Kev (27 page)

“Brace yourself,” said the brain.

In a flash, an inconceivable number of
memories became mine. I pulled the electrode off my head, now
staring at the girl and Clive. I knew who they were, or at least
who I believed they were when I had previously connected to the
brain. I didn’t know what the rules were. I didn’t know Clive was
Satan and that he wanted to end all creation, but I knew that
something was up with him, and I felt quite suspicious of him. The
girl, however, I felt nothing but love for. I felt bad about what I
was about to do, but there was no choice.

“I’m going to recreate the universe,” I
screamed and then teleported to Earithon, into a small workshop on
that planet, a planet almost identical to Earth. There I found the
Proth Sphere hovering in a corner of the workshop.

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

“I sure do,” I said.

I knew that everyone in the universe was in
on something, something that I might have created and then
forgotten, and knew that the rules prohibited any of them from
offering any material assistance. That included the girl, Clive,
Bri, the Proth Sphere, and Jesus, although I had a vague memory of
Jesus helping me once.

I intended to recreate the universe in a way
that would essentially force everyone to help me. I wanted to know,
and in that instant, convinced I was playing some game, I
desperately wanted to win.

I grabbed onto the sphere and did what I
believed would institute this change in reality, focusing all of my
thought on creating a new universe that would not be set against
me.

“I’m sorry, Kev, but I can’t do that,” said
the sphere.

“What?” I said.

“Rules are rules. I can’t help you. Now, if
you want to have a giant nozzle come and suck up the entire
universe or change the entire universe into a giant theme park or
something like that, I’d be more than happy to help, but I’m not
going to let you cheat.”

“Cheat?” I cried. “How is this cheating? What
rule says you can’t do this?”

“Well, that would be rule seven, actually.
Sorry, Kev.”

“Dammit. What are the other rules?” I
said.

“Can’t tell you that. I shouldn’t have told
you about rule seven.”

“Well can you tell me how many rules there
are?”

“I guess. There are thirty-seven rules. There
are always thirty-seven rules.”

“Always? What do you mean?”

“Nothing. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.
Anyway, you’re going to have to figure it out on your own.”

In that instant, I remembered the black cube
and reached into my pocket, grabbing it. I should note that, at the
time, I had the black, red and clear cubes in my possession.

I remembered something about pressing the
button five times on the black cube, something I should never do,
but something I felt I must, for reasons unknown.

“You sure you want to do that?” said the
sphere.

“Are you breaking the rules right now?” I
said, suspecting the sphere was offering help, but wondering if it
was trying to stop me from doing something that would allow me to
win this game.

“You know, I’m not entirely sure. Go ahead
and do it. Let’s see what happens.”

I pressed the button five times, blacking out
and falling to the ground.

Thirty-seven days later, I opened my eyes and
saw a girl who looked identical to the girl hovering over me, a
look of concern on her face. I was in bed. I knew more than I could
have possibly imagined I could ever know, but I knew I did not know
everything.

“Are you okay?” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “Thank you for taking care of
me. Have you seen a floating yellow sphere of energy recently?”

“It left a few days ago; said it wanted to
connect with someone named Aputi, but I don’t know who that is,”
she said.

“I do,” I said, recalling the horrific
nightmare Aputi had once had, realizing that if the Proth Sphere
connected to Aputi, all creation--absolutely everything--would be
lost.

Would the sphere really connect with him? It
would know what he possessed. Would it really end everything? I
couldn’t take any chances.

At the time I pressed the button five times,
Aputi had been in Barrow, Alaska, at the time making plans for
pnukes, part of his plan to end humanity, something I now realized
Clive put him up to. Why would Clive do that?

I teleported to Aputi’s home in Barrow, a
small shack on the outskirts of town, finding him standing by his
sink, preparing a glass of green tea.

Aputi looked at me, shock on his face. “Kev.
I didn’t expect to see you this soon. What brings you here?”

“Have you seen the Proth Sphere?” I said.

“Well, no…I mean, what is the Proth
Sphere?”

I eyed the wrinkly, little man suspiciously.
While I was concerned about the possibility that the sphere might
come here and try to connect with Aputi, I had other questions
weighing heavily upon me. Why had Clive hired Aputi to end
humanity? Why had Clive elected to be the first person that Aputi’s
pnukes would kill some ten years in the future? I knew Aputi didn’t
know the answer and knew that Clive would never give me the
answer.

Something dawned on me in that instant. Aputi
already had killed off humanity many times, but in different lives.
Countless times he had enlisted me to help him find the yellow
cube, a cube I had given him many times after he manipulated me. I
realized that I had lived many lives, some remarkably similar to
each other. The majority of these lives appeared to have ended at
two different places in relative time. The only way I knew this was
I had the memories of all of the beings that had ever interacted
with me and I could tell when they had stopped interacting with me,
and then I could tell when their lives suddenly came to a halt all
at the same time, and they started over. In fact, I saw this
pattern over and over again in my memories; all of the lives of all
of the beings in the universe cut off and then restarted in a
single moment. What could this mean? I kept searching my memories
and realized that this had all started at the moment I
inadvertently killed myself while in hell with Clive. I had done
that many times after the first time. I had done that many times,
leading up to a final time that led to a new pattern, one in which
I lived my life up until I was living in Vermont after graduating
from college, up until the day after Max, the last person to see
me, saw me for the last time in each of the lives that followed
that pattern. In that pattern, always about a day after the last
time Max saw me, everyone in the universe died and was reborn,
reborn on the day of my ninth birthday. How many times had that
happened? What caused it?

I remembered the voice telling me I was stuck
in a loop, and in this instant understood what it meant, although I
did not fully understand the nature of the loop. I puzzled on it
for a while before concluding I was wasting my time. I would not
find the answer. I focused on Aputi. I had to find somewhere to
hide him, somewhere the sphere couldn’t find him.

This begged the question, how much did the
sphere know at any given time? Could it track everything that
happened in the infinite universes or was it only Bri who could do
that? I remembered Bri telling me that in some past life. What did
the sphere know?

I took a step back. How many times had the
Proth Sphere told the girl on Earithon that it was going to find
Aputi, and how many times had I come after Aputi to take him to
some safe place? I couldn’t count the number of times that had
happened. I knew I never actually tried to hide Aputi, that I would
come to him in Barrow with the intention of hiding him somewhere,
and I would talk to him, and the conversation would inevitably
drift to subject of Clive. I questioned him countless times about
working for Clive, getting very few answers, each time getting to a
point in the conversation, often in different ways, where I gave up
and left, not taking Aputi with me to hide him. I sifted through
those conversations, looking for a pattern.

Aputi definitely did not know why I
ultimately chose not to hide him each time. I was certain of that.
So, what had he said to me? I had the memories, but in my frantic
state, I couldn’t piece things together. The only thing that
offered any clue was the fact that I had, over and over again, left
Aputi there, essentially out in the open for the sphere. If that
had happened over and over and all creation had not come to a
terrible end, then would it come to an end if I left him here now?
That struck me as highly unlikely. However, I did not understand
why it was so.

I sifted through Aputi’s recent memories,
memories from this life, memories leading up until the moment I
pressed the button on the black cube five times. I realized Clive
had hired Aputi to work with the Canadians to end humanity
thirty-eight days ago, at least in this life. However, that didn’t
make sense. I was with Clive at the precise moment when Clive hired
Aputi. Had Clive somehow traveled in time to do this? If so, from
when did he travel? Did it even matter? I knew Aputi didn’t know
the answer, so I abandoned that line of thought, going back to the
issue of the sphere.

Would the sphere really try to connect to
Aputi? It hadn’t in the past. I believed the sphere knew where
Aputi was, for whatever reason. If that were so, wouldn’t it have
immediately come to Aputi after telling the girl on Earithon that
it was going to connect with him? Something clicked.

The sphere had told the girl on Earithon that
it was going to connect with Aputi because it wanted me to visit
Aputi. It didn’t intend to connect with him. Why did it want me to
visit Aputi? What was I missing? Was the sphere trying to help me?
Was it telling me something? Maybe it was telling me that it
couldn’t end all creation by connecting with Aputi, a strange
conclusion to draw, but the one I drew. If that was the case, then
the sphere might only be able to end all creation if it connected
with me, because I now had Aputi’s nightmare drifting around in my
mind.

I was unconscious for thirty-seven days,
unconscious but in possession of Aputi’s nightmare. The sphere
could have connected to me in that time and wiped everything out.
It didn’t do that. It didn’t do that because it didn’t want to do
that.

I had another realization in that instant.
The sphere didn’t want to connect with me at all. However, someone
wanted the sphere to connect with me. Someone wanted to end all
creation. Who?

None of my memories pointed to a suspect.
However, I didn’t have absolutely everyone’s memories. Those of
Clive, the girl, Bri, the sphere and Jesus were missing from my
mind. I knew Clive, the girl and Bri would not help me, and
believed the sphere had already done all that it was going to do to
help me. I vaguely remembered Jesus helping me in the past,
although my memories of that were quite foggy. Would he help me
now?

I teleported to ancient Israel, to Nazareth,
to the home of Jesus, a boy at the time. He looked at me when I
appeared and said, “I am happy you came to me, my friend. We need
to talk.”

“I know. You need to tell me what is going
on. Who wants to end all creation?”

Jesus smiled sadly and said, “Don’t you
already know?”

“Know what?” I said, forgetting my previous
lines of thought.

“Maybe you don’t. Interesting. I’ll come
right out with it, then. Clive is Satan. He is trying to end all
creation by connecting you to the Proth Sphere. I take it you
pressed the button on the black cube five times, did you not?”

“Yes.”

“So, you have Aputi’s nightmare?”

“Yes.”

“Then you are exposing all creation to great
danger. You must find a way to eliminate that nightmare from your
mind. If Clive catches you and connects you to the sphere, that
will be the end, a very absolute end.”

“Clive is Satan?”

“Yes.”

I had few memories of my thoughts about God
in all of my infinite lives. The ones I did have centered on my
doubt that God existed. In this moment, I found that I had a very
profound belief in God. I believed that Jesus told the truth when
he said Clive was Satan, and I accepted the idea that Satan would
want to end all creation, my understanding of Satan largely
influenced by what I had learned as a child, a rather limited view
of the truth.

“But, what if Clive figures out that Aputi
had that nightmare?” I said.

“The sphere can only end all creation if it
gets the nightmare from your mind, Kev. You must be rid of it as
soon as possible. You are not safe here or anywhere, for that
matter.”

“Do you know how I can get rid of it?” I
said.

“That I do not know. However, you should know
if you pressed the button on the black cube five times.”

I searched my memories and found something
interesting. At one point, Aputi had seen the instructions for the
black cube, instructions I had forgotten. One of the instructions
read, “Press the button six times if you have pressed the button
five times.” The preceding rule stated, “Never press the button
five times.” Of course. Pressing the button six times would
eliminate the nightmare from my mind. Who created those
instructions? Who created the black cube? Did I? Was this a message
to myself, a warning?

“I see you have figured it out,” said
Jesus.

“I think so. I think I know what I have to
do.”

“Good luck, Kev. I love you. I hope you know
that.”

“I love you too. Goodbye.”

Unknowing

I teleported back to the park in Macon, Georgia, to a
moment not long after the moment the girl brought Clive and me to
Uthio Minor, to the top of the fort, pulled out the black cube and
pressed the button six times, immediately blacking out.