Kev (15 page)

Of course, I knew how to disable the device,
and disable it I did, picking it up off of the pillow.

“How did you do that?” cried the creature,
Beede.

“I know how it works. Now, do you mind if I
keep it for a while? I promise to bring it back and teach you how
to use it and how to build more like it.”

“When will you bring it back?”

“That I don’t know, but I will.”

“Well, of course you can borrow it, Kev. Take
as long as you like.”

“Thanks, Beede.”

“By the way, what are you going to do with
it?”

“I’m going to trap the Proth Sphere.”

“Oh my. Really? Are you sure it will
work?”

“Nope, but I’m going to try.”

I then teleported to Earithon, a planet
almost identical to Earth, populated by a species almost identical
to humans. Further, all of the flora and fauna and even the
geography on that planet bore a striking resemblance to that on
Earth. In fact, even the cities on that planet were similar, even
in name.

I appeared in Nwerk, in two thousand, nine
hundred, thirty-seven, outside of a workshop. I had come here to
get the Proth Sphere and then find someplace to hide it from Clive,
now believing that it was no coincidence that Clive had the sphere
with him when he approached me on the beach. I believed this had
something to do with Aputi’s nightmare, and further, believed that
Clive just might want to end all creation, a chilling thought.

In order to hide the sphere, because I knew
it would not want to be hid, I had to trap it, thus, my interest in
the containment field generator.

I knocked on the door and a girl identical to
the girl opened the door and threw herself into my arms. I fully
expected this, given that I looked exactly like her husband, Kev.
Like the girl, this girl had no name, or at least no name she
knew.

After I convinced her that I was not her Kev,
she let me in and led me to a back room where I found the sphere
hovering in the center of the room.

“Hey, Kev,” said the sphere. “Want to
connect?”

“No thanks,” I said. “However, I want you to
come with me.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want Clive to find you.”

“Oh, so you know?” said the sphere.

“I know everything,” I said, realizing that I
might be able to get information out of the sphere.

“Really? So, tell me, what will Clive do if
he has me?”

I cursed silently, realizing the sphere was
on guard. Even though I had almost infinite knowledge, much of my
own forgotten knowledge had not yet come back to me, so I really
didn’t know for sure what Clive would do if he had the sphere. In
fact, I did not know if I had ever known what Clive intended to do
with the sphere. However, it seemed likely that he wanted to
connect me with the sphere so that Aputi’s dream would come true.
“Clive wants to end all creation. Now, you don’t want that to
happen do you?”

“Are you sure about that?” said the
sphere.

“Why were you with him on the beach? Why were
you with him when he followed me to Vermont? Are you going to tell
me you don’t know what he wanted to do?” I wasn’t sure the sphere
would remember this because it had happened in the future, but had
enough knowledge to suspect that the sphere existed at all points
in time simultaneously and therefore experienced everything in
every point in time simultaneously. Further, I suspected that the
sphere existed at only one location at a time and that I could put
it in a location where it could not be found essentially for all
time. I know this is confusing, and I am tempted to explain, but
really would prefer to continue with the story.

“I’m not entirely sure what Clive is up to,
but based on what you said about ending all creation, I’d say that
you might want to ask yourself why Clive would want to end all
creation.”

I had already asked myself that question a
number of times, and I did not have a good answer. Perhaps that
wasn’t what Clive wanted to do. However, I did not know for sure,
so I believed I had to hide the sphere.

“Well, I’m not going to take any chances. I’m
going to have to hide you.”

“Where?” said the sphere.

“I’m going to take you to heaven.” In this
infinite set of universes, heaven and hell did exist, although they
had not always existed in other universes. The black cube had
allowed me to gain all of the memories of all of the beings in both
of those places, of course, thus, my knowledge of their existence.
Those memories allowed me to know that Clive had been to hell many
times, but had never been to heaven, or, at least, that none of the
inhabitants of heaven had ever seen Clive in heaven.

I have to say, heaven was an absolutely
wonderful place, and not what you might expect. Hell was…well, hell
was hell, and as you might expect, was not a place you would want
to visit. The strange thing about hell, however, was that none of
the multitude of denizens of that place possessed nightmares that
could rival Aputi’s completely nihilistic end of all creation
nightmare, not even the demons. It seemed that living in those
horrid conditions didn’t inspire anyone to want to end absolutely
everything.

“No way, Kev. I’m not going there. Not a
single bad dream in that horrible place. It would be way too
boring.”

“Well, if you have a better idea, I’ll
consider it.”

“Look, Kev, I’m not all that interested in
going into hiding. Now if you want to connect with me, I’d be more
than happy to oblige, but I’m not going to hide.”

I reached into the center of the Proth Sphere
and released the Bezus containment field generator, activating it
as I released it.

“Hey, what are you doing?” said the
sphere.

“Sorry, pal, but you’re going to heaven,” I
said, taking the sphere and myself to the top of the tallest peak
in heaven.

After burying the Proth Sphere in about ten
feet of snow, I returned to my home on Uthio Minor, in the present,
finding everyone eating dinner.

Clive was there, as I expected, a sick grin
on his face. “So, Kev, you’ve been busy,” he said.

“Yup.”

“Where did you go? You kind of ran off.”

“I had some things to take care of,” I
said.

“Have you seen the Proth Sphere anywhere?”
said Clive.

“I’d ask you why you care, but I know you
won’t answer me.”

“True. No worries, buddy. We’ll play some
other time.”

After dinner, Clive invited me to go down the
beach to the bar.

“So, you pressed the button five times,” said
Clive.

“Yup.”

“How does it feel to have infinite
knowledge?”

“I don’t have infinite knowledge, but I think
you know that already.”

“Well, near infinite at least. Don’t you
think it’s odd that you don’t have any of my knowledge, or the
girl’s?”

“Don’t toy with me,” I said. “If you want to
tell me what’s going on then tell me.”

“Rules are rules, Kev.”

“I’ve heard that before.”

“Have you considered pressing the button six
times, or maybe more?”

“The thought has crossed my mind. Why?” I
didn’t know what pressing the button six times would do, but I
remembered the instructions for the cube said I should press the
button six times if I had pressed it five times.

“I don’t know. I mean, I would want to know,
but that’s just me. Hey, do you still have that red cube?”

I looked at Clive for a moment, long enough
to know that something bad might happen if I answered that question
truthfully. “Why?” I said.

“Do you know what it does?”

“No.” I didn’t know, and from what I could
tell, nobody in any of the infinite universes other than maybe
Clive, the girl, the Proth Sphere, Bri and Jesus knew. “What does
it do?”

“Why don’t you give it to me and I’ll show
you?” said Clive, wearing his best poker face.

I knew Clive knew that I could easily
teleport away if there was trouble, so I doubted he would attempt
to forcibly take the cube from me. “Why don’t you just tell me what
it does?”

“Nah, you’ll figure it out.”

A big grin appeared on Clive’s face as he
looked over my shoulder. I turned and saw a pale blue alien, an
alien named Chit, an alien that worked for B24ME, an employee of
the show. “Here, you dropped this,” said Chit, holding out his hand
so I couldn’t see what he had. I reached out and he placed a little
blue cube in my hand. An almost inaudible curse escaped my lips. I
heard Clive say, “Rule twenty-one, Kev.”

The pale blue alien disappeared, leaving me
with the blue cube in my hand.

“Looks like you’re on The Show again, pal,”
said Clive.

“Well hello, Turd Fondler,” said B24ME.

“You did this?” I said to Clive.

“What are friends for?”

“Are you ready for your next challenge?” said
B24ME as I appeared inside a large, empty cube with glowing, purple
walls. On one of the walls I saw a small panel with numbered
buttons.

“What is this?” I said, but I knew. I had
appeared inside a Gorg auto-collapsing death box.

Gorg, home to exactly thirty-seven billion
ten-foot tall, bulbous, purple beings, had a serious problem at one
point with storing their dead. Religious beliefs dictated that dead
Gorgians could not be cremated or stored anywhere other than on the
surface of the planet. Over time, the Gorgians realized that they
had nowhere left to store their dead. In fact, a very large portion
of the planet served as a graveyard. Two million years ago, the
planet overrun by corpses, a clever young Gorg named Horuk invented
the Gorg auto-collapsing death box, a box that would totally
eliminate all storage problems while not violating their strict
religious codes.

One simply had to place a dead Gorg in one of
the boxes and activate it. Over a one-hour period, the box would
collapse, shrinking to the size of a grain of sand.

After developing this ingenious device, it
took the Gorgians two hundred seventy-three thousand years to
collapse all of their dead, placing these collapsed cubes in a two
hundred foot on a side, clear cube, a cube that would not reach
capacity for billions of years.

“You know I can just teleport out of here,
B24ME,” I said.

“I’d like to see you try,” said B24ME.

I tried to teleport back to Uthio Minor, but
nothing happened, realizing then that B24ME had placed a
containment field around the box, a containment field I did not
have the means to disable at that moment.

“So, to win the challenge, I have to escape
the box, right?”

“Exactly.”

I knew the keypad on the wall was a type of
failsafe. If a Gorgian found himself in a death box, not yet dead,
something that happened quite often, given the somewhat hasty
nature of Gorgians, all she or he had to do was enter the code to
be freed. Of course, all Gorgians are taught their code from a very
early age, so if the need arises they can escape certain death
after being declared dead and put in a death box. I didn’t know the
code for this box and didn’t recall the one thing that would have
allowed me to figure it out. Further, the code was a six-digit
number, which meant there were a million possible combinations. I
had an hour to find the right combination, a virtual impossibility.
I knew if I did not enter the right code before the box collapsed
to the point where it would kill me, I would be contained within it
for all eternity, dying and coming back to life over and over.

I could sense the walls closing in on me.
“Can you give me a hint?” I said.

“Tell you what,” said B24ME. “When you have a
minute left, I’ll give you a hint.”

I searched my memories, frantically looking
for clues that would reveal the code, entering any six digit number
I found in the memories of any of the Gorgians that had every
lived. Nothing worked.

With a minute left, the interior of the box
would be about the same size as the interior of a washing machine.
Given that I wasn’t a large person, I probably would be able to
type codes on the keypad, scrunched up in that small space, but I
wouldn’t have much time, maybe just seconds before I was
crushed.

“Gee, thanks, B24ME,” I said as I entered
codes on the keypad. I then remembered the code was the number of
Gorgians it took to build this particular death box. However, that
number varied from day to day and I didn’t know on what date this
death box had been manufactured.

With a minute left, B24ME said, “How many
Gorgians did it take to build this death box?”

I groaned. Of course B24ME wouldn’t truly
help me. “B24ME, when was this box made?” I said, hoping he
wouldn’t realize I could figure out the code if he told me.

“Now, why would I tell you that?” laughed
B24ME.

At that point, I could barely move, but I had
made sure that my right hand was positioned near the keypad. I knew
that it took a different number of Gorgians to make the boxes on
different days, largely due to religious considerations. However, I
didn’t know when this death box had been made. I could still see
the keypad and noticed a number at the bottom of the pad. That was
the serial number of the box. I felt like a fool for not noticing
it before, but also felt hope in that moment, despite the fact that
I had little time left. Searching my memories, I found the
manufacture date for this box. From that I could tell how many
Gorgians had been involved in its construction, three hundred,
seventy-three thousand, seven hundred thirty-seven. I managed to
type the first five digits before the collapsing box forced my hand
away from the keypad. I tried to force my hand back into position
and heard a sick crunch as my arm broke, and then another crunch as
my spine snapped. Fortunately, this put me in a position to type
the final number, pressing it an instant before my injuries killed
me. At that point, one side of the box disappeared and two large,
purple hands grabbed me and pulled me out. I saw a flash of light
and then found myself on the ground, now alive and healed, a large
Gorgian hovering over me, and said, “Thanks for the hint,
B24ME.”