Paul Hardy - The Last Man on Earth Club

“I was a liberal . I campaigned for women. But there are some things — you are just impossible!”

“It’s not the men that are the problem,” I said. “If Liss comes from a society where menstruation is taboo, you need to respect that.”

“Yes. Exactly,” agreed Kwame.

Olivia sighed in exasperation. “If it’s not one thing it’s another. Fine. Vaginal discharge is off the table.”

Kwame almost choked on his water, while Iokan couldn’t help a chuckle.

After the meal, Iokan went looking for Katie, and I watched him from my office. His intention to help the others could be a benefit or a hazard, and I or someone else kept an eye on him at all times to ensure he didn’t push things too far.

But Katie wasn’t in her room, or the common room, or the gym, or anywhere else he could enter. He asked after her with the staff, who could not recall having seen her in the last half hour, and suggested she was probably in her room. Having searched the centre from bottom to top, he seemed about to give up — but instead found her in the stairwell beside the gravity tubes.

“Katie?”

She stood at the edge of the stairs, her toes over the first step. The stairs were carpeted, but still presented a risk to anyone who fell. They were only there as a safety backup, and were little used except by those who didn’t trust the gravity tubes.

“Katie, are you all right?”

She whipped round suddenly at the sound of his voice.

“What is it?” he asked.

Her eyes darted about. “Ket’erun lun?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Ket’erun lun!” Whatever had happened to her in the trench at Kintrex had happened again. I alerted medics, and Iokan held out a hand.

“Just come back from the stairs. Okay?”

She seemed confused again, then looked around.

“That’s right,” he said. “The stairs are dangerous. You might fall.”

“Nunnon… nunnon… fall?”

“That’s right. I don’t want you to fall down the stairs.”

She closed her eyes. “Nunnon. Fall. Nunna. Fell. Nunnonos. Falling,” she conjugated, as though discovering our language for the first time. Her eyelids fluttered while her brain processed, then snapped open as she looked straight at him. “Where am I?”

“You’re in the centre.”

“What centre?”

“The therapy centre? On Hub?”

A pain struck her, a blight that twisted and palsied her face. “Hub…? Ket’erun… where is… Hub…”

She collapsed in a heap by the edge of the stairs.

Iokan knelt by her to help. But she snapped awake and stood back up in a smooth mechanical unfolding, her face passive once more.

She looked down and noticed Iokan was with her. “Is there something you require?”

I decided she was back to normal, and did not require immediate help. While we would need to look into this event and her condition, I thought the encounter with Iokan might be revealing for both of them, so I cancelled the request for medical assistance. Two floors below in the gravity tube, a pair of medics got the word and headed back down.

Iokan took a moment to register the sudden change back to her usual self, and stood up.

“I… came to see if you wanted any help.”

“I do not require assistance.”

“Well, you almost fell down the stairs a moment ago…”

She looked around, as though she hadn’t noticed them before.

“Thank you for your assistance,” she said.

“Do you remember what happened…?”

“I remember perfectly.”

“Okay… well, I was actually trying to find you so I could apologise for what I said at dinner.”

“No apology is necessary.”

“I feel I should. I’ve lost friends in combat. It’s never easy.”

She paused. “I accept your apology.”

“Would you like to talk about it?”

“I would not.”

“Is there anything else you’d like to talk about?”

And again the pause. “Yes. Please come to my room.”

Katie turned and walked down the stairs without concern, seemingly with no memory of teetering on the edge only a minute before. She led Iokan to her room, two levels below, and let him in.

He looked around at the unformed grey walls and the sleeping bench as Katie sat at one end. If he was at all alarmed by her sense of décor, he kept it to himself and maintained his look of concern.

“Please sit,” she said, more like an order than an invitation.

“Thank you.” He perched on the other end.

“Tell me more about the Antecessors,” she said.

“I thought you weren’t interested?”

“I am interested.”

“But you said they weren’t real. In fact, I think you told me they were charlatans…”

“I may have been mistaken.”

“Well, it’s very brave of you to admit that.”

“No bravery was involved.”

“Okay… so what did you want to know?”

“What form of life were they?”

“Oh, that’s simple enough. Electromagnetic.”

“Please explain further.”

“Well, as far as we could tell, they were composed of magnetic fields that held a matrix of electromagnetic radiation, which encoded their minds and allowed them to function like any other kind of intelligence. Except they could do so at the speed of light, of course.”

“How did they reproduce?”

“Not in the biological way. But they could spawn a new electromagnetic matrix and copy a human mind into that…”

“Was personality data preserved?”

“Oh, sure. They’d do it progressively, so you could feel yourself transferring without creating two of you.”

“Was there a complete continuity of self?”

“Absolutely.”

“Is it possible for a member of another species to become an Antecessor?”

I zoomed closer on her. The muscles on her face had moved. There was tension in her brow; she was anxious.

“…I’m not sure. I haven’t seen it done but I don’t see any reason why it should be species specific. As long as they understand how your mind works.”

“I can assist with this.”

He noticed how troubled she seemed. “Are you okay?”

“My functions are unimpaired.”

“You seem a bit worried.”

“My stress levels are normal.”

“Are you sure? You look worried to me.”

“I experience occasional emotional disturbance.”

“Is that what happened on the stairs?”

She paused, and her brow got as far as actually furrowing.

“Katie?” he asked, still concerned.

“Yes. That is what happened on the stairs. Would you be willing to assist me?”

“I’d be glad to. What do you need?”

She reached for the wall and activated a control. Privacy descended, and my ability to observe was curtailed. But it was very informative. Was she having flashbacks when she spaced out, or was something else happening? I resolved to look further into the matter.

Iokan and Katie stayed in her room for another half an hour, and Iokan went back to his own room afterwards, looking almost troubled. There was nothing further to learn from his demeanour, and the rest of the group were retiring for the night. With little else to do, I checked the apocalypse watch: the ice-bound world of Steteryn still refused our help; the incidence of live births on Llorissa had risen despite the radiation, giving them renewed hope; a splintered comet group had been observed only a week away from the orbit of Schviensever, and they were scrambling every ship they had to defend the world, but would probably pull through; and the flares emanating from Ardëe’s sun were still building despite scientific predictions to the contrary. Even so, there was no immediate danger, and no new worlds had been added to the list.