Paul Hardy - The Last Man on Earth Club

I must admit to being shocked when I saw the state of her brain; it had been slashed into several pieces by the landslide, but they had been able to revive all the individual scraps and reconnect them. All the shreds of tissue were suspended in jars of nutrient solutions hooked up to the battered remnants of glands and other organs, including the cybernetic implants that had caused so much trouble. The jars were suspended on a framework of metal with polymer sheaths wrapped around delicate cables of nervous tissue running haphazardly about the structure.

Dr. Ingeborg led the team that had reassembled her. She was justly proud of her work, and very used to the look of shock from anyone who saw it for the first time. “It is a surprise, I know,” she said. “But this is how we all are. Just pieces of matter connected by nerves.”

Katie’s face was the only thing I recognised, suspended from an armature in front of the apparatus. It had a deep slash held together by sutures and the skin around the edges was rimmed by a polymer that sealed it from infection. Her expression was sleeping and restful.

“How is she?” I asked through my surgical mask.

“Good! Very good. She is in normal sleep now,” said Dr. Ingeborg.

“So she’ll wake up soon?”

“I can induce consciousness whenever you wish.”

“Please.”

“Emteth? Yen? Can you monitor, please?” Two of her assistants moved into position around the apparatus, while she went to the main console. “She was wakeful earlier, but we did not reveal what happened. She may not remember.”

“I understand.”

“Here we go.”

Katie’s eyes snapped open and looked across us, one to the other, not knowing where she was. Her mouth opened but no sound came out. Dr. Ingeborg reached for a pad and activated speakers.

“Where — where am I?”

I looked at Dr. Ingeborg, unsure. “She is awake!” said the doctor. “Talk to her!”

I looked back. “You’re in hospital, Katie. In Hub Metro. You hurt yourself, remember?”

Her jaw trembled. “I — I — I can’t feel… any pain…”

“You hurt yourself very badly.”

“Who… are you?”

I pulled my mask down to show my face. “It’s Asha. You remember?” I replaced the mask after a sharp look from Dr. Ingeborg.

Katie tried looking about, tried to see her body, but her face was locked into position. “What happened to me…?”

“You were in an accident,” I said. “There was a rockslide. Do you remember?”

“No — no — I don’t —”

“You were very badly hurt. It took a lot of work to save your brain.”

“My brain…?”

I looked back at Katie, at the face hung on the machine. If anyone could take this news, she could. “We had to take your brain out of your body, Katie. I’m sorry. It was the only way to save you.”

Now she looked confused, drifting. “Who’s… who’s Katie?”

I realised who I was talking to. “I’m sorry — Elsbet…? Is that you?”

But her eyes snapped on me with a sudden understanding. “Show me. Show me!”

I looked over to Dr. Ingeborg, and she nodded. So I mirrored a pad and held it up to Katie. Or to Elsbet. She saw the familiar outlines of her face — and beyond them, nothing human. Just a lattice of steel and glass, organs and fluids.

She screamed. Tears dripped down her face and stained the floor.

She went on for an unnatural length of time. She had no lungs and could not run out of breath. Dr. Ingeborg and I waited. There was nothing we could do; she had to have her moment of horror. Anyone would. But eventually it degenerated into sobs.

“Sergeant!” I said in as commanding a tone as I could muster. She looked up at me, snapped out of her agony by a lifetime of duty and training. “Elsbet. It’s you, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember me?”

“I remember you.” By the tone of her voice, she didn’t remember me with kindness.

“Do you remember what happened?”

“I died. I died and I’m more a machine than I was before! Why can’t you let me be dead?”

“When you… when you hurt yourself, we saved you then. But it was Katie who came back. And since then, she got worse. She tried to kill herself—”

Elsbet’s eyes rolled back. I looked at Dr. Ingeborg, who leapt to the controls of the life support machine. “Not as stable as I thought. There. How is she?”

Elsbet blinked, returning to her senses. “What… what…?”

“How are you feeling, Sergeant?”

“Falling. Asleep…”

Her eyes fell closed. Dr. Ingeborg frowned and shifted controls some more. She beckoned me to the console. “She is not stable at all. I thought I had her! But there is something in her species makeup I don’t understand…”

“What’s the problem?”

“I can’t keep her like this for long. She’s going to die.”

“Can’t you put her in hibernation? Or a coma? Or something?”

“She is not that kind of species! There’s activity here I don’t understand…” she indicated a gobbledygook on the screen, pulses of connections around the brain.

“Can’t you do anything?”

“If I get her out of this body, sure…”

“She said no.”

“Then she’s going to die.”

I had to think about it: a neat and unpleasant ethical dilemma. Katie had refused treatment that would save her. And now the moment had come when she would die without that treatment. But Katie was gone. She could make no further decisions. And Elsbet was only a simulation.

Unless she wasn’t.

“Can you wake her up? I need to ask her some questions.”

“She will wake up by herself. There. See?” More nonsense on the screen. “She goes, she comes back. It will be intermittent.” I dashed back to Katie/Elsbet, as her eyes fluttered open.

“Elsbet. Can you hear me?”

She showed no sign of it.

“Sergeant!”

She snapped awake again. Dr. Ingeborg seemed delighted. “Yes! Keep doing that!”

“Sergeant. You remember me. Correct?”

“Yes. I remember you.”

“Do you remember what we discussed?”

“You told me I’m a machine.”

“That’s right. And you’re dying. Right now. You’re dying right now .”

“Let me. Please…”

“If that’s what you want. But I have some questions first. Do you remember Katie?”

“Assassin!”

“Yes. An infiltrator. Do you remember anything else about her?”

“What…”

“You share the same brain. Her memories are inside you. Is there anything you remember?”

“I don’t want it… I don’t want her memories…”

“Elsbet. Is there anything?”

But she stared forward. I worried she was failing again and looked to Dr. Ingeborg. “She is good! Some other regions are lighting up…”

I looked back at Elsbet. She locked eyes on me.

“What do you remember, Sergeant?”

“I killed children.”

“Yes. In the hospital.”

Her eyes darted aside, ashamed. “No. In a bunker. With fire.”

Not the hospital. Another memory. A Katie memory from the Second Machine War. One that Elsbet had never heard, that had happened long before they shared a body.

“Go on.”

“I… I was a machine. I had… needles and tubes… I put the needles in the little bodies and.. it was blood and mess in the tubes… samples!” She gasped. “That was how they made people! They took our blood and made us from that… that’s how they made me… Oh God…”

“Elsbet. This is important. You remember I said before that you were only a persona? You only came out because of the neural problems Katie had?”

“Yes…”

“I think I was wrong. You’re not cut off any more. You have access to things in Katie’s mind. I think that makes you a second individual in the same brain. Katie may have chosen to die but you have the right to choose as well.”