Table Of ContentTHE LAST MAN ON EARTH CLUB
By Paul R. Hardy
Second Kindle Edition Copyright © 2011 Paul R. Hardy Cover image ©
Sdecoret | Dreamstime.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are
products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
PART ONE – GROUP THERAPY
1. Group
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.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Olivia. It seems a shame, since we haven’t really
started. Can you tell us why you don’t want to be here?”
“You damn well know why I don’t want to be here! It’s a waste of time. I’m
not going to get better and neither’s anyone else. I’ve had six of you poking at
me while I’ve been here, and none of you could do a damned thing. It’s useless
and I don’t want any more of it.”
As much as she was trying to disrupt the session, she’d given me an excellent
way to involve the others. “Does anyone else feel that therapy is useless?” I
asked.
Kwame raised a trembling finger. He wore a business suit from his world, as
though ready to go before a press conference: a cream linen jacket with sharply
creased trousers, and a zigzag pinstripe shirt buttoned to the collar. I nodded and
he spoke in a slow, solemn manner, concentrating to overcome his aphasia. “I
think… that perhaps Olivia has forgotten how much we have gained from our
stay on Hub. We may not receive all we would wish for, but I can assure those
who are new to this world that they are very kind to us here.”
“Hasn’t stopped you being a crackpot, has it?” said Olivia. They’d both been
on Hub for a while, and had met before at the Psychiatric Centre. By all reports
they hadn’t been friends.
“I have not changed my goal. I am as determined as the last time we met.”
“And that’s why they sent you here, wasn’t it? Am I right? They’re fed up
with you, so they packed you off here with everyone else they can’t cure of
being the last man on earth. They don’t want you to get better, they want you to
shut up!”
“I admit… the thought had crossed my mind–”
“So you agree with me?”
“That is not what I–”
“You’re embarrassing to them, that’s what it is, because they don’t want to lift
a finger to stop it happening again. We’re all embarrassing.”
A new voice spoke up. “Can I say a word?”
“Iokan. Yes, please, go ahead.” Iokan’s chair had been floated in from the
infirmary, and he still wore a hospital gown and cotton trousers. He was
emaciated, jaundiced, only just back from the edge of death, but with a light in
his eyes that simply ignored his physical state. He spoke his own language, and
the rest of us read the translation as it sprang up on our various systems.
“What do you mean, ‘reason’? What reason?” asked Olivia, straight in with
her usual bile once her glasses translated his words.
“Olivia. Iokan wants to speak,” I said.
“He’s talking rubbish!”
“He has as much of a right to speak as you do, and you’ve already told us
what you think. Iokan’s only just been rescued, remember, and he’s still unwell.
If you carry on like this, it’s not going to help.”
Olivia grudgingly surveyed his wasted form. “Fine,” she said, and looked
elsewhere.
Iokan continued: “As I was saying, I think we’re all here for a reason, or
perhaps many reasons. I don’t know what those reasons might be. But I’d like to
find out.”
“Thank you, Iokan,” I said. “Although I think Olivia raised a very valid
point.” She looked round, surprised. Kwame looked up too, just as shocked that I
was agreeing with Olivia. “She said we can’t cure you of being the last man – or
woman – on earth, and she’s right. Nothing can change that. What we can do is
help you learn to live with it. Now, that won’t be easy, and you’re all going to
have to do a lot of work in the group and in individual therapy. But I believe it’s
possible, if you’re willing to try. So, does anyone else have any opinions about
the rules?”
I couldn’t help glancing at Olivia first, but she sank into her folded arms. The
three who hadn’t yet spoken stayed quiet. “Does anyone else have anything to
say?” I asked; but none of them volunteered. In group therapy, it’s vital for the
members to be willing to at least talk to each other. Someone like Olivia can
disrupt that, but the real danger was that they didn’t participate at all. So I fell
back on an old tactic to get them started.
“Okay, then. What I’d like to do is get everyone to introduce themselves to the
group. You’ve probably done this kind of thing before but today I’d like to do it
differently. I’d like each of you to introduce someone else to the group.”
They perked up a bit, some looking worried. Olivia sneered as I went on. “So
what you’ll have to do is talk to one of the others, find out their story, and then
explain it to everyone else. Katie, is that all right with you?”
Katie turned her head a perfect forty degrees and locked her eyes on me,
always a little unnerving because she never blinked and hardly seemed to
breathe. She was tall and heavily built, with close-cropped hair that revealed a
trio of metallic sockets on the back of her head. She wore a shapeless jumpsuit
that was practical in all circumstances and spoke in fluent Interversal, which
she’d learnt astonishingly quickly. “I will comply with all reasonable requests.”
“Do you think this request is reasonable?”
“I am not an effective communicator.”
“But you’ll try?”
She processed for a moment. “I will try.”
“Good. Pew?”
“Yes?” Pew looked back at me, distracted from staring at the holes in Katie’s
head. He had the pudgy build of someone who’d spent too long sitting down,
and wore clothes from his stay at Hub University: a black hooded top that helped
him hide away; comfortable, scuffed training shoes; and the loose, pocketed
trousers that had been in style a year before. His hesitancy had nothing to do
with his skill in Interversal, which was normally fluent. “Uh. I’ll do it. I’m, I’m
not sure I’ll be any good…”
“That’s okay. I’m sure you’ll be fine.” He smiled a little, but was still nervous.
I turned to the last member of the group. “Liss?”
“Oh, is it me?” Liss stopped toying with her earrings and perked up as she
read her own name in her contact lenses. “Yeah, sure! I’ll just go on and on,
though,” she chattered back in her own language, “I’ll get carried away and start
talking and I won’t get halfway there before the end. Hope you don’t mind!” Out
of all the group, she’d made the most deliberate effort to look good, and had
deliberately overdone it. She wore lipstick in a shade of pink I could hardly
imagine on anyone over the age of twelve, a top that flounced in a darker shade
of pink over a black vest, then a skirt in another pinkish hue and ankle boots that
matched the lipstick perfectly.
“Do we have to listen to that?” asked Olivia.
I ignored her and smiled at Liss. “Don’t worry. I’ll let you know if you need
to wrap it up. Okay, what I’ll ask you to do is write your names down on pieces
of paper, then you all pick out someone’s name, and that’ll be whose story you
tell. I’ll give you twenty minutes to introduce yourselves to each other, and then
we’ll come back to the group and take it from there. Veofol?”
Veofol already had paper and pens ready, and distributed them among the
group. Most of them were comfortable with the old technology, though Katie
had to be shown how to use a pen. She rapidly gained an ability to write her
name in a perfect sans serif font while Veofol collected the names in a bowl.
Olivia, however, was having none of it. She sat with her arms folded and
would not touch the pen and paper placed before her. “You didn’t ask me for
permission, did you?”
“I’m sorry, Olivia, did you have an objection?” I asked.
“Well. I don’t want you to think I don’t respect you,” she sneered, “but I don’t
want to know any of you, and I don’t bloody want to be here.”
“Can you at least be polite?” asked Kwame, irritated.
“Why should I? I didn’t ask to be here! Did you?”
“That is not the point–”
“Of course it’s the bloody point! I’ve been dragged here against my will and I
don’t want any part of it!”
Liss was perplexed by the venom. “I don’t get it. What have you got against
us?”
“And I definitely don’t want to know this tart,” said Olivia, disgusted by every
inch of her. A moment later, Liss gasped at the translation.
“This is a waste of time,” said Kwame, looking at me. “Why was she included
in this?”
“To punish me, that’s why–”
“Will you be quiet?” he snapped back at her.
“No I will not! I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to know any of you, and
you don’t want to know me!” Kwame’s eyes flashed with anger and his mouth
flapped at words, struggling to find a retort through the aphasia. I was about to
intervene – but someone else got there first.
“I want to know you,” said Iokan, in that calm, gentle voice of his. Everyone
looked to him, and the room fell silent. Olivia took off her glasses to check the
translation system hadn’t been broken, then jammed them back on her face.
“Rubbish!”
“I want to know you.”
“Utter rubbish!”
“Not at all. I want to know how you came here, and all the things that
happened to you.” He smiled with complete innocence, meaning every word he
said. It gave even Olivia a moment of pause.
“You’re talking rot.”
“Are you worried I’ll find out too much?”
“You’re the one should be worried. You don’t know where I’ve been.”
“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.
