Paul Hardy - The Last Man on Earth Club

“Ley’ang?”

“The last one in the breeding programme, yeh. The one where he couldn’t get it up.”

“Ah. So what did you say?”

“Well, you know. It happens to men. It’s not always their fault if they can’t do it.”

“Did he say anything?”

“He said it wasn’t like that. Got all worked up about it, really touchy, you understand me?”

So far, he’d stuck to the Soo line about ‘erectile dysfunction’ being the reason why the final mating attempt failed; but if he was telling a different story now, that was worth looking into. “Did he say anything else?”

She shrugged. “He didn’t want to talk about it. So I didn’t.”

“Thank you, Olivia.”

“Are we finished?”

“Your session isn’t until later, so I suppose so, yes. Although… do you mind if I ask you something?”

“When has me minding ever stopped you?”

I smiled. “He’s a little bit like a son to you, isn’t he?”

That made her pause for a moment. “Rubbish.”

“Well, isn’t he?”

“Dunno what you’re talking about.”

“You do, don’t you?”

“Utter rubbish…”

“Olivia, can I ask… did you have any children?”

“You can ask,” she said.

“Would I get an answer?”

She leaned forward for emphasis. “Let the dead lie in peace.”

A chime went off in my ear. Someone was calling for me. “I have to take a call. I’ll see you in my office?”

“Not frigging likely.”

She really wasn’t happy as I left her behind and answered the call. I couldn’t get further than the far end of the garden because the call was rated ‘urgent’, so I treated it at face value and answered as quickly as I could. It turned out to be Bell, calling from the Lift and responding to all my messages but with a priority level that wasn’t supposed to be used except in emergencies. I was irritated and asked him to call back a little later, but he demanded he had to speak to me now. I looked back over my shoulder — Olivia was fiddling with a watering can and seemed to be oblivious, but the last thing I wanted to do was have this conversation anywhere near her, so I headed up to the building and out of earshot before I went on.

He wanted to meet up, he said. I told him that was fine, but I was very busy with my patients. Couldn’t we just talk? He dropped the bombshell: he wanted to have a serious conversation.

I knew right away what kind of serious conversation he meant, and flapped around, trying to think of something to say. Like a fool, I told him I wasn’t going to be answering any of his questions about my patients, and managed to offend him because of course the group had nothing to do with it. He wanted to have a serious talk. A very serious talk. About us.

I pointed out that I had patients who needed me, and that was pretty damned serious as well. I lost my temper for a moment: he’d been away with no explanation for weeks, and then he just turned up out of the blue with demands for a ‘serious conversation’ and he expected me to drop everything and go running off to see him so he could be ‘serious’, whatever that meant? He pointed out that he just wanted to have a civilised discussion, but I wasn’t in that kind of mood. I told him to piss off, ended the call and went inside. I flew up the gravity tubes to my office, set the soundproofing to maximum and had a very therapeutic yell. The only difference it made was that I quickly realised what an idiot I was.

But before I could figure out what to say or do, Elsbet stormed in to see me. She’d told us a lot about the asteroid society she came from in her first few sessions: a horrible bolthole for a tiny fragment of humanity, surviving on algae and hatred of the machines. We hadn’t yet found a way to tell her about Katie, because it was all too clear they would have been deadly enemies in the war between humans and machines, and it was just as clear that we’d left it too late.

“Look at this!” she shouted, holding out her arm.

“It’s your arm,” I said.

“Look!”

She concentrated, then twisted it into an unnatural position. She reached round with her other hand and pulled the arm off her shoulder, ripping the skin away to reveal metallic contacts, graphene construction and a mess of cabling: exactly what we already knew to be there, but something that was news to her.

“My arm comes off!”

“Ah… yes.”

“Did you do this to me?”

“No, we didn’t. Do you want to sit down and take some tea?”

“No I fucking don’t! How the hell did this happen if you didn’t do it?”

“This is how you were when we found you, Elsbet.”

“What?” She was incredulous.

“Please, sit down and we’ll talk about it.”

She was furious, but could see I wasn’t going to discuss it any other way, so she dropped herself into a chair with her arm on her lap. I made myself some tea to calm what was left of my nerves.

“Are you sure you don’t want some?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, then.” I sat down with my own cup. “What’s the last thing you remember before you came here?”

“I told you! I was in a missile, I was supposed to destroy an installation on Earth.”

“And kill yourself.”

“I’m a soldier. The machines are an abomination. I was doing my duty.”

“And what next?”

“You said I skipped off the atmosphere and they found me at Ceres. I suppose that last part isn’t true.”

“That’s right.”

“So you must have found the missile out in space somewhere.”

“No.”

“No? What do you mean, no?”

“We have no idea what happened to you in the missile. We know nothing about that.”

“But… you found me in the missile! Right?” I shook my head. She was left very confused. “Then how…?”

“We found you floating in space. In orbit around the L1 point between the Earth and Moon.”

“In vacuum? ”

“Yes.”

“But in a space suit? Right?”

“No.”

She stared at me, disbelieving. “That’s impossible.”

“It happened.”

“I’d be dead! ”

“You were in a dormant state. But you weren’t dead. We were able to revive you.”

“No, no, this is algae shit . You’re lying .”

“Are you sure you don’t remember anything else?”

“I— No. Nothing! Nothing…” But she trailed off. There was something there.

“Elsbet? Are you sure?”

She was thinking hard, eyes twitching. But she snapped out of it and looked at me. “I’m sure .”

“Are you all right…?”

“I’m. Fine.” Her eyes twitched again. A tremor set into her remaining hand. She shouted at something to my left. “I said I’m fine!”

She jumped up, as though hearing something off to the right, and then spasmed, gritting her teeth and screwing up her eyes, gasping as though bearing a terrible pain. She pitched forward, collapsing on the coffee table. I hardly needed to look at the medical monitors to know she’d had another seizure. I went to call for medics — but she suddenly woke up. She lifted herself from the table and unfolded into a standing position. Her head twitched and looked about with no emotion.

“I have been offline,” she said in a flat voice. She wasn’t Elsbet any more.

“Katie?”

She looked down at me.

“That is my designation in this place.” She noticed her missing arm, where it had fallen to the floor. “I am damaged.” She picked up the arm, and pressed the joint against her empty shoulder socket. Cables jumped out, connected and pulled the arm back into place as the skin knitted and healed until there was no trace of a join. She flexed it, decided it was acceptable, and then frowned. “Have I suffered further neural degradation?”