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 bomb 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.