Paul Hardy - The Last Man on Earth Club

The forest along the valley had been safe for thousands of years. No deadly animals hid among the leaves to poison and devour the unwary. Floods never swept away soil and trees. Fire never consumed the branches. Volcanic ash never choked the landscape to make a desert of barren cinders. The sun never blighted the land with ultraviolet radiation that could kill everything down to the last microbe.

Nor had the forest ever been stripped of leaves and branches by rain so acidic it could mark steel. It had not known the blast, the light, the heat, or the radiation from a nuclear fireball. Survivors of a terrible war had never fled through the trees, pursued by robotic hunters. Gene-mutated horrors had never oozed across the leaf litter, digesting all the biomass they could absorb. Invaders from a distant universe had never swept down from the skies, darting tentacles among the branches to drag the last remaining people to slavery on another world.

Convincing my patients of this was sometimes difficult. Many had lived through similar horrors before they were evacuated to the safety and security of Hub. Even though they knew they were on another world, it still took time for them to accept that they’d escaped their apocalypse; but the peaceful setting eventually proved beneficial to even the most traumatised survivors.

I was based at one of the smaller therapy centres on Hub, designed as a secluded retreat for groups of up to fifty refugees from dying worlds. There were no roads through the forest and no public transport; the only way in was by air. As you flew up the valley, you saw the ground level out for a few hundred metres, and before it climbed again, you came upon the meadow by the banks where the river parted the forest, giving us the clearing where we’d built the centre.

The main building was deliberately designed not to look too advanced, so as to provide a point of comfort for refugees from worlds not used to the soaring architecture of Hub Metro. The façade looked exactly like weathered stone, though there was not a single quarry on the planet. Something that resembled the grain of polished wood framed the doorways and windows, though we never used timber for construction. It even had rivulets of ivy flowing up the wall — ivy that wasn’t even remotely real, and could be adjusted from the master controls for the building. A few smaller structures stood nearby, providing shelter for vehicles and a workspace for the groundskeeper. Further up the valley, a microwave collector gathered power from satellites while a retransmitter kept us in touch with the dataflow coming from the planet’s capital, fifty kilometres away.

The last patients had left a month before, to be replaced now by a special group of only six people. Each of them had suffered in a way that was unique, even for those I work with, so we had reserved the entire building and shuttered anything we did not need. We only required two therapists — myself and my assistant — but even so, the rest of the staff outnumbered the patients by eight to one. We had a full infirmary staffed with four nurses and a physical therapist; two doctors permanently on call; kitchen and housekeeping staff who mainly served the others who lived and worked there; a few administrators who kept the place running; and a security team big enough to guard a group three times the size. In such an isolated location, we had little fear of attack from outside. The main danger was the patients themselves.

After they’d had a night to settle in, we brought them together in the central lounge, which also functioned as a small kitchen and dining room they would be able to use later on. Each took their place in a circle of chairs, along with myself and my assistant. My first task would be to introduce them to each other, an important first step towards bringing them together as a group.

Olivia objected before I could open my mouth.

“I don’t see why I should be here,” she said. “It’s only more talking. What good’s that going to do?” She was older than the rest, with a deep-lined face, hard-worn calloused hands and sun-beaten skin. She’d left her hair ragged and unwashed, and I knew from her file that she was still cutting it herself. There was a finger missing on her left hand, and scars on her arms that looked like bite marks. Her clothes were copies of the styles she’d worn on her own world, practical and hard-wearing: coarse woollen shirts and slacks, along with boots that could cope with rough terrain. The only thing that looked like it came from Hub were her glasses, which she needed both for astigmatism and translation.

“Well, Olivia,” I said, “your previous therapists say you’ve often pointed out how different your experiences are. I don’t think you’ll find that’s a problem with this group. Everyone here is just like you.”

“Huh,” she snorted, and looked suspiciously at the other five, whose own attitudes ranges from nervousness to reticence, as is normal in a first group session.

I turned to them. “Each one of you is the last survivor of your species. Each one of you is from a different universe where something terrible happened, and each one of you is the only survivor of that event. It’s been very difficult to help people like you because there are so few who share your experience. But we’ve found more of you in the last couple of years than we usually do, so we’ve been able to set up this group. I hope you’ll find it helpful to be among others who’ve shared your unique loss.

“My name is Doctor Asha Singh. I’m the group leader, and your therapist for individual sessions. This is Veofol, my assistant.” I indicated him, sitting next to me and smiling a greeting, wearing the ordinary clothes of a Hub resident: a neutral, sober mix of styles influenced by the fashions of a hundred worlds. “He’ll be available to talk to if I’m not around, and one of us will be on call twenty four hours a day.”

“Hello,” said Veofol with a voice as friendly as his smile.

“What are you, an elf?” asked Olivia. Veofol’s physique was a little outside human normal, with the slender build and long limbs of a species used to the light touch of microgravity.

“No, no,” he said. “I’m a bit tall and thin, that’s all. Same as everyone else from my universe, and that’s just because we live in orbit. We’re not elves. Just another kind of human.”

“Is that what you call it…” muttered Olivia, shaking her head.

I ignored her and went on. “To begin with, there are some ground rules you all need to agree to. Firstly: you must have respect for one another. Each of you has a right to speak and be heard, but not to prevent anyone else from speaking. You may feel very strongly about what you have to say, but please remember that others do too.

“Secondly: You all have a right to privacy. While these sessions are recorded to help me run the group, they are confidential, and only I and Veofol have access. Each of you should respect this and not repeat anything you hear in the group.

“Thirdly: You need to be here on time. If you have trouble remembering when sessions are scheduled, there’ll be chimes throughout the centre ten minutes before each one.

“And finally, if you no longer wish to participate, please do everyone the courtesy of attending a final session to say goodbye. Now, how does that sound?”

“I don’t want to participate. This is my last meeting. Goodbye,” said Olivia, folding her arms. She was determined to be the problem patient, much as I’d expected after reading the reports from her previous therapists.