Kevin 7

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. However, Kevin had discovered this was not true in the case of the foyer of a movie theatre. Everyone was staring at him. Also, the fact he was wearing pyjamas probably didn’t help. Kevin looked around, confused and bewildered. Most of the crowd had returned to their business, moving along the expansive concourse, to or from their allocated cinema screen. A few still stared at him, a group of three girls giggled and whispered behind raised hands. Then, he started to feel what was becoming a familiar churning in the base of his stomach. Panicked, he began looking around, desperately looking for sanctuary, when his eyes fell on the sign for the toilets. For some reason, known only to his subconscious, he announced, rather too loudly,

“I really need a shit!”

The schoolgirls collapsed in a fit of giggles, as Kevin barged past them, making a beeline for the restrooms. Once inside he quickly located a vacant cubicle and locked himself inside. Then, it felt as if his intestines were being twisted inside out and sucked through a black hole, then thrown against a wall and left to slide down into a puddle of goo. As he regained his senses, he found that he was tumbling down the last three or four steps of a carpeted staircase.

“What the fu…!!?”

Was all the time he had to blurt out before crashing to a halt against something solid, which turned out to be a large oak door. He lay for a few seconds, gathering his thoughts, as he stared across a black and white chequerboard linoleum floor. As the breath began returning to his lungs, he saw a pair of bunny slipper, clad feet shuffle into his line of site. Perplexed, he started to sit up, and as he did so, more of his new companion came into view.

“Well, you took your fucking time! I thought you’d never get here!”

The voice did not go with the words. The words were gruff, harsh and angry. The voice however, was angelic, childish and sweet. Kevin’s brain was still recovering from his transportation, and he was having trouble reconciling the voice and the words. This was exacerbated when he finally managed to regain his verticality, and saw the full picture.

Standing at the end of the short hallway, was a young girl, who he estimated to be around 6 or 7 years old. But juxtaposed to that, she was wearing a T-Shirt which read “Fuck Trump” and chomping on a cigar the size of a small submarine. In her right hand, lifted and resting against her shoulder, was a large firearm he didn’t recognise, something akin to a machine gun. But it looked far too heavy to be held by a child of her size. In response to her statement, all Kevin could muster was,

“I’m sorry..?”

The girl sighed, and lowered her weapon to point at the floor.

“No, I’m sorry. It has just been a very frustrating process, trying to get you all together. Harder than I ever thought it was going to be.”

Kevin thought he had begun to regaining some of his faculties, but what she was saying just didn’t make sense, and he was once again thrown into confusion.

” Look, let’s start this again. I’m Lucy, nice to meet you. I know you are Kevin from earth 2409. Stand yourself up, get your shit together, and let’s go and meet your others.”

By now, Kevin was far to confused to notice her strange choice of Grammar, and meekly struggled to his feet. He then stood hesitantly, alternately looking at her, and the ominously dark doorway that loomed behind her. The girl noticed this and responded,

“For fucksake Kevin 7, I’m not going to eat you, or batter your head into a bloody pulp with a length of lead pipe. I could have shot you before you finished falling down the stair’s you twat.” She seemed to consider this last option longer than he would have liked, then continued, “Look, it will make more sense once you meet the others, come on.”

With this, she turned and disappeared into the darkness behind her.

Too late to make a difference, Kevin called after her,

“Wait, Earth 2409? Kevin 7? What the fuck is happening to me? This must be a nightmare. That’s it. I’m asleep and having a nightmare! So you can all fuck off. I’m just going to sit down here and wait until I wake up.”

With that, he leant back against the wall and slid down to the floor.

Kevin closed his eyes, and tried to force himself asleep and wished for the dreams to take him. But they didn’t. After an indeterminable amount of time, he felt a gentle hand on his elbow.

“Come on mate. It’s not going away. The sooner you accept it, the sooner we can move on. And we really need to move on.”

Kevin looked up to see himself staring back at him. Seeing the confusion in his face, Kevin 2 (Who in reality was Kevin 5, but we’ll deal with that later.)

“I know. It’s a head fuck. But there is a lot to get through in a very short amount of time so you need to focus. Just brace yourself for a more revelations. We really need you on board pretty much straight away” Kevin 2 (5) helped Kevin to his feet and began ushering him towards the dark backroom. Reluctantly, Kevin allowed himself to be led by his doppelganger towards the darkness.

Not for the final time that night, Kevin was stunned speechless. Once in the room, a green glow enshrouded the table and surprisingly lit the area well. But it was not the lighting that took his breath away, it was the twelve other beings that sat around the table. Twelve Kevins. Twelve sort of clones of himself, each with a slight uniqueness, a different eye colour, a swarthy build, a higher cheekbone. But they were all him. Not for the first time that night, Kevin said,

“What the fu…!!?”

Lucy gave him a sideways glance. Then commented,

“I always though Earth 2409 had a more articulate civilisation.”

Kevin returned her sideways look. He tried for a witty retort, and failed badly.

“Well, I thought your… planet, had nicer, er, um, girls.”

Lucy fixed him with an icy stare and replied,

“What makes you think I’m a girl?”

“Well, you look like a girl?” He responded, fairly weakly.

Lucy’s shoulders sagged and she looked to the floor. The room was silent for a few moments. Then Lucy looked up wearily.

“Kevin 7, I know this is incredibly hard to take in, but you need to throw away your pre conceptions of reality. My real name is Kevin, and I am you, from earth 1357.” Noting his expression, Lucy/Kevin 1 continued.

“Kevin 7, have you ever heard of the multiverse?”

“Well, yeah, sort of. Every second of everyday things splinter into different realities based on decisions made. Like that movie Sliding Doors.”

Lucy looked across at the assembled Kevins and said,

“Fuck. We have a Sliding Doors one.”

A collective sigh rose from the Kevins around the table.

“What!!?” Kevin 7 asked. “I’m trying my best. This is pretty fucked up, right here, right now! GIVE-ME-ME-A-BREAK!”

“Sliding Doors is a singularity. One moment in two people’s lives. The multiverse is an infinite amount of moments in an infinite amount of people’s lives. Like comparing a marble to all the planets in the universe.”

Kevin 7 slumped into a nearby chair and inhaled deeply.

“Okay, I understand that there is a time limit here. But someone needs to explain to me what the fuck is going on. I have TELEPORTED! Out of my bed, into the middle of a movie theatre. And it’s not the first time I have found myself waking up in various places. I put it down to sleepwalking initially, but waking up in locations three or four kilometres away was just strange.”

Lucy sighed again (She was good at that) She took the time to look at each Kevin around the table, they nodded in unison.

“Okay, here’s the truth Kevin 7. The multiverse is collapsing. This is some bad shit. It could mean the end of all reality as we know it. We know that you, or one of your equals in the multiverse, manages to thwart this apocalypse, but we can only narrow it down to the representatives present here. We had to relocate you all here as soon as we could, to make sure there was no chance of the one we needed being eliminated. There were teething problems with the initial teleportations, but I think we got there.”

Kevin looked around the table at the assembled versions of himself and breathed in deeply.

“Okay, I guess the big question is, how do you know it is one of us? And how do we change this.”

For the first time, Kevin 7 heard a murmur of concern amongst the gathered Kevins.

Lucy/Kevin 1 took in a huge breath, looked around the room, and replied.

“This is far more complicated than you can ever hope to understand. Time is not linear, there is a nexus around which all time revolves in a mobius swirl. It folds in on itself, and we have seen the future. We know, that in the next 2 hours, a portal will appear in this room, and it will take us to the exact point in the convergence of all multiverses that everything changes, and we need to change that.”

The silence in the room was deafening. Kevin 7 looked around the room, but no one would meet his gaze.

“So, we are mankind’s last hope?” He asked. Lucy turned her gaze to him, a sardonic look on her face.

“This is not a movie Kevin 7. One of us will make a difference.”

Noticing the slight hesitation in her reply, Kevin 7 replied.

“You are so full of shit. You know exactly how this plays out, but you are afraid to tell us. One of us? What about the others? What happens to the others?”

“The rest of you will die.” Kevin 1 replied bluntly. You wanted to know. That is the brutal truth. But if you don’t, reality will cease to exist. Everyone you know and love never happened.”

The Kevins exchanged glances and nodded in unison.

Before they could affirm their commitment, a small, blue vortex appeared above the centre of the table and swirled in Kaleidoscopic patterns. All eyes were fixed on the hypnotic pattern.

“Okay, this is it Kevins. Earlier than predicted, but let’s get in there."

“Okay,” Kevin 7 stood and looked around at his alternate counterparts. “This has already been the weirdest day of my life, so why not, lets fucking do this shit!” With that, Kevin 7 jumped on to the table and threw himself into the increasingly growing portal. He disappeared into the maelstrom without a sound.

After a brief pause, one by one, the rest of the Kevins climbed on the table and followed him into destiny. Including Kevin 1.