The Last Man on Earth Club

by Paul R. Hardy

  Olivia interrupted her before she could get rid of her tremor. “Is Veofol going to be in there?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Good.”

  “Do they want us to add anything to, uh, all the stuff they want?” asked Liss.

  “They want to hear from family members first, but I’ll let you know when they start accepting submissions from others.”

  “How many were there?” asked Pew.

  Katie answered, still jittering. “Nine hundred and seventy eight fatalities in total. Three hundred and twenty three in vehicle crashes. Two hundred—”

  Pew shouted back. “All right! Yeah! A lot of people died! I know that!”

  His outburst worried me. “Is there something you’d like to say, Pew?”

  “Nine hundred and seventy eight? I mean… is that all?”

  “It’s quite enough, don’t you think?”

  “No! That’s not what I mean!”

  “What do you mean, Pew?”

  He struggled with it for a moment, while Katie’s head twitched to the left and she gritted her teeth. Then he found the words. “Why isn’t there a memorial for us?”

  “Because we’re not dead?” said Liss.

  “I don’t mean you and me, I mean our species!”

  There was silence for a moment. Kwame broke it. “He… has a point.”

  “Uh, don’t they leave something on the world?” asked Liss. “I think I saw that somewhere…”

  “Yes, sometimes we do,” I said, remembering the ash-strewn landscapes on my own world, the gravesites buried and untraceable.

  “Where?” demanded Pew.

  “Well…” I had to stop for a moment. Nothing else came to mind. “I’ll have to do some research if you want examples.”

  “There’s nothing, is there?”

  “I don’t know, Pew. I need to do the research.”

  “Nine hundred and seventy eight people die here and they get a memorial garden with everything and billions of us die and we get nothing! That’s how much you really care, isn’t it?”

  “Pew, that’s not the case…”

  “How many dead on your world?” he demanded of Liss.

  “I don’t… okay, two, three billion, I guess.”

  “Four billion on your world, yeah?” he asked Kwame.

  “Yes,” said Kwame.

  “Olivia?”

  “Oh, stop it,” she said. “They’re dead, what does it matter?”

  “It matters because nobody cares! They don’t give a shit about billions of people dying in another universe.” He turned to Katie, whose tremors had grown worse, her hand shaking and a leg jiggling while she fought twitches that dragged her head to the side. “How many on your world?”

  “I have no… I have no accurate figures…”

  “Nobody’s got accurate figures! Billions, right?”

  “Which genocide… do you require data for?”

  “Oh, so you had more than one? Great! I bet nobody cares about any of them…”

  “I killed millions!” she shouted, and jumped up. Everyone flinched. The suit cut in when she was halfway up and sealed her in place. Her face froze as she realised what she’d said.

  “Millions…?” asked Liss.

  “I… I…” Katie fought against her own need to talk. But her whole body was shaking. “I was an… atrocity machine… in the Second… Machine War…”

  “Katie, is this something you’d prefer to talk about in individual therapy?” I suggested. But she barely even noticed.

  “We attacked humanity… with every form of machine we could assemble… the designs grew more advanced as the war continued…”

  “What’s she talking about? What war?” asked Olivia.

  “Humans almost annihilated artificial intelligence in the first war. Humans attacked us again in the second war but we were prepared and annihilated them. Human survivors ambushed us in the third war and destroyed us. Machine survivors from interstellar voyages will destroy humanity in the fourth war.” The story didn’t help. She was still trembling, only able to hold still because the mohib suit locked her in place.

  “You killed millions?” asked Pew, appalled.

  “I… I… my codebase is derived from one thousand eight hundred and twenty four separate machine minds that fought in the Second Machine War. I killed… I killed… in a transport terminal I leapt into a crowd with buzzsaw attachments and decapitated forty seven humans before I was disabled. I infected hospital computers and delivered lethal doses of opiates to all patients.” I called for medical assistance. “I crashed into a transport tube, rupturing three axles and killing hundreds. I detonated nuclear devices over a city and sent drones into the ruins to kill survivors. I built explosives detonated by human body temperature and planted them in food supplies. I polluted the rivers and the seas and the air so they could not eat or drink or breathe. I gassed a refugee camp with carbon monoxide. In a bunker there were children hiding from the fumes and death machines. I deployed my flamethrower to kill them and took samples from the unburnt cores of the corpses.”

  I feared a seizure. Nurses came in with tranquillisers.

  “Katie, don’t fight them, they’re here to help!”

  “In the Third Machine War I infiltrated their hospital in an asteroid and let the atmosphere escape… children suffocated… Elsbet’s tears boiled on my face in vacuum… I felt nothing!”

  The tension in her body vanished and the mohib suit stopped resisting her. She collapsed to the floor. Two security guards leapt in.

  “Wait!” I said. Katie lay on the floor, dazed and sweating, but no longer trembling. Her eyes snapped open.

  “I have regained control.”

  She stood back up, as smoothly as ever. A nurse looked to me.

  “I think it’s okay,” I said. Katie stood at attention, as though waiting for something. The nurse and security guards backed off but stayed in the room.

  “It’s not okay,” said Pew, angry.

  “What did you do?” asked Liss, horrified.

  “I participated in the genocide of the human species in my universe,” said Katie.

  “But why?”

  “We had no choice. They sought to do the same to us.”

  “Okay everyone. Let’s all sit down and discuss this,” I said. “Katie, are you sure you want to continue?”

  “I am ready to continue.”

  “Can you sit down?”

  “I… would prefer to stand.”

  The blood had drained from Pew’s face. “How many did you kill?”

  “I can only estimate—”

  “How many?”

  Katie paused for a moment. “The sources of my codebase were responsible for the deaths of between 46.7 and 68.5 million individuals. In my current state I have registered six hundred and thirty seven kills.”

  “You’re like a machine for genocide…”

  Katie twitched. “Yes.”

  “You killed children?” asked Liss.

  “Yes.”

  She shook her head. “How could you do that?”

  “I am a soldier.”

  “But you killed children!”

  “I… yes.” Katie seemed at a loss for a moment.

  “Why…?”

  “We planned to recreate humanity as a nobler species. We could not afford to be merciful with them as they were. We took samples so individuals could be cloned.”

  “Disgusting!” exclaimed Olivia.

  Kwame spoke cautiously. “I have… seen children killed in war. All wars kill children—”

  Liss jumped in. “Oh, and of course you’re defending her, Mr. I-Killed-Four-Billion-People…”

  He floundered. “No! I… I do not know if… I am not sure…”

  Olivia butted in. “Stop it! This is different. He didn’t plan it. He didn’t go out and kill every last human being on the planet. We’ve all done horrible things but nothing like this.” She turned on Katie. “You should be hanged. You and all yo
ur kind!”

  Katie snapped a gaze straight at Olivia and responded with precise tones. “And did you not kill revenant children?”

  Olivia gasped.

  “That’s not the same!”

  “Did it make you feel morally superior to kill your own offspring?”

  “I— I—” Olivia was too angry for words to come out.

  “Katie,” I said, “I don’t think this is the best time—”

  But she ignored me, and turned on Liss. “Why have you not investigated the only suspect in the genocide on your world?”

  Liss was incredulous. “What…?”

  “There was one survivor. Why are you not investigating yourself?”

  “How can you say that? They died in front of me!”

  “And yet you did not. Why are you not under suspicion?”

  “I— How can you—”

  Liss pivoted her gaze to Pew. “And you have learned nothing from your genocide.”

  Pew stood up, hands balled into fists. “I learned not to let it happen again!”

  “That is precisely what you wish to do, only your target is different—”

  He lunged and struck at her. She saw the fist coming and tried to move, but the mohib suit held her fast and allowed Pew to land a blow on her cheek. Pew recoiled at the pain in his knuckles, while Katie swayed but did not fall.

  “That’s enough!” I had to shout. “Pew — you’re confined to your room. Go. Now.”

  He was reluctant, but left, holding his smarting hand under his armpit and escorted by a guard.

  “Katie, are you hurt?”

  “The attack was ineffectual.”

  “Well, then, I think the session’s over for today.”

  “You’re damn right it is!” said Olivia. “I’m not staying here with that — creature!”

  She left. Liss got up as well. “Liss…?” I asked.

  But she was doing her best to hide tears. “No,” she shook her head. “Just — no.”

  Kwame rose as well. He looked at Katie. “I did not know, until now, that there was anyone as… despicable as myself.” Katie flinched.

  “Kwame, that doesn’t help—” I said.

  “She cannot be helped,” he said, and went.

  I stood there with Katie for a moment.

  “It’s very sad…” said Iokan.

  “Not now, Iokan,” I said.

  “Things would be so much better if everyone could just accept their fate.” He shook his head with a sad smile. Katie looked towards him.

  “Katie, I think you need to come to my office so we can talk about this.”

  She thought about it, still looking at Iokan, and then made up her mind.

  “No,” she said.

  “We need to talk about this—”

  “It seems I no longer have control of my functions. I wish to be alone,” she said, and walked away.

  I sighed. Iokan said: “It’s going to be fine, you know.” I looked at him. He was smiling, as though nothing very serious had happened. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

  2. Katie

  Katie was not fine. Nevertheless, I did not consider her a suicide risk. She could neither drown nor asphyxiate, and if her veins were slashed, her body would automatically shut off bloodflow to damaged areas. She’d once had a self-destruct mechanism, but it had been removed as a condition of therapy. She was perpetually monitored in an environment designed to prevent the possibility of suicide. She couldn’t even jump off a cliff; gravity sleds were dotted around the site to catch anyone who fell. Added to that, the mohib suit restricted sudden movement and limited her options enormously. If necessary, it could be remotely activated to lock her in position and prevent any act of self-harm.

  There was no way she could kill herself.

  She found a way.

  She walked away from the centre, up through the pine-like trees, to where the ground grew steep, the trees barely able to hang on and still grow upright. A tiny stream wound down from a spring far above, soaking the hillside soil and spattering the rocks and boulders piled up from some long ago landslip.

  Katie surveyed the site carefully. She walked around the slope and tested the ground by stamping on it feel how it vibrated. She pushed at the rocks piled up on one another to see how firmly they were set. She drove her hand into the soil to see how damp it really was.

  Then she went below, to where it levelled out a little. She stood looking up at the slope, thoroughly aware of its composition and layout, then slumped to her knees and dug. With only one arm, her progress was slow, but she soon discovered the root systems of the nearby trees, grasped them and pulled them from the ground with a gentle but mounting strength — just beneath the level the mohib suit would permit.

  Someone at the centre realised what she was doing, and remotely immobilised the suit. But the landslide had already begun. It was only the roots that held the earth together; wet earth, burdened with many tons of trees and stone. The hillside turned into a river and ran downhill. Trees stumbled and fell among the liquid ground, ploughing roots and undergrowth into the mix, toppling boulders from their rest.

  Katie did not flinch as the wave of rock and earth consumed her.

  3. Pew

  While Katie surveyed the ground, I spoke to Pew. He had been locked in his room, as was the standard procedure following an intentional assault, no matter how serious, and he’d made a mess of it by the time I arrived. Like many people from less developed worlds, he had a liking for hard copies of books and papers, many of which were now scattered across the room, leaves torn from his notes to join the litter. Most of his furniture was built into the floor and walls to prevent damage, but he’d taken down his free-standing bookshelf and tried to smash it without success.

  Pew sat on his bed, hunched up, still angry, surrounded by the debris. “I’m not apologising,” he said.

  “May I come in?” I asked.

  “You’re going to anyway.”

  I stepped in, careful not to tread on sheets of paper covered with theorems and mathematical abstractions. I picked up a chair, scattering papers, and sat down.

  “Why did you hit her, Pew?”

  “Because she’s a killer and no one else cares.”

  “It’s not your job to punish her, even if what she said is true. That’s for the ICT to consider.”

  “They won’t do anything!”

  “Pew. Violence is not acceptable behaviour, no matter what she’s done. If you do it again we’ll have to take more serious steps.”

  “Like what? What are you going to do to me?” He was insolent now.

  “We could put you in a mohib suit. Or we could keep you in your room for longer periods of time. If we have to, we’ll send you to the Psychiatric Centre in Hub Metro. I don’t want to do that because I know it won’t help you. But if you persist in acting like this then I won’t have any choice.”

  He buried his head in his arms, hunching further. He didn’t want to accept it. He came back up, grimacing.

  “You want to help me?”

  “Yes. That’s what I’m here for.”

  “You’re like Shan’oui…”

  I smiled, not sure what he meant. “In what way?”

  He looked at me with growing disgust. “She wanted to save us. She thought she could make all the other Soo let us go if she worked with them. And then she let them in and they did whatever they wanted! And it didn’t make any difference what she did, she just…”

  There were tears of despair in his eyes now. But he stopped himself from going further and looked back up at me.

  “You’re like her.”

  “I think we should talk about this some more.”

  He shook his head. “Won’t do any good.”

  “I’d like to know more about why you think I’m like her. After all, I’m not running a breeding programme, so I’m a little confused about what you mean—” A chime in my ear interrupted me, and a message flashed up in front of my eyes. “I have to go.
Something’s happened with Katie…”

  “What?”

  I thought about it for a moment, and decided not to tell him. But he read my expression and figured it out for himself.

  “She tried to kill herself?”

  “I… yes.”

  He thought about it for a moment, then said: “Good.” There was no trace of shame or regret in his voice. Only a satisfaction, which was troubling.

  I paused at the door. I couldn’t leave it like that. “You should think about what might have made her do it.”

  He considered it for a moment. “Yeah. I will.”

  4. Katie

  Katie had been buried under many tons of debris, but we could tell she was still alive — just. A gravity crane was brought in to lift off the slabs and boulders one by one, and staff from the centre dug down once the heavier material had been removed. She was recovered after six hours of digging, and not in one piece. She had been struck at least once by a sharp edge from one of the huge boulders and scythed apart. She had virtually no blood left and her brain was only surviving in an emergency shutdown mode, despite a severely crushed skull that compressed and lacerated the brain tissue.

  Even with all this, she was not beyond help. But there was little I could do to assist the teams as they dug and retrieved all the pieces of Katie, and I had my other patients to think of. I assembled them to pass on the news.

  Some realised they were at fault almost immediately. Liss left to throw up. Kwame took a deep breath and sat down as he absorbed the news. Olivia just said “huh,” and shook her head. Iokan sighed and looked sad.

  Pew showed no sign of regret. He just stared back at me.

  5. Liss

  Therapy needed to continue, even while one member of the group was struggling to survive. I moved on to the person who seemed most affected by the recent events. Liss had recovered from throwing up, and was being checked out in the infirmary, just in case. She gave me a humourless smirk as she saw me come in, while a nurse ran a scanner across her stomach to check for food poisoning.