Paul Hardy - The Last Man on Earth Club

“Yes.”

“Is this your way of saying sorry?”

“I… kind of.”

She looked up at him, appalled. “What the bloody hell did those bastards do to you? They make you rape someone?”

He looked away. He couldn’t answer.

“For gods’ sake, boy, I’m a killer and a cannibal, how can you be worse?” He looked back at her, a little shocked. She went on: “If they put a gun to your head, it wasn’t your fault. It’s like a… it’s like a time of war, you do whatever you have to do to survive.”

“It wasn’t a war. We never fought.”

“War, genocide, call it what you like. You do what you have to do to survive.”

He blurted back: “So why do you want to die?”

It was her turn to go silent for a moment. Then she said, “That’s my business.” She didn’t add anything else. After a moment of floundering, Pew turned away and went back indoors. She watched him go, then pulled down her brim. But sleep was impossible and she threw the hat aside.

The evening came, and I prepared for dinner. While I tried to get my hair into some kind of acceptable shape, I kept an eye out for Liss on the monitors. The troubles the rest of the group were experiencing made it difficult for them to find any time for her, and I was hoping to see some sign she wasn’t giving up. Iokan was the only one to make an effort, so of course we had to monitor their meeting in case he attempted any therapy.

He caught up with her in her room, which she’d spent much of the day resetting to something she could bear. The pink and the fluff were mostly gone, and it was nothing more nor less than a normal bedroom. Perhaps a little untidy with all the screendiscs piled up in one corner, but she said she couldn’t be bothered sorting them out. She only brought them for her cover story, and didn’t really need them any more.

She answered the door to Iokan and said: “That took you a while.”

“I’m sorry?” he said.

“I didn’t think you’d wait this long. Are you coming in?”

He gave her a brittle smile and entered the room.

“So what do you want?” she asked, sitting on the end of her bed, crossing her arms and giving him a harsh look. “If you want your clothes back you’re too late. They don’t fit you any more.”

“I have plenty,” he said. He was wearing his casual outfit now, having put the robes off after the group session. “I wanted to welcome you back.”

“That’s your religious duty, is it?”

“It’s the decent thing to do.”

“Does it get you points with the glowy shiny people?”

“That’s not what it’s about.”

“No. Of course not. So what else?”

“You know, you’re a lot less polite than you used to be.”

“I’m catching up on weeks of listening to your bullshit and not calling you on it.”

“I didn’t know you were so intolerant.”

She laughed, bitterly. “So your gods came back and murdered your whole planet and when someone doesn’t tippy toe around your religion, that’s intolerance?”

His smile was getting strained. “That’s not what I came here to talk about.”

“So get on with it.”

“Do you mind putting the privacy on?”

“Yes. I mind.”

He looked up at the ceiling. The cameras weren’t detectable by human eyes, but he couldn’t help it.

“It’s about the genocide.”

“Yours or mine?”

“I really can’t talk about it unless we have privacy.”

“If you can tell me, you can tell them.” She pointed at the ceiling.

“It’s too dangerous.”

“What, are you worried your antewhatevers’ll find out and stop you getting into heaven?”

“It’s got nothing to do with that.”

“Bullshit. That’s got everything to do with it.”

He was actually getting quite worked up. “There are things you know nothing about—”

“Well I’m just going to have to stay ignorant, aren’t I?” She went to the door to open it — but he grabbed her arm as she passed.

“This is about your species!”

She was instantly furious and threw his arm off. Or rather, she tried. He turned a full circle with the momentum she generated with her great strength, and simply grabbed her with his other arm.

“Get the hell off me!”

“Not until you listen.”

She tried again: this time a shove. It should have thrown him across the room and broken bones as he smashed into the wall. But he read the move, stepped to one side, and she found herself stumbling across the room.

“You’re not a soldier,” he said. “Don’t try and fight me. I’m here to help you!”

But she was pissed off now, and came back for another go. This time, he ducked under her attack and threw her over his head into the opposite wall, crashing down to the floor. She was still on her knees as four security guards in full power armour rushed in and surrounded her in a ring of weapons.

“On the floor! Hands behind your head!”

She held her anger in check. “I’m already on the floor.”

“Officers, it’s okay!” said Iokan. “It’s nothing serious! We were just…” One of the security officers looked round at him. “…sparring. That’s all. Just sparring.”

“You’re kidding,” said the security guard.

“She needs more training,” added Iokan. “Go on, Liss, tell them.”

“Sparring,” she said in a deadly monotone. A command buzzed over the comms and the guards relaxed.

“If you want to spar, schedule a session in the gym,” muttered the guard.

“Of course,” said Iokan, smiling to try and maintain the fiction that no one in the room seriously believed. Liss got to her feet.

“Are you going to let me out?” she asked the guards. They tried to shuffle aside in their armour, and she squeezed out of the room, marching away to be alone somewhere, still angry.

I should have gone after her, despite the fact I was supposed to be getting on the bus to Hub Metro in a few minutes. But another crisis drew my attention.

Elsbet would not speak to me. She kept a stony silence every time I saw her, and never looked me in the eye. Whatever she’d remembered in our last meeting, she was keeping it to herself. Over the last week or so, I’d gently encouraged the others to visit her, to see if that would help; Olivia had the greatest success, something that initially surprised me. But then the two of them had gotten on surprisingly well in the brief time they had known each other. They shared an earthy contempt for most of the others, but even so, Olivia was in no mood to mess about. She considered Elsbet to be malingering in bed and inflicting unnecessary suffering on herself. She accused her of giving up, and Elsbet retorted that she hadn’t given up in the slightest. She was still at war. Olivia demanded an explanation, but Elsbet fell silent again and Olivia left with nothing else to show for her efforts.

After we’d let Elsbet out of the infirmary, she’d spent most of her time in her room — a different one to Katie’s, which she set up with one of the preset options. But while she avoided any furnishings that recalled her days on her home asteroid, the view outside the window was of space, the pale band of the Milky Way shining through, brighter and clearer than could be seen on Earth. For a few days, she simply went about her business in the centre. She would not venture outside, as much as we might encourage her, and only turned up to the group therapy session where Liss returned after some pleading on my part. Once that was done, she went back to her room, turned on privacy and refused to speak to anyone for the rest of the day.

Then she attempted suicide.