Kev (14 page)

I believed her, but thought she might suspect
someone. “And what about Jesus, Bri, and the Proth Sphere? I don’t
have their memories, but I know they exist. Am I missing
anyone?”

“I don’t know, Kev. Really, I don’t. I mean,
I do know quite a bit about your situation, but I can’t really tell
you much.”

I hadn’t gotten to the good part yet, the
part that made me question everything. “Why did Clive hire Aputi to
wipe out humanity?”

“He did?”

“Yes. Are you telling me you don’t know about
that?”

“You know this from Aputi’s memories?”

“Yes. I know you’ve never talked to Aputi
about it, of course. I also know that Aputi doesn’t think you know
about it at all. However, I believe you do know that Clive hired
him. Of course, the universe was reset and it was all undone, but
I’ll bet anything you knew about it at least at one point. Are you
going to tell me that when I brought Aputi to live with us, you
didn’t know?”

“No.”

“What’s your game? I know I’m playing a game
now, but I don’t know the rules or what my objective is, if I even
have one.”

“Kev…”

“Are you really my wife? Do you even love
me?”

“Kev, stop. You know I love you.”

I dug deeper into my memories and found
Soph’s memories. One in particular stood out. The girl had once
told Soph the story of how she and I first met and how she
instantly fell in love with me. I doubted she would tell our
daughter that if it wasn’t true. I could find no other memories of
the girl telling anyone about her love for me, but I believed she
spoke truthfully when she told Soph the story.

“Did you know Clive and I created The Show?”
I said.

“You did?”

“Yes. I hired B24ME to host the show and
instructed him to try to kill me in an infinite number of ways, and
if I managed to get off the show somehow, to get me back on. Why
would I do that? I don’t know the answer because even though I have
all of these memories, I know now I don’t have all of my own
memories back. I only know about The Show because I have B24ME’s
memories. I suspect you and Clive know all the answers, and I know
you’re not going to give them to me. I know. The rules. Why can’t I
die? Can you die? Can Clive? Why have I been alive for over a
thousand years? Actually, I have been alive much longer than that,
haven’t I? Same with you, and Clive as well. I know that’s not
normal.”

The girl didn’t answer. I saw tears streaming
down her face. She came beside me and kissed me, her hands on my
face. “You have no idea how much I want to tell you everything,
Kev. Know this. You will be much happier that I didn’t when you
figure it all out.”

I brought my legs over the side of the bed
and sat up. “The Canadians will probably be coming. They were in
town the day I pressed the button five times, hoping I would come
here. We should go.” I brought us to Uthio Minor in the present,
now knowing how to teleport at will, and able to move back and
forth through time without the black cube. I still didn’t know what
the red cube did, but I suspected Clive and the girl knew, and knew
they would never tell me. I also knew about a small clear cube that
I had when I was a boy, and knew exactly where it was. Something
told me that cube held all the answers.

I went into the bedroom and changed out of my
hospital garb, and then returned to the family room and sat down on
the couch next to the girl. Soph entered the room and sat beside
me. Moments later, Ruby and the three Kev’s appeared.

“Daddy!” cried the Kev’s, all rushing over to
me.

I looked at Ruby, a smile on my face,
remembering all of the times she had taken advantage of me. I
didn’t hold it against her, of course. It was just her part in this
madness.

And that was another thing. Everyone in the
universe knew who I was and that I was playing a game, although the
only thing they knew about the game was that they could not provide
any material assistance to me, whatever that meant. It appeared
that most of them had different opinions of what constituted
material assistance. Only a small handful knew anything even
remotely useful, and the things they did know didn’t give me much
to go on at present.

Realizing I wouldn’t get any help from
anyone, I focused on being with my family, although my thoughts
wandered as I played with the kids and made small talk with the
girl and Ruby. I wondered why Clive had hired Aputi to end
humanity, and even kill him. I knew Clive had died that day.
However, his death wasn’t final, which made me wonder even more
about him. What was Clive’s role in this game? Was he the one I
should beware of? Who had told me to beware of him? That thought
stayed with me for a while.

We had dinner and then went for a walk on the
beach. The kids played in the water, while Ruby, the girl and I
walked hand in hand. On our way back to the house, I found a memory
of something so horrible that I couldn’t believe it. Aputi had once
had a dream or maybe a nightmare in which all creation, including
God ceased to exist, something so convoluted and vile that words
cannot truly describe it. In that instant, I remembered the Proth
Sphere and what it could do, and I wondered what would happen if
Aputi ever connected to the sphere. In all of the infinite memories
I had, this was the only one of its kind. That seemed odd to me. I
would have thought many would have such a nightmare at some point
or another. Why would only one, and now two, including me, have it?
I remembered my nightmare about the giant nozzle that sucked up the
universe and knew that nightmare had almost ended the universe.
Aputi’s nightmare was far worse than that, given that if Aputi’s
nightmare came true, nobody would be able to save anything ever
again because nothing would exist.

My thoughts drifted to other memories. There
were so many them, an infinite number. I found it difficult to keep
track of things, and knew I was missing something. That’s when I
saw Clive walking down the beach, followed by the Proth Sphere.
Clive had a sick grin on his face. I knew in that moment that he
had come looking for me, and I suspected it had something to do
with Aputi’s nightmare. I immediately teleported to my house in
Vermont in two thousand, sixteen.

Moments after I appeared in my house in
Vermont, Clive and the sphere appeared right in front of me. Before
Clive could speak, I teleported to Gamma War. In this universe,
Gamma War had not been sucked into a black hole. However, it was
orbiting the black hole and appeared to be on the verge of being
sucked into that monstrosity. I wondered if Clive would follow me
here and wondered if it was best to go somewhere he might not think
of, and also somewhere that was not about to be consumed by a black
hole.

I remembered the clear cube in that moment
and teleported to Ceti Margaux in the present, the last location
that anyone in the universe had any memory of seeing the clear
cube, the place where it had been for many years.

Very few traveled to Ceti Margaux and for a
couple of good reasons. The planet had a terrible smell, like the
worst kind of fart imaginable. Further, its residents were a
putrid, hunched race covered with warts and sores, whose voices
made your skin crawl. Needless to say, this was not a popular
tourist destination.

I looked around, now in a place that looked
like an old French village. I found it remarkable that the
inhabitants of this planet would create such a quaint village. I
felt someone tap on my shoulder and turned around, facing an older
female.

“Class three?” she said.

“What?”

“What class are you?” she said, and I
remembered. The residents of this planet had an obsession with mind
class (and also fine wine and stinky cheese), most of them being
class sevens. It was a crime to not know your class, although they
were lenient with visitors, more than happy to test you, so you
could go on your merry way and enjoy the fine smells, wine, cheese
and company their planet had to offer.

“I don’t know,” I said, already knowing the
answer, but wanting to give her a little surprise.

“Well, we’ll have to get you tested.”

I smiled and waited for her question, knowing
that my two-word answer would determine everything. Well, honestly,
it wasn’t just the answer, but the way I said it, the time of day,
the temperature and a large number of other factors that played
into it.

“What is your favorite color?” she said.

“Cerulean blue.”

Her rheumy eyes widened and she said, “Are
you sure? You wouldn’t be lying would you?”

“So, what does that make me?” I said, smiling
in my most pleasant way.

“You’ll have to come with me,” she said,
grabbing my hand with a knotty, pustule covered claw, leading me
into the building I had planned on visiting, the building where I
would find the being who had the clear cube, the cube it had found
while visiting a small park in Macon, Georgia, having mistakenly
teleported there after drinking far too much wine, many years in
the past.

Sitting in an empty room on what appeared to
be a pile of logs, I saw the most horrid creature I had ever seen,
possibly the ugliest creature one might find in the universe. His
name was Grall Tok. He bowed his head slightly, his head covered in
oozing sores, green, red and black, and said, “Kev. You know, I
never thought I would see you. Well, that’s not entirely true. You
see our simulations said you would arrive about a billion years
from now.”

“He’s a class nine,” said the female, Korl
Mol.

“Just as we predicted,” shouted Grall Tok.
“How excellent. So good to have you here, Kev. Actually, do you
mind if I call you Kevin? Kev is a name for someone with a class
one mind, don’t you think?”

A class one nine was typically associated
with parasitic organisms. I laughed and said, “You can call me
whatever you want.”

“You know what class nine means, then?” said
Grall Tok.

“Of course.”

“What else do you know?”

“Pretty much everything,” I said.

“For how long?”

“About thirty-seven days. I think you have
something for me,” I said. I have said I didn’t know absolutely
everything, and that is completely true. I knew everything that
every living being in all of the infinite universes that had ever
existed knew up until the time I pressed that button five times,
except for Clive, the girl, Jesus, Bri and the Proth Sphere, and
also some of my own memories, or at least, so I thought at that
moment. So, I didn’t know anything from the last thirty-seven days
and would not know anything new unless I pressed the button five
times yet again.

“Yes, of course.” Grall Tok reached into a
pocket and pulled out a small clear cube about the same size as my
other cubes. He handed it to me. “You know, I knew this was yours
when I found it, and I did try to find you to return it, but you
are quite difficult to find, Kev. I offer my apologies for not
putting more effort into my search.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I know I’m
difficult to find, and I have to say, I’m pretty happy about that
right about now.” I looked at the cube, completely unaware of its
purpose. Why was it so important?

I’ll explain something now. The reason I was
so difficult to find is because I exist only at one point in time
at a given time. So, if someone wanted to find me, they would have
to find me in my relative present or be somewhere I would be in my
future. I hope you understand.

I didn’t bother to ask Grall Tok what the
clear cube could do, already knowing he did not know. However, I
knew he believed, as did his colleagues, that this cube was what
they called the God cube. Grall Tok and his colleagues believed I
was some sort of a god, an amusing thought.

“Why don’t you stay for a while? I’ll have
Korl bring us some wine.”

Grall Tok and I shared a bottle of wine,
talking about anything that came to mind. At one point he asked me
if I was God and I laughed and said, “I know quite a bit, more than
enough to know that I am not God.”

“Pity,” said Grall Tok. “We were almost
certain you were.”

The conversation wound down and I left,
traveling to a small planet near the center of the universe called
Contigax, home of the G-Field Corporation, makers of containment
field generators, the best containment field generators in all of
the infinite universes. I appeared in a small shop that had
something I needed, something that would allow me to stop Clive
from doing whatever it was he planned on doing.

One of the sales persons, an eight-legged,
furry, brown creature, approached me and said, “Can I help you,
Kev?”

I happened to be standing next to a pedestal.
Sitting on the top of the pedestal was a pillow and on the pillow a
pea-sized sphere. A class Z containment field surrounded the
pedestal, making access to the sphere impossible, or at least
nearly impossible. I examined the sphere, thinking it was exactly
what I needed.

“Ah, the Bezus model,” said the creature.
“The only one of its kind. I take it you are interested in
purchasing it?”

The Bezus containment device happened to be
the most powerful containment field generator ever created. Only
one had been created before the individual who created it died in a
freak accident. Of course, that individual had never documented how
to construct the device or use it, and nobody had figured out the
secret. Further, its inventor had placed it on this pedestal and
activated it right before a meteor struck him. Since then, nobody
had been able to disable the field, thus eliminating the
possibility that anyone could examine it and figure out how to work
it.

“I just want to borrow it,” I said.

“Well, unless you know how to disable it, you
are going to have a rather difficult time taking it.”