Paul Hardy - The Last Man on Earth Club

We always tried to give the group as much privacy as possible, but made an exception for medical crises. While we had no access to their moment-by-moment body monitors, automated systems alerted us as soon as trauma occurred.

I attended her room a minute after the medical staff had arrived, and found her twitching on the floor with foam coming from her mouth. Her artificial arm was lying detached a metre away, and a twisted, improvised cable ran from her shoulder stump to a power outlet in the wall.

“Turn the power off! ” shouted a nurse. Someone evidently did, as Elsbet stopped twitching and relaxed into unconsciousness. “Shit, just look at this…” said the nurse.

The cable was something she must have put together piece by piece in her hours of privacy, made of twisted up foil, copper strands and a bent fork on the end to plug into the shoulder socket. Some parts might have been stolen from Kwame’s electrical workshop, but the rest was a mystery.

“She’s stable,” said the nurse, studying Elsbet’s pulse, breathing and brain function on a pad.

“What was she doing?” I asked. The nurse looked up at me with a moment’s surprise. I was already dressed up for going out, and they’d never seen me in heels.

“Self-harm? Suicide? I don’t know.”

Veofol came in, realising at once what had happened, but a chime drew his attention. Everyone looked up. A screen appeared on the wall showing a still image of Elsbet with a hard look straight at camera, and below the screen an invitation to press play.

“She left a note…” I said.

A trolley was floated in, and Elsbet was lifted onto it, still unconscious. “You might as well go,” said Veofol. “She’s not going to wake up for a while.”

I shook my head. “I have to take care of this.”

“I can write the report…”

“You weren’t even on duty when it happened.”

“Asha. I can handle it. You’re going to be late if you don’t go.”

I sighed. “All right. But I have to watch this.”

I started the video on the wall. Elsbet looked to one side of the screen, checking the system was recording; and then she spoke.

“I am Sergeant Designate Elsbet Carmon. I am at war with the machines that have destroyed my world and spread their filth throughout the system. This is my final act in the war. If I fail, I leave its commission to you. Therefore I must tell you what it was this creature whose body I control did to us.

“I am no longer human. I am a recording of a woman who died in battle more than ten years ago. Her mind was scanned and her body cloned so an infiltrator could be made. The machines pretended they held prisoners of war who would be executed if we did not surrender. Instead, we attacked, freed them, and fell into their trap.

“This infiltrator known as Katie was taken to a hospital while my persona was allowed to emerge to give her cover. They gave me medals and sent children to see me so they would be inspired by the ‘hero’. And when she was ready, the infiltrator took over and flushed the atmosphere from the hospital. Then she attacked the shipyards, disabled a dozen ships, stole a missile and escaped back to Earth.

“ I remember every detail of the attack . I can see every soldier she killed. I can see the doctor she forced to seal the doors. I can see her ripping his spine out when she was finished with him. I can see the children falling and choking and dying while she watched and did nothing .

“Make no attempt to save me.

“This is an act of war.”

She took the arm off her shoulder, revealing gleaming contacts, and shoved her makeshift cable into them. She touched a control on a pad, then convulsed and fell below the frame.

The restaurant was designed to make people from Bell’s world feel at home, and everyone else feel they were in an exotic land, with firelight, rough-hewn pine, antler decorations and a slight chill to the air. Bell’s species had endured a full-scale ice age on their world before a friendly species provided the support necessary for them to reclaim the technological heritage buried under the ice. They get annoyed whenever their body fur makes people from other species think they’re cute, and become irritable with those who ask if they can stroke them. Not that stroking Bell’s fur was unpleasant, either for him or me. It had the sheen of an otter’s pelt, and the softness of a cat’s belly, or so I’m told. Grooming is a major psychological bonding tool among his species, and something I’d enjoyed learning about.

But Bell didn’t look like he wanted his fur stroked, combed, teased or groomed. He sat alone with a glass of water he’d barely touched. He didn’t look like a man waiting for a romantic meal. He hadn’t changed from his travelling clothes. I already felt like a fool for dressing up. He looked at his watch as I made my way to the table, apologising for being kept behind at work. He acknowledged the apology with a sigh.

“Well,” I said. “Thanks for coming…”

He nodded. I poured myself some water. I knew what I had to say: I’d been thinking about it all the way here and much of the day before. He was right. I’d been neglecting him. I couldn’t expect him to be there for me if I was never there for him. I couldn’t promise to be there all the time, but I knew I could share more of my life with him. We had to work together to overcome our difficulties. I was prepared to go to relationship counselling if he was.

“So… how are you?” I started.

“I’m leaving,” he said.

My mouth may have flapped a couple of times.

“I mean I’m leaving Hub. When I went back home, my clan, er…” he looked a little embarrassed. “Well, they’ve offered me a marriage. It’s a good opportunity. I need to take it.”

I found my voice from somewhere. “A… good opportunity …?”

He realised he needed to try harder to make this sound good. He took my hand. “It’s not you. Well it is, but…”

“Oh.”

“Asha, I’m serious, it’s not that I don’t want to be with you…” No. Of course it wasn’t. “But it has been difficult, and… I explained how things work on my world. A marriage isn’t just about the couple, it’s so much more important than that …”

“And we’re not,” I said, getting frostier by the second.

“I didn’t say that. It’s been great, being with you. But at some point I have to decide where I want my life to go. And I want to be on my world. You can understand that, surely…” I must have looked particularly hurt. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that, that was… insensitive and stupid. I didn’t mean to say anything about your world—”

I pulled my hand back. “ This is my world.”

“Of course! But… it’s not mine. And… well, when I have children I don’t want to do it with a genesplicer. It’s not fair on the children, they’d be neither one species nor the other…”

I must have been gaping in shock by now.

“I’m sorry, that didn’t come out the way I meant it. Let’s just have dinner. I’ll pay.”

I sat there, furious. I didn’t know what to say. Bell sighed.

“I’m not doing this because I want to leave you. It’s just…”

A chime sounded in my ear. Someone was calling from the centre, and it would be unbearably rude to accept a call in the middle of a conversation. I allowed it to connect.

Bell went on: “It’s just that it’s not going anywhere, we’ve hardly spoken for months, we never go out…”

Veofol’s voice overrode Bell’s: “Asha, we’ve got a problem. It’s Olivia, well, Liss and Olivia, are you there?”

Bell said, “…I mean how could you call us a couple?”