Paul Hardy - The Last Man on Earth Club

“Nobody ever does,” muttered Pew.

“It’s not primitive,” said Kwame. Pew looked up at him. “We were the same. We prayed to spirits. Such as… spirits of buildings, and railways, and cities, as well as rivers and forests and lakes. It was comforting to think something was holding a house together, more than nails or rivets or girders.”

“What did you do when the building was sick?” asked Pew.

Kwame smiled gently. “We found a priest to ask it what the trouble was. And a structural engineer to do the same.” His smile faded. “Or latterly we asked only the structural engineer. And sometimes not even him…”

“Was religion in decline on your world, then?” asked Iokan.

“My whole world was in decline. But… yes. Less and less people went to the temples. The priests grew poor without payment for blessings. If I were a moralist — and I am not — I would say the spirits took revenge on a world that ignored them.” He shook his head. “Perhaps it is coincidence… but people had no sense of shame in the last few years. Openly kissing in public! You would have been arrested for that in my youth.”

“And you’re not a moralist…” muttered Olivia.

“You may sneer, but religion has a place. It teaches proper behaviour, it shows us how to have respect for the world and our betters. No one had respect for anything at the end.”

“Oh, and did the bombs have spirits too?”

Kwame’s look turned to exasperation. “Some priests said nuclear weapons had spirits, as a sword has a spirit. Some said they had no spirit at all and that was what was wrong with them.”

“Well, if you don’t respect a gun, it’s liable to go off and take your hand with it, eh? Is that what happened with your bomb? The big one?”

Kwame bristled. “I had every respect for the device.”

“Yeah, that’s why you set the bloody thing off—”

“Olivia,” I said. “Before you go on, I’d like to hear from Liss. She hasn’t spoken yet. Liss?”

“Hm?” she said, surprised as always to be called on. “Oh. Well. It’s all a bit dumb, isn’t it?”

“How so?” asked Iokan.

“Well. It’s silly. Gods and spirits and all that stuff. It’s just superstition. It’s like these old guys from thousands of years ago and they don’t know what life’s like now, so what’s the point?”

“Is there nothing in your world beyond normal human understanding?” asked Iokan.

“Oh, sure! Scientists are crazy, aren’t they? I mean, who understands what goes on in their heads. One minute they’re doing all the stuff with test tubes, next thing you know they’ve got all these mutant bug things everywhere and they have to get the big guys in to clear it up. You know what I mean?”

There was a second of pause while everyone failed to understand a word she said.

“Doesn’t that ever happen on your world?” she asked, honestly perplexed at the stares she was getting.

“No, Liss. Your universe is… a little unusual,” I said.

“Oh. Well,” she shrugged with a smile.

“I wonder…” said Iokan to the group in general. “I wonder what you would do if you met your gods? Or spirits?”

“I’d choke the bastards,” said Olivia. “All twelve of them. And anyone who says they were good and kind and decent.”

“…Isn’t that a little harsh?” asked Iokan.

“No,” said Kwame. “The spirits on my world were supposed to protect us as long as we made offerings. They had cause for complaint, I suppose you could say. But in the end they did nothing.”

“You were spared, though. Do you think they might have had anything to do with that?” asked Iokan.

“Spared? You call this spared?” demanded Olivia. “I had to watch I don’t know how many people eaten alive and now I have to listen to you and I don’t know which is worse!”

“But what if there was a plan? What if your survival was the point?”

“You show me someone whose plan is to let billions of people die and I’ll show you a bastard deserves to suffer. And if I ever see one of your Anteshitters I’ll tell them that to their face.”

Iokan’s pitying tone came back. “The Antecessors only came for us out of kindness—”

“Well if your species is anything like you, then I suppose killing you all was a kindness…”

Iokan paused for a moment. “And what is that supposed to mean?”

Olivia scented that he’d finally taken offence. “Wasn’t much of a species, was it, if you’re all going to slit your wrists the first time you take some mushrooms.”

“What…?”

“Well, that must have been it. I bet you all started taking something and you’re all so hot on your religion you start seeing the bastards and killing yourselves. Pathetic!”

“You think we were hallucinating? ”

“Can you prove to us you were not?” asked Kwame.

Iokan stared back at him, then at Olivia. He seemed almost angry — but found his self-control again, and sighed. “I can see how it must look. But the Antecessors are real—”

“Prove it,” said Olivia.

“It can be proved.”

“Yeh? Go on, then.”

“There is proof on my world.”

“Hah! Don’t think I’m going there any time soon.”

“It will be found,” he insisted.

“We’ll see about that, won’t we?”

“Yes. I expect we will.”

“And what, you’re going to put your Antewotsits on us and make us all scared? We’re not as feeble as you lot!”

I’d had enough, and intervened before Iokan could reply. “Okay. This was useful for a while but I think it’s gotten out of hand.” Olivia sat back in her chair. “Olivia, I know you have strong opinions but it doesn’t help to be offensive. I think you should apologise.”

She glared at Iokan across the coffee table. “I’m so very sorry. Very, very sorry.” I’m not sure Iokan picked up her forced, insincere tone through the translation.

“I also apologise. I won’t bring up the subject again,” he said. “But I’ll still try to help you if I can.”

Olivia rolled her eyes. “Gods, that’s all I need…”

“And perhaps they agree with you,” he said with a smile. Olivia gave him a cutting look in return.

And so it went. Getting them talking was one thing. If I could get them talking without an argument breaking out, I might actually get somewhere.

While we held group sessions and individual therapies and tried our best to engage the group with various activities, much of their time was their own. Each had the right to a degree of privacy, although we never turned off the medical monitoring system as we needed to keep a full suicide watch on each of them. They were permitted to engage a limited privacy mode in their rooms — but leaving it on for more than a couple of hours would result in a knock on the door from a member of staff to see how they were. As much as we would have liked to give them full privacy, the necessities of therapy argued against it; nevertheless, a perceived break from outside attention has long been shown to be of therapeutic benefit, so we preserved it as much as we could.

With the right to hide away from time to time, it was no surprise to find the group making their rooms comfortable, each in their own way. Each room could be configured to virtually any form they desired, which of course provided us with useful insights. Veofol wrote notes on these along with his analysis.

NOTES: Individual Patient Rooms

HD y276.m5.w4.d2

Dr. Veofol e-leas bron Jerra

KWAME

Kwame has used the facilities of the centre to continue a hobby he has apparently pursued for decades. He uses one of the empty rooms as a workshop, where he tinkers with electrical devices, such as radio sets and amplifiers. He needs robotic assistance for the fine work but the devices he makes function quite well, though of course his radios only detect static and digital signals, as there are no analogue radio sources on Hub. Even so, he took pleasure in showing me the decametric noise coming from electrical storms between Jupiter and Io, though he claims no skill as a radio astronomer. He says it’s simply a phenomenon well known to anyone who dabbles in radio. When I asked how he found time to be an electronics engineer as well as a politician, he said he had some training in engineering when he was in the Mutapan military, and was a hobbyist before that.