Kev (22 page)

I appeared in the torture chamber, finding
Clive tormenting a group of naked pledges that were writhing around
on the ground on a pile of chopped lettuce. I could smell salad
dressing. Clive wore his best silly grin on his face.

I looked around the room, seeing no sign of
the sphere, and then said, “Clive, I’m going to hell. Why don’t you
join me?” Then I teleported out of the chamber to a random spot on
the planet, tapped my heels three times and said, “There’s no place
like hell.” In the background, I could hear Bri laughing, that
bastard.

Hell

I appeared at the top of a wooden fort in a small
park in some unknown place, all of my memories gone.

I examined my body, realizing I was a child.
I had no knowledge of the past, no expectations for the future. I
had no context in which to place anything I was sensing.

I looked around, my gaze drifting out to the
edge of the park, to a road, and then across the road to a field.
Far away, in the field, I saw an old barn. I saw something that
looked like a horned man wearing a red leotard, a man carrying a
pitchfork, entering the barn. Soon after, I heard a scream, the
scream of a girl.

I climbed down from the top of the fort, and
headed toward the barn, uncertain and a bit frightened, but
determined to understand what was going on.

Inside the barn, I found the man, a man with
fake, plastic horns on his head. On the ground in front of him I
saw a young girl, her body still.

The man turned and looked at me, a wicked
grin on his face. He disappeared.

I rushed over to the girl and knelt down
besides her, checking for signs of life. She was dead.

I had seen her before, but did not know who
she was. On one hand I saw a ring on her finger, a silver band with
an amethyst. I knew that ring.

I shook the girl in a desperate attempt to
bring her back to life, but she did not stir. I cried out, begging
her to live, but live she did not.

“What are you doing?” said a boy’s voice
behind me. I turned my head and saw a large, brown boy standing not
far away. He had a confused look on his face. It was Clive, but I
did not know that at the time.

“She’s dead,” I said, wiping tears from my
eyes.

“Oh,” he said. “Maybe we should bury
her.”

“No.” Beside the girl I saw a small blanket,
which I picked up and draped over her body.

“You’re just going to leave her there?” said
Clive.

“Maybe she will come back to life,” I said,
praying I was right.

“Let’s get out of here,” said Clive.

I stood up, looked back at the girl, now
covered by the blanket, and said, “Do you know her?”

“No, but I feel like I’ve seen her
before.”

“Me too. What’s your name?”

“I don’t know. What’s yours?”

“I don’t know.”

“Let’s go to the park,” said Clive, motioning
for me to leave with him. I followed him out of the barn, across
the field and the road, and into the park.

Clive and I climbed to the top of the fort,
and for some time said nothing, both of us lost in thought, both
wondering who we were, where we were, what we were doing here, and
what would happen next. Finally, Clive spoke up. “Hey, do you want
to play a game?”

I did not want to play a game. The death of
the girl weighed heavily upon me, and I was in no mood for fun.
Despite that, I said, “What game?”

“Why don’t we play The Show?” said Clive.

I remembered. At least, I remembered who
Clive was. I knew he was Satan and that he wanted to end all
creation. I did not know, however, if he knew that. Was he toying
with me?

Then I remembered tapping my heels three
times and saying, “There’s no place like hell.” I knew where I was.
Did Clive know where he was?

“So, you don’t know who you are?” I said.
“Are you sure about that?”

“No clue, bro.”

“Do you know where you are?” I said.

“I’m in a park.”

I should note that at this point I remembered
not only Clive, but also remembered some of the events that
preceded my arrival in hell. I remembered talking to Bri. I
remembered wondering about God, and coming to the conclusion that I
believed in God. I remembered the girl, and knew it was she in the
barn, a blanket covering her dead body. However, I did not believe
that was really she. I believed this was some trick that hell was
playing, perhaps one of the torments hell offered.

I remembered the black cube, realizing it was
in my pocket, and knew that if I pressed the button five times, I
would gain almost infinite knowledge, but also knew that if I did
that, I would be unconscious for thirty-seven days. If I pressed
the button five times and blacked out, if Clive somehow got his
hands on the sphere while I was out, and if he remembered he wanted
to connect me to the sphere, he could end all creation.

I did not see the sphere anywhere, and I
believed, or at least partially believed that Clive did not yet
have his memories, that he, like me, came to this place with those
memories wiped clean. Could I risk pressing the button five times?
Perhaps not while standing here with Clive. I knew I could not
teleport out of hell and did not know how I could escape hell,
because that bastard, Bri, wouldn’t tell me. Maybe I could teleport
to some other part of hell and do the deed. But, what would I find
in other parts of hell? I remembered the horned man in the red
leotard and his wicked grin, and thought traveling out of the
confines of this park might be a terrible idea. I wondered if the
strange man had killed the girl. In fact, I believed he had. Were
there others like him? What would they do to me?

The black cube would allow me to travel in
time. But, then, I might be able to do that without the black cube,
now having the knowledge that would allow me to travel freely
through time. If I traveled back thirty-eight days to this same
spot and pressed the button five times, I believed I would wake up
before Clive got here. If I traveled back thirty-eight days, would
Clive know I had done that? Would I disappear in front of his eyes?
Maybe not, at least not if I came back to this spot at this point
in time. I knew Clive could also travel back in time in his own
way, but didn’t think he would think to go back thirty-eight days.
I believed if he truly didn’t have his memories, he wouldn’t try to
go back in time if I disappeared, which I didn’t think I would if I
made sure I was back in this spot in thirty-eight days.

At this point, I should explain the rules of
time travel, rules that are different for me than for any other
being in the universe that can travel backwards and forwards in
time.

Here are my rules:

I exist only at one point in time at a
time.

I do not age when I am not in the
present.

I can travel back in time.

I can travel forward in time, but not beyond
the present.

When I am back in time, the present still
moves forward.

I can’t change my past, a corollary to
existing at only one point in time.

Here are the rules for others who can time
travel:

Time travelers exist in all points in time
they have ever existed in, except when they negate their existence
in any one point in time that they have traveled to by changing
their original decision to travel in time to that point in
time.

Time travelers do not age when they are not
in the present.

Time travelers can go back in time.

Time travelers can go forward in time, but
not beyond the present.

When time travelers are back in time, the
present still moves forward.

Time travelers can change their pasts and
the pasts of all other beings and things in the universe except for
me.

Time travelers remember pasts they have
changed even though those changed pasts technically never
happened.

.

Now, I could go into a lengthy discussion of
what all of this means, of course, but I am not going to do that.
If you take the time to explore the rules and different scenarios,
I’m sure you’ll be able to figure it out. It might take many ages
to figure it out, and you might only be able to figure it out from
the afterlife (yes, of course there is an afterlife), but I’m sure,
with enough effort, it will all come to you. Well, I’ll give you
something to work with. It is the least I can do.

What if Clive travels to the past and then in
the past convinces himself (his other self he finds in the past)
not to go into the past? What if Clive goes to the past and finds
me in the exact place in time I am? What if I go to some point in
Clive’s past and do something naughty to him? Will that change his
future relative to that past? What will Clive remember if he goes
to the past, does some things of a naughty nature and then
convinces his other self not to go to the past? What if Clive and I
are together in time at some point in time that we just arrived in
(in my time bubble. No, I am not going to explain time bubbles
right now) and I travel back in time, but in the same place and
wait until the moment I traveled back in time? Will Clive know I
traveled back in time? If I do something that might make Clive
depart that point in time before I get back to that point in time,
will I still see him? What would be the easiest way for someone to
find me in time, given that I am only in one place in time at a
time? Some of these questions have multiple answers. Anyway, I have
a million of these little problems I could share, but think these
will suffice for now.

So, I believed if I traveled back in time
thirty eight days, that Clive would never know because I would come
back to this same spot thirty eight days later and find Clive still
here. I suspected that when I went back in time, I would not
disappear in front of Clive if I made sure I returned to this spot
at this point in time. I might not be able to be in the exact same
position, but I could get close enough that he might not detect the
change. At least, I hoped that was how it worked. But what if it
worked some other way? I didn’t really have a clear understanding
of things, and wasn’t able to work through the problem, so I just
accepted that I would have to take my chances.

I attempted to travel back thirty-eight days,
and absolutely nothing happened. You might ask why I bothered to
say anything about the rules for time travel if I wasn’t going to
be able to travel in time. I’ll say this; would you prefer that I
hadn’t told you the rules? If so, then why are you reading this
book?

“So, do you want to play the game?” said
Clive, an expectant look on his face.

I couldn’t travel through time at will, and I
assumed that meant I could not teleport at will. I would have to
use the black cube. “I don’t know,” I said, stalling for time as I
grabbed the cubes from my pocket, now finding four cubes in my
possession, red, clear, black, and blue. Blue. I reeled back in
horror, realizing that I had touched the blue cube, an act that
would put me on The Show.

“What’s the matter?” said Clive.

In that instant, I knew the solution to the
problem. While I wasn’t sure that The Show existed in hell, I
believed it probably did, and I believed that if I gave Clive the
blue cube, he would be stuck on The Show, and I believed that
whatever version of B24ME existed in hell would trap Clive in this
place for all eternity.

I looked at Clive and said, “These are cool.
What do you think they are?” I picked the blue cube out of my palm
and offered it to Clive.

Clive took the blue cube and said, “Don’t
know. Maybe they’re nothing.” A look of surprise crossed over
Clive’s face. “Who is B24ME?”

“You tell me,” I said, a wicked grin creeping
onto my face.

“He said I have to battle Excretorian ants.
What are those?”

“Not sure,” I said, now confident that I had
set in motion a chain of events that would prevent Clive from
ending all creation.

“I don’t want to battle Excretorian ants, but
B24ME says he will kill me if I don’t.” Clive started crying, and
in that moment I felt terrible. Clive really didn’t know what was
going on and he was facing a multitude of horrible deaths, deaths
he might never escape, deaths he would face as a child, as an
innocent. My regret profound, I reached out to take the cube back
from him, but he disappeared before I could get it.

“Why, hello, Turd Fondler. Fancy meeting you
in hell,” said a familiar voice. “Are you ready for your next
challenge?”

“I’m not on The Show, B24ME,” I replied.
“Clive has the cube now.”

“Really? Then what’s that in your hand?”
chortled B24ME.

I looked at my palm and saw a blue cube along
with the other cubes. Things were about to get really ugly.

“Look, you can’t kill me, B24ME. You know
that, so why bother?”

“I might not be able to kill you, but I can
torture you for all eternity. Don’t you think that would be
fun?”

“Just lovely. Do you think that will be good
for ratings?” I said.

“My dear boy, I’ll have you know that after
you gave the cube to Clive, ratings climbed three hundred
thirty-seven percent. We have reached an all time high. Audiences
love this stuff.”

“What if I fire you, B24ME? I am your boss,
right?” A gamble, but worth a shot.

“You thought you might say that at one point
when we negotiated my contract, and I can tell you don’t remember
the terms of the deal, although you clearly remember that you are
my boss, so I will refresh your memory. If you terminate me without
cause, I am entitled to torture you for all eternity.”

“I agreed to that?”

“It was your idea, actually. I have to admit,
it was the one thing that really made me want to take this
job.”

What kind of a masochistic moron was I? Why
would I ever do that to myself? There had to be a reason, but find
it I could not.