The Last Man on Earth Club

by Paul R. Hardy

  “Katie? Do you have something to add?” I asked. She looked at me.

  “Religion can be used to justify any atrocity. My enemies sustained their society with a religion of hatred and revenge. They re-edited every video file from the Second Machine War to prove we were evil and fought a holy war with no diplomacy. Their soldiers would not surrender when defeated. They would not accept our surrender at the end of the war. Their religion was an excuse for genocide.”

  No one knew what to say, until Iokan broke in. “Is that all religion was used for on your world?”

  “That was the primary purpose: the justification of criminal activity.”

  “Hah! You see?” exclaimed Olivia to Iokan, but he hid his irritation.

  “The Soo were the same,” muttered Pew. He looked up, a little surprised as everyone looked at him. “Well, they… they had lots of religions. But they all said the same thing about us.”

  “What was that?” I asked.

  “We were destined to be slaves. Or god created us as slaves. Or one said that anyone that couldn’t look after themselves deserved to be slaves. Or we didn’t have souls, so it was okay to enslave us because we didn’t really feel pain. They were all the same. It just gave them an excuse to do whatever they wanted with us.”

  “Did you have a religion of your own? Before you were captured?” asked Iokan.

  “That was different,” said Pew. “It wasn’t… we didn’t really have a religion. Not like the Soo did.”

  “But you had some kind of spirituality?”

  Pew smiled, just a little. “Spirituality. Yeah. Something like that. Lots of spirits. The Polar Bear had a spirit. The Beluga had a spirit. Storms were spirits.”

  “So a kind of… primitive animism?”

  Pew’s smile vanished. “…Yeah. I suppose you’d call it that. We did all those things you see in anthropology videos. Like saying sorry to the seal because you killed it. Praying to the spirit of the spear so it’d fly true. Putting the dead under the ice where all the spirits were.” He grew bitter. “Do you know what else we thought was a spirit? Illness. It was called Ikti. Ikti opened the tent flap for Akkikit. That was death. Maybe if we hadn’t been primitive animists we’d have known about germs and we wouldn’t have died.”

  “I didn’t mean to imply anything—” protested Iokan.

  “Nobody ever does,” muttered Pew.

  “It’s not primitive,” said Kwame. Pew looked up at him. “We were the same. We prayed to spirits. Such as… spirits of buildings, and railways, and cities, as well as rivers and forests and lakes. It was comforting to think something was holding a house together, more than nails or rivets or girders.”

  “What did you do when the building was sick?” asked Pew.

  Kwame smiled gently. “We found a priest to ask it what the trouble was. And a structural engineer to do the same.” His smile faded. “Or latterly we asked only the structural engineer. And sometimes not even him…”

  “Was religion in decline on your world, then?” asked Iokan.

  “My whole world was in decline. But… yes. Less and less people went to the temples. The priests grew poor without payment for blessings. If I were a moralist — and I am not — I would say the spirits took revenge on a world that ignored them.” He shook his head. “Perhaps it is coincidence… but people had no sense of shame in the last few years. Openly kissing in public! You would have been arrested for that in my youth.”

  “And you’re not a moralist…” muttered Olivia.

  “You may sneer, but religion has a place. It teaches proper behaviour, it shows us how to have respect for the world and our betters. No one had respect for anything at the end.”

  “Oh, and did the bombs have spirits too?”

  Kwame’s look turned to exasperation. “Some priests said nuclear weapons had spirits, as a sword has a spirit. Some said they had no spirit at all and that was what was wrong with them.”

  “Well, if you don’t respect a gun, it’s liable to go off and take your hand with it, eh? Is that what happened with your bomb? The big one?”

  Kwame bristled. “I had every respect for the device.”

  “Yeah, that’s why you set the bloody thing off—”

  “Olivia,” I said. “Before you go on, I’d like to hear from Liss. She hasn’t spoken yet. Liss?”

  “Hm?” she said, surprised as always to be called on. “Oh. Well. It’s all a bit dumb, isn’t it?”

  “How so?” asked Iokan.

  “Well. It’s silly. Gods and spirits and all that stuff. It’s just superstition. It’s like these old guys from thousands of years ago and they don’t know what life’s like now, so what’s the point?”

  “Is there nothing in your world beyond normal human understanding?” asked Iokan.

  “Oh, sure! Scientists are crazy, aren’t they? I mean, who understands what goes on in their heads. One minute they’re doing all the stuff with test tubes, next thing you know they’ve got all these mutant bug things everywhere and they have to get the big guys in to clear it up. You know what I mean?”

  There was a second of pause while everyone failed to understand a word she said.

  “Doesn’t that ever happen on your world?” she asked, honestly perplexed at the stares she was getting.

  “No, Liss. Your universe is… a little unusual,” I said.

  “Oh. Well,” she shrugged with a smile.

  “I wonder…” said Iokan to the group in general. “I wonder what you would do if you met your gods? Or spirits?”

  “I’d choke the bastards,” said Olivia. “All twelve of them. And anyone who says they were good and kind and decent.”

  “…Isn’t that a little harsh?” asked Iokan.

  “No,” said Kwame. “The spirits on my world were supposed to protect us as long as we made offerings. They had cause for complaint, I suppose you could say. But in the end they did nothing.”

  “You were spared, though. Do you think they might have had anything to do with that?” asked Iokan.

  “Spared? You call this spared?” demanded Olivia. “I had to watch I don’t know how many people eaten alive and now I have to listen to you and I don’t know which is worse!”

  “But what if there was a plan? What if your survival was the point?”

  “You show me someone whose plan is to let billions of people die and I’ll show you a bastard deserves to suffer. And if I ever see one of your Anteshitters I’ll tell them that to their face.”

  Iokan’s pitying tone came back. “The Antecessors only came for us out of kindness—”

  “Well if your species is anything like you, then I suppose killing you all was a kindness…”

  Iokan paused for a moment. “And what is that supposed to mean?”

  Olivia scented that he’d finally taken offence. “Wasn’t much of a species, was it, if you’re all going to slit your wrists the first time you take some mushrooms.”

  “What…?”

  “Well, that must have been it. I bet you all started taking something and you’re all so hot on your religion you start seeing the bastards and killing yourselves. Pathetic!”

  “You think we were hallucinating?”

  “Can you prove to us you were not?” asked Kwame.

  Iokan stared back at him, then at Olivia. He seemed almost angry — but found his self-control again, and sighed. “I can see how it must look. But the Antecessors are real—”

  “Prove it,” said Olivia.

  “It can be proved.”

  “Yeh? Go on, then.”

  “There is proof on my world.”

  “Hah! Don’t think I’m going there any time soon.”

  “It will be found,” he insisted.

  “We’ll see about that, won’t we?”

  “Yes. I expect we will.”

  “And what, you’re going to put your Antewotsits on us and make us all scared? We’re not as feeble as you lot!”

  I’d had enough, and intervened before Iokan
could reply. “Okay. This was useful for a while but I think it’s gotten out of hand.” Olivia sat back in her chair. “Olivia, I know you have strong opinions but it doesn’t help to be offensive. I think you should apologise.”

  She glared at Iokan across the coffee table. “I’m so very sorry. Very, very sorry.” I’m not sure Iokan picked up her forced, insincere tone through the translation.

  “I also apologise. I won’t bring up the subject again,” he said. “But I’ll still try to help you if I can.”

  Olivia rolled her eyes. “Gods, that’s all I need…”

  “And perhaps they agree with you,” he said with a smile. Olivia gave him a cutting look in return.

  And so it went. Getting them talking was one thing. If I could get them talking without an argument breaking out, I might actually get somewhere.

  2. Patient Rooms

  While we held group sessions and individual therapies and tried our best to engage the group with various activities, much of their time was their own. Each had the right to a degree of privacy, although we never turned off the medical monitoring system as we needed to keep a full suicide watch on each of them. They were permitted to engage a limited privacy mode in their rooms — but leaving it on for more than a couple of hours would result in a knock on the door from a member of staff to see how they were. As much as we would have liked to give them full privacy, the necessities of therapy argued against it; nevertheless, a perceived break from outside attention has long been shown to be of therapeutic benefit, so we preserved it as much as we could.

  With the right to hide away from time to time, it was no surprise to find the group making their rooms comfortable, each in their own way. Each room could be configured to virtually any form they desired, which of course provided us with useful insights. Veofol wrote notes on these along with his analysis.

  * * *

  NOTES: Individual Patient Rooms

  HD y276.m5.w4.d2

  Dr. Veofol e-leas bron Jerra

  KWAME

  Kwame has used the facilities of the centre to continue a hobby he has apparently pursued for decades. He uses one of the empty rooms as a workshop, where he tinkers with electrical devices, such as radio sets and amplifiers. He needs robotic assistance for the fine work but the devices he makes function quite well, though of course his radios only detect static and digital signals, as there are no analogue radio sources on Hub. Even so, he took pleasure in showing me the decametric noise coming from electrical storms between Jupiter and Io, though he claims no skill as a radio astronomer. He says it’s simply a phenomenon well known to anyone who dabbles in radio. When I asked how he found time to be an electronics engineer as well as a politician, he said he had some training in engineering when he was in the Mutapan military, and was a hobbyist before that.

  His bedroom is set up to look like a hotel room from his world. He told me he could have made it look like a room in his Zimbabwe City house, but while he preferred something that reminded him of his world, he didn’t want anything that felt permanent. However, he certainly didn’t pick the design of a luxury hotel. The bed is very basic, with a thin mattress that doesn’t seem very comfortable. The walls have a simple and inelegant design on untextured wallpaper. The floor is of wooden boards rather than carpet, and he chose simple recessed closets rather than high quality furniture. It’s true he wasn’t President for very long, so perhaps did not have the time to become accustomed to luxury, but I fear it’s more likely that he denies himself physical comfort as part of his self-persecution.

  As for his nightmares and screaming at night, Olivia’s irritation is understandable. The policy of leaving their rooms unsoundproofed means everyone hears his night terrors. Perhaps we should look at moving him to another floor?

  LISS

  Liss has created a cocoon for herself. The bed she chose (pink) is one you can almost sink inside, and the couch from which she watches screenshows (also pink) has at least half a dozen frilly cushions (again, pink). Her remote control has a habit of disappearing in the cushions — I suggested she key the screenplayer controls into a pad, but she said she didn’t want to learn to use something else. Of course, she’s learned to configure her room quite well in order to achieve the desired level of pink, so I’m not sure why she’s so adamant on the subject.

  The screen dominates the room, and her spare time. Watching the screenshows she brought back from her world seems to be her main hobby, and the discs she has represent at least six months of back to back, uninterrupted viewing, or maybe a year and a half if she only watches them when she has free time. She’s unlikely to run out in the near future.

  She does make an effort to be sociable, though, and often tries to get the others into her room to watch something, but her choice of viewing (ranging from the soppy to the implausible, as I discovered when I sat down with her) leaves most of them cold. Pew was the only one who visited more than once, but I think this is just because he’s easily persuaded and doesn’t have to talk while they watch the shows.

  Alone among the group, she’s used her clothing allowance to its utmost limit, and acquired a small wardrobe of clothes that are often as pink as the décor, and just as difficult to look at. She also asked for a sewing kit, and happily spends some of her time in front of the screen adjusting the clothes to her taste. As much as her love for a very limited range of the spectrum hurts my eyes from time to time, it is at least a healthier outlet than watching the screen.

  At some point, we may need to remove the screen if we want her to mix properly with the others, or face up to what really happened on her world. For now, I’m not sure if removing it would help or hinder her progress, given how delusional she seems to be.

  KATIE

  Katie hasn’t set her room to anything at all. It’s completely blank — grey walls, no window and no real furniture; just a bench to sleep on, which she does rarely and never for more than two hours at a time. Otherwise she stands in the middle of the room. She does, however, use her privacy option to the letter, for exactly two hours each day, and I haven’t yet had any reason to breach the privilege.

  Her activities outside the room mainly involve physical fitness. She works out in the gym once a day, using extremely high settings on the gravity weights. I had trouble believing she could lift so much, until she gave me a brief and very technical description of the enhancements that allow such feats.

  Katie represents a very particular problem and I’m not sure this kind of therapy is appropriate for her. I suppose it comes down to how much of a machine she really is. Maybe we’ll discover more with patience.

  PEW

  Pew uses his room to study, and has it set like a dormitory room at Hub University — in fact, I think he’s copied the parameters directly. His room is very similar to one I stayed in for a year during my own studies. He has, however, edited out all the mirrors that come with the basic settings. I asked him if this was because of associations with mirrored surfaces back in the zoo; he blushed and didn’t answer, so I suspect this might be the case.

  He spends his spare time catching up with his education. He fell behind in his classes after his suicide attempt, but he’s working his way through the lectures and coursework. Apparently he’s learning about the kind of calculus that describes the motions of objects in three dimensional space and the motion of space itself in response to gravity. He describes his studies as layers of progressively finer approximations — from the basic laws of motion that describe the movement of planets, to the use of calculus to refine orbital motions, to relativity to explain the anomaly of Mercury and finally the distortions of gravity along the probability axis that mean gravity wells in one universe can subtly affect objects in another universe. My mind boggled a long time before he finished, and I think this is a problem. No one else here shares his enthusiasms, so the only thing he has in common with the rest of the group is his trauma, and even that is highly individual. Again, he’s going to be a difficult one to bring into the gro
up.

  IOKAN

  Iokan is studying, but not like Pew. He has his room set up to resemble university lodgings from his world. But for his species, a university also seems to be a religious institution, deliberately designed to avoid unnecessary distractions like comfort and heating in the pursuit of scientific inquiry. As bare as his room is — and when I say ‘bare’, I mean stone floors, concrete walls and shutters on the windows that would let in a draft if the room didn’t automatically edit that out on health grounds — he doesn’t restrict himself when it comes to technology. One entire wall is given over to a screen and a desk he stands at, or lowers and sits at if he feels unwell, though he’s very nearly healed. He mastered the operating system and interface very swiftly indeed. He’s also quick at learning languages, though nowhere near as fast as Katie. After one week of studying Interversal, he had perfect command of the grammar and a vocabulary of a thousand words. It won’t be long before he can discard the translation software.

  He has also been studying the constitution, history and actions of the IU, as was obvious from his comments in the last group session. He told me he’d waited years to see what people from other universes were like, and now he was making up for lost time. I asked him if we met his expectations. He said we didn’t; apparently we’re much better than he expected. I suggested he was flattering us, but he seemed entirely serious. I find myself wondering what exactly he was expecting.

  OLIVIA

  Olivia gave up on programming her room by herself and asked me to do it for her. She picked one of the basic ‘primitivist’ presets, with wooden furniture and a floor to ceiling window, though she insisted it have bars on it. She seems not to feel safe without some kind of protection, even if the window is fake. You may recall how she paced around when she first came here — I initially thought she was exploring, but I’m now certain she was working out where the escape routes were.