Lonely In Every Universe

Kilgore was commanding an army of shampoo bottles to wage war against the brethren of treacherous soaps frothing in their dishes when it struck him that he was truly lonely. In fact, two days later, after proclaiming the battle with the soap, Kilgore would find himself mocked by three radio hosts wearing black T-shirts pockmarked by curry stains and adorned by the image of an angry man fingering a donkey. This would happen after Kilgore told them about how amidst his bottle with the soap, the soap had first turned into a rubber chicken, then a real chicken and then a clone of Kilgore wearing a purple jumpsuit. The Kilgore that had been soap then strapped a metal watch onto the Kilgore that had been showering and sent him across the multiverse. The radio hosts did not believe Kilgore and Kilgore (that had been showering) hardly believed himself. As for the Kilgore who writes the following story, nothing here is the truth. But nothing here is also a lie. It just was. It just is.

The Kilgore that had been showering suddenly found his loneliness amusing as he gawked at the blue watch on his wrist. He’d heard the saying that loneliness was like hunger, but if one only had a look at this little, fissured blue watch, one would know that loneliness felt like this – broken and useless. Kilgore’s heart hurt, but his body felt the pain when he realized that he hadn’t spoken in six weeks, five days, thirteen hours, and forty-two minutes. Like a retired pianist running his fingers through a dusty, white keyboard, Kilgore’s vocal cords shuddered his voice awake through a thunderous guffaw.

“Whooooo areeeeeee youuuuuuuu?” The Kilgore that had been showering hummed, his voice still rough from being unused. He wondered whether he was still using the right vowels, the right syllables, and the right language. Maybe there had been some global catastrophe that had destroyed the entire human civilization outside Kilgore’s one-bedroom apartment. And this new Type IV civilization of invaders had decreed English as a primitive language. The new language could have been anything now! Perhaps it was the same whistling sound that the water pouring from Kilgore’s shower made when it splashed against the grey marble tiles. Or it could be the stomping sound that his neighbours made at 3 am in the morning. Who knew? Kilgore definitely did not. He had not been outside in six weeks, five days, thirteen hours, and forty-two minutes.

“My name is Trout. I am ‘Kilgore’ from a different universe,” the Kilgore that had been soap said.

“My name is just Kilgore. I am from thisssss universe,” Kilgore extended his hand to Trout, but Trout was busy talking to someone on his headset. Whatever Trout spoke about worked because, at that moment, a skintight blue jumpsuit bonjoured itself out of the blue watch on Kilgore’s arm and engulfed him whole. The skintight suit flickered, and all of a sudden, Kilgore found himself not in his shower but in an empty strange vessel. There was no decoration, no window, and no person (except Trout). Interestingly, there was also no gravity or floor because Kilgore realized his feet were touching nothing. It was just grey walls everywhere.

“Coo,” Kilgore whispered, spreading his hands, mimicking a bird, and the hollow, grey vessel cooed back at Kilgore. Maybe this is the language that the Type IV civilization adopted, Kilgore wondered to himself.

“Stop that,” Proust admonished. “The others will be here soon.

“Others?” Kilgore questioned.

He didn’t have to wait long for an answer because the vessel decided to have a party instead. Fireworks went off, and Kilgore did not know where the fireworks were coming from or why they were coming at all. Then, he realized that the fireworks were actually portals, and through these portals stormed many, many, many other Kilgores. The vessel was abruptly so full of Kilgores that the walls were no longer painted in grey but Kilgore himself. Everywhere Kilgore looked, he saw a version of himself.

“Welcome to the Council,” Trout said, smiling warmly at Kilgore.

“Council?” Kilgore asked.

“Listen carefully, Kilgore. You are just one of many Kilgores. Every action you have taken since your birth has created a wooshy-wishie-boom effect, or in simpler words, a ripple effect. For every action you took, there were multiple consequences. While you continued to live one consequence of your action, there were versions of you that lived through other consequences.”

“Cool.” That was all Kilgore said because, truth be told, he stopped listening right when Trout asked him to listen carefully.

Instead, Kilgore was busy ogling at the other versions of himself. Some of these Kilgores had cauliflower for hair and carrots for skin. Some were just wisps of cloud with water droplets for a face. Some were just literal Renaissance paintings stuck in the boundaries of their frame. Some were just newspaper clippings haunted by the words smeared on them. Some just had a body made full of quotes by scholars they disagreed with. Some were still just apes confused about the situation. Some were just miniature planets without satellites and life.

“Every Kilgore here has one thing in common with you,” Trout sighed.

Kilgore smiled. Even though he was watching so many different versions of him, he knew they were all still him. They all had eyes that yearned to see another face. They all had smiles that weren’t truly smiles. They all had ears to lend. They all had brains that hurt. And bodies that felt the pain. Loneliness is truly amusing, Kilgore decided then.

“They are all lonely,” Kilgore mumbled.

“We are,” Trout said. “You are not the first Kilgore I have brought here. I am the one who started the Council to find a way to answer my own loneliness. Each time I failed to understand a reason for why I am lonely, I brought another version of myself. Another version of us.”

“Which version am I?”

“Forty-Two-”

“-there are more than forty-two versions here.”

“Forty-two millionth. There are forty-two million versions here, and I still don’t understand why I am lonely. I still do not understand why we are lonely. This is why you are here. And with this burdened heart, I ask you this: why, Kilgore, are you lonely?”

Kilgore already knew the answer. He had known it for a while now. Six weeks, five days, thirteen hours, and forty-two minutes – that’s how long he’d known, but he’d been too afraid to say his answer aloud to anyone. He’d been too afraid to admit the answer to himself. Kilgore might have had the answer. But only after having looked at every version of himself, Kilgore knew he finally understood the answer now.

“I feel too much, but I have too little to say. I don’t know how to say anything. I know everyone has some shit going on. And all of us blame it on something – family, friends, situations, love, life. I blame my problems on time. I have been told to stay in the present, but what even is present? The past is all that came before us, and the future is all that will come after. The present merely stands out as a single page in the thick, infinite book of the past and the future. How do you stay in the present when it is so thin? And since I’ve never understood time, I’ve never known how to stay in the present. I am either drowned in my memories or lost in my dreams,” Kilgore cried.

Trout was silent. He folded his hand and shut his eyes. “So, you think you are lonely because of time.”

“Yes,” Kilgore said, nodding. “I think time is meaningless. We talk about free will, but can we truly be free if time exists? Everything we do has the threat of time looming over it. While there is time, we are never truly free.”

“But if time is meaningless...and everything is bound by time...then everything is meaningless,” Trout wheezed like a child who had been denied the candy after a heavy lunch.

“True. But looking at all of you, I have realized another thing. We are not alone in our loneliness. If every action we take creates other versions of ourselves, then we might be free in the way it matters,” Kilgore said, freely throwing away his limbs in joy.

“I don’t understand. You just said that while time exists, we can never be free,” Trout said, curious and inching closer to Kilgore.

“We don’t have to be free from the clutches of time! We don’t get the free will to choose our time, but we get the free will to choose how we spend our time.”

“I know what you are saying, but I don’t think I understand how to believe in what you are saying,” Trout said, helpless, a tear coalescing on the hinges of his eye.

“Then let me show you!” Kilgore exclaimed. His heart was finally beating. His chest was finally pounding. He was finally ready. He was ready to be free in the way it mattered. “I know now I am free to choose any path I want to, which is why I have decided to go mad.”

“To go mad?” Trout and all the forty-two million Kilgores gasped, surprised. “Why would you choose to go mad?”

“We all have different ways to choose our own path, right? To me, I won’t be free unless I go wild enough. People keep telling me to be something I don’t want to be. They tell me to do things in ways that are not me. I think I don’t want to listen to them anymore.”

“Ah! So, you know what they are saying, but you don’t want to believe them. Like how I can’t bring myself to believe you. You don’t want to lose your mind; you want to lose yourself. That’s not going mad. Rather that’s just...living, isn’t it”

“Living is madness,” Kilgore said, nefariously cackling along with all forty-two million versions of himself.

When Kilgore returned to his shower, he actually did go mad in the way that mattered. His loneliness did not wash away overnight, but he knew one thing for certainty: while he might be lonely, he wasn’t alone. There were forty-two million other lonely versions of himself. All of them free to go mad living life freely.