Kev (10 page)

The black spot in the sky grew quickly, soon
filling my field of vision.

“You are now crossing the event horizon,”
said the voice.

I started feeling my body being pulled in
different directions, subtle at first, but soon uncomfortable. Soon
after that, I started to feel pain, pain that soon reached an
unbearable level.

“Can we stop?” I screamed.

“Almost there. Don’t worry about the tidal
forces. Sure, they are going to rip you to pieces, but you’ll make
it through,” said the voice.

My body tore in half, and looking down I saw
that I had somehow stretched. Under normal circumstances this would
have been my death, but I lived on, the pain absolutely
unspeakable. I screamed and cried, flapped my arms around madly,
praying for the end. My halves divided and then those divided as
well. This continued until I was nothing, no body, only thought. I
felt no more pain.

“Destination reached,” said the voice.

Light returned, and I found myself in
Singularity Bar in Barrow, Alaska, sitting across from Aputi. He
didn’t acknowledge me, instead reaching into his pocket and pulling
out a small, brown cube of some sort with a yellow button on one
side. I looked around the bar, seeing a handful of people, and then
back at Aputi.

“Time to die,” said Aputi, as he pressed the
button five times in rapid succession. Everyone in the bar except
Aputi and I exploded. The scene shifted and I found myself looking
at Bok Choy.

“Which one did you get?” said Bok Choy.

“Which what?”

“Which experience?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I got sucked into a black
hole,” I murmured.

“And after that?”

“I think I saw Aputi kill everyone on Earth,”
I said, wondering if I could go back in time and get the brown cube
from Aputi.

“Aputi?” said Bok Choy.

“Yeah, he’s an Inuit or a Bladrithian. I
don’t know which. But, he killed everyone on Earth,” I said,
vaguely remembering enough to say that.

“He’s a bad guy,” said Bok Choy. “There is no
telling what he’ll do next.”

“Wait. You know him?”

“Yeah, well, I think I do if we are talking
about the same Aputi. I’ve known him for years now. I don’t know
what he has planned for Earth, but I bet it isn’t good.”

“Well, he wants me to find some yellow cube.
He said he was going to use it to re-engineer the humans he didn’t
kill so he could save the universe,” I said, starting to remember
things.

“The yellow cube. So, it’s real?”

“What? Oh, I don’t know. I guess so or he
wouldn’t be looking for it.”

“Do you know what that thing can do?”

“What?”

“It can manipulate matter. If Aputi had that
he could do more damage to the universe than you could ever
imagine.”

“Well, I’m not going to give it to him. I
have to go back in time and stop him somehow, but I’m stuck on this
show and don’t get many breaks. Anyway, I don’t have the black
cube, so even if I do get a break, I have no way of going back in
time and stopping him.”

“Don’t worry, Kev. You’ll figure it out,”
said Bok Choy, patting me on the shoulder with two of his hands. In
that moment, I felt like Bok Choy knew more than he was letting on.
I wanted to ask questions, but somehow knew asking questions would
not lead to enlightenment.

Bok Choy and I talked for hours, and I
learned much, but nothing that really helped me understand my own
situation. In that time I had two more green teas and two new
experiences,
The Induced Seizure Driving Experience,
and
The Auto-asphyxiation Experience
, two rather terrifying
experiences to have. After each, I had what I’ll call a follow-on
experience, in which I witnessed some event in history, an event
somehow connected to me. The first was my wedding on Riddent, and
the second was of me telling the blue cube I wanted to go to a
workshop that had all of the parts necessary for building the black
cube. In that experience I appeared in the workshop, constructed
the black cube and then pressed the little blue button on it five
times. For a brief moment, I knew everything, absolutely
everything, but the moment passed and I returned to the real world,
lacking infinite knowledge. However, I knew that I must build the
black cube.

Bok Choy left some time later, and I decided
to stay at the bar. Satisfied that I had had enough green tea to
last a lifetime, and in the mood for a screwdriver, I motioned to
the bartender, a gray-green biped with two heads and eight arms,
and asked if he knew how to make a screwdriver, a reasonable enough
question in a universe that appeared to be completely
unreasonable.

“Yeah, sure,” said the bartender. “Who
doesn’t?”

“I mean a screwdriver like they make on
Earth.”

“They’re the same everywhere, Kev.” I hadn’t
told the bartender my name.

After three screwdrivers, now quite drunk, I
took a seat at the bar and had a look around, amazed by the
diversity of the aliens that populated the bar. While I had always
believed aliens, for the most part, would be quite different that
humans, I never really imagined how different they would be.
Looking at these aliens, I wondered how they evolved. What
conditions led them to appear and function the way they did? Of
course, I was on a planet with an atmosphere much like Earth’s, and
similar gravity, so the aliens I saw were only those that could
survive in this type of environment. What would aliens living in
radically different environments look like? I could not guess.

“Anyone sitting here?” said a woman’s voice.
I turned and saw a beautiful blonde with a stunning body, naked
except for a string of pearls around her neck. Had I seen her
before, or at least someone who looked like her? Was she with Aputi
in Alaska?

Carefully maintaining eye contact, I said,
“No. It’s yours.”

“What’s your name?”

“Kev. Yours?”

“Ruby.”

“Oh, hi Ruby.” Hadn’t someone named Ruby sent
a message to my communications device? Wasn’t it something about
intercopulation?

“What are you drinking?”

“Screwdrivers, but I’m taking a break.”

“Tell you what. Why don’t you have one more
and talk to me?”

“Okay,” I said, hoping I wasn’t violating my
vows to the girl in any way.

Ruby ordered a green tea and a screwdriver.
After the bartender delivered the drinks, she held up her glass and
said, “To happy endings.”

I tapped her glass and took a sip of my
drink, tasting something strange. “This a screwdriver?” I said.

“What else would it be?” said Ruby, smiling,
a smile that seemed to convey a warning.

I woke naked in a bed in a room in a hotel on
Gamma War, Ruby by my side, stroking my chest. However, Ruby had
changed, and I found myself more than a little horrified. It wasn’t
just my infidelity that horrified me. It was also the
transformation that Ruby had undergone. This was no human, and from
what I could tell it was no female, or at least was--well,
she/he/it wasn’t human.

“Did we?” I gasped.

“Five times, tiger,” said Ruby, her smile now
that of some strange demon, a pale red aberration wearing pink
lipstick.

“Where am I?”

“At the hotel. Do you want to do it
again?”

“You drugged me!” I cried.

“Well, of course I drugged you. You wouldn’t
have come with me otherwise.”

“You violated me.”

“Yes, and you enjoyed every minute of
it.”

“I did not.”

“Yes, Kev, you did.”

I jumped out of bed and raced out of the
room, went down to the lobby of the hotel and then out the front
door, heading toward the beach. As I neared the beach I saw the
bar, rushed over to it and grabbed a stool. On the stool next to
mine I saw my clothes and on top of my clothes I saw the blue cube,
a grim reminder of The Show.

“Did you have fun?” said the gray,
barrel-headed, eight-armed bartender, seeing the wild look in my
eyes.

“What’s your strongest drink?” I said.

“Green tea, of course.”

“Give me three,” I said, scanning the area
for signs of Ruby. “What was she? He?”

“Oh, that my friend is a Nidian hooker.”

“A prostitute?”

“No, no. They’re called hookers because the
hook in their victims by drugging them.”

“Why didn’t you warn me?”

“I don’t know. You looked like you were
enjoying yourself.”

“Well, next time could you warn me if another
Nidian or whatever gets near me?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Three green teas later I had managed to calm
myself down. Of course, Ruby had appeared while I was in the middle
of my third green tea experience and had her or his or whatever
hand on my thigh, stroking it gently. I brushed its hand off my
thigh and said, “No more. Leave me alone.”

“Oh, come on Kev, it was fun.”

“I’m married.”

“So? She will never know.”

“Of course, she’ll know. I’m going to tell
her. Do you have any diseases?”

“No, but I’m pregnant. This will be the third
humo-nidian child in history. Well, sort of.”

“I don’t believe you. Wait. Third?”

“It’s true,” said Ruby. “Nidians always get
pregnant after intercopulating.”

“What?” I cried. “What the hell? By the way,
when are you due?”

The Nidian hooker, now back in the form of
the beautiful blonde, smiled and said, “In about an hour, your
time.”

“So, who are the other fathers?” I said,
utterly confused. “Have you been to Earth, because I’m pretty sure
that the girl and I are the only humans to have left Earth.” I
wasn’t sure about this, wondering if Clive had at one point in time
left Earth.

“They are all yours,” said Ruby.

“No, they aren’t.”

“Yes, they are. You just don’t remember.”

“Remember what?”

“You don’t remember how many times we’ve met
and how many times we’ve intercopulated. It’s okay. I know about
your memory problems, Kev.”

I passed out.

The Nidian Connection

“Kev,” said the girl. I opened my eyes and stared up
at her for a moment before remembering my experience with Ruby,
confessing everything. She picked me up off the ground, a sweet
smile on her face. “It’s okay, Kev.”

I took a deep breath and sat at the bar, the
girl sitting next to me. Ruby was nowhere to be seen. “Where is
she?” I said.

“She went to Nidia to give birth.”

“So, I’m a father. How is any of this
possible? This is the first time I met her. I’m sure of it.”

“Kev, you’re not sure of anything. When you
get your memories back it will all make sense.”

“You mean if I get my memories back. I don’t
think I ever will.”

“You will, Kev. You will. You just need to
stop traveling in time.”

“But, I haven’t been traveling in time. I
don’t have the black cube.”

“Yes, I know, but you were traveling in time
before. You have time lag. You’ll remember eventually. Hopefully,
I’ll be around when you do so I can keep you from going
insane.”

That didn’t sound promising.

“I think I need to see my children,” I said,
determined not to abandon them even though I had not sired them
willingly.

“You’ll see them soon, Kev. Don’t worry.
Anyway, you already know them. You’re a good father. You’re a
wonderful person. You have absolutely no idea how wonderful you
are.”

I felt tears coming on and wiped my eyes.
Overwhelmed and confused, all I could do was roll with it, but I
couldn’t just roll with it.

“Why won’t you explain things to me? I don’t
understand why you won’t.”

“Let’s take a walk.”

The girl led me down to the beach, taking my
hand in hers. For whatever reason, I grabbed the blue cube before
she pulled me away from the bar.

“Can you at least tell me how to get off this
show? B24ME is going to kill me.”

“You’ll figure it out. You always do. Do you
know this planet is orbiting a black hole?”

“It is? So, the green tea experience was
real? I really got sucked into the black hole?”

“Sort of. You were sucked into it once
before, or maybe many times, but you only told me about one time.
You see, your green tea experiences are things that have really
happened to you in the past, at least most of the time. Sometimes
they are hints you are giving yourself. The follow-on experiences
are generally things that have happened in your time bubble,
usually more recent events.”

“Time bubble?”

“You explained it to me once, but I have to
admit, I didn’t understand. I wouldn’t be giving much away if I
told you that you invented green tea. Of course, that statement is
a direct violation of the rules, but I think it is a stupid
rule.”

“I know you’re not going to explain
that.”

“I’m not, but it’s true. Kev, you have done
many things in your life, amazing things. Green tea was something
you created for yourself. I think it is your way of dropping hints
for yourself. That or you just like reliving the past in some
hallucinatory way.”

“What is green tea like for you?” I said.

“Well, the other day, I had
The One
Million and One Orgasms Experience,
my personal favorite.”

“So, that has really happened to you?”

“You should know.”

“Dammit, I’m getting pretty sick of not
remembering things. You can’t give me a hint?”

“Nah, that would spoil the fun. Anyway, as I
said, you’ll figure it out and then you’ll probably lose your
memories all over again. You keep doing that.”

“On purpose?” I said, now suspicious not just
of everyone around me, but also of myself, and now quite certain I
was playing some sort of game, a game with rules I could not
remember.

“Maybe.”

“Great. Changing subjects. Aputi killed off
pretty much everyone on Earth or maybe everyone. I’m pretty sure he
did, anyway.”