by Gene Brewer
When everyone had finally quieted down, I informed the participants that Walter had obviously done this, and that surely there could be no doubt that the Bullocks could do whatever they wished with us. I reiterated that we were not the most important species in the universe, merely one of many, just as our sun is only a drop in the ocean of the heavens. Finally, I recited my granddaughter’s heartfelt appeal: “I don’t want all my friends to disappear from the Earth!” There didn’t seem to be anything more to say.
“Dr. Brewer,” said the chair, “will you and your party please excuse us?” I glanced at the President, who nodded to me and rose. We all stood, I grabbed the cone, and we left the chamber.
In the large waiting room, actually a banquet hall, my wife told me that I was wonderful, and there were handshakes all around. Dr. Uttley relieved me of the cone (and was visibly relieved, himself), and quickly vacated the premises.
There was nothing left to do but wait. I asked the President how long it would be before a vote would be taken. He said it could be anywhere from a couple of minutes to never. “A long time to wait,” I said.
“We’ll stay awhile, have a cup of tea. If nothing happens by five o’clock, it probably won’t take place today.”
For the next two hours the President and others tried to make small talk, tell jokes and the like, but it was no go. Everyone was exhausted, most of all me. The time passed excruciatingly slowly. Finally, just before five o’clock, the Secretary General came into the room. His face showed no emotion. I wondered how he could maintain that inscrutable countenance regardless of the news he was carrying. He made a gesture to the President, but came directly to me. The President came over to join us. The Secretary wasted no time in preliminaries. “The vote was 13-2 in favor of reducing the death rate.”
“Yes!” shouted the President. Then he asked, more quietly, “Who were the two?”
“Nigeria and Rwanda.”
“We have some work to do there,’ he said. “But at least they don’t have veto power.”
“Does this mean — ?”
“Exactly.” He held out his hand, which I took, though he did all the shaking. “You’ve done it, Dr. B!”
“I didn’t do it alone, Mr. President, as you well know.”
“Nevertheless,” he said, “your name will go down in history as the man who saved the human race. Assuming we can meet our quota, of course.”
“The Secretary General reminded him that it would first have to be approved by the General Assembly, though that should be a mere formality, given the Security Council vote. Another round of handshakes and congratulations, sighs of relief, laughter.
“So let’s get started,” said the President. “I won’t be joining you and your lovely wife on the trip back to upstate New York — I’ll be flying back to Washington. There will be more meetings, decisions on how to implement our goals, convince other nations to help us reach them. You would be welcome to — ”
“No, thank you, Mr. President. Karen and I have done our duty, and we’re retiring from politics. But good luck to you. To all of us.”
He gave each of us another hug, as did the First Lady. “Thank you both,” she said. “And enjoy your retirement. You’ve both earned it.”
The President’s familiar grin reappeared. “After all this is over we’ll play a round of golf or something.”
I laughed nervously. Mike said, “Don’t worry, Gene. The President is an even worse golfer than you are.”
The next thing I knew the motorcade, or part of it, was on its way back home. We actually made it in time for a late dinner. But we would have had to prepare it ourselves. The Nerve Center was gone.
We ordered in pizza.
* * *
The General Assembly voted ‘yes,” though it was a surprisingly close vote. It appeared that some countries had a different agenda. “What if we’re attacked by our neighbors?” was the refrain. “Or by terrorists?” It became a kind of mantra. Certain well-known terrorist groups, in fact, vowed to make sure there would never be a day when no one was killed. They were perfectly willing to martyr everyone on Earth for their cause. Some of the third world countries took a different approach, asking for money in exchange for their co-operation, just as the former President had predicted. However, most nations went along with us, and diplomatic efforts were begun to change minds around the world.
Over the next several months there was the occasional call from Mike or the President (we never did play a round of golf, however, or have the party promised by the Vice-President), with encouraging messages about the reduction of killings in the Netherlands, or Japan, or some other country that didn’t kill many people anyway. Many leaders around the world were still unwilling to co-operate, calling the Bullocks’ demands a “trick” of some kind. With COMPLIANCE DAY (some were calling it CAPITULATION DAY) rapidly approaching, the murder rate in the United States was slowly falling, but only by a few per cent after four months. The military was actually faring much better than the general population after having withdrawn early from Afghanistan, and refraining from engaging anyone elsewhere. Certain nations in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and South America were not doing so well. The trend was in the right direction, however, and diplomatic solutions continued to be firmly pressed. Envoys were even sent to a few of the more radical and violent political organizations, to no avail, and some never returned.
In the meantime, efforts to decipher the cone were going ahead full steam, and hundreds of scientists had been conscripted for the project. It reminded me of the constructions of the pyramids. After several months, however, Mike informed us that they had come up with virtually nothing.
So it appeared that all the efforts on my part and that of all the others were going to result in abject failure. I didn’t say this to the President, but I knew that the responsibility had been mine and I had failed. Perhaps if I had been more forceful? Or if I had better conveyed my ability to travel in time and space… I began to rely more heavily on Schultz’s happy pills for the anxiety and insomnia I felt. A safe drug, but I actually thought briefly about checking into MPI, under the watchful eye of my son Will, to see if someone could help me deal with my problems.
During those months I never heard from Walter. I presumed they had returned to Bullock, though they could have been traveling the Earth, watching and waiting — who knew? Wherever they were, I was sure they would be back on the anniversary of MESSAGE DAY. I can only tell you this: during that time I refused to go to the mall for pickles.
In the meantime, Karen and I practiced time and space travel. After many, many failed attempts, she finally got the hang of it, mostly by studying pictures, including works of art, etc. We visited ancient Greece, hung out in the Roman Forum for a while (it reminded me of the Security Council meeting), watched the signing of the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence, and attended literally hundreds of other events: the Gettysburg address, the crowning of kings and pontiffs, great sporting events (my wife loves to watch Olympic figure skating, and she completed beautiful triple axels of her own on Olympic ice), including many World Series’ and Super Bowls, historic battles (where we witnessed cruelty and bravery on an unimaginable scale). And, of course, dozens of original Broadway shows. For my part, I loved hovering over the hood of an Indy 500 car as it roared down the straightaway at more than 200 miles per hour. I wish we could have taken pictures, but our camera didn’t work in the fourth dimension. Another mystery for someone to solve.
But the highlight of these visits was a trip to 0 A.D. to attend a sermon by Jesus Christ. It was quite remarkable. We had never seen a crowd so transfixed by a message (I wished he could have given my speech), which, after all, was one of love and kindness, perhaps entirely new ideas for the time, and one (we could argue) that was brought to us again by the Bullocks. Whether Jesus was the son of God, or just a charismatic carpenter, there was no way to determin
e from the sermons he gave, especially since we couldn’t hear or understand them. Nevertheless, it was a fascinating experience, and we vowed to come back to this era later on.
After all that, we tried a simple experiment: travel to the moon. After a number of failures to do that, we finally succeeded. This was followed by a brief visit to the deserts of Mars, a pretty dull place to tell you the truth. At last we were ready to visit prot and fled and all the others on K-PAX.
On a sunny April morning, exactly six months after the declaration by the United Nations that the world would stop all killing of other humans insofar as was possible, and begin to reduce the slaughter of animals for food and all the rest, we left the house for that now-familiar planet, promising to return to the dining room if we got lost somewhere in the ether. Miraculously, we made it on the first try, and after a short time in this remarkable place we decided to stay for a while. Whatever happened, we knew we could always go back to our own beautiful planet at the same moment we had left it.
We stayed on K-PAX for five years, mostly just floating around watching the K-PAXians, including the various animals, living their peaceful, yet rewarding lives, and watching the heavens at “night,” which is often not much darker than in the daytime, thanks to the planet’s two suns. Here, no one killed anyone or anything. If there were some way to become corporeal, we would have stayed forever. We spent considerable time in the company of prot and Robert (though they didn’t know it) and many of my former patients, but we never ran across Abby. Or for that matter, Giselle and her son Gene. We finally concluded that our daughter must, indeed, have been on her way back to Earth. So we finally returned to our dining room, which, of course, looked exactly as it had when we left.
It was a few months after that, on a hot summer day in August (one of the hottest on record, in fact), that we were surprised and delighted when Abby appeared at the door with Giselle and her son Gene, by now an athletic and handsome young man. Of course we all started talking at once. But after the greetings and all the questions had been asked (they had never seen our retirement home), I said to Abby, “Why did you come back? Are you planning to stay?”
“Are you kidding, Dad? Human beings will soon be gone from the Earth. I came to take you both back to K-PAX!”
I was stunned. “No one can predict the future,” I told her. “How do you know we won’t stop the killing?”
“You know human nature as much as anyone, Dad. You’ll be lucky to get 20% for the whole five years. Maybe in another thousand.”
“But Walter came now. We have to at least try.”
“This is the only chance you’ll have. Do you want to go to K-PAX or not?”
“You mean in real time?”
“Yes.”
Her mother and I looked at each other. Would we want to give up our new-found ability to travel around the galaxy?”
“You can still do that,” Abby said, with a little smile.
“Can you read minds now?”
“Not very well, but I’m working on it. But your facial expressions were pretty transparent.”
“So you’d take us there on a — ?”
“On a beam of light. Yes.”
Karen’s and my eyes met again. “I’m willing if you are, honey,” she said.
“I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be,” I replied.
“Give us a day to say our good-byes.”
“No problem. I’ve got a few people to see, too.”
“Is Steve going with us?”
“I doubt that he’d ever leave his telescope. Anyway, he’s got a new girlfriend now.” She giggled. “His assistant in the observatory.”
“Oh. We didn’t know that.”
“Nobody else does, either.”
“What about your kids?”
“I’ll ask them, but they have their own lives here, too.”
“Maybe not for long,” I pointed out.
“Like a lot of people, they probably don’t believe in the Bullocks. Or that you can speak to them. If they truly believed that, all the killing would stop immediately. Just as it would if they truly believed the Bible.”
“Maybe you could help us convince the world’s leaders that the Bullocks are who they say they are, and that they can do what they promised.”
“No matter what you do, a lot of people, maybe most people, still won’t really believe it, or can’t break old habits even if they did.”
“So there’s no hope?”
“Oh, there’s always hope. Even if you have a terminal illness. But you know how that usually plays out.”
“So when do we leave?”
“Noon tomorrow?”
“Why noon?”
“It’s already programmed. It’s the only time we can go.”
“Oh. Do we need to take anything?”
“Nope. Everything you need is already there.”
“Can Flower go, too?”
“Of course.”
I glanced at my lovely wife, who smiled and nodded. “Okay,” I said, with very mixed feelings. “We’ll be ready.”
She grinned. “Don’t take it so hard, Dad. I guarantee you’ll love it there.”
“I’m sure we will. I only wish the human race could find some way — ”
“Don’t worry, the Bullocks aren’t going to kill anyone. They’re just going to make all us humans disappear, like they did the Taj Mahal, until the end of time. No one on Earth will kill anyone ever again.”
“Where will everyone go?” her mother wanted to know.
“Just into another dimension, where they’ll stay in the present until the end of time. Until then, of course, they’ll be able to visit the past, like you and Dad did. Who knows — maybe learn something from that and convince the Bullocks to give them another chance.”
“But why don’t they just change our DNA, like fled did with Jerry? Evolve us so we would lose the desire to kill?”
“Then we wouldn’t be human anymore. We would be a creation of the Bullocks. They don’t want that. They do have their principles, after all. We have to figure it out for ourselves. Anyway, the answers are all on the cone if anyone wants to find them. The human race still has a few months to do that.” She headed for the door. “Okay, Mom and Dad. We’ll see you tomorrow at noon.”
Karen and I talked late into the night discussing what we’d be leaving behind and what might lie ahead. Both of us agreed that the richness of the Earth, our family, our friends, and all the rest didn’t make up for the fact that the killing would probably never stop. And if it did, we could always come back. K-PAX was just the opposite — filled with peace and beauty and compassion. We went to bed with mixed feelings, yet eager for the morrow.
* * *
That morning we spoke to everyone in our immediate family, as well as our good friends, the Siegels. There was some wavering, but no one really wanted to come with us. We understood it would be a difficult decision, and we couldn’t fault them for wanting to stay where they had been all their lives. They hadn’t experienced everything we had. We wept for them but we had to go.
We were in our usual travel base, the dining room, when Abby and the others returned just before noon. “Ready?” she asked us (our daughter never minced words). “And you’re sure you both want to go? And Flower, too?”
We both looked around the familiar room and the adjacent kitchen. Would we ever see this sight again? “We’re ready,” we said simultaneously.
“Gene? Giselle?”
“Beam us up, Scotty,” they both said in unison.
Abby pulled out a little mirror and flashlight. The last words we heard, and the last thing I wrote on my yellow pad, were “Here we go!” She held the mirror in front of her so that everyone’s reflection showed in it, and switched on the light.
AFTERWORD
My father, Gene
(actually “Eugene,” though he hated the name his father gave him) Brewer, disappeared into a state of catatonia on October 15th, 2013. Before that he had been a long-term patient at the Manhattan Psychiatric Institute in New York City. Although I am actually a psychiatrist, and my name is William (also described in his books as “Will” or “Chip”), I was not his doctor, who was, in fact, Dr. Bernard Schultz. Dad had long ago been diagnosed with intractable psychotic depression resulting from the death of my mother and my sister Abby. Both were raped and murdered by a deranged man who had escaped from a New Jersey prison more than two decades ago. I would prefer not to go into the details here, but the events of this tragedy paralleled, more or less, those that befell Robert Porter, a prominent character in the fictional K-PAX series.
The reader may be wondering how such a person as my father, a severely ill mental patient, could have written five books (K-PAX I through K-PAX-V), one of which was made into a successful motion picture by a top Hollywood studio, with A-line actors and producers. I still wonder about it myself, though it goes to prove what all psychiatrists know: there is no limit to what the human mind can do. The brain is actually divided into compartments. The “multiple personality” syndrome, more commonly called “dissociative identity” disorder, for example, allows a person to live in one of these compartments while those souls “residing” in other such areas of the brain are often unaware of his or her existence.