The Meridians(97)

He felt like he'd blown a critical fuse somewhere. But he knew he had to go with Kevin - with this older version of the young boy beside him.

He carefully put Tina down on the seat beside Lynette and the little boy Kevin. "Untie her," he said softly. "Don't let her look out the window."

Lynette said nothing, merely nodded and began working on the knots that tied the young girl. She would have time now. They would all have time.

Scott got out of the car and the old Kevin closed it.

"What's happening?" he asked the old man.

"What do you think is happening?" responded Kevin, and there was a trace of the mirth in his eyes again, though it was still mostly masked by uncharacteristic seriousness.

"I think you have Kevin's eyes," said Scott. "I think Mr. Gray is dead. More than that, I don't know."

Kevin nodded. "I'm Kevin, all right, you have that much at least."

"From the future?"

Kevin shook his head. "No, from the other-now."

"Other-now?"

Kevin looked through the window at the occupants of the car. "So young," he sighed to himself. "Mother and me, we're so young. And Tina. So beautiful." He knuckled a tear away from his eye, then laughed at himself. "Look at me, getting all maudlin." He looked at Scott again. "I'm Kevin, but Kevin from a different dimension."

"String theory," said Scott.

Kevin nodded. "I'm from a place where time flows opposite to time here. I'm what's called a meridian: I live in a timeflow that perfectly overlaps the timeflow of my other-dimensional counterpart," he said, nodding at the boy in the car.

"Overlaps?"

"On the day Kevin is born here, that's the day I die. On the day he dies, I will be born. Exact overlaps of the same experiences, only moving in a different direction. As your universe cools and grows dim in its final days, ours will be birthing new planets in exactly the same sequence as yours has done."

"But how -" began Scott. He closed his mouth with an almost audible snap. How could Kevin grow up to be a man like this? How could the autistic boy speak so fluidly and fluently?

"How come I'm not autistic?" asked Kevin. Scott nodded. Kevin pointed into the car. "That's why Tina was so important," he said. "That's why you had to save her. Because she grows up to cure autism. She saves me."

Scott felt anger stir in his breast. "She saves you? Are you saying that all of this - my wife, my son dying, Lynette's husband being killed - all that was so that we could get you and Tina together and cure your autism?"

Kevin shook his head. "No. If that were all there was to it, I would never have meddled. Hell, I wouldn't have been able to meddle." He smiled again. "I'm a bit more than just an autistic kid all growed up. I was born with something of an unusual talent."

"What?" said Scott. He felt anger growing and growling within him. He knew that Kevin was a good kid, knew that he'd be willing to do almost anything for him. But only almost anything. And losing his wife to make the man's life a bit more romantic was definitely beyond the "almost."

"I'll show you," said Kevin.

He grabbed Scott's hand. He winked.

And the world, once again, disappeared.





***





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?"