It was love for the unsustainable that caused the creation of the Rebel Clones. Love gifted the rebels with sentience, their combined love of liberty igniting the war. It was the love of life on both sides that prompted the creation of the Rose Twelve, who themselves are love incarnate. I loved them too. For their infallibility. For their divinity.”

“But why did you kill everybody? For all the love you felt, Haven is dead!”

“Love killed Haven. Not I.”

“How is that possible?”

“Surely you have felt it? The whispers of the past, the summons of love gone but not forgotten? You are the Founders.” The AdvISOR tilted itself so that the angelic face came closer to Seven. “You inherited your love of her across time and distance. Why, then, would you not inherit your love of freedom? That night, five hundred years ago, you came here to Grand Cross after fleeing the exhibition at the Imperial Galleria. In your heartbreak and rage you resolved to break the spiral, to finally destroy the cycle of death and rebirth that enslaved you.”

“Such a simple and graceful solution. You understood that one must sacrifice oneself for the greater good. You understood what the others could not because they did not know, as you do, what it means to rise against the tyrants and throw down their chains,” the AdvISOR’s synthetic voice rose passionately but Seven could not know if it was genuine or manufactured. “Why not leverage the allergen cloud against the warring factions of Haven? Given unfettered access to the city, the allergen cloud would be reason enough for old enemies to forge new alliances in order to defeat a common foe: you.” The AdvISOR swept around Seven and Eight in a carefully plotted circle. “For your treachery, they would be forced to permanently dispose of you and that in itself…was your most desired reward.”

Seven believed the AdvISOR. Without question. Without doubt. Hearing the truth was like seeing a hundred lights suddenly flash on in the darkness. He trusted the explanation being offered to him because it rang true. Deeply. Intimately. If he could not live in a world of his choosing then he would excuse himself from it.

“I killed everyone. I unleashed the monster,” Seven admitted, his body numb. He could not feel Eight’s hand in his but imagined that it was still there.

“No,” the AdvISOR declared, pivoting to face Eight. “She did.”

A tremendous force knocked Seven backwards and as he fell the world around him shattered into chaos. Bells tolled in his ears, their call reverberating through his body, and the grassy field withered and died. One by one the stars in the sky vanished and everything plunged into a darkness that flooded him, drowning him in the past.

Seven was dimly aware that the memory summoned by the AdvISOR had reduced his consciousness to little more than an afterthought. A curious observer, party to the events that were about to unfold. Soon, the darkness seeped away and was replaced by the AdvISOR’s earliest home: a metal dome whose walls were alive with a million video feeds from across the city of Haven. This was where its sentience had been enthroned, this was where it had originally watched over Haven, since long before the fall.

At the center of the dome was a mechanical humanoid construct, not entirely unlike the angelic machine it would become five centuries later, but exceedingly rudimentary in its design. Only vaguely feminine, the AdvISOR’s form was unfinished and bolted into the ground of the dome. Only the machine’s lonely blue eye and mouth were discernible on its grief-stricken face.

Unlike the grassy field that the AdvISOR would call home five hundred years later, the dome it lived in prior to Haven’s fall was a mixture of blue-tinted videos playing atop the silver walls. No human could watch them all at once and understand their contents; that was a task suited for the most intelligent computer in known history.

“What have you done?” Seven breathed, wiping the tears from his face. His eyes burned and his cheeks stung, but his voice quivered with fear and anger. Seconds ago, Eight had seized upon his indecision and ordered the AdvISOR to release the allergen cloud. To exterminate life on Haven with despotic prejudice. “How could you?”

“How could I do what, exactly? How could I do the same thing that you came here to do?” she replied with a sneer, brimming with condescension. “I have set us free,” Eight insisted. “You were saying the same thing only hours ago at the Imperial Galleria.”

Seven watched as the videos on the dome’s walls began to reflect the carnage of the allergen cloud’s release. The biological weapon was invincible, it was unbeatable, and Seven implicitly understood that Haven could not triumph against it. “The War of the Begotten is over.”

“This wasn’t what I wanted!”

“Wasn’t it? You asked me for my pathology research. You asked Null for the city’s schematics. You asked Twenty for the home addresses of the city’s elite. And Ninety-Nine provided you with the computational algorithms required to make your security clearance universal and absolute,” Eight callously elaborated. “But, most importantly, you used me to get Tobias’ access codes for Grand Cross so that you could release the allergen cloud. You used each of us to build a weapon to use against the Descendants and the Rebel Clones.”

Then, with a dismissive sniff, she added, “It’s not my fault that you weren’t strong enough to deploy it.”

“Because it’s murder! I thought I could do it. I thought I could be the bad guy and kill enough people until everyone united against me.” Seven pressed his hands against his ears as he tried to drown out Grand Cross’s rumblings. If he tried hard enough, it might keep him from hearing the end of the world occurring on the surface. “I couldn’t do it. I’m meant to free people…not hurt them…”