Paul Hardy - The Last Man on Earth Club

She seemed honestly perplexed. “What’s unusual about chimps?”

“Lets put the chimps to one side. I’d like to talk about the moment everyone disappeared. Did this happen while you were entering data?”

“Oh, no. It’s like I said before, I was in the photocopier room.”

“And what were you doing?”

“Copying.”

“Can you explain any more?”

“Well, when the forms come to us, they’re like the originals but we need to keep backup copies in case the system goes down, you know? It’s boring. You’ve gotta take the staples off and run the pages through and half the time the feeder doesn’t work so you’ve got to do them one page at a time and then the manager asks you why you haven’t finished yet and it just goes on and on and on… you know.”

“But it didn’t go on and on, did it?”

“No… I guess not.” She fell into silence. But before I could coax her into going further, she perked back up again. “But I did finish it!”

“After you found everyone had disappeared?”

“Oh, not straight away… I came back the next day. Or the one after that, I don’t know. But I got it done.”

The question was: what happened between the moment of discovery and the point at which she started work again?

“Hm. Do you remember the moment they vanished?”

“I guess.”

“Can you tell me what you experienced?”

“Not much of anything. I don’t know. It got quiet.”

“How so?”

“People stopped talking. I guess that’s when they all walked out. They must have taken their shoes off too, ‘cause they were real quiet about it.”

“What did you do once you realised everything had gone quiet?”

“I kept copying. For a while, anyway. Then I thought it was weird, so I went to look.”

“Did you notice the piles of dust?”

“What, those? No, those weren’t there. That was later. It all got messy because the cleaning staff went as well. I can’t clean everywhere so it just builds up.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Uh-huh.”

She wasn’t likely to give up her delusion in the first session, so I moved on. “What did you do next?”

“I went looking for everyone. But they’d all gone.”

“Where did you look?”

“Everywhere. I took a drive. Everyone was gone.”

“What else did you do?”

“I called the cops but they were useless. I guess they were hiding too because they didn’t answer the phone. I left a message but they didn’t call me back.”

“How long did you look for people?”

“Until it got dark and I went home.”

“What did you do then?”

“Watched screen.”

“What was on the screen?”

“Just the stories.”

“They were still broadcasting?”

“Uh-huh.”

“But it was automated?”

“I guess.”

She’d started the session as bright and breezy as could be, but the sun had gone in. She wasn’t looking at me any more. She wasn’t even looking at the beautiful view outside. She was looking at the table, and picking at her nails.

“So why did you decide to go back to work?”

She shrugged. “I didn’t want to get fired.”

“Was that the only reason?”

“Have you ever tried living on welfare? Huh.”

“There wasn’t anything else?”

“No.”

“Nothing you left behind there?” She shook her head just a little. “Nothing you saw there?” She didn’t even answer. She kept her eyes down, not even pretending to look at her nails any more. I worried that if I kept pressing her this way, I might seem unsympathetic; so I decided to engage her in something she was interested in.

“You said earlier you liked watching screen…”

“Yeah.”

“What kind of things did you like watching?”

She looked up at me with a returning smile. “Oh, you know. The usual stuff.”

“Such as?”

“Uh… well anything on ScreenTime. That’s all reruns but it’s good reruns. ASN had a couple of good shows. And I can always stand to watch Dates and Hates . I know, it’s kinda soppy but it’s only a half hour show.”

“Is that a romantic one?”

“Uh-huh. See, Ellera’s always having to decide which guy she likes from the dating agency and she always picks the wrong one and the wrong one turns out to be an okay guy after all but the right guy she should have picked ends up kidnapping her and then she has to have dinner with him but she gets away and finds the wrong guy again and then it turns out he really is the wrong guy because he was in on it with the right guy so she dumps them both and goes back to the agency to try again. Which is so lame because she should have realised she wasn’t getting anywhere but she keeps on trying!”

Liss was definitely back to being perked up and happy. “Any others?” I asked.

“Well I like some of the reality shows…”

“Such as?”

“ CP7: Secret Squadron is good, it’s like you can’t believe those people are real, they’re so crazy. So you’ve got Gelean acting like he’s so cool, like he’s the real one and only, you know? And he’s a complete ass and everybody knows it except him. And Uilea and Yelessean are always fighting and poor old Sayas is trying to keep everyone from making idiots of themselves in front of the cameras but no one listens so she ends up complaining about everyone. I mean, it’s like these guys think they’re supposed to save people but they’re a total bunch of screwups.”

“So is this a show about… police officers? Firefighters?”

“Huh? No. Well, kinda. They’re adventurers. You know?”

“Not really. Are they some kind of emergency service?”

“Yeah. For really big emergencies.”

“Such as..?

“You know, like end of the world kind of stuff?”

If I’d had my cup of tea in my hand, I’d have dropped it. “End of the world stuff?”

“Yeah. If something really bad’s happening, they go off and deal with it. Well, not CP7, they’re just local, you know? They’re City Patrol 7, they’re not important. I mean, ‘Secret Squadron’, you gotta be kidding, right?”

“But there were other, uh, ‘adventurers’ saving the world?”

“Sure!”

“What did they save the world from?”

“Uh, well. You know. Like that one time the bugs took over all the people in Noyza and made them all into one person. Or when Calafaria blew up. Or that mountain in Eleshin that kept moving and squashing things. That kind of stuff.”

“Did this happen a lot?”

“Every now and then, I don’t know. But they deal with it. You know. Save the world and everything.”

“What do they do when they’re not saving the world? And appearing on screenshows…”

“They save cities. Or countries. Or just help people. Don’t you have anyone like that here?”

“No. We don’t…” It occurred to me there was a problem with this. “Okay. I apologise if this is an obvious question…”

“Uh-huh…”

“But this is just a screenshow. Right?”

“Oh, sure, it’s a screenshow!”

“Oh. Good.”

“But it’s a screenshow about real people.”

I had a thousand questions fighting in my head. Picking the right one took a moment. “So… why is it these people who save the world? I mean, what qualifies them to do that?”

She answered as though I were a child asking a stupid question. “Because they’ve got powers.”

“Powers?” I asked.

“You know. They can do stuff.”

“Stuff like…?”

“Oh, I don’t know. They’re strong. Or bulletproof. Or really fast. Or really clever. Lots of things.”

“So they had posthuman modifications?”

“What does that mean?”