“Can you believe that? I didn’t have time to talk to the super that morning so I just got in the car and went to work — there was this complete asshole on the road into Telissauga, guy cut me up and I was so mad, I just can’t tell you. He could have killed somebody, the way he was driving—”
“Liss!”
“Oh. Sorry!”
“Can you tell me more about where you worked?”
“Okay. So where I work, I guess you’d say it’s a recruitment agency. People come in, we interview them, we get them jobs, and then they screw up and the employer complains and we try and send them someone who isn’t a screw-up but what are you going to do? These guys come in off the street and you can’t believe anything you see on their resumé, but how are you going to spot them? I dunno, I just did data entry most of the time, and we were so far behind I had weeks and weeks of work backed up, so when everyone went away I was getting tons of it done, only I had everyone else’s work to do as well so I guess I wasn’t getting that far, and Barara left me all the photocopying as well, he’s just lazy, never gets through his work—”
“Can I stop you there?”
“Oh! Sure! Sorry…”
“It’s okay, Liss, I’d just like to focus a little more on the actual events on the day itself.”
“Which day?”
“The day everyone disappeared.”
“Oh. Sorry!” She looked childishly embarrassed.
“You said you went into work as normal. Was there anything special going on that day?”
“Nope. Normal day, far as I know.”
“What was on the news?”
“I don’t watch the news.”
“You say you watched a breakfast show?”
“Oh, sure, but not news. I mean, movie stars, that’s not news. I know that. News is too depressing. I mean, who wants to hear all that kinda stuff when you’re eating breakfast?”
“Why is the news depressing?”
“Well, y’know. Everything going wrong. Disasters and screwups. I don’t need to hear about it, I’ve got my own troubles, you know?”
“What do you mean by disasters and screwups, exactly?”
“Oh, I don’t know… all that crap, it just wears me out. I don’t pay any attention.”
“I see. So you have no knowledge of world events at that time?”
She shrugged. “Guess not.”
“Okay. So you went to work. And everything was normal?”
“Uh-huh. Normal as normal is. You know, nobody’s filling the coffeepot, too much work, my manager’s stressed. I dunno. Normal.”
“How did you spend the day? I mean, what did your work consist of?”
“Data entry. You know, typing forms into the computer?”
“Why was that necessary?”
“Huh?” She seemed puzzled, as though the question made no sense.
“Why did that have to be done?”
“Of course it had to be done! How else are you gonna do it?”
“No, I mean… your world had some amazing technology. It seems strange that you needed humans just to enter data into a computer.”
“I don’t know. I guess it was cheaper than getting a chimp to do it?”
She wasn’t being sarcastic, and my translation system was working perfectly. “I’m sorry — you said a chimp? A chimpanzee?”
“Uh-huh. They don’t work for nothing! I mean don’t get me wrong, they’re great little guys but you’ll never get them doing anything like I was doing. I tell you, I’m so close to minimum wage I don’t know how I make it from month to month…”
Her world grew stranger and stranger. “Let me just check that I’ve understood this: Chimpanzees were an intelligent species on your world?”
“Sure. Of course they were.”
“That’s… rather unusual.”
She seemed honestly perplexed. “What’s unusual about chimps?”
“Lets put the chimps to one side. I’d like to talk about the moment everyone disappeared. Did this happen while you were entering data?”
“Oh, no. It’s like I said before, I was in the photocopier room.”
“And what were you doing?”
“Copying.”
“Can you explain any more?”
“Well, when the forms come to us, they’re like the originals but we need to keep backup copies in case the system goes down, you know? It’s boring. You’ve gotta take the staples off and run the pages through and half the time the feeder doesn’t work so you’ve got to do them one page at a time and then the manager asks you why you haven’t finished yet and it just goes on and on and on… you know.”
“But it didn’t go on and on, did it?”
“No… I guess not.” She fell into silence. But before I could coax her into going further, she perked back up again. “But I did finish it!”
“After you found everyone had disappeared?”
“Oh, not straight away… I came back the next day. Or the one after that, I don’t know. But I got it done.”
The question was: what happened between the moment of discovery and the point at which she started work again?
“Hm. Do you remember the moment they vanished?”
“I guess.”
“Can you tell me what you experienced?”
“Not much of anything. I don’t know. It got quiet.”
“How so?”
“People stopped talking. I guess that’s when they all walked out. They must have taken their shoes off too, ‘cause they were real quiet about it.”
“What did you do once you realised everything had gone quiet?”
“I kept copying. For a while, anyway. Then I thought it was weird, so I went to look.”
“Did you notice the piles of dust?”
“What, those? No, those weren’t there. That was later. It all got messy because the cleaning staff went as well. I can’t clean everywhere so it just builds up.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“Uh-huh.”
She wasn’t likely to give up her delusion in the first session, so I moved on. “What did you do next?”
“I went looking for everyone. But they’d all gone.”
“Where did you look?”
“Everywhere. I took a drive. Everyone was gone.”
“What else did you do?”
“I called the cops but they were useless. I guess they were hiding too because they didn’t answer the phone. I left a message but they didn’t call me back.”
“How long did you look for people?”
“Until it got dark and I went home.”
“What did you do then?”
“Watched screen.”
“What was on the screen?”
“Just the stories.”
“They were still broadcasting?”
“Uh-huh.”
“But it was automated?”
“I guess.”
She’d started the session as bright and breezy as could be, but the sun had gone in. She wasn’t looking at me any more. She wasn’t even looking at the beautiful view outside. She was looking at the table, and picking at her nails.
“So why did you decide to go back to work?”
She shrugged. “I didn’t want to get fired.”
“Was that the only reason?”
“Have you ever tried living on welfare? Huh.”
“There wasn’t anything else?”
“No.”
“Nothing you left behind there?” She shook her head just a little. “Nothing you saw there?” She didn’t even answer. She kept her eyes down, not even pretending to look at her nails any more. I worried that if I kept pressing her this way, I might seem unsympathetic; so I decided to engage her in something she was interested in.
“You said earlier you liked watching screen…”
“Yeah.”
“What kind of things did you like watching?”
She looked up at me with a returning smile. “Oh, you know. The us
ual stuff.”
“Such as?”
“Uh… well anything on ScreenTime. That’s all reruns but it’s good reruns. ASN had a couple of good shows. And I can always stand to watch Dates and Hates. I know, it’s kinda soppy but it’s only a half hour show.”
“Is that a romantic one?”
“Uh-huh. See, Ellera’s always having to decide which guy she likes from the dating agency and she always picks the wrong one and the wrong one turns out to be an okay guy after all but the right guy she should have picked ends up kidnapping her and then she has to have dinner with him but she gets away and finds the wrong guy again and then it turns out he really is the wrong guy because he was in on it with the right guy so she dumps them both and goes back to the agency to try again. Which is so lame because she should have realised she wasn’t getting anywhere but she keeps on trying!”
Liss was definitely back to being perked up and happy. “Any others?” I asked.
“Well I like some of the reality shows…”
“Such as?”
“CP7: Secret Squadron is good, it’s like you can’t believe those people are real, they’re so crazy. So you’ve got Gelean acting like he’s so cool, like he’s the real one and only, you know? And he’s a complete ass and everybody knows it except him. And Uilea and Yelessean are always fighting and poor old Sayas is trying to keep everyone from making idiots of themselves in front of the cameras but no one listens so she ends up complaining about everyone. I mean, it’s like these guys think they’re supposed to save people but they’re a total bunch of screwups.”
“So is this a show about… police officers? Firefighters?”
“Huh? No. Well, kinda. They’re adventurers. You know?”
“Not really. Are they some kind of emergency service?”
“Yeah. For really big emergencies.”
“Such as..?
“You know, like end of the world kind of stuff?”
If I’d had my cup of tea in my hand, I’d have dropped it. “End of the world stuff?”
“Yeah. If something really bad’s happening, they go off and deal with it. Well, not CP7, they’re just local, you know? They’re City Patrol 7, they’re not important. I mean, ‘Secret Squadron’, you gotta be kidding, right?”
“But there were other, uh, ‘adventurers’ saving the world?”
“Sure!”
“What did they save the world from?”
“Uh, well. You know. Like that one time the bugs took over all the people in Noyza and made them all into one person. Or when Calafaria blew up. Or that mountain in Eleshin that kept moving and squashing things. That kind of stuff.”
“Did this happen a lot?”
“Every now and then, I don’t know. But they deal with it. You know. Save the world and everything.”
“What do they do when they’re not saving the world? And appearing on screenshows…”
“They save cities. Or countries. Or just help people. Don’t you have anyone like that here?”
“No. We don’t…” It occurred to me there was a problem with this. “Okay. I apologise if this is an obvious question…”
“Uh-huh…”
“But this is just a screenshow. Right?”
“Oh, sure, it’s a screenshow!”
“Oh. Good.”
“But it’s a screenshow about real people.”
I had a thousand questions fighting in my head. Picking the right one took a moment. “So… why is it these people who save the world? I mean, what qualifies them to do that?”
She answered as though I were a child asking a stupid question. “Because they’ve got powers.”
“Powers?” I asked.
“You know. They can do stuff.”
“Stuff like…?”
“Oh, I don’t know. They’re strong. Or bulletproof. Or really fast. Or really clever. Lots of things.”
“So they had posthuman modifications?”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, it means they had surgery or cybernetic implants, or they were genetically altered to have extra abilities. A lot of species do it once they have the technology.”
“Oh, some people did that…”
“Okay.”
“But most of them were just born like it.”
“Right. I see. But… did you hear about any of these world savers trying to stop what happened? Or did they all disappear too? ”
“I guess so. I didn’t hear about them after that.”
“No. Hm. The thing is… the thing is, what you’ve just described is very unusual. In fact I’ve never heard of anything like it. I don’t know if it has anything to do with what happened, but…”
I paused there. If she was telling the truth, then her world hadn’t faced an end once, but many times. It faced it often enough that it needed to have people constantly on hand to save it, and this time they’d failed. It didn’t help to explain why Liss had survived, though. Unless…
“Liss… do you have any powers?”
She laughed. “What, me? No. Of course not!”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah. I was tested. Same as everyone else. I’m normal. Why do you think I’ve got powers?”
“I was just wondering what it was that made you different to everyone else.”
She looked very surprised. “You think the reason I was left behind was because I have a power?”
“I don’t know. I’m just speculating.”
“Wow! Me with a power… that’s just, wow. You know?”
“Well, you are very strong for someone your size…”
“Oh, stop it, everyone’s this strong on my world! It’s not us that’s strong, it’s you that’s weak.”
I needed to do some research. “Hm. Can I ask a favour?”
“Sure!”
“You brought a lot of screenshows back from your world. Was this show, Secret Squadron, one of them?”
“Oh, no, I didn’t get any of those. I’ve got some of Dates and Hates, though.”
“Do you mind if I borrow a few discs? Anything that has people with powers. Or something that just shows what your world was like…?”
She shrugged. “Sure. Okay.”
4. Katie
PSYCHOMEDICAL HISTORY — SUMMARY
KT-00932/IN “KATIE”
It is difficult to take a full history for KT-00932/IN, partly because her physiological state is extremely unusual, and partly because she is almost completely silent on the subject of her own health.
When rescued, she was suffering from nearly a year of exposure to vacuum, and was in a deep coma that seemed to have prolonged her survival in an airless environment. Her biology has clearly been designed for survival in open space. Her circulatory fluids do not expand or contract as normal human blood would, thus avoiding damage during the extreme changes of temperature she experienced while in vacuum. There was radiation damage across her dermis to a depth of approximately one millimetre, but she displayed remarkable resistance to any deeper exposure. She had also lost all her hair, but her eardrums had remained intact despite the lack of air pressure.
She was equipped with a number of implants intended for military use, and consented to their removal while she was in quarantine, as a condition of release to Hub. However, she did not consent to the removal of three implants in her brain, which she claims have a vital regulatory function. Our analysis suggests they force the biological systems of her brain to operate at higher efficiency than normal. If this is the case, they may cause neural damage over time, and a small but significant degradation has been observed across successive scans.
Her psychological state is a difficult subject, as she is as reticent here as elsewhere. She gave a brief statement regarding the war she fought in, which her side appears to have lost. She has agreed to reasonable co-operation with IU authorities, but this has amounted to a policy of almost complete silence regarding her past. She displays no emotion, and demonstrates absolutely no empathy. S
he is nevertheless extremely intelligent and perceptive. If the neurological degradation causes suffering, she conceals it perfectly.
It is projected that KT-00932/IN has between six and nine months before the neurological degradation threatens autonomic systems and therefore her life. Treatment is theoretically possible but extremely risky and counterindicated unless there is no other option. It is recommended that she should remain under close observation and be encouraged to engage further with therapy.
* * *
Katie folded into her chair like a robotic arm. Whatever interest she had in the room was satisfied with a steady sweeping look, not pausing once to examine any single thing.
“Katie… is it okay if I call you Katie?”
She stared directly at me without regard for how anyone might interpret such a constant gaze, and replied in the usual flat, toneless voice. “It is okay.”
“Good… well, first of all, thank you for agreeing to come to the centre. I know you don’t think we’ll be able to help, but I’m glad you’re willing to let us try.”
She didn’t react. Her first therapist had reported that pleasantries would just pass her by, but that she would respond to direct inquiries.
“Well. Okay. Now, I know you’ve answered this question before, but… how did you survive?”
She started without a pause. “I was assigned to crew a modified orbital freight transport with two others. The transport was equipped with antimatter explosive devices. Our mission was to simulate the appearance of a wreck near the path of an enemy asteroid ship on approach to Earth orbit, then to burn engines at point of closest approach, ram the asteroid and detonate the antimatter devices. However, the enemy discovered us before we could ram them and destroyed our ship with pulsed EMDIS weapons. The ship was divided into a number of sections and the contents dispersed. The antimatter devices and other crewmembers were eliminated by plasma fire, but I remained undetected among other debris. I engaged vacuum survival systems, and have no further memories until I was recovered by the exploration ship Chemistry.”
I checked the notes from the triage therapist who had first spoken to her at Grainger station, months before:
G: Can I ask how you survived?
K: I was assigned to crew a modified orbital freight transport with two others. The transport was equipped with antimatter explosive devices. Our mission was to simulate the appearance of a wreck near the path of an enemy asteroid ship on approach to Earth orbit, then to burn engines at point of closest approach, ram the asteroid and detonate the antimatter devices. However, the enemy discovered us before we could ram them and destroyed our ship with pulsed EMDIS weapons…
The Last Man on Earth Club Page 6
