Knock-knock-knock!
His curiosity won. Kevin grabbed the brass knob and turned until the mechanism clicked.
A breeze pushed its way through as the door opened, smelling sweetly of spring grass and trees. A man stood at the threshold. He was lean and good-looking, with a face not unlike Kevin's father's, only younger—he was twenty-three or twenty-four at the most. He wore a bathrobe.
Kevin thought he knew who this was, although he never expected Him to look like this. Under normal circumstances, Kevin would have felt awe and amazement—but then, under normal circumstances, he wouldn't have come face to face with God in a bathrobe. Now, as things stood, Kevin was simply too sick and too exhausted to feel anything at all.
The visitor at his threshold, on the other hand, seemed awed enough for both of them. He looked around at the walls and at the hole where the bathroom had been with childlike wonder. "Wow," he said.
"I'm sorry," said Kevin. "I'm sorry I screwed up so bad."
"You look like crap," said his guest. "You should be in bed." Then he took Kevin in his arms and brought him back to his bedroom, where he laid Kevin down and covered him with a blanket. The man introduced himself as "Brian," and said he had come a long way. "I'm sorry," croaked Kevin again.
"Save it," said Brian. He went to wet a towel and then used it to blot Kevin's head. "You'll be sick for a while," said Brian. "It'll get worse before it gets better, but I'll stay here with you."
"I'm sorry for what I did," begged Kevin.
"Just shut up and get some rest."
Kevin drifted in and out of consciousness as the sickness got worse, but Brian never left his side. Kevin thought he would die a thousand times over, but after what seemed like an eternity, it began to get a little bit better, as Brian had promised.
Kevin opened his eyes to find Brian sitting at his desk, building an elaborate Lego castle.
"Amazing things," said Brian. "I haven't played with these in years."
"What time is it?" asked Kevin.
"Nine-forty-two."
"Oh, right," said Kevin. "Duh!"
Brian sighed. "I'd better get back." He got up from Kevin's desk. "It's been surreal, but I've got places to go and people to see."
He took one last look around and laughed. "What a scream," he said. "I hope I remember this."
Kevin followed him to the hallway, his legs feeling stronger by the minute.
"Wait, you're just gonna leave me here?"
"That's the general idea."
"But you can't go!" cried Kevin. "Everything's still screwed up—and what about the glasses?"
"The glasses!" said Brian with an amazed grin, as if remembering something he had completely forgotten.
"I can't get myself out of this," said Kevin. "Even if I had the glasses, I can't undo the things I've done—I've tried every which way...."
Brian shrugged. "Did you let someone else try? Maybe someone else could use the glasses to fix the things you can't."
The thought robbed the very air from Kevin's lungs, making him dizzy and speechless. As he thought about it, Kevin realized that Brian had the answer. How selfish and short-sighted Kevin had been! Why couldn't he have seen that it would take someone else to "re-imagine" the mess he created? Teri, Josh—anybody could have done it if Kevin had let them try. It had always been in his power to fix things—by the simple act of letting it be in someone else's power. But there were not others left—only Kevin and Brian.
Brian grabbed the doorknob.
"Wait," said Kevin. "I've got an idea. The glasses are probably healed by now. I'll go get them and give them to you—and you can fix everything!"
"That's the whole point," said Brian. "I can't fix things."
"Yeah, you can," pleaded Kevin. "You can fix anything—I'll bet you don't even need those dumb old glasses to do it, either."
Brian just shook his head. "What are you, nuts? Who do you think I am?"
"I know who you are," said Kevin, in a solemn voice reserved for extremely important information.
"No," said Brian. "I think you're still seriously clueless. Take a good look, Shrimpoid." Then Brian knelt down to Kevin's level and looked into Kevin's eyes—eyes the same shade of blue as his own. This close, Kevin's blurry vision came into focus, and he could see everything about Brian's face that he had missed before; the slope of his nose and the shape of his eyes, and the tint of his dirty-blond curly hair. It was all so very familiar—so familiar that for the strangest moment, Kevin thought he was looking into a mirror.
Brian didn't have to tell him who he was, because now Kevin knew. He should have known from the very beginning—not because of the hair, or the eyes, or the tone of his voice, but because his visitor chose to call himself Brian, which was, after all, Kevin's middle name.
"But, how . . . ?"
"Beats me," said "Brian." "Maybe you asked to see your own future while those supercharged shades were still on your face. So, do you like what you see?"
Kevin smiled. "I like it a lot." Kevin was about to begin throwing out all the questions—what do I grow up to be? Where do I live? What happens to everyone else? But before he could say another word, a sound came wailing in from beyond the door. It was a very familiar drone, and now Kevin knew how Brian's journey was possible. The sound on the other side of the door was an alarm clock.
"Gotta go." Brian pulled open the door. "Can't sleep my life away!"
"But how do I get out of this?" asked Kevin.
"I can't remember."
As Brian crossed the threshold, Kevin peered in, but Brian stepped in his way, blocking his view.
"No peeking," he said.
"Right. See you later, Shrimpoid."
"Who are you calling Shrimpoid?" said Brian with a smile, and Kevin noticed for the first time that "Brian" was about six feet tall.
Brian closed the door, slicing off the sound of the alarm, and when the echo of the door had faded, the stillness of 9:42 returned once more.
Kevin, still weak and a little tipsy, hurried downstairs, out the back door, and up the hill. He hadn't seen much of the world beyond "Brian's" door, but the glimpse he did get was enough. He saw a life for himself! A world with a blue sky and trees and sunshine. There was a way out!
At the top of the hill, the glasses were nowhere to be seen.
Kevin carefully searched through the dirt beneath the twisted tower, in an ever-widening circle, with patience and determination. Finding a needle in a haystack was, after all, a simple enough thing if one took the time to do the job right.
Kevin found the glasses in the tall grass near one of the legs of the tower. Sure enough, the glasses had pulled themselves back into one piece, and although the lenses were still covered with hairline fractures, they were already beginning to disappear, one by one.
The glasses will always be here, thought Kevin. They would always be there, waiting—but they weren't necessarily waiting for him, were they? That was just in his own head. The glasses, after all, were just a machine. Kevin's putting the glasses on was no different than if he had gotten behind the wheel of a monster truck and headed downtown. If he ended up totaling every car in town, it wouldn't be the truck's fault—he had no business driving the thing to begin with.
With that in mind, Kevin slipped the shades into his pocket and decided to go looking for a truck driver.
Just a few miles north of town, Kevin hit the front of the storm, where stationary raindrops hung in the air like an impossibly dense fog, soaking him to the bone. As he walked along the highway, he noticed that things around him were changing. It wasn't just his eyes, he was certain of it. The buildings and trees around him were only shadows, and even the raindrops that hung in the air seemed less and less real.