Paul Hardy - The Last Man on Earth Club

Pew, on the other hand, was more than willing to give advice. She found him in the gym, working hard on muscles left unexercised for too long, pushing gravity weights with his legs.

She told him her situation. His reaction was to slow his exercise, and then stop altogether. At which point his foot slipped and the footplate jumped at him. Liss reflexively sprung forward, but the safety mechanism cut in first.

“Damn this thing!” said Pew, then sighed. “I’m so… weak . Damn it.” She helped him out of the machine, and he couldn’t help but notice how firm her grip was. “You don’t have this problem, do you?”

“Uh, no.”

“If you had to fight, you could fight. I don’t even know how to fight…”

“Kinda. I guess. Never used to be any good at it.”

He sighed. “What did you say? You think you know who did it?”

“Something like that.”

“Do you know for sure?” he asked.

“No! That’s the point. It’s just… freaky. You know. I’m not what I thought I was and maybe there’s this species that dumped me on the planet and forgot about me and then killed everyone…”

“So the attack was genetically targeted?”

“I guess. Could have been…”

“Has to be!” he cried, springing up so fast that Liss took an involuntary step backward. “That’s why you survived!”

“Yeah, but I don’t know . And you know me, I’m not the one to do this, I tried it before and I got caught. I just… I know it sounds pathetic, but—”

“I’ll help.”

“Uh. Okay.”

“What will you do when you know for sure?”

“Well, I… I hadn’t really thought about that.” He nodded intently. “Turn them over to the ICT, I guess…”

“No!” Again, he made her jump. “They won’t do anything!” He looked around, fretting. “Come with me.”

He dashed off to his room, and she followed, already a little worried. “We need privacy,” he said, and activated it. Later, feeling troubled by his words, she told me what happened.

He was disturbingly earnest. He wanted to know what she would do if she knew for sure who had killed her species. She repeated her earlier answer: she didn’t really know. She wasn’t thinking about that yet.

He seemed to think of little else. He asked if she had resources to do anything; she had to agree that, in theory, she could do something. There were plenty of extremely destructive weapons at her disposal thanks to the PRG. She could certainly inflict a revenge — if she could get hold of interversal transit technology, which was far beyond her understanding. But not his.

He volunteered to help. Liss asked what he wanted to do. He said: punish them. Give them what they deserve. Give them what they gave us. She found herself at a loss. His idea of punishment was clearly far beyond anything she had in mind. She made excuses and let herself out.

Kwame wasn’t available for her to talk to, as he was still secluded inside the bunker simulation. So she went to the last of her peers she could ask for advice.

Iokan was putting his affairs in order. There wasn’t much to do. His few physical possessions were tidied away, his files were archived and he’d written a short will reiterating his desire for the IU to be given anything useful from his world. He was now in the process of erasing his room.

“And there goes the texture…” he operated a control on a pad, and the stonelike finish of the walls and ceiling slowly smoothed, receded and paled into unassigned grey. “We need to step outside if I’m going to do the floor… I’m sorry, what did you want to talk about?”

“Do you remember, you came to my room and said you wanted to help me?”

“Of course! I didn’t think you were interested.”

“Well, heh, yeah, sorry about that. Um. I just wanted to know how you were going to help me?”

He looked at her, gauging her expression. Then shrugged. “It wasn’t much, I’m afraid. I had some intelligence from my world about the people we were fighting. I thought perhaps we could work together and compare notes.”

“You said the people who attacked my world might have attacked your world as well.”

“It’s possible.”

“Did you have anyone in mind…?”

He looked at her again, and frowned in an amused way. “You’ve had some news, haven’t you?”

“Yeah… something like that.”

“You have a suspect?”

“Kind of.”

“And you were thinking I might be able to corroborate your suspicions?” She was about to agree, but he spoke again: “Or… perhaps you want to have a short cut so you don’t have to look into it yourself?”

She looked down, embarrassed.

“That’s fine,” he said. “I understand. You don’t really want to be a detective, do you?”

“Well, I… I don’t know.”

He smiled. “I don’t mind. You can have the intel if you want. It’s not a short cut, I’m afraid. There’s a lot to go through and we never really knew exactly who we were fighting. I’ll sort out access later today.”

“Can’t you…?” She asked for help with trailing voice and helpless eyes.

“Can’t I…?” He looked back at her, forcing her to say it for herself.

“I wouldn’t know where to start with your files. Can’t you help me out with them?”

He shook his head and sighed a happy sigh. “No. I’m not long for this world. And really, it doesn’t matter any more. Now, if you don’t mind…” He indicated they should leave, so he could finish blanking the room.

Liss wandered slowly downstairs to the common room, which Olivia had now vacated. She slumped down in a chair and put the newsfeed back on. After a repeated item about the solar flares threatening Ardëe, they went back to the same old reports on the ICT: endless coverage of the same issue summarised again and again. She watched the clips of people on various worlds, giving the same opinions as before. For it. Against it. It’ll stir up trouble. Something has to be done. Interversal relations would be destabilised. Doing nothing sent a signal that abusers could continue with impunity.

She drummed the arm of the chair with her fingers. Nothing was easy.

She sat up straight, and looked further into the newsfeed: there were plenty of other opinions available from many more worlds, if you were willing to search.

She selected Quillia.

They were against it. Unanimously. There were no Quillian voices of any kind expressing any other opinion than that it would be more trouble than it was worth. And the newsfeed, as it did elsewhere, asserted that the quotes shown reflected the balance of opinions they had found.

She finger-drummed the armchair again. Then shut down the newsfeed, went up to her room and began her investigation.

Kwame walked through the bunker alone, save for the two medics who kept as much distance as they could.

Beyond the lobby, the heavy steel door opened onto a tunnelled-out corridor that ran left and right. Kwame took a few steps down to the right, and pushed open the guard-room door: a small chamber, again hollowed out from the mountain rock. A table at the centre. Comms console in an alcove. CCTV screens in a bank, all of them showing views from within the bunker: TV Studio. Offices. Living quarters. Galley. Ops Centre.

A weapons rack drew his eye. Ten standard Mutapan assault rifles. The 35MFR-E model, he judged by the electronics on the scope. He took one down and inspected it: the magazine detached properly, and there were rounds pressed within. Nothing in the chamber; good safety protocol. He slammed the mag back in. It even sounded right. He reversed the weapon and brought it to port arms, then shouldered it, standing to attention and stamping his feet as though he were on a parade ground. He smiled, remembering old times.