The Last Man on Earth Club

by Paul R. Hardy

  Iokan smiled as he saw Kwame coming in, and Kwame couldn’t help a scowl. “Good evening,” said Iokan.

  “Yes. Good evening,” replied Kwame.

  “Haven’t seen you much recently…”

  “I have had much on my mind.”

  “Well, if you want to unburden yourself, you only have to ask.”

  “I… No. It is a private matter.”

  Iokan wasn’t ready to give up yet. “Well… how about a game?”

  Kwame turned and paused. “Yes. A game would be good. I need some… distraction.”

  “A board game, perhaps?”

  “No. Something a little more…”

  “Exciting?”

  Kwame thought about it. “Not… too exciting.”

  “No shooting games then.”

  “No.”

  “A strategy game?”

  “Yes. Something that will take a while.”

  “I’ve been wanting to try Brentervile…”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a historical game, apparently. Something to do with a war between machines and humans when they met on an empty planet. It lasted for hundreds of years, or so I’m told.”

  “How do you play?”

  “It’s a real time strategy game. You collect resources, build up your forces, and command them in battle.”

  “It sounds like a board game.”

  “It’s a bit more exciting when it happens in real time.”

  “I see. Which sides can we take?”

  “We don’t have to take sides. We can work together against the computer, if you like.”

  “I… yes. Let us do that.”

  Iokan set the game up and they selected co-operative mode. The game was a very simplified model of the actual war, designed to present an AI/Human conflict as an entertaining experience. In reality, millions had been killed before the entire planet had to be abandoned, but the popularity of the game did at least remind people of the horrible lesson of Brentervile and the risks of AI/Human wars.

  Iokan moved the game to one of the walls. “Do you want the eastern or western sector?” he asked.

  “Eastern.”

  “Any preference for unit colour?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll give you green, then. I’m blue, and the enemy are red. Do you want to play from a pad, or do you want to use the wall?”

  “The wall. I cannot use pads.”

  “Of course…” Iokan put aside the pad he’d been using to set up the system, and called up his own on-wall controls to finish setup. He selected the last few options and hit the start button. “Okay. We’re good to go.”

  The game map glowed into position on the wall, surrounded by control icons and status readouts. Iokan attended to his own side while Kwame looked across the screen, overwhelmed with information.

  “You’ll want to set up some mines over there by the forest — you see where the geology overlay says there’s heavy metal deposits?” said Iokan.

  “I see it. How do I…?”

  “Drag the control board over. There? You see this?” Iokan demonstrated by pulling the control board image across the map on his side, and Kwame did the same.

  “Ah. And I pull the mine from the list?”

  “That’s it.”

  Kwame dragged a mine icon from the control board and set it up in a favourable spot. The icons were large enough for his disability not to be a problem, and he and Iokan worked to build their base and a line of defence.

  “Where are the enemy?” asked Kwame.

  “They’ll be with us soon enough,” said Iokan. “You should build a fort on the edge of that glacier. They’ll use that to outflank us otherwise.”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “So what’s been bothering you?”

  “I am fine.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. I am fine.” But his brow was furrowed as he said it. “Should you not place something there?”

  Iokan looked; Kwame indicated a gap in the defensive line, conspicuously undefended. “That’s the killzone. We should leave that.”

  “Why?”

  Iokan gave him a puzzled look. “You’re a military man. You know.”

  Kwame looked confused. “I do not…”

  “If we leave a gap in the defences, it tempts the enemy to attack. Then you make sure there’s enough firepower behind the line to eliminate anything that gets through. It’s elementary strategy for a fixed defence, all the way back to castle sieges. The computer will probably see through it but it’s worth a try. You’re sure you’ve never heard of this?”

  “It… you see… the thing is, I do not remember very much of my training.”

  “Oh. It’s one of those things that…”

  “Yes. One of those things that has gone.” Kwame looked troubled again. Iokan turned back to the wall and his preparations, but looked back to Kwame with curiosity.

  “Have you lost everything to do with your military experience?”

  “I… remember what it was like to be a soldier. I do not remember what I did. And that is…” Kwame struggled for a moment, then looked at Iokan. “If my memories vanish, did they really happen?”

  “That’s an interesting philosophical question.”

  “I remember facts about some things in my life, but I do not remember the events. At other times, I remember what it felt like to be there but I cannot recall what happened…”

  “And they can’t look inside your brain, of course…”

  “They did! They looked in my mind. But I… I do not…”

  Iokan turned his full attention to Kwame and spoke gently. “What did they see?” He failed to notice the enemy units infiltrating down from the top of the screen.

  Kwame paused there, grasping and desperate for words. “What if you knew there was something wrong with your memory? How could you tell?”

  “Well, I suppose I would take new brain scans and compare them with older scans. I had that done to me a few times.”

  “What if you have no older scans?”

  “Then you bring in people who knew you before and take their testimony.”

  “What if they are all dead?”

  “But they did scan your mind? Right?”

  “What if you do not trust them?”

  “Oh. I see.”

  “I have been trying to think, to work out a test, a way to be sure my memory has failed… will you help me?”

  “Of course! What can I do?”

  “I think I know a way to test myself.”

  “Okay.”

  “I need you to… kiss me.”

  Kwame said it with disgust. Iokan blinked. Enemy ground units found the outer defences on the wall beside them. Kwame steeled himself for Iokan’s response.

  “Can you say that again?” asked Iokan.

  “I need you to kiss me.”

  “…I was under the impression that your world was, well…”

  “A moral world. Yes.”

  “I meant homophobic.”

  “If you wish to call it that.”

  “And you want me to kiss you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I do not know what is real! They showed me things in my dreams that were wrong, simply wrong! I must know!”

  “You think you’ll remember something if I kiss you?”

  “I do not know.”

  Iokan shrugged. “Well, if it’s what you want. How do you want me to kiss you?”

  “Do not make fun of me. Just do it.”

  Iokan took a step closer. Kwame steeled himself like a man about to be punched in the face. “You should really relax. It won’t hurt.” Kwame nodded but was still tense. Iokan sighed, and took him by the shoulders. “This is a very brave thing to do, Kwame. I respect you for that.” Kwame relaxed, surprised. Iokan took his moment and kissed him before he could react.

  Kwame’s eyes went wide in outrage; he raised his arms, seemingly to grab Iokan
and push him away. But the outrage fled. Iokan moved back for a moment; the first kiss had been gentle, no more than a meeting of lips. But Iokan saw a puzzlement in Kwame’s eyes, and went in again. Kwame’s hands fell away and he surrendered to the kiss.

  Iokan stepped away. “Did that tell you anything?”

  But Kwame didn’t answer. He didn’t even seem to hear the question. Tears flooded his cheeks as he stared through Iokan without seeing him. His arms moved behind his back, and his wrists crossed as though bound.

  “Kwame?” But Kwame did not hear. “Kwame, are you in there? Oh, damn it…”

  Iokan went to raise the alarm as the enemy on the wall overran the carefully planned defences.

  7. Olivia & Pew

  Pew had spent the day avoiding everyone, but slunk outside to find Olivia after she’d been slashing dead stems on beanstalks for half an hour.

  “What do you want?” she muttered as she saw him.

  “Um,” he said.

  “Just ‘um’? Is that it?”

  “Well, er…”

  “And ‘er’ as well, who's ‘er’ when she’s at home?”

  “What?”

  He looked confused. She sighed. “Let me have a look at those hands.”

  He held them out, wrapped in a transparent healer that would bring them back to normal within a couple of days. “Well you got lucky there, didn’t you? Try that on my world and you’d have an infection and be dead in a month. Does it still hurt?”

  “No…”

  “Well it should hurt! That’s a damn stupid thing to do! You know damn well that stuff can slice right through you!”

  “Yes.”

  “So why do it, for gods’ sake?”

  He couldn’t answer. He looked at her, appealing for understanding. She took it in for a moment and gave him a shrewd look back. “So it’s like that, is it? Your life’s so miserable you’d rather cut yourself?”

  “Something… like that.”

  “You’re all the bloody same…” she muttered.

  “What?”

  “I’ll never understand it. All right, you’re the last survivor and everyone you know is dead, but why do you need to go and make it worse?”

  “I—”

  “It’s hard to carry on, I know it’s hard, but you’ve got to.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh don’t you give me that! I had ten years listening to that and I’m sick of it!”

  “You don’t understand…”

  “And they said that and all.” She took on a mocking tone. “‘You don’t understand! I can’t take it any more! Just let me kill myself!’ Well, rubbish! If I could take it, you can bloody take it!”

  “But how…”

  “What do you mean, how?”

  “How did you do it…?”

  “I had to! I had children! And fifty other people I was responsible for! I had to carry on or no one would, because they were all like you, giving up at the first sign of trouble!”

  “But I don’t have any of that…”

  “You’re all the same. I told my children not to go off outside the station, I told them it wasn’t safe, but they went anyway…” Frustration made her voice ragged.

  “I don’t understand…”

  “Everyone gives up. Everyone kills themselves. And you’re going to do it as well…”

  “I’m not!”

  “You want to.”

  “I…”

  “Yeh, you want to. None of us want to live, there’s nothing left to live for, the only reason I’m not in my grave is because they won’t let me…”

  Pew was puzzled by her sudden turnabout. “But I thought you said you always carried on…?”

  She didn’t notice she was weeping. “Well it’s not true! Why do you want to go and listen to me for, anyway? First thing I did when they found me was try and kill myself! Do you want to know why? Because everything’s so bloody easy for them, I mean look at this place! My whole planet’s dead and your species is gone and what’s it for? Nobody even bloody noticed!”

  “You… you tried to kill yourself?”

  “…Yeh.” She looked uncomfortable and far from proud.

  “I thought you were…”

  “You thought I was stronger than you? Is that it?”

  “But why…”

  “They won’t let me do it. Not unless I do their damn therapy.”

  He slumped down to the earth. “They won’t let us go. That’s all I want. I just want it over.”

  “That’s what they said.”

  “Who?”

  “My children.”

  “They were lucky.”

  “No they weren’t. They came back. You understand me? They came back.”

  He looked up at her, realising what she meant. “I’m sorry…”

  “Don’t you start. That’s what Asha keeps saying. She’s always bloody sorry.”

  “It must have been terrible…”

  “It was.” She knelt by him in the mud. “I won’t tell you anything else. You’ve heard it all. You’re a grown man. If you have to die, then do it, if you can find a way…”

  “But how?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve tried often enough.”

  “If… if you think of a way… will you let me know how?”

  Tears came from both their eyes as she nodded. “And you let me know, if you figure out something.” He nodded in return. She reached out to give him a hug. He flinched with his usual aversion to physical contact, but overcame it and let her put his head into her shoulder.

  “You’re a good lad,” she said. She didn’t notice his hand trembling as she pulled back a little to kiss him on the forehead like a devoted mother.

  Some part of Pew’s brain didn’t read it that way. His eyes bulged in horror, his hands froze like claws and he pushed away from her. “No! NO!” he yelled.

  “What’s the bloody matter now—” she asked, exasperated, not realising what was plain when I reviewed the video later: Pew was having a flashback to some terrible event, and responded as he did when the trauma first happened. He attacked.

  His hands flew for her throat, and she was quickly pinned down with him on top of her, struggling to pull his hands away as he snarled like a beast. But murder was not his intent. He let go of her throat with one hand and ripped open the front of her work shirt, revealing her underwear.

  Her eyes went a little wider as she realised what he was doing. The surprise disarmed her, one hand falling aside — to land on a trowel. As he pulled at more of her clothes, she brought the trowel up to club him on the side of the head. He fell away, dazed.

  Veofol and half a dozen staff were already running to them as she struggled away from him, coughing from a bruised throat, pulling her shirt back together. Pew was swiftly apprehended and sedated. Olivia was left bewildered and angry, refusing the help of a nurse until Veofol insisted.

  8. Asha

  Two major crises in one evening kept the staff very busy. Olivia needed minor medical attention, but far more important was the betrayal of trust. Veofol spent some time with her explaining how PTSD flashbacks work, and how they can lead to violent behaviour in otherwise placid people. Olivia accepted our diagnosis as a variant of the necrotic hysteria she knew from her own world. But we could not completely allay her suspicions; if Pew was traumatised by the memory of tearing off a woman’s clothes with the intent of rape, what did that say about him? We could get nothing from him to indicate what he had experienced during the flashback. Shame silenced him.

  Kwame, too, had seen something that left him ashamed but also very confused. He retreated to his room again and rejected all offers of assistance. At least we had no serious trouble with Elsbet, but, like the others, she refused to speak to us, and we could only guess what she might have remembered about Katie, other than that it was clearly traumatic.

  Added to all these disruptions was the impending return of Liss, which we had scheduled for the next day along with a group therapy sessio
n. This would be delicate, but I hoped for a welcome distraction that would relieve pressure on the group as they concentrated on the mystery of her actions.

  I found myself exhausted at the end of the day, working far past my usual hours even after Veofol should have been left alone to handle the night shift. The group must have been quiet, because he came to see me, very clearly concerned and asking how I was.

  “I’m fine,” I protested, knowing very well that I didn’t look it.

  “Are you sure? I don’t remember you working these hours with the last group…”

  “Hah. The last group were a breeze, compared to this.” I leaned back in my chair. But he still looked concerned. “Is something up?”

  He struggled to find words to express his concern.

  “Is it Olivia?” I asked. “Is she complaining?”

  “No, no.”

  “Pew? Kwame?” He shook his head. “Elsbet? Has she said anything?”

  “She’s not talking to anyone.”

  “Then what is it?”

  He sighed. “How’s Bell?”

  I closed my eyes for a moment, and rubbed my temples. “He’s fine.”

  “I was checking the records on Olivia. She overheard something.”

  “Something, yes.” And I hadn’t spoken to Bell since the call that afternoon.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “I don’t need a therapist, Veofol.”

  “No, of course — but you are okay? Aren’t you?”

  I realised it then: he was sitting by me, full of honest concern, full of kindness. No arguments, no domestic squabbles. And he was very beautiful. All I had to do was pull him close, and he wouldn’t say no, I could just start with a kiss…

  The moment passed. I had responsibilities, duties, and a man I couldn’t run away from. I stood up.

  “You should check on Pew.”

  He stood as well. I don’t know if he even realised what had been going through my mind.

  “I’ll do that. Um, don’t work too hard.”

  “I won’t. Thanks.”

  He went, and I crumpled back down into a chair. Somewhere back in town, Bell was getting ready to leave me. I could call him and have that serious conversation about our relationship — but that would end up being a serious conversation about who was going to move out and when. Something else was required, something impulsive, less rational.