The Last Man on Earth Club

by Paul R. Hardy

  “What centre?”

  “The therapy centre? On Hub?”

  A pain struck her, a blight that twisted and palsied her face. “Hub…? Ket’erun… where is… Hub…”

  She collapsed in a heap by the edge of the stairs.

  Iokan knelt by her to help. But she snapped awake and stood back up in a smooth mechanical unfolding, her face passive once more.

  She looked down and noticed Iokan was with her. “Is there something you require?”

  I decided she was back to normal, and did not require immediate help. While we would need to look into this event and her condition, I thought the encounter with Iokan might be revealing for both of them, so I cancelled the request for medical assistance. Two floors below in the gravity tube, a pair of medics got the word and headed back down.

  Iokan took a moment to register the sudden change back to her usual self, and stood up.

  “I… came to see if you wanted any help.”

  “I do not require assistance.”

  “Well, you almost fell down the stairs a moment ago…”

  She looked around, as though she hadn’t noticed them before.

  “Thank you for your assistance,” she said.

  “Do you remember what happened…?”

  “I remember perfectly.”

  “Okay… well, I was actually trying to find you so I could apologise for what I said at dinner.”

  “No apology is necessary.”

  “I feel I should. I’ve lost friends in combat. It’s never easy.”

  She paused. “I accept your apology.”

  “Would you like to talk about it?”

  “I would not.”

  “Is there anything else you’d like to talk about?”

  And again the pause. “Yes. Please come to my room.”

  Katie turned and walked down the stairs without concern, seemingly with no memory of teetering on the edge only a minute before. She led Iokan to her room, two levels below, and let him in.

  He looked around at the unformed grey walls and the sleeping bench as Katie sat at one end. If he was at all alarmed by her sense of décor, he kept it to himself and maintained his look of concern.

  “Please sit,” she said, more like an order than an invitation.

  “Thank you.” He perched on the other end.

  “Tell me more about the Antecessors,” she said.

  “I thought you weren’t interested?”

  “I am interested.”

  “But you said they weren’t real. In fact, I think you told me they were charlatans…”

  “I may have been mistaken.”

  “Well, it’s very brave of you to admit that.”

  “No bravery was involved.”

  “Okay… so what did you want to know?”

  “What form of life were they?”

  “Oh, that’s simple enough. Electromagnetic.”

  “Please explain further.”

  “Well, as far as we could tell, they were composed of magnetic fields that held a matrix of electromagnetic radiation, which encoded their minds and allowed them to function like any other kind of intelligence. Except they could do so at the speed of light, of course.”

  “How did they reproduce?”

  “Not in the biological way. But they could spawn a new electromagnetic matrix and copy a human mind into that…”

  “Was personality data preserved?”

  “Oh, sure. They’d do it progressively, so you could feel yourself transferring without creating two of you.”

  “Was there a complete continuity of self?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Is it possible for a member of another species to become an Antecessor?”

  I zoomed closer on her. The muscles on her face had moved. There was tension in her brow; she was anxious.

  “…I’m not sure. I haven’t seen it done but I don’t see any reason why it should be species specific. As long as they understand how your mind works.”

  “I can assist with this.”

  He noticed how troubled she seemed. “Are you okay?”

  “My functions are unimpaired.”

  “You seem a bit worried.”

  “My stress levels are normal.”

  “Are you sure? You look worried to me.”

  “I experience occasional emotional disturbance.”

  “Is that what happened on the stairs?”

  She paused, and her brow got as far as actually furrowing.

  “Katie?” he asked, still concerned.

  “Yes. That is what happened on the stairs. Would you be willing to assist me?”

  “I’d be glad to. What do you need?”

  She reached for the wall and activated a control. Privacy descended, and my ability to observe was curtailed. But it was very informative. Was she having flashbacks when she spaced out, or was something else happening? I resolved to look further into the matter.

  3. On Call

  Iokan and Katie stayed in her room for another half an hour, and Iokan went back to his own room afterwards, looking almost troubled. There was nothing further to learn from his demeanour, and the rest of the group were retiring for the night. With little else to do, I checked the apocalypse watch: the ice-bound world of Steteryn still refused our help; the incidence of live births on Llorissa had risen despite the radiation, giving them renewed hope; a splintered comet group had been observed only a week away from the orbit of Schviensever, and they were scrambling every ship they had to defend the world, but would probably pull through; and the flares emanating from Ardëe’s sun were still building despite scientific predictions to the contrary. Even so, there was no immediate danger, and no new worlds had been added to the list.

  After half an hour perusing such tedious information, I stopped avoiding what I really needed to do, and called Bell. But all I got was a message telling anyone who rang that he’d gone back to his homeworld for a meeting and would be gone for several weeks. I wasn’t sure which was worse: him not having the decency to tell me he was going, or my own relief at not having to have an argument.

  With everyone in their beds, I retired to my own room but couldn’t sleep; I lay there and wondered whether Bell would come back to me when he returned.

  At three in the morning, Kwame awoke screaming from a nightmare.

  The duty nurse got there first, and was helping him up from the floor where he’d fallen, still hyperventilating and covered in sweat. His hands shuddered, uncontrollably; the symptoms of neural damage only got worse with distress. It made me appreciate exactly how much self-control he had to exercise on a daily basis.

  “Was it the same?” I asked.

  “The… same,” he said, between heavy gasps.

  “Okay, let’s get you downstairs and we’ll have a cup of tea.”

  He nodded as best he could through the shakes. With the help of the duty nurse, we got him into a dressing gown and a chair and took him down to the common room. “Would you like to talk about it?” I asked.

  “No,” he said, clutching his non-spill cup with all the self-control he could manage.

  “Do you mind discussing it tomorrow?”

  “You should… not concern… yourself.”

  “I’d like to help,” I said. “You can’t keep going through this every night.”

  “Not… now. Please. Not now.”

  It was a poor time to start a therapy session, so I left it at that. And anyway, I had little choice; a chime in my ear called me elsewhere. I left Kwame with the nurse and paid a visit to the security manager, Lomeva Sisse, in her room of screens and monitors haunted by the scent of triple strength coffee, from where she could see every little bit of nothing happening across the centre in the middle of the night. She was grimly concerned, as she usually was.

  “Somebody broke in,” she said.

  “What?”

  “About an hour ago. Look.” Lomeva pulled up monitor video for the perimeter, backgrounding everything else, and showed
me something I couldn’t even see until she enhanced the image. High among the trees, at the edge of the picture, a shadow leapt among the branches, avoiding every barrier.

  “Is that a monkey? Or an ape or something?”

  “Only apes on this planet are human. So’s that.”

  “Haven’t we got alarms out there? And the energy barrier?”

  “Went over them. And knew exactly where to do it as well. That sector’s a pain to cover. No rivers, no clearings, no actual damn perimeter of any kind.”

  “So, whoever that is, is still here?”

  “That’s the sum of it.”

  “Shouldn’t we be in lockdown?”

  “Nuh-uh. Take a look at four hours earlier.” Lomeva wound the footage back, and showed the same place earlier in the night: another human figure darted through the treetops, in the opposite direction. “Automatic systems didn’t pick it up that time. I said we were underbudget for security. And this is what we get.”

  “Okay. Hang on. So someone left. And then someone came in. Would that be the same person?”

  “I’d bet on it. And I’m thinking we won’t find full coverage on all the patients for the evening.”

  “You think that or you know that?”

  “I know that. The crybaby, the cyborg, the wacko and the old woman were all in their rooms, and they all had privacy on. Somebody hacked the shit out of our systems because it stayed on for four hours and nobody noticed. The same four hours this person was missing. What are you going to do about it?”

  “Okay, okay, let me think for a moment…” If Hub Security found out about this, they’d move us all to a secure facility somewhere underground in a heartbeat, and that wouldn’t help therapy in the least. “So let’s say one of the patients is getting out. How far can they get?”

  “Depends on whether or not anyone was helping.”

  “Okay. Let’s say there wasn’t. What’s inside two hour’s foot travel?”

  “There’s the weather station on Yayne Peak. But it’s unmanned.”

  “So they don’t have any transport there?”

  She closed her eyes in frustration. “Yeah. Dammit. They’ve got a one-person sled for emergencies.” She took a pad and pulled records for the Yayne Peak weather station up on a screen. “Yeah. Same thing. No records for about three hours. Except…” She homed in on the details for the one-person sled. “The sled doesn’t think it’s gone anywhere but it’s recharging as if it had. And that much power loss…” She ran a calculation. “Hundred and twenty kilometres travel, give or take. Whoever it was went to Hub Metro.”

  “How long would they have been there?”

  “Not long. The sled’s not fast. Couldn’t have been there more than ten, fifteen minutes at most before they came back.”

  “Not much time to do anything.”

  “Depends on what they wanted to do. I’ll have to search their rooms.”

  “No. Not yet.”

  “What…?”

  “If they can get out this easily, they can escape any time they like. I don’t want to scare them off. Let me see… they’ve all got individual therapy over the next couple of days. I’ll see if anything comes up in the sessions.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then I’ll decide.”

  4. Kwame

  Kwame was the first in my office the next day. I could have scheduled him later, but I wanted the nightmare fresh in his mind. He’d refused sedatives and hadn’t slept, so he was in a bad way: red-eyed and trembling, hunched over his coffee, speaking even more slowly and hesitantly than he usually did.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked.

  “I have… been better,” he said.

  “Do you remember anything from last night?”

  “No. Please… do not ask me…”

  “If we don’t look into it, Kwame, it’ll always be like this. I know you’re strong enough to face up to this but I know it’s difficult as well. We’ll take it one step at a time.”

  He sat there, exhausted, too tense to relax. He wasn’t himself; but since he refused all attempts at therapy when he was, this was the best time to talk to him. After a few moments of thinking about it, he nodded. “What do you… want me to do?”

  “I know you can’t remember anything concrete,” I said, “but do you remember how it felt?”

  He closed his eyes to control a shudder. “I remember.”

  “Can you tell me?”

  His eyes started open, and he tried to speak but couldn’t get the words out. “I… I… I cannot.”

  Well, I had a few more techniques at hand. “Let me try something else. I’m going to turn the lights down, okay?”

  “Very… well.”

  I dialled the lights down on a pad until the room was comfortably dim, and switched off the outdoor scene so the wall became black and indistinct.

  “I’m going to put some lights on the wall. I’d like you to look at them.”

  “Is this… hypnosis?”

  “No, not at all. It’s just a distraction. It keeps part of the visual cortex busy, and since that’s where a lot of the problems are coming from, it makes it easier to talk about it. Shall we give it a try?”

  “Yes.”

  I activated the program, and coloured lights pulsed in slow, gentle patterns on the wall. As hypnotic and calming as it felt, there was no danger of a trance resulting.

  “So you had another bad dream last night.”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you tell me what you felt?”

  He stared into the lights. “I… guilt. I felt… guilty…”

  “Why did you feel guilty?”

  “I… left someone.”

  “Left them where?”

  “To… die. She died!”

  “Your wife?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did you leave her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What happened?”

  “I… I made a choice.”

  “You made a choice?”

  “Her or me…”

  “What happened?”

  “I… I left her… to die… I wanted… her to die… instead of me…”

  The non-spill cup dropped to the floor. His whole body arched, as though fighting against some kind of restraint. His eyes stared wide with pleading and horror. His arms slipped behind his back, and his wrists crossed as though bound together.

  “Kwame?” He didn’t reply. “Kwame. Can you hear me?”

  He was having a flashback. I was sure of it. I switched off the program and dialled the lighting back up. He couldn’t see the change; only the horror from years ago that he could not escape. It was pointless to try and snap him out of it. PTSD sufferers can be violent in the midst of flashbacks, depending on what they see. At length he relaxed, his arms were released from their imaginary restraint, and he seemed surprised to see the darkness gone.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “You had a flashback,” I said.

  “I do not remember…”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t want that to happen.”

  “It… happens anyway.”

  “I think we can help you.”

  “With more of this?”

  “No. Until we know what happened, this won’t help. You need to be able to get hold of these memories when you’re awake.”

  “You… still want to read my mind.”

  “Yes. If you’ll let us.”

  He looked down, pressing his shaking hands together. “What do you need me to do?”

  “We have to calibrate the scanners to your visual cortex. There would be some tests with a neurologist. It’ll take a while to get it right.”

  “Very well.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I have nothing else to do.”

  “Did you want to talk about the legal process, while we’re here?”

  “There is no legal process. Is there?”

  “Not for some time, I’m afraid.”
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br />   “Then I have nothing else to do.” He was approaching therapy with resignation; far from perfect, but better than no approach at all.

  5. Liss

  Liss had her perky face back on as she bounced into an easy chair. She’d made a special effort with her outfit today, a short dress embroidered with hundreds of pink hearts in an interlocking pattern, only slightly less alarming than the bright pink tights or the heart-cluster earrings. “Hi!”

  “How are you feeling today? Better?”

  “Uh-huh!”

  “You’re sure you’re okay? You seemed a little stressed at the meal…”

  “Oh, that’s just Olivia, you know what she’s like…”

  “Nothing else? Obviously you weren’t really having a period, so I have to ask, I’m afraid.” She was on my list of suspects for the breakout — she was physically capable, given the inherent abilities of her species.

  “Nope!” she shrugged with a beaming smile. Physically capable of breaking out? Certainly. Psychologically capable? Less likely. And there was virtually no chance of her having the technical skill to get past our security systems.

  “I’d like to talk today about what happened at Kintrex.”

  “Oh,” she said, her face falling.

  “Is that okay?”

  “I s’pose.”

  “You had quite a reaction.”

  “Guess I did. Sorry.”

  “There’s nothing to be sorry about. But you have seemed a bit down in the mouth since then.”

  She sighed massively, turning it into a pout. “They get on my nerves.”

  “The others?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is that the only reason?”

  “I dunno.”

  “I’m wondering if you’ve been feeling unhappy about what you saw at the ruins.”

  She looked down at the coffee table. “Maybe. A little.”

  “Why was that?”

  “It was a crappy place.”

  “It reminded you of something, didn’t it?”

  She shook her head. “Not really.”

  “That’s not what you said when you were there. You said it was a call centre. And you knew because you used to work in similar kind of place.”

  “Well, maybe a bit.”

  “Can you tell me about the call centre you worked at?”