Paul Hardy - The Last Man on Earth Club

“It seems I no longer have control of my functions. I wish to be alone,” she said, and walked away.

I sighed. Iokan said: “It’s going to be fine, you know.” I looked at him. He was smiling, as though nothing very serious had happened. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

Katie was not fine. Nevertheless, I did not consider her a suicide risk. She could neither drown nor asphyxiate, and if her veins were slashed, her body would automatically shut off bloodflow to damaged areas. She’d once had a self-destruct mechanism, but it had been removed as a condition of therapy. She was perpetually monitored in an environment designed to prevent the possibility of suicide. She couldn’t even jump off a cliff; gravity sleds were dotted around the site to catch anyone who fell. Added to that, the mohib suit restricted sudden movement and limited her options enormously. If necessary, it could be remotely activated to lock her in position and prevent any act of self-harm.

There was no way she could kill herself.

She found a way.

She walked away from the centre, up through the pine-like trees, to where the ground grew steep, the trees barely able to hang on and still grow upright. A tiny stream wound down from a spring far above, soaking the hillside soil and spattering the rocks and boulders piled up from some long ago landslip.

Katie surveyed the site carefully. She walked around the slope and tested the ground by stamping on it feel how it vibrated. She pushed at the rocks piled up on one another to see how firmly they were set. She drove her hand into the soil to see how damp it really was.

Then she went below, to where it levelled out a little. She stood looking up at the slope, thoroughly aware of its composition and layout, then slumped to her knees and dug. With only one arm, her progress was slow, but she soon discovered the root systems of the nearby trees, grasped them and pulled them from the ground with a gentle but mounting strength — just beneath the level the mohib suit would permit.

Someone at the centre realised what she was doing, and remotely immobilised the suit. But the landslide had already begun. It was only the roots that held the earth together; wet earth, burdened with many tons of trees and stone. The hillside turned into a river and ran downhill. Trees stumbled and fell among the liquid ground, ploughing roots and undergrowth into the mix, toppling boulders from their rest.

Katie did not flinch as the wave of rock and earth consumed her.

While Katie surveyed the ground, I spoke to Pew. He had been locked in his room, as was the standard procedure following an intentional assault, no matter how serious, and he’d made a mess of it by the time I arrived. Like many people from less developed worlds, he had a liking for hard copies of books and papers, many of which were now scattered across the room, leaves torn from his notes to join the litter. Most of his furniture was built into the floor and walls to prevent damage, but he’d taken down his free-standing bookshelf and tried to smash it without success.

Pew sat on his bed, hunched up, still angry, surrounded by the debris. “I’m not apologising,” he said.

“May I come in?” I asked.

“You’re going to anyway.”

I stepped in, careful not to tread on sheets of paper covered with theorems and mathematical abstractions. I picked up a chair, scattering papers, and sat down.

“Why did you hit her, Pew?”

“Because she’s a killer and no one else cares.”

“It’s not your job to punish her, even if what she said is true. That’s for the ICT to consider.”

“They won’t do anything!”

“Pew. Violence is not acceptable behaviour, no matter what she’s done. If you do it again we’ll have to take more serious steps.”

“Like what? What are you going to do to me?” He was insolent now.

“We could put you in a mohib suit. Or we could keep you in your room for longer periods of time. If we have to, we’ll send you to the Psychiatric Centre in Hub Metro. I don’t want to do that because I know it won’t help you. But if you persist in acting like this then I won’t have any choice.”

He buried his head in his arms, hunching further. He didn’t want to accept it. He came back up, grimacing.

“You want to help me?”

“Yes. That’s what I’m here for.”

“You’re like Shan’oui…”

I smiled, not sure what he meant. “In what way?”

He looked at me with growing disgust. “She wanted to save us. She thought she could make all the other Soo let us go if she worked with them. And then she let them in and they did whatever they wanted! And it didn’t make any difference what she did, she just…”

There were tears of despair in his eyes now. But he stopped himself from going further and looked back up at me.

“You’re like her.”

“I think we should talk about this some more.”

He shook his head. “Won’t do any good.”

“I’d like to know more about why you think I’m like her. After all, I’m not running a breeding programme, so I’m a little confused about what you mean—” A chime in my ear interrupted me, and a message flashed up in front of my eyes. “I have to go. Something’s happened with Katie…”

“What?”

I thought about it for a moment, and decided not to tell him. But he read my expression and figured it out for himself.

“She tried to kill herself?”

“I… yes.”

He thought about it for a moment, then said: “Good.” There was no trace of shame or regret in his voice. Only a satisfaction, which was troubling.

I paused at the door. I couldn’t leave it like that. “You should think about what might have made her do it.”

He considered it for a moment. “Yeah. I will.”

Katie had been buried under many tons of debris, but we could tell she was still alive — just. A gravity crane was brought in to lift off the slabs and boulders one by one, and staff from the centre dug down once the heavier material had been removed. She was recovered after six hours of digging, and not in one piece. She had been struck at least once by a sharp edge from one of the huge boulders and scythed apart. She had virtually no blood left and her brain was only surviving in an emergency shutdown mode, despite a severely crushed skull that compressed and lacerated the brain tissue.

Even with all this, she was not beyond help. But there was little I could do to assist the teams as they dug and retrieved all the pieces of Katie, and I had my other patients to think of. I assembled them to pass on the news.

Some realised they were at fault almost immediately. Liss left to throw up. Kwame took a deep breath and sat down as he absorbed the news. Olivia just said “huh,” and shook her head. Iokan sighed and looked sad.

Pew showed no sign of regret. He just stared back at me.

Therapy needed to continue, even while one member of the group was struggling to survive. I moved on to the person who seemed most affected by the recent events. Liss had recovered from throwing up, and was being checked out in the infirmary, just in case. She gave me a humourless smirk as she saw me come in, while a nurse ran a scanner across her stomach to check for food poisoning.

“I’m not pregnant,” she said.

“To be honest, I didn’t think it was very likely.”

“Hah. Like there’s anyone on this planet who could actually get me knocked up…”

“Well…” We had news for her on this front. But I decided to keep it back for a moment. “I think we need to discuss what just happened, first.”