Paul Hardy - The Last Man on Earth Club

“How did it happen?”

“Hah! Same as always. Nothing natural. It was the flood basalt thing in Calafaria. Some superbrain thought it’d be a great idea to study volcanoes by making some. So he got some tectonic forceps or whatever he was calling that crap and the whole faultline went and there were huge floods of lava coming out, earthquakes like crazy… I was in daycare, the building collapsed, some adventurers came by and dug me out. Supposedly I was the only one who made it. My parents never turned up.”

I brought her a mug of tea. “That’s a lot for a child to have to deal with.”

“Huh. Well. You know, I guess I never thought about it like that.”

“I’m sorry, Liss. I’m sure you’re a little tired of talking about it.”

“Everyone was tired. Everyone had something horrible happen to them. I wasn’t any different.”

“That doesn’t mean your health isn’t important.”

“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t want you to be unemployed, I guess.”

“I don’t think there’s any risk of that in this place.”

That got a very small chuckle out of her. “Thing is, it wasn’t being an orphan that was the problem. I don’t know, I’ve always been kinda… resilient about the big stuff. Huh. Guess you noticed that…” I nodded. “It was more the other kids when I got to the refugee camp.”

“Where was that?”

“Other side of the continent. Lots of countries were taking in refugees from Calafaria, I ended up in Algonquia. Some of the kids were messed up bad but a lot of them were just mean.”

“In what way?”

“Well, I kinda had trouble with lessons. They got us into schools and I guess something about those machines they used on me made it difficult for me to keep up. So they all thought I was kind of a retard. I wasn’t, I mean I’m not a superbrain but I’m, you know, college level and all. So I guess I was bullied. There was one therapist who thought that was what it was.”

“It’s possible. How did you respond?”

“Huh. Well, it’s not a good idea to bully a kid with Early Onset Superpower Syndrome, you know?”

“You hit back?”

“I sure did. Soon as I figured out I was stronger than all the other kids, and I mean way stronger. I was lucky, some kids died because they got powers too soon, but I didn’t have that kind of a problem. It was all the other kids around me that had the problem. I got into a lot of trouble after I started breaking their arms when they called me names.”

“That’s, um…”

“Yeah, I know. Not nice. I got sent to doctors and shrinks and all the rest and they started figuring it out and told me I had to be real careful. But as soon as I went back to school, all the name calling started again and I hit some kid and it just went back and forth and back and forth and…”

She sighed. “Eventually they decided I’d be better off with foster parents who had powers. That’s why I was placed with Keff and Seelie. Seelie was a full-time adventurer, she was too strong and tough for me to hurt and Keff had this poison touch thing, he could give you drugs through your skin, so he could calm me down if I was having a tantrum. He never liked doing it, he used to be a bad guy but then he met Seelie and, well, that’s ancient history, I guess.”

“But they were good for you?”

“The best. They were great. They…”

Tears came suddenly. I passed her a tissue.

“Shit, sorry, I just, sometimes I remember all of a sudden…”

“It’s natural, Liss. You have to cry about these things.”

“Yeah.” She wiped her eyes and looked down at the floor.

“So did you still have problems at school?”

“Oh, all the time. I didn’t get placed with Keff and Seelie until I was nine and I must have been hell for them for a couple of years, but they kind of tamed me, I suppose. And then the other kids started getting their powers, and that was it, I wasn’t special any more.”

“That must have been difficult.”

“Yeah… I ended up being the mousy kid with hardly any friends. Everyone forgot about me and… I just stopped doing all that stuff. I pretended I was normal. I went from hitting people all the time to never doing anything. Until I went to college and met Yott. Even then I wasn’t really special.”

“But you still saved the world…”

“Yeah, I guess. Didn’t do me any good. Me and Yott joined the PRG but he was the one they really wanted. We had the same agent and you could just see it in her face. I was only there to keep him out of trouble, which usually meant taking a beating while he finished wiring up whatever machine we needed to save the city or whatever we were doing that day. And then when he worked out his armour he didn’t need me any more. Great boyfriend he turned out to be…”

“There’s always a few more.”

“Not from my species.”

“No. I’m sorry.”

“So I tried making it in one of those little City Patrol teams but they never had any money. I could have gone corporate, I suppose. But everyone knew I wasn’t any good at it. So I gave it up…”

“What did you do then?”

“Unemployment. I had to move back in with Keff and Seelie for a while. God knows what I would have done without them. That made me feel even worse.”

“How did you get out of it?”

“I got lucky. Somebody let an AI virus loose on the infonet and it ate all the other AIs. So we ended up with half the computers in the world not working any more and having to get humans to do everything. Like the helpline for adventurers — the call centre, you know? You could call up and get legal help or they could give you tactical advice if you were in a tight spot. It was done with an AI before but all of a sudden they were hiring. I had some customer service experience out of all the crap jobs I did and of course I had the adventuring experience… I thought it’d be a disaster, but the money was okay, so…”

“Was it a disaster?”

“Not so much. Turned out to be a lot easier when I wasn’t actually there. You know, without all the stress and ‘am I going to get turned to dogmeat if I put my head up’, kind of thing. I’m better at all the paperwork and admin side anyway. Eventually I got promoted out of there into another department. Had my own team. Had a good income. Had my own place. Couldn’t hang on to a man but you can’t have everything.” Her face turned down. “Or anything at all, now…”

“If it’s a man you’re after, there’s a few of them knocking around.”

“Not much good if he’s not my species.”

“I was dating a man from another species.”

“Oh… was it Veofol?”

I couldn’t speak for a moment. My mind froze. Liss realised she’d said the wrong thing.

“Oh, shit. Sorry…”

I found my voice again. “It wasn’t him. It was someone else.”

“What happened?”

I had to pause a moment. “He left after the attack. He’s gone.” She nodded, clearly mortified. “It’s okay, Liss. You didn’t know.”

“Well, uh… I guess there’s plenty more out there for you? Right?”

“One day,” I agreed. “And for you as well.”

“Huh.” She considered it for a moment, then frowned. “And they let you do that? I mean with other species?”

I smiled. “Sure. You can get a medical test to see who you might be compatible with.”

“Last thing I want is to get pregnant…”

“That’s unlikely, given the medical issues. But you might still want the test. For, uh, compatibility. So you don’t have any surprises.”

She looked confused. “What do you mean?”

“Not every species is built the same way.”

She realised. “Oh…”

“It’s a good idea to get the test. Just in case.”