Read Online Someone to Remember Me: The Anniversary Edition by Brendan Mancilla - Free Book Online Page A

in both directions. It occurred to me that we might be on a peninsula, but the map at the railway station would have depicted that. If I had to guess the dimensions of this island, then I would say we’re on an island with a narrow northern region, a wide southern cape, with at least three peninsulas extending horizontally away from the western coast.”
    “Then whoever built this city, and whoever caused its end, was here on this island,” Eight surmised.
    “A city on an island,” Seven repeated in a wistful tone.
    “Who picks somewhere like this?” Twenty balked at the idea of a city on an island, having silently rejoined the group. “Thanks to their bad municipal development, we’re out of food and out of shelter.”
    “If it comes to it we can eat the artist first,” Null declared.
    “Oh, ha ha ha. Don’t you have a building to go climb up?”
    “I’m sure I could, but I wouldn’t risk it,” Null chuckled. “They’re forged from some type of molecularly enhanced titanium, I’m sure of it even though I don’t know how I know that. If I had to build a city like this in a place like this, I’d start with that material. It’s lightweight but strong and extremely resistant to the elements.”
    “Then why wouldn’t you climb up?” Twenty wondered, confused by her elaborate detailing of Haven’s elemental makeup.
    Null cleared her throat. “I bring it up because the building I surveyed showed horrible, and I mean awful, signs of metal fatigue.”
    “Metal fatigue?” Seven queried.
    “Metal can fatigue. It can wear out, weaken, and eventually just snap, tear, and burst on its own. But it’s very rare.”
    “Why is that?”
    “Because most buildings are not left standing long enough for their metal to fatigue to begin with. Let’s say you’re building a normal city. You erect buildings that last an average of sixty years, and that’s being generous, before someone else comes along, tears it down, and buildings something new to replace it. I mean, you’d have to build it, and then ignore it for years and years and years until metal fatigue would become a noticeable problem,” Null droned on, as if reciting a textbook. “But these buildings weren’t made from poor materials. They were forged from the best metals and resources that science…I guess I should say, the best materials that our science could bring us.”
    Seven shook his head, lost.
    Doubling down on her attempt to make sense of her knowledge to Seven and the others, Null continued, “If the average person used sticks to build their cities, our people came up with something that revolutionized the way buildings were built. They used the strongest metal they could make,” she brightened considerably, convinced that she’d boiled it down to layman’s terms. “For this fantastic type of titanium, that these buildings use, to fatigue so badly...” and again she gestured to the skyscrapers to drive home her point. “Let me make this as simple to understand as possible: the metal says that whatever left this place abandoned occurred hundreds of years ago.”
    Seven stopped moving.
    “Hundreds of years ago?” he demanded.
    “I can’t be sure without seeing the formulaic equations for this offshoot of titanium that was used, but my most mild estimates would say that the buildings are at least hundreds of years old.”
    “Is it safe for us to be here?” Eight wondered, surveying the railway with a newfound anxiety.
    “Of course. For the four of us this city would last, say, another thousand years or two.”
    “Then we urgently need to get to the city’s center,” Eight wiped the indecision from her expression, her determination reinvigorating Null and Seven. Null imagined Twenty audibly rolling his eyes behind her. “We need to find out what happened here and why we survived it.”
    “Survived it?” Null inquired, her curiosity piqued by Eight’s phrasing. “You mean that your memory was from when the city was