Paul Hardy - The Last Man on Earth Club

“I… remember what it was like to be a soldier. I do not remember what I did. And that is…” Kwame struggled for a moment, then looked at Iokan. “If my memories vanish, did they really happen?”

“That’s an interesting philosophical question.”

“I remember facts about some things in my life, but I do not remember the events. At other times, I remember what it felt like to be there but I cannot recall what happened…”

“And they can’t look inside your brain, of course…”

“They did! They looked in my mind. But I… I do not…”

Iokan turned his full attention to Kwame and spoke gently. “What did they see?” He failed to notice the enemy units infiltrating down from the top of the screen.

Kwame paused there, grasping and desperate for words. “What if you knew there was something wrong with your memory? How could you tell?”

“Well, I suppose I would take new brain scans and compare them with older scans. I had that done to me a few times.”

“What if you have no older scans?”

“Then you bring in people who knew you before and take their testimony.”

“What if they are all dead?”

“But they did scan your mind? Right?”

“What if you do not trust them?”

“Oh. I see.”

“I have been trying to think, to work out a test, a way to be sure my memory has failed… will you help me?”

“Of course! What can I do?”

“I think I know a way to test myself.”

“Okay.”

“I need you to… kiss me.”

Kwame said it with disgust. Iokan blinked. Enemy ground units found the outer defences on the wall beside them. Kwame steeled himself for Iokan’s response.

“Can you say that again?” asked Iokan.

“I need you to kiss me.”

“…I was under the impression that your world was, well…”

“A moral world. Yes.”

“I meant homophobic.”

“If you wish to call it that.”

“And you want me to kiss you?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I do not know what is real! They showed me things in my dreams that were wrong , simply wrong! I must know!”

“You think you’ll remember something if I kiss you?”

“I do not know.”

Iokan shrugged. “Well, if it’s what you want. How do you want me to kiss you?”

“Do not make fun of me. Just do it.”

Iokan took a step closer. Kwame steeled himself like a man about to be punched in the face. “You should really relax. It won’t hurt.” Kwame nodded but was still tense. Iokan sighed, and took him by the shoulders. “This is a very brave thing to do, Kwame. I respect you for that.” Kwame relaxed, surprised. Iokan took his moment and kissed him before he could react.

Kwame’s eyes went wide in outrage; he raised his arms, seemingly to grab Iokan and push him away. But the outrage fled. Iokan moved back for a moment; the first kiss had been gentle, no more than a meeting of lips. But Iokan saw a puzzlement in Kwame’s eyes, and went in again. Kwame’s hands fell away and he surrendered to the kiss.

Iokan stepped away. “Did that tell you anything?”

But Kwame didn’t answer. He didn’t even seem to hear the question. Tears flooded his cheeks as he stared through Iokan without seeing him. His arms moved behind his back, and his wrists crossed as though bound.

“Kwame?” But Kwame did not hear. “Kwame, are you in there? Oh, damn it…”

Iokan went to raise the alarm as the enemy on the wall overran the carefully planned defences.

Pew had spent the day avoiding everyone, but slunk outside to find Olivia after she’d been slashing dead stems on beanstalks for half an hour.

“What do you want?” she muttered as she saw him.

“Um,” he said.

“Just ‘um’? Is that it?”

“Well, er…”

“And ‘er’ as well, who's ‘er’ when she’s at home?”

“What?”

He looked confused. She sighed. “Let me have a look at those hands.”

He held them out, wrapped in a transparent healer that would bring them back to normal within a couple of days. “Well you got lucky there, didn’t you? Try that on my world and you’d have an infection and be dead in a month. Does it still hurt?”

“No…”

“Well it should hurt! That’s a damn stupid thing to do! You know damn well that stuff can slice right through you!”

“Yes.”

“So why do it, for gods’ sake?”

He couldn’t answer. He looked at her, appealing for understanding. She took it in for a moment and gave him a shrewd look back. “So it’s like that , is it? Your life’s so miserable you’d rather cut yourself?”

“Something… like that.”

“You’re all the bloody same…” she muttered.

“What?”

“I’ll never understand it. All right, you’re the last survivor and everyone you know is dead, but why do you need to go and make it worse?”

“I—”

“It’s hard to carry on, I know it’s hard, but you’ve got to.”

“Why?”

“Oh don’t you give me that! I had ten years listening to that and I’m sick of it!”

“You don’t understand…”

“And they said that and all.” She took on a mocking tone. “‘You don’t understand! I can’t take it any more! Just let me kill myself!’ Well, rubbish! If I could take it, you can bloody take it!”

“But how…”

“What do you mean, how?”

“How did you do it…?”

“I had to! I had children! And fifty other people I was responsible for! I had to carry on or no one would, because they were all like you, giving up at the first sign of trouble!”

“But I don’t have any of that…”

“You’re all the same. I told my children not to go off outside the station, I told them it wasn’t safe, but they went anyway…” Frustration made her voice ragged.

“I don’t understand…”

“Everyone gives up. Everyone kills themselves. And you’re going to do it as well…”

“I’m not!”

“You want to.”

“I…”

“Yeh, you want to. None of us want to live, there’s nothing left to live for, the only reason I’m not in my grave is because they won’t let me…”

Pew was puzzled by her sudden turnabout. “But I thought you said you always carried on…?”

She didn’t notice she was weeping. “Well it’s not true! Why do you want to go and listen to me for, anyway? First thing I did when they found me was try and kill myself! Do you want to know why? Because everything’s so bloody easy for them, I mean look at this place! My whole planet’s dead and your species is gone and what’s it for? Nobody even bloody noticed!”

“You… you tried to kill yourself?”

“…Yeh.” She looked uncomfortable and far from proud.

“I thought you were…”

“You thought I was stronger than you? Is that it?”

“But why…”

“They won’t let me do it. Not unless I do their damn therapy.”

He slumped down to the earth. “They won’t let us go. That’s all I want. I just want it over.”

“That’s what they said.”

“Who?”

“My children.”

“They were lucky.”

“No they weren’t. They came back. You understand me? They came back. ”

He looked up at her, realising what she meant. “I’m sorry…”

“Don’t you start. That’s what Asha keeps saying. She’s always bloody sorry.”

“It must have been terrible…”

“It was.” She knelt by him in the mud. “I won’t tell you anything else. You’ve heard it all. You’re a grown man. If you have to die, then do it, if you can find a way…”

“But how?”