“When you were found, we did a complete scan of your neural functions.” I tapped the controls. Areas at the front and back of the brain lit up, tracing a cable nest of signals through the two areas. “We found increased activity in the temporal and parietal lobes. For most species — and yours as well, we think — that means you’re very spiritual. In fact, it’s so strong it suggests a recent and very intense religious experience. Possibly from natural causes, but we’re concerned it might have been artificially stimulated.”
He smiled at me again, pitying me even more. “Well, I did tell you. They touched me and I understood.”
“Yes. You’ve been very honest with us. So I should be honest with you. You see, the IU has a very clear policy when it comes to religion and spirituality.”
“Let me guess. You don’t like it.”
“We don’t think it reflects the real, physical universe. We know a lot of people honestly feel there’s a world beyond this one, but we’ve never found anything to show that gods or spirits exist outside the human imagination. And the fact that it’s possible to create religious feeling just by stimulating these parts of the brain… well.”
“And yet I saw what I saw.”
“You saw the population of a whole world kill themselves. And your mind may have been recently interfered with. You must understand that we find this troubling…”
Was that a slightly uncomfortable look on his face? “I can see how you’d find that… difficult.”
“Can I ask another difficult question?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Certainly.”
“How did your wife and child die?”
He paused a moment, but I didn’t see any sadness or anguish. Instead, he smiled again, with a faraway look. “Szilmar cut her wrists.”
“And your son?”
“Ghiorgiu. He was too young. She did it for him.”
“How?”
“Smothering.”
“So… Szilmar, your wife, murdered your son, Ghiorgiu. She deliberately smothered him. And then she slashed her own wrists. And you found their bodies. Is that right?”
He hesitated. “I can see how you’d find that difficult to understand. But they’re not dead. Only transformed.”
“Okay, but let’s think about how this looks for a moment. How do you think we’d interpret it, given that we have no evidence of these Antecessors?”
He sighed, but at least he was willing to discuss it. “If I were to make your assumptions…”
“Go ahead.”
“Then I might think that an alien force from another universe murdered my species.”
“That’s pretty much it.”
He seemed troubled now. “But that’s wrong.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m certain.”
“But you see why we’re concerned.”
“You think I’m mad,” he said, shaking his head.
“I think something was done to you that changed your perceptions.”
“Why would anyone do that?”
“Some totalitarian societies manipulate religious feeling to control their people. It happens.”
“You’re suggesting someone did this to billions of people just to make them kill themselves? Now that’s ridiculous. Why not just kill them, if that’s what they wanted?”
“I don’t know. But something was definitely done to you, and we want to help you get better.”
“So if the whole thing is in my mind, why don’t you just reverse it? If it’s so easy…”
“Well first of all, we have to ask your permission. And even if you gave us your permission, it isn’t easy. Your species is reasonably average but we still wouldn’t want to risk psychosurgery.”
“That seems convenient.”
“It really isn’t. Because what’s likely to happen is going to be a lot harder on you.” There. Let him think about that for a moment, and become curious.
“What exactly do you think’s going to happen to me?”
“Religious revelation fades over time. If you live on a world where religion is normal, then you slowly go back to being an ordinary believer. But in a place like this, where your views will constantly be challenged, you’ll probably find it very difficult to stay certain. And it’s usually worse when the religious experience is artificially stimulated.”
I might as well have told him the sky had turned green for all that he believed me. The pity returned to his voice. “You really think that’s going to happen?”
“Look,” I said, indicating the wall display, “we monitored your brain over a period of about a week. Compare the two images.” I split the screen and showed two pictures of his brain.
“No change,” he said.
“It’s very subtle. Look at the numbers.” I increased the size of the readouts showing the strength of relevant neural impulses. A very slight reduction was clear. “In a single week, the activity reduces in intensity by a tenth of a tenth of a per cent. Not much, but enough, and it’s not a statistical error. Would you like me to scan your brain now and see how much further it’s gone?”
He looked closely at the displays and considered them for a moment before turning back to me. “Well. That seems quite conclusive. May I ask something else?”
“Of course.”
“Has any other part of my mind been interfered with?”
“Not as far as we can tell.”
“So my memories are intact.”
“Probably, yes.”
“So I saw what I saw, and I heard what I heard.”
“That seems likely.”
“So it still happened. And if that’s the case, it won’t matter what happens in here.” He tapped his skull.
“I don’t think it’ll be that easy.”
He smiled at me again. “Well… I suppose I’ll just have to make do with reality.”
He was definitely going to be hard work.
8. Asha
I did not spend all my time at the centre. I commuted back and forth from Hub Metro and the apartment I shared with my partner, Bell. I had long since warned him I would not have much time for him during a major evacuation, when I would be working eighteen hours a day for weeks on end, and he said he understood. But we were between evacuations for now, and I was still having to spend almost all my time at the centre with this new group, so he felt neglected and let down. He also tended to pester me for information about the group. As a linguist, he was curious about worlds full of dead and untranslated languages. There were rumours spreading from the Diplomatic Service about a lone survivor found on a world full of corpses, and he guessed my work had something to do with that. I had to remind him firmly that the group had the strictest confidentiality. To my surprise, this left him grumpy and even more unreasonable. In retrospect, I think he was starting to look for a way out, but at the time, I was hurt and irritated by his response.
At the centre itself, we continued trying to persuade the members of the group to interact outside group therapy sessions. We arranged activities to encourage them to work together to accomplish simple goals, and the first goal we picked was dinner.
I delegated this task to Veofol one evening while I was back in Hub Metro, trying to explain to Bell why he could not interview my patients about their languages. Each morning when I returned, I would have a conference with Veofol and the other overnight staff to catch up on what had happened while I was away, and if there was anything serious, there would be reports to read and issues to address with the patients. The morning after Veofol tried to persuade the group to cook a meal, he simply sighed, shook his head and presented me with his report and the recording of the session.
9. Cooking
REPORT: Group Activity (Cooking)
y276.m4.w2.d7
Dr. Veofol e-leas bron Jerra
At 18:00, I called the group together in the kitchen to begin the evening’s assignment. Everyone but Katie showed up. She has failed to engage in any social contact with the group, and rem
ains in her room virtually all the time.
There were a range of menu options, but they first had to agree which to make and who would do what. The arguments started immediately. Iokan suggested they make one dish they could all share, while Olivia didn’t want to share because she complains everyone else’s food is bland and tasteless. Kwame suggested she have her own meal and stop bothering the rest of them. Iokan proposed a compromise: a meal that could be divided into portions and seasoned one by one. Olivia wanted to know what they could cook, and Iokan suggested a basic stew could be made and separated into different vessels. When asked what might be in the stew, further disagreement resulted. Olivia grew irritated with the argument and deliberately disgusted the group by describing some of her favourite recipes. I have to admit that my own stomach turned when she described ways to cook human (or revenant) flesh. Liss decided she didn’t want any meat in the stew, but Kwame insisted they have it anyway as he did not want to give in to Olivia. Pew stayed very quiet, as he often does when the others argue.
I was on the verge of enforcing a choice when Katie made an appearance. She ignored the group, went to a storage locker, took out one of the individual microwave meals we’re not supposed to use except in emergencies, cooked it (they take about 30 seconds), then left without saying a word.
Olivia declared that Katie had the right idea, took one of the meals for herself (along with copious seasonings to add later), and tried to cook it. Unfortunately, she didn’t know how to use the microwave, and hitting it got her nowhere. Liss declared she used them all the time, but she was unprepared for one not made on her world and mistakenly set it to ‘defrost’. Olivia shouted at her for ‘thinking she was so clever’ — it is clear that Olivia regards Liss with contempt — and Liss fled the kitchen in tears.
I stepped in to tell the group how to use the microwave, as the objective of a group meal had entirely disintegrated by this point. Olivia cooked hers and left, leaving Iokan and Kwame behind. Iokan continued to be friendly and helpful, showing Kwame how to operate the microwave, but also continued to have very little tact. He attempted to console Kwame about the actions that led to the end of his world, but did so by implying there was some kind of divine reason for the nuclear war. Kwame found this very offensive, and left as soon as his meal was ready. Pew then made his meal and took his leave. He was familiar with the device, but did not intervene at any point.
Liss returned now Olivia was gone, and Iokan again volunteered to help her. Once their meals were ready, she asked for his help fixing a problem with her screenplayer setup. Even she could not bear his company for too long, however, and once the device was ready, she asked him to leave.
Conclusions:
It’s going to be difficult to get them behaving like a group. It’s not just Olivia’s disruptions, but also Iokan’s attempts to help, which, while well-meaning, tend to repel the others. Pew is quite withdrawn, and Katie completely so. Kwame tends to stand apart from the others unless something is done to bring him in. Liss irritates most of the group (except Iokan, of course), and causes disruption in her own way.
Before we resort to more extreme methods, it may be worth trying again. If we can find something that appeals to the more disruptive elements (Olivia especially), this might neutralise the most serious problem. I’ll prepare some options for you to choose from.
PART THREE — DAY TO DAY
1. Group
I started our next group session very conscious of how far we still had to go. Most of them were barely speaking to each other, with the exception of Iokan; but anyone he spoke to would usually do their best to get away as quickly as possible.
Katie arrived as the chimes sounded, having set out in precisely enough time to walk in the door at that moment. Kwame, Iokan and Pew were already there. Liss ran in a couple of minutes later, apologising for her lateness. I located Olivia outside, half asleep on a garden chair with hat brim down and earplugs in (presumably to give her an excuse not to turn up). I sent Veofol to rouse her, and we waited until she joined us, tossing her wide straw hat on the floor.
“What, were you all waiting?” she said. “You can start without me. I don’t mind.”
Once she was sat down I addressed the group. “Well, thank you to everyone for turning up. I know it’s early days yet, but you don’t really seem to be getting to know each other very well, so I’d like to try and address that in this session.”
Liss brightened up. “Are we going to tell stories again?”
Olivia muttered, “Not if I have to listen to one of yours…” Liss’s smile vanished.
“Not quite,” I said. “What I’d like to do is throw the session open to you. We can discuss a topic of your choice.”
Kwame didn’t like the idea. “What precisely do we have to talk about?”
“I’ve got a complaint,” said Olivia. “He screams at night. I can’t get any sleep.”
“I have nightmares,” said Kwame.
“We’ve all got bloody nightmares. You’re the only one that screams.”
“Olivia,” I said, “this isn’t a forum for complaints. I’d prefer it if we could have a civilised discussion.”
“Well, what about?” she demanded. “He’s right, none of us have anything in common! You say we all survived the end of the world but it’s different worlds! Half of us don’t even speak the same language! I’m fed up reading subtitles all the time.”
“I’ve started learning Interversal,” said Iokan. “You could help the rest of us catch up with you, if you like.”
“I would rather not,” said Kwame.
“Well… it’s something we share, isn’t it?” said Iokan. “All of you who’ve been here for a while had to learn Interversal. And those of us who are new need to pick up the language…”
“It is not that…” said Kwame, too slowly to prevent Pew joining in.
“I can help,” he said. “I did a bit of teaching at the university—”
“Please. Let me finish,” said Kwame.
“Oh. Sorry…” said Pew, looking embarrassed.
“I had great difficulty learning to speak again after my hibernation. And thinking about it gives me a headache. So I would rather not.”
“Ah,” said Iokan. “Okay, we could just talk about something. We can pick a subject, right?”
“I can count the ways you’re off your rocker,” suggested Olivia.
Iokan looked back at her for a moment. Not offended, but pitying her a little. Then he smiled. “Okay. If that’s what you want.” He waited for her to frown.
“What do you mean?” she said.
“Let’s discuss the thing about me you don’t like.”
“There’s nothing about you I like.”
“There’s one thing in particular.”
“Yeh. Everything that comes out of your mouth.”
“I meant religion.”
“As much as I dislike agreeing with Olivia,” said Kwame, “she has a point. Nothing else comes out of your mouth.”
“If you’re tired of my point of view, why not present your own?” said Iokan.
“There is nothing worth saying,” said Kwame.
“Religion may be a rather difficult subject for today,” I said. “Does anyone else have any ideas?”
“No, I don’t mean ‘let’s have a debate about what’s real and what isn’t’,” said Iokan. “I mean… you can tell a lot about a society by how it worships, or how it doesn’t. For example, the IU doesn’t officially recognise religion, so we know they’re interested in the physical world rather than the spiritual. But they don’t stop people worshipping if they want to, so we also know they’re tolerant of people who are different. Which suggests they take morality seriously. And without religion, they have to take their morality from their own conscience. So perhaps they respect human life more than some religions do. The problem comes when they have to choose between two bad options; they don’t want to hurt anyone, so they often do nothing, which can end up hurting
everyone.”
“That’s an… interesting analysis,” I said.
“But you see the point?” said Iokan. “We don’t understand each other. But if we talk about how we worship, we’ll learn something about each other.”
I considered it for a moment. It was actually a good idea. Olivia butted in. “Rubbish,” she said.
“I think Iokan’s got a point,” I said. “Were you ever religious?”
She snorted. “You must be joking. The only thing you get from religion is rot. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Not even just to tell us how your religion was set up? What kind of gods you had?”
“It’s all rot. Nothing but rot.”
“So you’re an atheist?” asked Iokan.
She gave him a hard look. “All right. If you’re so bloody desperate to know. Those priests you want to hear about, those good kind, moral people,” she said, spitting out the words, “they said revenants were dead souls from Tartarys. So in the first outbreak, they’d get them into a temple and worship them, like they’re messengers from Plutos. And then they let the revenants bite them, can you believe! All the wounds got infected and most of them died and got up again — more bloody revenants. And the ones that were still alive would worship them, like they’d been to Tartarys and come back with a message from high and mighty himself. And we didn’t know this was going on because we were out in the countryside searching for more of the bastards. Right when it was ending, I mean when the first outbreak was ending (gods only know what they did in the last outbreak), we found out they’d locked the temple doors. There was one temple school that kept all the children inside. All of them died and came back. Disgusting. We had to quarantine the temples until we could go in and put them down one by one. They had us go in there and shoot children because they wouldn’t let us burn the place down, that would be disrespectful to the gods, wouldn’t it?” She shook her head at it all. “So don’t tell me religion does any good.”
“Olivia is correct,” said Katie. Everyone turned to look at her. I think a lot of them had forgotten what her voice sounded like.
The Last Man on Earth Club Page 9
