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 Pew is quite withdrawn, and Katie completely so.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.”