55.
***
The worlds fly by. They are color and sound and fury and love.
In one of them, Scott is paralyzed, growing old and alone.
In another, he sees himself working as a garbage man. He has no family. He is alone and comes home every night and drinks until he sleeps.
In another, there is nothing of him. He is gone.
World after world, vision after vision.
In another world, the people move backwards. They are as ghosts, people moving in strange, jerky movements as they run in reverse, as they speak in reverse, as they eat and drink and copulate and love and hate - all in reverse.
"My world," says Kevin. The old man. He does something, and the worlds stop flying by. "An exact duplicate of yours, but with one difference: the timeflow. I'm moving forward according to my timeflow, but that means I'm moving backward according to your perceptions. So every time I come to you, you perceive an earlier version of me." He smiles, jolly again. "That's why I get prettier and dumber each time."
"What about Mr. Gray?"
Kevin sobers. "Mr. Gray was an accident. I was trying to save you, Scott. You're critically important, and you had to live."
Again, Scott grows angry. "I had to live? What about my family, you sonofabitch?"
Kevin shakes his head. "There was no universe where your family survives, Scott. They die no matter what. And it's always a horrible, painful death. If I had saved them in the alley, they would have gone on to die of wasting diseases only a few years later. Same with Tina's father. There's not a single universe where he makes it past this night in his timeflow. He either dies by killing himself after killing you and Tina, or I save you and Tina by making you and Mr. Gray switch places at the instant he was also about to kill my mother."
Scott tries to understand the words that John Doe - that Kevin, the other-Kevin - is saying. He shakes his head. "But...couldn't you do your time travel thing and find some way to save all of us?"
Kevin chuckles, though the sound is devoid of happiness. It is the chuckle of a man who has had to make too many harsh decisions for one lifetime. "I don't travel through time. I travel through the dimensions of space and matter. Time doesn't alter its flow. I couldn't just zap ahead and find a way to save you...I had to follow time's normal movements until a moment when I could move to save you by simply changing the positions of certain material objects in your universe."
"You mean switching me and Mr. Gray."
Kevin nods. He puts a hand into his pocket and withdraws something. Two very old, faded, red foam rubber balls. "These were some of the first things I ever moved as a child, discovering my talents. The first thing was a bullet, which I reached out and grabbed while still in the womb. Moving people is harder, but still doable."
"And what about Mr. Gray?" asks Scott, returning to his original question. "How was he able to do what he did...disappear and reappear? And what about his aging?"
Kevin frowns. Another world winks by as he does so. In this world, Scott is a quadriplegic. Shot in the chest and arm. History seeks to reassert itself. "Mr. Gray was an accident," says Kevin. "His name's Adrian, actually. He was a hitman, as you've figured out already. But I tried - will try, as far as I perceive it - to save you." Kevin grimaces again. "Something will go wrong. Apparently I die, and Adrian - Mr. Gray - will be pulled into my timeflow. He'll be catapulted to the moment of my birth, and exist backward for sixty two years."
Scott feels confusion welling inside, replacing the anger he felt before. "But, if Mr. Gray is sent to your time, then why is there a Mr. Gray here and now?"
Kevin chuckles again. "Plays with the mind, don't it. Remember: my dimension is the same as yours, only in reverse. So there's a Mr. Gray there as well. Who is catapulted to your dimension at the time of your Kevin's death. He resides here, living backwards in time, for sixty-two years living - if you can call it that - as a ghost. Existing, aging, but unable to touch anything."
"That's why he grows younger and younger."
Kevin nods. "And why his wounds disappear. Because to him, they haven't happened."
"But if he can't touch anything, how did he try to kill us?"
"Remember how earlier he would just appear? Then as time moved on for you he grew younger and more powerful?" Scott nods. "Best I can figure is that he grows in power when he's close to the nexus himself, especially when near to Kevin. So he gears up for a huge attack - his first, which you perceive as what happened tonight. Then, after tonight, he's blown his power, and has less and less ability. He can appear, but can't remain solid. He can write a note, but can't interact with you. He can knock over a glass of water, but can't touch Lynette's husband. Weaker and weaker, until he finally fizzles out and disappears forever."
"But he's dead now. How can that be undone?"
"He's not dead. He survives this night. Just like he survived the car crash, the board across the face, all the other things. Something about being catapulted through the dimensions has changed him. But he gets weaker and weaker after this. So what you perceived as his first cautious attacks were really his last gasps, his final attempts at destroying you, me, and my mother. He's a meridian, too. Just that he's an artificial one. By his actions and interventions over the years, he's made a loop of events, a sort of nowhere that he can exist in. It only overlaps you for a few years, and that's when he tries to kill you as something like a ghost. Other than that, Mr. Gray doesn't exist anymore."
Scott feels his head furrow in confusion. "Don't think of it too hard," says Kevin. "It's confusing as hell, and I barely understand it myself."
"It all comes down to that, doesn't it," says Scott. "You. What's your role in all of this?"
Kevin laughs quietly. "I'm the man who figures out how to travel between dimensions. It happens about twenty-five years from now, as you perceive things. Tina solves the problem of my autism, and it turns that autistics in our two worlds are special."
"Special how?"
"We perceive more than we should. It's why we're autistic. We withdraw because of too much information. We live in a constant state of bombardment."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that autistics perceive more than their own dimension. They perceive all of them. It scares the hell out of them, so by the time they're about three years old they have to withdraw from reality...or go nuts."
Scott snaps his fingers. "Lynette told me when Kevin made the magic trick go wrong, all the autistics got angry, started screaming."
Kevin nods. He looks at the ratty foam balls in his hand. "I reached across a small hole in the dimensions to take these, and the other kids, well, they sensed something wrong had just happened. Made them quite upset."
"Can you still perceive the dimensions?" says Scott.
Kevin nods. "After Tina brings me out of my autism, it turns out I've been figuring out a few things. First thing I do is disappear. Go on a bit of a trip between some of the alternate dimensions."
"So that's why you're so important? Because you can do that?"
"Because I'm the only one that can do it," says Kevin, nodding. "Other autistics can sense or even see the other dimensions, but I'm the only one who can move between them. No one else, just me."
Scott shakes his head, thinking of the other-Kevins, the ones he and Lynette have seen overlapping their Kevin, the ones who have delivered important messages in this long night. He opens his mouth to ask about them, but before he speaks Kevin does. "You want to know about the other versions of me?"
Scott nods. "If you are the only one who can travel the dimensions, how come they appeared to us?"
"They weren't doing that. I was. Or rather, your Kevin was. Using his power to bring across other versions of himself, versions who had seen things in the other dimensions that they - not being autistic in their timeflows - could tell you about. So they could lead Lynette to save you, could tell you Mr. Gray was coming. The nexus between worlds is very thin around Kevin, so it's possible for things to be communicated like that. Even," he adds, laughing a bit, "a bit of my karate knowledge goes through to Kevin on occasion."
Scott is silent, thinking about the perfect kicks that Kevin has placed from time to time. His mind is reeling. "All so...what?" asks Scott. "Why all the work, the suffering? Just so you can survive? Is that why my wife and child had to die? Just so I could be in the right place and time to protect you?"
Kevin shakes his head. "I've told you. They die no matter what. All that I did - will do? - was alter things so that you survive, and can protect me. And believe it or not, that's a pretty important item. Not just because I'm rather attached to living, but because it turns out that it's critical that I survive. The world is in pretty bad shape in fifty years or so, and the only thing that keeps it from completely melting down is my ability to bring back certain things - technologies, mostly - from other dimensions that help us to survive. The survival of the entire world in my dimension - and in yours - literally depends on my being alive, and being cured of autism, and being able to travel the dimensions."
Scott begins to weep. It is more than he can stand. His family is gone, and will never be back. And perhaps they had died for a good cause, perhaps they had gone so that billions could live, but still....
"I hate you, Kevin," he says.
Kevin reaches out and touches him lightly on the shoulder. "I know. But you won't forever. Not even for very long, in fact."
Scott looks at Kevin. "How can all this be possible? How can I go back and have a life now, knowing all this?"
Kevin sighs. "Because you have to, Scott. Because there's more to life than life. There's more to you than you. Billions of people do depend on your decisions, on the life you will decide to lead." Then he smiles. "Besides, I have one more thing to show you."
He again touches Scott on the wrist, and this time when the world disappears around them, it is different somehow. This time, Scott sees nothing. He is in a place that is timeless, shapeless, without form or substance that he can perceive.
And yet, at the same time, he knows that he is not alone. He feels comforted in his anguish. He feels hope in the midst of despair and loss.
He turns, and Kevin is with him. Smiling.
"Where are we now?" asks Scott, and feels himself smile as the feelings all around him come pouring into his heart. Then he is weeping again, but this time not for pain or anger, but for relief and joy. He feels as though a great weight has come off his heart, leaving it free to fly and soar, unlocking it from a cage of grief and anger in which it has been hidden for eight years.
"Heaven," says Kevin simply. "Or at least, one small neighborhood of it."
"Heaven?" Even in his euphoria, Scott cannot believe this.
"Just a dimension. Just a place, like the place I live, like the place you come from."
Scott wants to disbelieve this. But he can't. The evidence his heart presents him is too strong, the feelings that assail him are too real. "There is more to life than life," Kevin had said. And this, Scott realizes, is what he was talking about. There is more. There is more.
Kevin puts out a hand, and Scott wants to shout to him, to plead with him not to take them away. But he does. The world disappears, and they are once again next to the car.
***