The Last Man on Earth Club, Page 2

  “Then I’ll just have to find out, won’t I?”

  She leaned forward. “Fine. See where it gets you.”

  “You still need to write your name, Olivia,” I said. She grabbed paper and pen and scribbled it down. “And if you could put it in the bowl, please?”

  Olivia glared at Iokan and held out the slip of paper. “He can tell my story.”

  I looked to Iokan. He assented with a smile and took her name. “And whose story will you tell?” he asked of Olivia.

  “We’ll see, won’t we?” she said, reaching for the bowl and taking a name.

  2. Kwame

  Indigenous Sapient Report

  Expedition HKAJ-778662-002

  Submission: HD y271.m2.w3.d4

  Author: Cmdr. Chesgryn, H

  Summary

  The IUS Calculus was sent to study the long term results of what may be the most devastating nuclear war ever discovered during a routine survey. The planetary atmosphere contains a high percentage of the radioactive isotope cobalt-60, which may have been released by a ‘cobalt bomb’, a thermonuclear weapon jacketed by large quantities of the mineral. With enough cobalt, this weapon can spread a cloud of radioactive dust across a planet and end life upon the surface within a few decades.

  After uneventful transit to the target universe, a planetary survey revealed numerous radioactive decay isotopes in hotspots associated with the ruins of cities, indicating a general thermonuclear exchange in addition to the use of a cobalt bomb. Vegetation was dramatically reduced, algal blooms were absent, and IR surveys found no evidence of warm blooded animal life on land or in shallow seas. At least some of the damage seemed to have resulted from UV exposure, as the ozone layer was severely depleted. We estimated that 86 years (plus or minus five years) had passed since the nuclear war.

  After several weeks of orbital surveillance we moved to low altitude drone surveys and were surprised to detect a small EMF anomaly that suggested the use of AC electrical equipment. The anomaly was located ten metres inside an artificial tunnel system within a mountain range running along the eastern side of this world’s version of Africa. The mission archaeologist suggested it was theoretically possible for a pre-war electrical system to still be functional, so we made a landing in order to conduct a more detailed survey.

  The geological team were quickly able to map the underground complex in detail. It was composed of two main sections: a large set of chambers that began about six metres into the rock and extended another five hundred metres inside (dubbed the ‘shallow complex’); then, linked by tunnels, a much deeper structure nearly a full kilometre within the mountain (the ‘deep complex’). The shallow complex seemed to have been made by extending pre-existing cave systems, while the deep complex was entirely artificial.

  The shallow complex should have been safe behind a two metre thick door, but this had been opened at some point after the war. Inside, we found several sets of skeletonised human remains. The EMF anomaly was traced to an emergency lighting system still despite the passage of time. The shallow complex seemed to be designed to hold several hundred individuals, perhaps the core of a post-war recolonisation of the world. What was unusual was the method in which they attempted to wait out the war; the chambers were filled with hundreds of devices resembling burial caskets. Approximately eighty per cent were occupied by human skeletons, and the caskets were later confirmed to be hibernation devices.

  Upon venturing into the deep complex, we found further blast doors, but these had never been breached by the occupants. The atmosphere was almost completely without humidity, limiting corrosion, and it proved to be possible to remotely activate the door mechanisms. The deep complex was designed for a few tens of individuals, clearly intended for the purposes of command and control. It contained offices, a communications centre, a broadcast studio, and further hibernation chambers. These seemed to be of better quality and were still powered, though all but one had failed. In this last one, we found a still-living human male who was apparently forty years old.

  We would have preferred to take his hibernation unit back to Hub, or at least to the Calculus, where we could have revived him with greater care. Unfortunately, the equipment was too fragile to move, and as the power supply (a radioisotope thermoelectric generator) was virtually depleted, we could not leave him in hibernation until we were able to return with better equipment. We could not even risk replacing the power source with one of our own. Instead, we spent two weeks studying the systems until we felt we could safely begin the revival process.

  The expedition’s medical staff exercised the utmost caution, but an emergency three hours into the procedure starved his brain of oxygen for approximately twenty seconds, and may have resulted in some minor brain damage. Nevertheless, the revival was completed successfully and he regained consciousness with no other incident. His initial reaction was one of understandable surprise and fear. We made every attempt to appear non-threatening, but still had to sedate him before he could be removed to the surface.

  As per evacuation protocols for endangered human species, our priority was to take him to Hub for medical attention, and accordingly we made haste to regain orbit and depart. The survivor was transferred from our custody at 05:46 on HD y271.m2.w3.d2, and placed in quarantine at Grainger L1 station, while we made preparations to return to his universe and continue our exploration.

  3. Group

  “Who wants to go first?” I asked. There were no immediate volunteers as I looked around the group, until Kwame sighed. “Kwame, would you like to start?”

  “I would not. I would like Olivia to begin. She was assigned to introduce me, and I would like her to complete her slander quickly.”

  “I’m not going to lie about you, if that’s what you think,” said Olivia. “I’m not whitewashing it.”

  “I am sure you will enjoy yourself.”

  She turned to the group. “He’s a mass murderer,” she said, then turned back to Kwame. “Am I right?”

  He paused, irritated. “That is substantially correct.”

  “And he killed, what was it, four billion people?”

  “Approximately. Yes.”

  “Because he says he was the president of his country. And then his country went to war with the rest of the world and everyone died and when the IU turned up he was the only one left in some hibernation thingamyjig.”

  “I am not denying it.”

  “And ever since he got here he’s been trying to get them to put him on trial for genocide. You’d think he’d keep his mouth shut, but no, this one wants to be put in prison, as though we’re not already in prison…”

  “Are you finished?”

  “No I am not!” she snapped back. “Because what he’s not saying is that he’s talking out of his backside.”

  Kwame was taken aback. “What?”

  “What happened was some anarchist or terrorist or something set off a nuclear bomb in his capital city, whole place goes boom, and quite frankly it makes me glad we never invented those things. But anyway,” she offhandedly jabbed a thumb at Kwame, “he’s in the government, secretary of sport or something…”

  “Minister of Culture,” said Kwame.

  “…something stupid, and he’s off on a foreign visit and the rest of the government gets killed. So he gets promoted to President, finds the terrorists and sends in the troops, only the terrorists have got friends in some other country and they threaten to start a nuclear war. So to make sure that doesn’t happen, this one here sets up a massive bomb in, what was it, a cobalt mine?”

  “The initiative was begun by the previous administration. But yes, it was in a cobalt mine.”

  “And this bomb can kill everyone with cobalt, don’t ask me how it does that, I suppose it paints everyone blue, hah!”

  “It was a massively destructive weapon that spread radioactive dust—”

  “And laughing boy here sets it up so it’ll go off if anyone attacks them. And guess what, somebody attacks them, the b
omb goes off, and everyone dies except him. Did I miss anything?”

  Kwame paused, trying to find a response. “You missed a great deal.”

  “You’re right. What I missed was that nobody even knew the thing was going to work. They hadn’t tested it, they just built it and told everyone it was there. So of course they got attacked, because everybody thought they were talking out of their backsides. And now he wants someone to slap him on the wrist for blowing up the world. And you know what? They keep saying no. What a surprise.”

  Kwame looked pained, one trembling hand going to his temples.

  “Olivia,” I said, “if you’re only going to be hurtful and offensive—”

  “I’m not finished!” she cried. “The thing is, he used to be married. He had a wife. And a family. Three children. They were in town when the bomb went off. Only they didn’t die quick. They got radiation poisoning, and when he got back from abroad, he had to watch that happen. You think about that. He’s off in another country and his whole family dies and he doesn’t. And he feels as though it should have been him, so he does stupid things. I saw it happen on my world. You’re not responsible when you’re like that.” She turned to Kwame. “So there. I’ve solved your psychological problems.”

  Kwame looked stunned. “I… I think that, that is…” He paused to get hold of his floundering voice. “I will never understand you.”

  “Are you going to stop asking for a trial?”

  He shook his head. “No. Grief is no excuse.”

  “Well don’t say I didn’t try to help.”

  4. Liss

  Indigenous Sapient Report

  Expedition LJHA-897189-002

  Submission: HD y276.m1.w5.d2

  Author: Cmdr. Gli, A-H-K

  Summary

  This may be the strangest world I have ever been fortunate enough to visit. The primary observation from the first probe was so remarkable that a manned expedition was sent immediately: although the Earth was there as usual, the Moon had been torn apart about a decade earlier. The smaller debris is currently forming a ring system around the planet, while larger pieces are falling in on each other to create a new, smaller Moon that should become molten and spherical within a century, and perhaps consume the other fragments as time goes by. The opportunity to study something like the accretion phase of the solar system was, in itself, reason enough to come to this universe, but a detailed study of the planet’s surface revealed a catalogue of remarkable oddities — and also, we fear, a human tragedy of enormous scale.

  We first observed that the western coast of North America had suffered a minor basaltic flow, burying a wide area in lava. But this had then been ‘frozen’ in place by a network of installations that kept the area geologically stable by dampening molecular vibration across the region. Such large scale geo-engineering was far in advance of the average tech level we witnessed across the world. Other oddities included the vast, formless sculpture that lay across the North Island of New Zealand; the cities of Germany covered by domes for no apparent reason; the arctic microclimate in the Amazonian rainforest that persisted by no clear mechanism; a kilometre high wall that ran across south east Asia, perhaps marking a boundary; and the forest clearings in Rwanda which formed the face of a chimpanzee when seen from space. It went on and on.

  And yet we saw no sign of the people who built these strange edifices. In our first survey, we saw not a single human being upon the planet, and while there were many automated transmissions providing ample evidence of recent inhabitation, we found nothing from any living members of the world’s population. An initial descent to an Antarctic establishment where we hoped to find greater preservation than in other areas provided us with some evidence of what had happened. In the ice station, we found scattered piles of dust which matched the chemical composition of a human body with all water subtracted and some oxidisation of the remaining minerals. Further investigation revealed quantities of the same dust in almost every part of the world. As bizarre as it sounds, we believe every human being on the planet has been reduced to powder by a form of combustion, while other lifeforms seem to be unaffected.

  We then found a survivor.

  In some parts of the world, electricity was still being generated, and conurbations were clearly visible at night. It was in such a city, on the east coast of North America, that we detected the lone survivor by the lights of her ground vehicle. The woman parked at a retail establishment, went inside, then emerged with polymer bags full of goods, before driving to an apartment block less than a kilometre away.

  We landed some distance from her apartment to avoid alarming her, and began covert surveillance. She rose each day at 07:00 and made her way to a building in the city by 09:00. There, she worked on a data entry process, typing information from forms into a computer. She would leave at 17:00, indicating her presence to the building computers by passing a magnetised disc over a sensor. She would then go home and watch pre-recorded entertainment programmes. Some days she would go to shops, which opened automatically, and from which she took whatever goods she needed. She used another magnetised disc to make a monetary transaction in each case. Throughout, she ignored the piles of dust that used to be human beings, unless they got in her way — in which case she tidied them up with a small vacuum cleaner she seemed to carry just for this purpose.

  We decided we would have to make contact. After deciphering the local language and programming a translation unit, we visited her at home. She panicked on seeing us and ran into a kitchen, where she threatened us with a carving knife. We were nevertheless able to calm her down and explain that we were there to help her. Strangely, she accepted both the translation unit and our story of travel from another universe without needing much in the way of explanation. Given the oddness of her world, it is possible she was used to far stranger concepts.

  She claimed the world’s population had simply disappeared. She did not regard the piles of powder as human remains; instead, she said she was irritated that dust was piling up, and cleaned whenever she could. She demonstrated with her vacuum cleaner and complained that no one took trash away any more. We told her that her life was at risk as the world’s automated systems were breaking down, and offered transport to the safety of Hub. She claimed to be perfectly happy to stay at home and watch her screenshows. We were only able to persuade her to come with us once we offered to bring along a collection of pre-recorded shows (along with her screenplayer), and made a promise to bring her back if the planet’s population returned.

  While she may have been of great use to the expedition as a guide, we chose to abide by the protocols concerning the rescue of survivors and immediately made the return journey to Hub, with a view to placing her in psychiatric care once she clears quarantine.

  5. Group

  “We’ll follow a chain from person to person if we can,” I said. “That makes Kwame the next one to speak. Kwame, is that okay?”

  “I am fine…” he said, although he didn’t look it.

  “Do you want a drink?” asked Liss.

  “Water. Please.”

  Liss went to the fountain in the corner and drew a cup for him. “Here you go!” she said, holding it out for him like a present. He drank deeply, clutching the cup with trembling hands, then addressed the group.

  “I would like to introduce you to Liss Li’Oul, who, like all of us, has survived the end of the world.”

  “Well, it’s not really the end of the world, I mean it’s still there and everyone’s coming back,” she added with a smile.

  “Yes. Well. Perhaps. Liss has told me she was quite ordinary, working at, as she calls it, a ‘nine to five’ job in a large city. She spoke of the tedium of the work and the stupidity of the people she worked with…”

  “Oh, everyone says that, don’t they? Everyone says they work with, you know, idiots, but nobody really means it.”

  “May I continue?”

  “Oh, sorry!”

  “She worked in what I believe wa
s a recruitment agency, filtering applicants for jobs. Her world was more advanced than mine, and more fortunate. They seemed to live in peace with each other.”

  Liss shrugged. “We’re just nice people!”

  “Indeed. But nevertheless, all of them are gone. Liss reports that as she was working one day at a photocopier, she noticed a sudden silence. She found that every last person on her world had vanished without a trace. She searched, but could find no one. She still does not know what happened to them.

  “Despite this, she is certain her people will return at some point in the future. I do not understand why she thinks this to be the case, but she is quite adamant on the matter.”

  “Well, it’d be just like them to go away and leave me all alone,” said Liss. “It’s probably just a trick. They used to do this to me when I was at college! They’d sneak off and leave me in a bar or a park or something. It was really mean. But they always came back.”

  “I do not wish to be unkind, but…” said Kwame, considering his words. But then he simply sighed. “I shall only add that after the event, she resumed her life as best she could, which was possible because the machines of the city continued to work after the disappearance of the inhabitants. She was found by an IU exploration team, and since then, she has been in psychiatric care. And that is all I can say about Liss Li’Oul.”

  6. Pew

  Hub Chronicle

  HD y273.m11.w2.d5

  05:32

  Soo concealed extinction while IU provided assistance

  IU intervention with the Soo species has been suspended after it emerged that the Soo concealed the progressive extinction of a second human species on their world.

  The IU has been providing technological advice to the Soo in order to avert an environmental catastrophe, but only on condition that they protect the remaining members of the other species, known as Pu.