Iokan was still ill, but rapidly getting better. His skin had regained colour and he’d put a little weight back on. He’d managed to get out of the hospital clothes, and into something he said was normal wear for an academic in his society. It looked more like the ecclesiastical robe you might see in a religious community on a less developed world, worn with little else apart from sandals. He still had to limp as he went to the window to look outside.
“Would you like a bigger window?” I asked.
“Oh, yes. Please,” he replied. I turned the wall back to full transparency. He breathed a sigh as he looked over the valley and wooded plain beyond, rainclouds low over lakes in the far distance.
“You like the view?” I asked.
He nodded. “I never thought other universes might be as beautiful as home…”
I took a seat. “How long have your people known there were other universes?”
“A while. But we only started opening portals recently.”
“That’s how we found you. We detected nanoscale portals and investigated.”
He looked back at me, still calm and contented. “That was the idea. You found us. And you came.”
“We were too late. I’m sorry.”
He shook his head. “Don’t be. We’re better off now.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“You seem very determined to think we’re not.”
“Every single person on your world committed suicide, and yet you say they’re better off. That worries me.”
“Who are you concerned about? Them or me?”
“You.”
He turned away from the wall. “We should get started, then.” He limped to a chair and sat down with a relieved sigh. “How can I help you today?”
“Well, first of all, you’re not here to help me. I’m here to help you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ve been through a terrible trauma. We’re here to help you recover from that.”
“Hm.” He furrowed his brow, a little obviously. He was gearing up for a debate, not therapy. “Do I seem traumatised to you?”
“Yes.”
“Really? How so?”
“Because trauma is a normal human response to the things you’ve experienced. But you don’t seem troubled at all, and that’s a sign of deeper problems.”
“I see. So you’re using a lack of trauma as evidence that trauma exists? That’s a strange kind of logic.”
“Not if trauma is normal for the situation.”
“I think you should look more closely at your assumptions.”
“One of my assumptions is that the extinction of a human species is a bad thing. I also assume, based on more than a decade of working with survivors from dead worlds, that people who survive a genocide suffer because of it.”
“You’re assuming that what happened on my world was similar to what happened on other worlds.”
“No, you’re right: your world is unusual. But you’re not very different from all the other humans who evolved on millions of other universes…”
“We didn’t evolve.”
“Really?”
“Really. We were created.”
“Is this part of your religion?”
“Yes. But it really happened. When the Antecessors abandoned their bodies, they left us behind to stay upon the Earth. We didn’t have a human form before that.”
“You have history going that far back?”
He smiled. “No. We have mitochondrial DNA. When we compared samples from across the world, they all dated back to the same mitochondrial genome about three thousand years ago. So, at that point, everyone on my world had identical mitochondria. Which would be very strange if we’d evolved continuously over millions of years.”
He had a point; that was very strange indeed. If it was true. “So you believe your species was artificially created?”
“I know it was.”
“And now you say the people who created you have… reclaimed your species?”
“They set us free.”
“When we arrived on your world, we found no evidence of these ‘Antecessors’. Where do you think they went to?”
“If they don’t want to speak to you, then you probably won’t find them.”
“Why wouldn’t they want to speak to us?”
“Perhaps you’re not ready to hear what they have to say.”
“And what is that?”
The only word to describe his smile was ‘beatific’. “We don’t have to be bound to these bodies. We can be like them. You can, too. And once you make the change, everything else, all the conflict, all the fighting, all the atrocity… just goes away.”
He really believed it, and probably pitied me for not doing so. “You want what happened on your world to happen to everyone?”
“Only if you want it to.”
“Did your people want it to happen?”
“Once the Antecessors showed us the way.”
I was very glad these sessions were confidential. If Hub Security got hold of this, they’d put Iokan back in quarantine in a heartbeat. Proposing genocide as a solution to our problems is worrying enough, but when the person doing so has lived through it once already, Security wouldn’t think twice.
I decided it was time to spell out the real problem. “Can I show you something?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said. “What is it?”
I tapped my pad, the room darkened and the window wall dissolved into an image of a half-transparent human brain. “This is you,” I said.
“I can see the resemblance,” he said, still lighthearted.
“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?”