The Last Man on Earth Club

by Paul R. Hardy

  I called Bell’s favourite restaurant, which offered authentic food from his homeworld. He’d only just been there, but it couldn’t hurt to meet him in a place he was comfortable with. I reserved a table for the following evening. Veofol was scheduled to be on call that night, so I was safe to abandon the group for a few hours. Bell was surprised by my invitation, but agreed to come after I couched it in suitably apologetic (and grovelling) terms.

  PART NINE — ENEMIES

  1. Group

  The group gathered for therapy the next day in a mood of general glowering silence. Elsbet simmered at the edge. Iokan was unusually quiet. Olivia wasn’t talking to Pew, and Pew was hardly able to talk in the first place. Kwame seemed to have forgotten the function of speech entirely.

  “Good morning everyone,” I said to the dejected circle. “Before we get started, I want to say I know we all had something of a rough night. I’m going to be seeing most of you during the day to talk it over, but I don’t think any permanent harm was done. You’re all making good progress in therapy and I don’t want to see that go to waste because you’ve been hitting a few bumps in the road. So, with that in mind, I’d like to move on to the main subject of today’s session…”

  I tapped a control on my pad. The door opened, and Liss came in. Not the fragile pink porcelain they all knew from before, but the troubled woman she really was, wearing rough jeans and a black t-shirt without a single heart on it. “Hello,” she said.

  “Who’s she?” asked Elsbet.

  “That’s Liss,” said Iokan.

  “Oh, she’s the terrifying infiltrator? Huh,” sneered Elsbet.

  Liss gave her a frowning look as she sat down. She’d been informed of the change of personality, but hadn’t been prepared for the sudden venom.

  I went on. “Liss has chosen to come back to the group, and of course you all agreed you’d be happy with that—”

  “I didn’t agree to anything,” muttered Olivia.

  “And I didn’t agree to you being a bitch but you’re still doing it,” said Liss. Olivia went wide-eyed as though slapped in the face.

  “Now you listen here—”

  “Shove it up your ass.”

  “Don’t you talk to me like that—”

  “I’ll talk any way I like—”

  “Oh, shut up!” shouted Elsbet, silencing both of them.

  Iokan noticed Liss’s stunned look. “Things have… changed a little since you went away.”

  “Right…” said Liss.

  “I think the best thing to do is let Liss tell you her story, and have a discussion afterwards. How does that sound?” I asked.

  “That sounds like an excellent idea,” said Iokan.

  “Some things haven’t changed,” said Liss. Iokan smiled, but his eyes were uncertain.

  “Well out with it then!” said Olivia. “Let’s hear your excuses. I haven’t got all day to sit around listening to you lying again…”

  “Olivia. Let her talk, please,” I said. Olivia grumped and I went on. “Liss? Perhaps you could start by telling us about your old job?”

  “I’m an office manager,” said Liss.

  “I meant the other job.”

  “Oh. That.” She sighed. “When I was younger… I was one of the people who was supposed to save the world.”

  That got the attention of even the most dejected members of the group.

  “Fucked that one up, didn’t you?” said Elsbet.

  “What is your problem?” demanded Liss.

  I jumped in. “I’m sorry, Liss, it’s a bit complicated. Elsbet, please restrain yourself. I know things are difficult but there’s no need to take it out on Liss.” Elsbet just stared ahead, sneering. “Liss, can you go on? You said it was your job to save the world?”

  “Yeah. Well. That was a long time ago. I was working in an office when the world ended. It wasn’t my job then.”

  “I’m not sure I understand,” said Iokan. “How were you supposed to save the world?”

  “Mostly by hitting people in the face.”

  The sarcastic tone baffled him. “I… must admit that never occurred to me as an option.”

  “How does one save the world by hitting people?” asked Kwame.

  “It depends who you hit.”

  “Hang on, hang on!” said Olivia. “How can you be going around hitting people? There’s nothing to you! You’d fall over in a stiff breeze…”

  Liss sighed again. “I have powers.”

  “What, electrical power? Power of attorney? What do you mean?”

  “You want me to show you?”

  “Go ahead, give us all a laugh, why not…”

  Liss got to her feet with a little sneer edging her lips. “Liss, what are you intending to do?” I asked.

  “I’m not going to break anything,” she said.

  “I’d prefer to know,” I replied.

  Liss walked behind the circle of chairs. “I’m just going to pick a chair up.” She squatted behind Olivia’s chair and lifted both it and Olivia two metres up. Olivia yelped with shock.

  “Put me down! Put me down!” yelped Olivia, squirming in the chair and trying to hang on.

  “Liss, that’s enough, put her down!” I insisted.

  “Really? I could do this all day if I wanted,” she said.

  “Put me down!” shouted Olivia.

  “Put her down this instant!” I demanded.

  “Okay,” said Liss with a smile, and dropped the chair. Olivia bounced as it hit the floor and clung onto the arms.

  Liss sat down with a cynical smile. “Any questions?”

  “You’re posthuman,” said Iokan.

  “No. I’ve got powers.”

  “Did you have surgery?”

  “No, I was born like this.”

  “Was there anyone else…?”

  “Yes. Fifty per cent of the population.”

  “Ancients… fifty per cent like you?”

  “Hah! No. A lot of them were more powerful than me.”

  “How could a species like yours be killed…?” asked Kwame.

  “They burned.”

  “To the dust?” asked Iokan.

  “Yes. To ash. That was all true.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “I don’t know. It was someone from another universe.”

  Iokan was intent now, deeply concerned in a way I hadn’t quite seen before. “Who?” he asked.

  “If I knew that, I wouldn’t have had to come here.” Iokan sat back, troubled.

  Olivia had gotten her breath back. “All right. So you’re bloody superwoman. Why did you lie to us?”

  “I’m investigating. I was investigating. I don’t know what I’m doing now.”

  “You infiltrated,” said Elsbet.

  “I went undercover.”

  “Will you kill them?” Elsbet looked at Liss with an intensity that Liss seemed to find disturbing.

  “I… I don’t know. I don’t even know who it is.”

  “So you’re just going to let them get away with it,” said Elsbet with disgust.

  “No. I did kill someone,” said Liss.

  “You killed one of them?” asked Pew, with something like awe.

  “Yes.”

  “Bully for you. Did it make you feel better?” asked Olivia, contemptuous.

  “No.”

  “There! You see? That’s a lesson for you!” said Olivia to Pew. Pew withdrew back into his chair.

  “What happened?” asked Iokan, still concerned.

  “I found the scientist who set it off. I lost my temper.”

  Iokan nodded. “I have to say I find that understandable, given the circumstances.”

  “It was stupid. I should have questioned him. I’d have found out where he got the technology from. All I got instead was him mumbling about aliens and parallel worlds.”

  “You’re sure of that? Someone from a parallel universe?”

  “Yeah. Why do you think I’m here?”

  �
��There’s no way you could be mistaken?”

  “I checked it out. There’s nothing else it could be.”

  “I see…” Iokan still looked troubled.

  “And you thought it was this lot that did it?” asked Olivia. “Hah!”

  “Yeah, I figured that out, thanks.”

  “That’s hilarious. You’re hunting for the people who killed your whole planet and you thought it was the most limp-wristed, weak-minded, lily-livered excuses for human beings in the multiverse?” She dissolved into cackles.

  Liss rounded on her. “Well obviously I should have asked for help from your species.”

  “And what do you mean by that?”

  “You wouldn’t have been much use, would you? Couldn’t even figure out proper antibiotics. No wonder you all died.”

  “We didn’t have your advantages.”

  “No. You got all your food infected and killed yourselves. Obviously we’ve got something to learn from you.”

  “You take that back.”

  “No.”

  “Olivia. Liss,” I said. “Let’s dial it back, shall we? This is a therapy session, after all.”

  “Of course,” said Liss. “I’m very sorry.” Olivia sat back in her chair, not mollified in the slightest.

  “I for one would like to say that I think you’re very brave,” said Iokan. “Fighting enemies from another universe is hardly the action of a coward. But I do have a question…”

  “Okay,” said Liss.

  “Why you?”

  Liss sighed. “Because I was the only one left! When the computers realised everyone was gone, they looked for survivors. When they found me, they put me in charge of the world and gave me the resources to find the people who did it.”

  “I do not think that is the important question,” said Kwame.

  “Go on, then,” said Liss.

  “How did you survive?”

  “I don’t know. I told you that before.”

  “I find that very troubling.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe you’re the one who did it,” said Elsbet.

  “What…?” said Liss, shocked.

  “You survived. Nobody else did. Maybe you killed them all.”

  “I don’t think that’s the case, Elsbet,” I said. “Security have gone to a lot of trouble to make sure Liss is telling the truth.”

  “That’s right. I gave them access codes. They know everything,” said Liss.

  “And yet no one knows why you survived,” said Kwame.

  “What, you think I’m hiding something?”

  “Memories can be changed. You would not even know if you were hiding something. How can we trust you?”

  “We’ve checked this,” I said. “There are no signs of tampering in Liss’s brain.”

  “Unless the techniques used were beyond the level of your scientific understanding.”

  Iokan interjected: “Kwame, if that’s the case, any of us could be hiding some terrible secret. You could have some horrible past we don’t know about…” Kwame flinched.

  “I am not — I do not have such a — a —” Kwame stuttered and stalled.

  “Kwame. Slow down. Take a breath,” I said.

  Kwame stopped trying to talk and breathed carefully for a few seconds before continuing. “All I would like to say is this: we cannot trust this woman. She has lied to all of us. She cannot tell us why she survived and billions of others did not. We cannot trust her.”

  “That’s not very charitable,” said Iokan. “I think she’s doing more than any of us to actually do something about the end of her world.”

  “Wouldn’t be hard to do more than you, would it?” muttered Olivia.

  Elsbet ignored them. “Have you given up?” she asked.

  “No,” said Liss.

  “Then why are you here?”

  “I…” Liss couldn’t quite answer.

  “You have a mission.”

  Liss looked back at her. “No. I can’t. I just can’t…” She shook her head and looked down. “I’m not the right person. I’m supposed to be an office manager. I don’t know how to find them…”

  “That doesn’t matter! You have a duty!”

  “Elsbet,” I said, “Liss still has some difficulties, the same as the rest of you. She’s lost her whole world and she needs our help.”

  “She has a mission!”

  “That’s up to her, Elsbet.”

  Elsbet gave me a boiling stare. Then looked aside at all the others looking back at her, and let it go.

  “Does anyone else have anything to add?” I asked. None of them did, not even Iokan. I have to admit to being disappointed in the group’s reaction, but I couldn’t force them to get on with each other, and trying too hard would make it worse.

  2. Kwame

  As soon as he could, Kwame went back to his room. I found him in the corner, legs drawn up, head on his knees. I took his chair from behind his desk and sat down facing him.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” I asked.

  “I do not,” he said.

  “I don’t mean last night. I mean the group session. You were very hard on Liss.”

  “I do not know who she is.”

  “She’s exactly who she was before. She’s lost her world and needs our help.”

  “Nothing is what it was before.”

  He fell silent.

  “You had a flashback last night, didn’t you?” I asked.

  “I am sure you already know that.”

  “Do you remember anything?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you tell me what it was?”

  “I saw him.”

  “The man in your dreams?”

  He laughed. “The man in my dreams. The man of my dreams!” His laughter turned to weeping and he waved me away. “Just leave me alone.”

  “Kwame—”

  “Just go.”

  “If that’s what you want. But if you need to talk to someone, please, just come and see me. Don’t stay in here all day.”

  “Will you just go?” He looked up at me, pleading with his eyes. I left him to it.

  3. Iokan

  My next job for the day was to deal with Iokan’s tendency to pretend to be a therapist, which was now causing actual harm. I called him to my office.

  “But this is why I’m here,” he complained.

  “No, Iokan, this is why I’m here. You’re here for therapy.”

  “But there’s nothing wrong with me. I’m supposed to help people!”

  “And how has that been going?”

  He paused for a moment. “Not perfectly, I have to admit, but—”

  “Can you point to any successes?”

  “I’ve… tried to support people in any way I can.”

  “That’s the problem, Iokan. You’ve been giving everyone exactly what they say they want. But true therapy isn’t about that. Dysfunctional people often don’t want what they need to get better.”

  He thought about that, and sighed. “Well, I suppose so…”

  “I don’t think a kiss was what Kwame actually needed, was it?” Iokan’s shoulders fell. “Look, I understand what you did, but if he’d gone to a trained therapist, we would have dealt with his problem much more carefully. Instead, he’s even more traumatised than he was before.”

  “I never intended to hurt anyone…”

  “I know, Iokan. I know you believe you’re here to help. But you don’t have the kind of training you need for this. I’d much rather you concentrated on your own issues rather than trying to solve everyone else’s. I’m afraid if we see anything similar happening again, we’ll have to intervene.”

  He nodded. He really seemed to have got the point, and it hit him hard. He left, looking more troubled than I’d ever seen him.

  4. Pew

  Pew hadn’t been willing to talk the previous evening, and I hoped a night’s rest would help him speak about his attack on Olivia. But instead he hunched himself in an easy
chair, hood up, as though he could somehow fall inside it and away from everything.

  “Pew? We really do need to talk about what happened.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “You had a flashback. You weren’t in control of yourself.”

  He still didn’t answer.

  “I’m only here to help you, Pew. If you did something you’re ashamed of, it’s okay to tell me. Anything you say in here is completely confidential.”

  He looked up at me, unsure of what to say.

  “Yes, Pew?”

  “I…”

  “It’s okay. Go on.”

  He blurted it out: “I want to die.”

  “It’s not that bad, surely?”

  “Olivia said you’d let her die if she did the therapy.”

  “I see.”

  “I want to do the same.”

  “Well… if you’re absolutely determined…”

  He nodded.

  “It’s not the easy way out. You have to demonstrate that therapy is completely hopeless, which means you really have to try. It’s hard work.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  “It can take years, Pew. Hardly anyone ever actually goes through with it.”

  “I said I’ll do it.”

  “Okay. If you’re absolutely sure.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “There’s some paperwork you’ll have to fill in. And there’s a cooling-off period of two weeks. We don’t put anyone on the euthanasia track without giving them a chance to pull out.”

  “We’re not free, are we?” He looked back up at me. “We can’t even die without filling in a form.”

  “We’re trying to help—”

  “I’ve never been free.”

  “Pew, we need to talk about what happened last night.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “You do understand — that’s going to be part of the therapy. You’re going to have to talk about it.”

  He took a few moments, and then nodded. “Not… now. Please.”

  “I’ll get a pad with the forms,” I said.

  5. Olivia & Pew

  Olivia slept in the garden, shaded under her massive straw hat, one hand trailing down from the reclined garden chair to a self-chilling glass of lemonade.