Kev (16 page)

The Gorgian grumbled something and lumbered
away.

“I see I’m going to have to think up
something a little more creative,” said B24ME, his disappointment
more than evident.

I pulled the blue cube out of my pocket and
placed it on the ground, remembering destroying it in the past,
realizing I had managed to get off The Show a number of times by
doing just that.

“Yes, Turd Fondler, we anticipated you might
try to destroy the cube again, so we re-engineered it. It is
indestructible. Nice try.”

I stomped on the cube repeatedly to no
effect, then picked it up and threw it away from me. The cube
reappeared in my hand.

“Are you ready for your next challenge?”
laughed B24ME.

“Hey, B24ME, I have a question. What is this
game I’m playing?”

“Which game?” said B24ME.

“Not The Show, the other game.”

“You must know I don’t know that, right?”

“It was worth a try,” I said, knowing full
well that B24ME didn’t know that, although I had hoped I was
wrong.

“Now, I might be willing to give you a hint
if you agree to stay on The Show,” said B24ME. Was I wrong? Did I
truly have all of the memories of all of the beings that ever lived
in all of the infinite universes, with the exception of Clive, the
girl, Bri, the Proth Sphere, Jesus, and myself?

I knew if I stayed on The Show, B24ME would
just try to torment me for all eternity, and knew that there were
ways in which he could do that, this last challenge almost proving
to be the one that trap me for all eternity. Even though I couldn’t
die in any final way, I could be put in situations where I would
die over and over with no hope of escape.

B24ME was an autonomous electronic entity,
originally programmed to be a space traffic controller. He had
subsequently been programmed to be the host of The Show, programmed
by me. His programming included a random challenge generator he
used to devise challenges. He could also pick and choose from
queues of generated challenges randomly. I had no way of knowing
what he might select next and so I could not prepare for any of the
challenges, even if he would give me enough time to prepare.
Further, I wasn’t sure he really knew the answer to my question and
suspected he might lie to keep me on the show for all eternity.

“I’ll pass,” I said.

“Okay. Let’s see. What should we do
next?”

“How about you let me take a break?”

“I suppose we could take a commercial break.
Have to pay the bills after all. I’ll give you a day, your
time.”

“Wonderful,” I said, teleporting back to the
bar on Uthio Minor.

Clive looked at me and said, “So, you won the
challenge.”

“Have I ever lost a challenge on that show?”
I said, knowing the answer.

“No.”

Aputi’s Dream

“Well, it’s time to end this,” said Clive, the Proth
Sphere appearing by his side. How had Clive managed to get the
sphere? I didn’t realize that when I died, I ended up disabling the
containment field that held the sphere in place. The sphere escaped
on its own.

I felt the Proth Sphere connect to my mind
and immediately teleported to my house in Vermont back in 2016,
hoping Clive wouldn’t follow me to such an obvious place. How did
the Proth Sphere get away? Did Clive find it while I was in the
death box? Was the sphere ever trapped? Nothing in my memories
could answer those questions. All I knew was that I could not let
the Proth Sphere connect to me under any circumstances.

I wondered then why the Proth Sphere hadn’t
tried to connect to me when I captured it on Earithon. Maybe it
didn’t want to. Maybe Clive was going to force it to connect to me.
Maybe he had some kind of control over it.

I now felt certain Clive wanted to connect me
to the Proth Sphere in order to make Aputi’s nightmare come true.
Clive wanted to end all creation; but why? Who was Clive? Actually,
who were the girl, the Proth Sphere, Bri and Jesus? I knew almost
nothing about them. I did know the girl loved me. Of that I was
certain, but I also knew she was a part of this conspiracy. Did she
want to end all creation? I thought not.

Clearly, Clive did not know that Aputi had
the one nightmare that could end all creation, or he would have
connected Aputi to the sphere. But, he knew I had it, or at least
suspected I did. How could I get rid of that memory? I remembered
the black cube in that instant. The instructions had clearly said I
should press the button six times if I ever pressed it five times.
Why?

I pulled out the cube and pressed the button
six times, and in that instant I blacked out.

I woke up thirty-seven days later, although I
did not know that thirty-seven days had passed. I had lost all of
my memories, but did not recognize the enormity of that loss. All
memories of the girl, Clive, The Show, and pretty much everything
else had been wiped clean. I didn’t know where I was, and I didn’t
know who I was.

After picking myself up off the floor, I
looked around this unfamiliar environment. I called out, but nobody
answered, so I searched the house. In one room I found a computer
and next to it a strange black cube, my communications device. On
the computer screen I saw an open window and in the window I saw a
list of messages.

One read, “Having trouble remembering me?
Respond and I’ll stop by to fill you in. Ruby.”

Another read, “Hey, Kev, could you send me a
copy of
Hocus Pocus
?” Was my name Kev? What kind of name was
that? Seemed like a stupid name.

A third read, “Having trouble with your flog?
Is it unresponsive or far too responsive? Respond for a free
Flogulator. The Flogulator is guaranteed to solve all your pesky
flog problems.”

I went back to the first message. I assumed
the sender knew me, so I wrote back, “I appear to have lost all of
my memories. Who am I?”

Ruby wrote back, “I’ll be right there, Kev.
By the way, I’m your wife.”

I noticed a ring on my finger, so I was
willing to accept Ruby’s claim that she was my wife. However, I had
no memory of her.

Moments later, the front door opened, an
absolutely gorgeous blond wearing a tight red dress entering the
house. She hugged me and said, “I’ve missed you, Kev. Where have
you been?”

“Uh, I don’t know. Who am I?”

“You’re my husband,” said Ruby, coming in the
house and leading me to the couch.

“You don’t remember anything, do you?”

“Not one thing. Where am I?”

“This is our home, Kev.”

“Oh. How long have we been married?”

“Five years, five wonderful years. You look
pale. Let me get you something to drink.”

Ruby disappeared into the kitchen and
returned with a glass of water. I took a sip, noting a strange,
bitter taste, and said, “How long have I been gone?”

“Thirty-seven days,” said Ruby.

I felt a tingling in my spine and let out a
laugh. My vision clouded up as my thoughts became strange. The
world around me faded.

Some time later, I woke up in bed, Ruby by my
side, now naked. Ruby wasn’t a woman. I was pretty sure Ruby wasn’t
human and probably wasn’t a she. I felt quite certain that Ruby
wasn’t my wife.

“You’re not my wife, are you?”

“No, but I’m the next best thing, Kev.”

“How do you know me?”

“You’re the father of our children,” said
Ruby.

“Children? Did you drug me?”

“Of course I did. Why you think you
intercopulated with me?”

“What? Intercopulated? What are you?”

“I’m a Nidian.”

Somewhere deep inside me, memories stirred.
However, I could not piece them together. I jumped out of bed and
put on my clothes. As I put on my pants I noticed a lump in my
right pocket. Reaching in, I found three cubes, a red one, a clear
one and a black one. More interested in escaping a quite
distressing situation, I stuffed them back in my pocket. Note that
when I pressed the button on the black cube six times, I performed
a type a reset, a reset that wiped out my memories and got me off
The Show. That is why I did not have the blue cube. Just thought
you might be wondering about that.

“Kev, come back to bed.”

“No way,” I said, remembering part of my
experience with Ruby.

“But we had so much fun.”

“I wouldn’t call that fun.”

Ruby sighed. “Well, I guess I better tell you
the truth, or at least the part I’m allowed to tell you.”

“The truth?”

“Your name is Kev Pryce. You are married to
the girl and you live on Uthio Minor. This is also your home, but
you don’t come here that often. You and I have three boys, Kev the
first, Kev the second, and Kev the third, and will soon have Kev
the fourth. You have a daughter with the girl named Soph.”

“What else?” I said, thinking Soph was a
stupid name to give a girl.

“Well, you just got me pregnant, and I will
give birth in about an hour. That’s all I can tell you. Why don’t
we go down the street to the bar?”

“Why? So you can drug me again? Wait a
second. I just got you pregnant?”

“Yes, I’m pregnant, and I promise I won’t
drug you. I don’t intercopulate when I’m pregnant.”

“How wonderful. Where the hell is Uthio
Minor?”

“About thirty-seven billion light-years from
here.”

Ruby and I went to the bar down the street
from my house, a bar she assured me I had been to many times. As we
entered, a burly, bearded man wearing a red flannel shirt with
sleeves rolled up, sporting tattoos on his arms and neck, called
out to me, “Hey, Kev. Where have you been?”

I looked at the man, trying to remember his
name.

He laughed and said, “Did it again, didn’t
you?”

“Did what?” I said.

“Lost all your memories, Kev. I swear you
have the worst memory.”

I looked at Ruby and said, “How many times
have I lost my memory?”

“More times than I can count,” said Ruby.

We sat at the bar and the bartender delivered
two unordered drinks, saying, “This might help clear things up for
you. By the way, I’m Max. Try to remember that.”

“Thanks, Max,” I said, grabbing the glass of
greenish liquid and taking a sip. I heard children laughing and
playing and then a voice that said, “Hello, Kev. Welcome to
The
We Think You Should Know, but We Know You’re Going to Forget
Experience.
”

“What?” I said, looking around for the source
of the voice and then at Ruby.

Ruby smiled and said, “It’s the green tea.
Nothing to worry about.”

The voice continued, “Kev, or shall I call
you Kevin. Kevin is a much better name, don’t you agree? I mean,
were your parents mentally challenged at the time they named you?
Maybe they were drunk?”

“Okay, call me Kevin,” I said, not caring
either way, since I barely knew my own name.

“Wonderful. So, you are about to experience
the entirety of your life in the span of ten seconds. Pay attention
and you might remember some of it. After that, we have a special
treat for you.”

In the next ten seconds I experienced an
infinite number of lives, all of which I knew were mine, but none
of which I recognized. I experienced bursts of infinite knowledge
lasting fractions of fractions of picoseconds, moments of extreme
agony and despair, joy I could not comprehend, and a near infinite
number of things I would classify as absolutely confounding. At the
end of the ten seconds, I found myself on my back in the bedroom I
had just been in with Ruby. Ruby was straddling me and doing things
I will not describe here, things that I prayed I would forget. That
moment passed and I found myself back in the bar, facing Ruby.

“Which one did you get?” she said.

“Which what?”

“Which green tea experience?”

“Oh, I don’t remember the name.” While much
of my memory of the green tea experience had faded, I remembered
enough to ask, “How long have I been alive?”

Ruby smiled. “I don’t really know, to be
completely honest, but I think you have been alive for a very long
time.”

I tried to remember more from the experience,
but the memories were like bright flashes in a dark room,
imprinting on your retina and quickly fading away.

Ruby steered the conversation away from the
green tea experience, telling me about her home world, Nidia, and
about Nidians and their curious way of drugging and intercopulating
with unwitting victims, all in an effort to have children.

Nidians could mate with pretty much any
species in the universe. They were a type of hermaphrodite,
possessing both male and female reproductive organs. They could get
pregnant either intercopulating with a male or a female of almost
any species, or they could (although they rarely did) impregnate
themselves. Nidians never had sex with other Nidians (other than
themselves), however, and generally regarded self-impregnation as
giving up.

A Nidian would have five children before
going through a transformation that would render them sterile.
Ruby, now pregnant with her fourth child, tried to persuade me to
be the father of her fifth, arguing that it just wouldn’t be right
for the her fifth child to have a different father. I told her four
children was plenty and she was lucky I had given her that, to
which she said, “We’ll see about that.”

Ruby told me about a number of other places
that she had been to in her life. She mentioned a planet called
Gamma War and I stopped her. I remembered Gamma War, and something
about a black hole sucking it into oblivion, but Ruby told me that
had been in another, prior universe. Of course, I asked what she
meant by prior universe and she said, “Well, you should know.
You’re the one who once negated all the universes that ever existed
with a wish.” She would say no more on the subject and moved on to
Uthio Minor, my purported other home. Ruby claimed Uthio Minor was
considered the ultimate paradise in the universe, a planet covered
by a single ocean with only one island, a twenty-mile long crescent
at the equator, two miles wide at its widest point. The island had
a bar and two homes. The girl and I lived in one of the homes and
Clive lived in the other. Ruby had already told me that Clive was
my best friend, someone I had grown up with, and, of course, I
believed her.