Kev (5 page)

“Are you going to give me a kiss?” she
said.

I kissed her on the cheek and she turned her
head and gave me a more proper kiss. “I’m happy you remembered me
this time,” she said.

“There were times when I prayed I could
forget you like I forget everything else, but I’m happy I
didn’t.”

“Do you want to go somewhere?” she said.

“No, not really,” I said. “Maybe we can just
sit on the bench.”

I led her to the bench where we sat for
hours, and in those hours I felt like time had stopped, a static
universe surrounding us. We talked about countless things, about
her life and adventures, about what little of my life I could
remember, about the universe and all of the strange places that
existed within it, and about our love for each other.

“I have to go now,” she said.

“When will I see you again?”

“I don’t know, Kev. You are becoming more
difficult to track. You have to stop using that black cube all the
time.”

“What are you talking about?” I knew I had
the black cube, and that it was in my pocket at that very moment,
but I had no memories of ever using it for anything.

“I can’t tell you. I shouldn’t have said
anything.”

“Please tell me what you are talking
about.”

“I’ll tell you this. The more you use it, the
more your memories will be messed up. Time lag. Also, it is much
more difficult for me to find you when you use it, so don’t use
it.”

I pulled out the black cube and looked at it.
The date on the cube was 2013. I pushed the button once and let go,
and said, “It doesn’t do anything.”

“Trust me, it does,” she said.

“Why can’t you tell me?”

“Rules are rules, Kev. Anyway, you’ll figure
it out.”

She gave me a kiss and then disappeared.

I looked down at the black cube and pressed
the button on the cube again, this time holding it down for a
second. The date went from 2013 to 2012. I looked around and
noticed that things appeared to have changed, but in what way I was
not sure. I pressed the button twice and held it for a second and
the date went up by one.

Out of curiosity, I again pressed the button
twice and held it, but this time until the number climbed to 3237
and stopped. Around me, the world had changed, although the park
itself had not changed. Surrounding the park I now saw an immense
city. In the sky above, I saw flying cars. In the park, I saw many
people and some aliens. Nobody paid me any attention.

I forgot what I had done, forgot about the
girl and her warning, and forgot who I was. I looked at the cube
again, and out of curiosity, I pressed the button once and held it
until the number dropped to 2013. Things returned to normal,
although, at that point, I did not remember them being anything
other than normal.

I had a habit of using the black cube this
way, of taking myself back and forth in time, a kind of tick,
something I didn’t realize I did. I had done this many times, but
always forgot I had done it.

A minute later, I remembered who I was and I
remembered Uncle Joe and thought it might be a good time to go fly
planes with him, so I returned to his farm.

Pnukes

Clive and I decided to go to college together,
settling on MIT. We both chose computer science and electrical
engineering as our major.

I liked MIT, and really enjoyed living in
Boston, and Clive felt the same way, but for some reason we both
felt stifled. Still, we stuck to it, thinking we would be more
engaged when we started taking higher-level classes.

In that time, Clive only mentioned the girl
once, asking me if I remembered the time she took us to other
planets. I had no idea what he was talking about and he said he
might have imagined it, dropping the subject. I immediately forgot
he ever brought it up.

At the end of our second year, we decided to
drop out and continue our studies on our own. Clive’s said his
parents didn’t really mind, and were happy to support him, provided
he showed that he was working toward something that would get him a
job. Uncle Joe and Aunt Helen wanted me to get my degree, but
didn’t put up much of a fight. I had plenty of money from my
father’s life insurance policy and the sale of my home, so there
was no question about me being able to support myself.

Clive and I moved to a sleepy town in
Vermont, five miles from the Canadian border, buying a nice four
bedroom house near the center of town, a town that had very little
other than a small market, a bar, an inn, and a gas station. I took
one of the spare bedrooms and turned it into a workshop. Clive
turned the other spare bedroom into a library and study. We both
agreed we had found the perfect place to figure out what we wanted
to do.

I had developed a strong interest in signal
processing and communication devices while at MIT. Further, I had
developed an interest in signals that could travel faster than
light, something most thought impossible.

I set out to build a device that could send
faster than light signals to any point in the universe. For some
unknown reason, I had a strong desire to make contact with alien
life. Of course, I know now what motivated me, but at the time, I
just wanted to see if there was anybody out there.

Clive and I settled in to our new lives, each
of us spending much of our time on our own projects. We didn’t play
The Show anymore, Clive telling me he already knew everything he
needed to know.

Six months after we moved in, Canadian
extremists killed Clive's father while he was visiting Atlanta.

Canadian extremism had been a fairly recent
phenomenon, Canadian terrorists attacking targets across the globe,
but mostly in the United States. Nobody really understood what had
pissed off the Canadians, their transition from a peace loving,
open society into a belligerent, brooding one happening sometime
around the time Clive and I started at Baker.

The first documented act of terrorism
committed by the Canadians was the simultaneous destruction of a
number of sugar cane plantations down in Florida. Those responsible
were captured. They claimed the only true sweetener that should be
used was maple syrup, an odd twist on terrorism.

After that there were several attacks on corn
syrup manufacturers. Many were killed in these attacks, and the
Canadians who were captured all repeated the same thing, that the
only true sweetener that should be used was maple syrup.

After that, the Canadians started attacking
other targets, now not limiting themselves to targets in the United
States. Places where sugar cane was grown were hardest hit. Those
places included Brazil, India, China, Mexico, Australia, Thailand,
and Pakistan, all major sugar cane producers.

Despite the attacks, the sugar industry was
able to stay afloat, having put security measures in place to
protect crops. The Canadians adapted to this and started targeting
places that sold products that contained sugar, like grocery
stores, cake shops, candy stores, and so on.

Officials in the Canadian government
disavowed all knowledge of the attacks and took no responsibility
for them, and, for the most part, the world bought into the idea
that some fringe part of Canadian society was behind this
madness.

The attacks stopped six years after they
began, after the thirty-seventh attack, an attack on a donut shop
in Peoria, Illinois. Nobody knew why the Canadians had stopped, and
everyone wondered if they were planning something big.

Two years later, terrorists attacked a
wellness facility outside of San Francisco. Three more wellness
facilities were attacked soon after. However, the culprits were not
apprehended. However, pretty much everyone on Earth believed
Canadians were responsible.

Clive’s father had been visiting a wellness
facility in downtown Atlanta when a man wielding an assault rifle
stormed in and killed thirty-seven people. The gunman, later
identified as a Canadian, then took his own life.

Following that, Clive developed an intense
hatred for Canadians, and started a blog that chronicled the rise
of Canadian extremism. He wrote countless diatribes and
indictments. Eventually, the press heard about Clive’s blog and
invitations for appearances on a variety of television and radio
shows started coming in. He refused all offers, hating the press
almost as much as he hated Canadians.

Clive started drinking heavily, a regular
patron at the local bar. I can’t count the number of times someone
had dragged him home after one of his benders. When he wasn’t
drinking, he spent his time writing computer viruses and deploying
them on Canadian computers, viruses that would wreak havoc on the
infected hosts, often wiping out all of their data.

Clive hadn’t lost it completely, however. He
still had a sense of humor. Sometimes, he would write viruses that
did silly things and infect my computer with them. In response, I
learned to write viruses and sent no small number of them his
way.

Meanwhile, I had made great progress on the
communication device that I truly believed would allow me to make
contact, completing my work on July twenty-third, two thousand,
sixteen, at three thirty-seven. I believed my device, a six-inch on
a side black cube connected to my computer, would change absolutely
everything for humanity.

I had prepared for this day, amassing a
collection of digital media, a primer for any alien race that might
get my messages. The package contained books, music, pictures,
computer programs, jokes, and a variety of other digital media,
along with a note from me.

I had spent countless hours thinking of names
for this device, finally settling on Cavendish, named after Henry
Cavendish, the first scientist to calculate a value for Big G, the
gravitational constant. The reason this name made sense was that my
device used gravity to send its signal. Of course, this might not
make sense given that most believe that gravity propagates at the
speed of light. That is both true and false. Gravity waves do
propagate at the speed of light in vacuum and through normal
matter, but they propagate through dark matter, the stuff that
makes up most of the mass of the universe, immediately. Dark matter
is all around us, within us. In fact, most of what exists in the
universe is dark matter and dark energy. Of course, I could have
named my device after the scientists who first theorized that dark
matter and dark energy existed, but thought Cavendish more
appropriate because Big G was a major constant in my device’s
ability to communicate immediately with everyone in the
universe.

I sent the signal out in every direction
possible, the only way, in fact, to send the signal out, and
waited.

Thirty-seven seconds later, I received a
response, quite surprised to find out it was in English. It read,
“There you are, Kev. I’ll be right over. Don’t go anywhere.” I
traced the source of the signal to a star some two thousand
light-years away. I responded with, “How will I know you when I see
you?” I received a picture in response, a picture of an alien’s
head, pale blue and lipless with two bright orange eyes and what
looked like a cigarette dangling from its mouth.

Moments later, I received another response,
“Hey, you up for a little intercopulation? Reply if you want me to
come over. Love, Ruby. XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO!”

Following that, I received, “Need to fix a
mistake? Want to see the birth of the universe? Want to travel in
time?” The message contained plans for a small black cube that had
a single blue button and what appeared to be a digital display. The
device had two parts; a cube with a cylindrical hole and a
cylindrical insert that I presumed went directly into the hole. I
wrote back, “Where do you get the parts?” The response was, “I
don’t know, but if you find them, send me a message.” I had vague
memories of having a little black cube that resembled the one in
these plans, a cube I had misplaced at some point.

My last response came in a few minutes later.
“Would you mind turning down the signal a bit? You’ve already
killed three million of us. Don’t you think you’ve done enough
damage?” I turned down the signal on the device and sent a reply.
“Much better,” was the response.

I ran out into the family room, finding Clive
on the couch eating a bowl of sugary cereal, his favorite thing to
eat. “Clive, you’re never going to believe this. I’ve made contact
with aliens.”

“Yeah, well, let’s hope they’re not a bunch
of maple humping Canadian pigs,” said Clive. Clive’s body exploded,
sending little bits and pieces of flesh everywhere.

I stared at Clive’s remains, in shock, unsure
of what had just happened. Was this a dream? It would explain many
things if it was. I tried to wake up, but couldn’t. I didn’t think
this was a dream.

I grabbed the phone and dialed 911.

“Yeah, what do you want?” said a woman’s
voice.

“My friend just exploded,” I cried.

“Is your friend still alive?”

“No, he exploded.”

“So, he’s dead then. With whom am I
speaking?”

“Kev Pryce,” I said.

“What kind of name is Kev?”

“What?”

“Never mind. I’ll send someone over.”

She hung up without asking for my
address.

An hour later, a police cruiser and an
ambulance arrived.

“Did he eat dynamite or something?” asked the
first police officer on the scene. The two paramedics were staring
at the walls and the floor, the furniture and windows, flesh
covering everything.

“I don’t know what happened,” I said.

“Did you kill him?” said the police
officer.

“Absolutely not.”

Several hours later, I found myself alone in
the house. It had taken over a dozen techs to gather Clive’s
remains. The house reeked and although they had managed to find
most of Clive’s bits and pieces, everything was covered in blood,
including me.