And God Belched Read online

The mirror then did, as he’d said, reposition, while we, in turn, gasped in unison.

  “He,” I said. “It is most definitely a he.”

  Chapter 3

  He, in fact, looked like me. That is to say, he looked very Harlequin-cover-model-like, with long blond hair, an aquiline nose, those aforementioned eyes of blue, and cheekbones that Vogue would’ve photographed for days, given the chance. And since I could now see more of him, he could now see more of me. Or at least I reasoned as much, considering he was smiling in response to Craig and my smiles, nodding as Craig and I nodded. Heck, he even gasped when Craig and I gasped, much like a reflection would, but only slightly off-kilter.

  Still, all we could see was his face. Everything else sort of blurred around the edges, became my room. I lifted my hand in front of my face and waved. He did the same. He had five fingers, five manicured nails. I lifted my other hand and waved. He did the same. No wedding ring, by the way—and yes, I was checking. Then again, who knew if such a custom was even practiced on his planet, in his universe. Maybe they didn’t marry there. Maybe, heaven forbid, they didn’t mate. Or maybe they mated and killed, very black-widow-spider-like. Or maybe, again heaven forbid, he didn’t want to mate with me, wasn’t even gay. Cart before the horse, though, right? Heck, the horse was so far behind that it might as well have been in the cart with me, coasting downhill. I mean, we couldn’t even communicate. I could barely see the smallest portion of him. Was mating even an option? And why was I even thinking such a thought?

  Ah, because there was that whole connection I’d felt, felt all along, ever since the earthquakes had started. When I looked into his eyes, the connection was even more palpable, like a tether was binding us together, yanking him to me, me to him. In a mirror, you see yourself, but now, in my mirror, I saw us. So yeah, the cart was before the horse, but at least the horse was still in the race, so to speak.

  “Weird,” Craig said when at last he’d come to his senses.

  Me, no, no senses. Not yet. “Which part?”

  He grinned. “All of it, but no, that’s not the weird I was referring to.” He glanced my way. “The alien is in a different universe, but he looks just like us.”

  “Mostly like me,” I made note.

  Craig exhaled sharply, eyes rolling like always. Nope, no moss ever collected on those squinty peepers. “Must you?” he asked.

  I smiled and nodded. “I must. And your point?”

  He shrugged. “Not sure, but like I said, weird. I mean, what are the odds that beings who live, theoretically, millions of miles apart, would look so similar?”

  “Similar to me, you mean.”

  “Again?”

  I nodded. “It bears repeating.” Still, just before I could “talk” to the alien again, to ask more questions, like if he was my age and gay, and if the rest of him looked as good as his face, said face slowly and sadly began to vanish, until Craig and I were again staring at each other in the mirror, and not into the eyes of dazzling blue.

  “Damn,” I said.

  “Weird,” Craig said.

  “Again with the weird?”

  He sighed and walked over to my bed, then sat down and looked my way. “Well, putting two and two together, the earthquakes seem to trigger the eyes, so at least we can assume that all this is somehow tied together. Now then, the alien said, or at least blinked, that he’s in a separate universe from ours, but one in our same timeline. To me, that means that his universe was formed when ours was, but runs independently from our own.”

  “And the weird thing? I mean, apart from all of it?”

  “The weird thing, or things, to be precise, is why now, and why here, and why you?” He held his hand up, thereby stopping me from affirming that, yes, it was all about me. I mean, the alien even looked like me. This was fate, kismet. I felt it. I had, as I said, always felt it, ever since the first quake I could remember. It was why I came home after college, too afraid to leave for good, to maybe miss something, something like all this. “Rhetorical, dude,” he said. “I was asking the questions because I think I already know the answers, not because I care to hear you prattle on about your favorite subject, namely yourself.”

  I sat down next to him, skulking. “I don’t prattle.”

  He grinned. “Uh-huh. Major prattling, dude. In any case, I think there are two universes, and they’re all of a sudden meeting up, one world butting against the other, said butting causing the earthquakes. As to the mirror, somehow, we’re able to see into their world and vice versa, but the door is only open for a brief period of time, as if the two universes bump, meet, and then separate.”

  I frowned. “So, they could separate and never come together again?”

  He nodded. “They could meet one, twice, a few times, a few thousand times. It’s impossible to tell. Though we have had the earthquakes for years now, so perhaps the two worlds are running side by side. Perhaps there’s some kind of gravitational pull keeping them together, at least for the time being.”

  “But none of that explains why my mirror, why I feel this connection, why the owner of those eyes looks like me, albeit with eyes the color of brilliant sapphires.”

  He chuckled. “All I saw was blue.”

  “Figures.”

  “Anyway, as to why your mirror, why not? If there’s a portal between the two worlds, your mirror is as good as any. As to the connection you’re feeling, you probably just have a screw loose. And as to why he looks like you, well, maybe his screw is just as loose. Or maybe they worship that Fabio guy in their universe.” He stood. “Buy a wrench, dude. Tighten the screw. Save on those inevitable psychiatry bills.”

  I looked up at him. “You don’t seem that shocked by all of this. I mean, we just talked, more or less, to an alien. We might be the first humans ever to do so.”

  He shrugged. “Guess I’m desensitized. Too many violent video games. Plus, I live with you. In other words, I’m already well-accustomed to alien encounters.”

  He was gone a moment later, leaving me alone with the mirror. I stared at it, but the connection was clearly broken, the tether severed. Still, I wasn’t as nonchalant about the whole thing as Craig was. This was huge. No, nix that. THIS WAS HUGE! Yes, better. I mean, I met an alien. I talked to an alien. I popped a boner talking to an alien. Then again, I popped a boner when the wind blew, so that last thing was neither here nor there.

  But what was I supposed to do now? Call the Enquirer, TMZ? In other words, cash in? Nah. No thanks. I’d been chosen. Chosen people didn’t appear on the cover of US. People, maybe. Rolling Stone would’ve been nice. OUT for sure. Still, I shook my head. No, no, no. That’s not what this was all about. Was it? Again, I shook my head as potential fame wrapped its sticky tentacles around me and threatened to drag me under.

  In any case, I wanted to meet the alien, not scare him off—or worse: piss him off. I mean, what if he had a ray gun that could disintegrate me? Ouch. And no thanks.

  And so, I’d have to wait, wait for another tremor, another encounter with Old Blue Eyes.

  I hoped I wouldn’t have to wait all that long.

  FYI, I didn’t.

  § § § §

  It happened the next morning. I was in bed, wide awake. In truth, I’d barely slept. Instead, I tossed and turned, thinking about those eyes, wondering what the alien looked like beyond merely his stellar face. Or maybe make that interstellar. My mind buzzed at the possibilities. Why me? I wondered. Why here? And when would I see him again?

  As to that last question, the when was in five seconds.

  Five-four-three-two-one. Contact!

  The bed began to bounce, my body along for the ride. My teeth chattered. My cock went boing. I hopped out of bed. Well, that is to say, I fell out of bed, tripping as the house shook one way and I the other. I then managed to crawl to the mirror, a smile instantly widening on my face.

  “Morning,” I said, the eyes, thank goodness, staring back at me. “What’s up?” I stared down at my tenting jammies. “Ap
art from the usual.”

  The alien didn’t answer. Um, okay, he might have, but without an auditory connection, I hadn’t a clue. Still, he nodded and returned my smile in kind. I wondered where he was. Was he on a purple phosphorescent beach with a pink ocean lapping at his toes? Did he even have toes? For all I knew, he had flippers. Was he a merman? Was his mother named Ethel Merman?

  But I digress. It happens. Frequently.

  “Can you hear me?” Two blinks. No? But he’s answering me? “Can you read my mind?” Two blinks. Then how were we sort of, kind of, communicating? It was then that I snapped my fingers. Because if he couldn’t hear me, and he couldn’t read my mind—a short read, by the way, and quite a dirty one—then that left only one option. “You’re reading my lips.” One blink, then a nod of his head, with a smile again spreading wide across his Harlequinny face. Such a beautiful smile. Such a beautiful man. But wait, was he a man or a boy?

  “Can you blink your age.” He blinked, and kept on blinking. He stopped at twenty-two. “That’s my age!” So yes, a man, if just barely. My body trembled, even though the earth had already quieted down.

  As before, all I could see was his handsome face. “What can you see of me? Just my face, all of me, the entire room?” He didn’t reply. “Too many questions?” One blink. “Can you see my face?” One blink. “Anything more than that?” Two blinks.

  Damn, this was frustrating. It would take forever to learn about him, about his world. And forever we didn’t have. At most, we had minutes at a time. And what if our universes separated, if the connection forever broke? Then I’d never see him again. My heart ached at the thought. To come so close, only to be wrenched apart, was too much to bear. He was my future. I was certain of that. He was the one I’d been waiting for.

  Drama queen much? Sure. So sue me.

  I frowned, and said, “Is there another way for us to communicate? I mean, I’m sure lip reading is no more fun that blink-reading.”

  He seemed to laugh. I mean, that’s what it looked like he was doing, but you never know with an alien. For all I knew, he was about to divide and split like an amoeba. Which was fine by me, as then there would be two gorgeous aliens to gaze longingly upon. In any case, he didn’t divide or split, so he must’ve indeed been laughing. And nodding. Nodding, apparently, is universal. Or maybe make that multi-universal.

  “So, we can communicate?” He nodded and blinked once, then opened his mouth and spoke. Not that I could hear him, but he was speaking, his mouth moving, lips parted, puckered, pursing. He was saying a word. “Commuter? There’s a train from me to you?” No, that couldn’t be it. Star Trek would’ve been awfully boring then, replacing the Enterprise with a choo-choo. These are the voyages of the star train Lionel. Yawn.

  “Say it again,” I told him. And so he said the word again, slowly, then again, and again. “Wait!” I shouted. “Computer! You’re saying computer!” He nodded, the smile returning, vast as the Pacific.

  I turned around and raced the few feet to my desk before flicking my laptop on, my breathing becoming heavy. I turned my wireless speakers on and waited, my heart pumping so fast it could give a jackrabbit a run for its money. And then, there it was…

  “Greetings, Earthling.” He laughed, the sound like seashells being tossed at the shoreline. It was a beautiful laugh, sublime.

  I turned and looked at him in the mirror. “You’re laughing.”

  He nodded. “Of course. What did it look like I was doing?”

  I shrugged. “Dividing?”

  He tilted his head. “Why would I divide? Sounds painful. Do humans do that? I thought you procreated to make more of you.”

  I fought to catch my breath. I was now talking to an alien, and one, at the time, in an entirely different universe. How was that possible? “How is this possible?”

  “Which part?”

  Good question. “Talking. How are we talking?”

  He nodded. “I believe you call if Wi-Fi. I’m transmitting through a similar device. For all intents and purposes, our two worlds are connected at the moment, and so we can communicate wirelessly.” His grin rose northward on his face. “Neat, huh?”

  I shook my head. Not because it wasn’t, as he said, neat, but because all this was too much to take in. I pulled up a chair, lest I should fall down—yet again, that is. I stared at him as he in turn stared at me. “What’s your name?”

  “You can call me Milo. That would be easiest for you. And you’re Randy Rogers. And your brother is Craig. And you live in the city of San Francisco. And you like the band known as Britney Spears. And you’re, what is called by your people, gay. And you just finished college.”

  “Wait, back it up,” I said, holding my hand to the mirror.

  “To which part? The Britney Spears thing? I listened to her.” He frowned. “I, uh…I don’t get it.”

  “She’s a talented singer.”

  He shrugged. “If you say so.”

  “Anyway, how do you know all this? And how do you know I’m gay? Are your people monitoring me? Is there an anal probe in my future? A dissection? Will my lifeless corpse be used for educational purposes?” I pictured my body on a slab, a slab that was neither phosphorescent nor pink. I cringed.

  Again, his head tilted. “Why would we dissect you? I can simply scan you for all necessary information. Dissection sounds far too messy. Gross, I believe you would say.” His head righted. “Facebook.”

  “Huh?”

  “Facebook. I learned about you on Facebook. We’re Facebook friends.”

  I blinked in rapid succession. “Huh?”

  “You already said that.”

  “Worth repeating.” I turned and went back to my computer. I went to Facebook. I searched for a Milo. Shockingly, there he was. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  “Doesn’t sound any better than dissected. Are you perhaps a masochist, Randy? It doesn’t say so in your profile.”

  I had many hundreds of Facebook friends, most of whom I never met, nor would ever meet. Milo sent me a Facebook friend request. I accepted it based simply on how pretty he was. Call me shallow, but it’s far easier to swim at that end of the pool.

  “How?” I asked as I returned to my chair.

  “Like I said, wireless. I have a device similar to your laptop, though far more advanced. When our worlds abutted, it became possible to communicate, though it took me a couple of days to learn your language. As for that communicating query, I chose Facebook. It seemed a popular medium.”

  “Wait,” I said, ignoring the comment about learning English in two days. I mean, I’d taken Spanish for two years in high school, and I barely knew how to ask where the bathroom was. Anyway, back to that aforementioned wait. “So, your race is already communicating with mine? I’m not the only one?” I sighed. Not the only one? Not special?

  “Nope, not communicating.”

  “But you just said that your people are communicating with us.”

  He shook his head. “No, I said it was possible to communicate; I didn’t say we were communicating. What would be the point?”

  “Lost me.”

  His shake turned to a nod. “Exactly.”

  I squinted his way. “Lost me further, Milo.”

  The nodding cranked up. “Lost. Your people would be lost, so to speak, if we communicated. It would be as if you tried to teach a puppy how to speak. Sure, a puppy is cute and all, but the lesson would ultimately be futile.”

  I think I got it. “Your people, like your computer, are too advanced for us?”

  And still he nodded, his mane of blond hair bouncing all the while. “Too advanced, yes. Plus, your kind must learn for itself. You will thrive or perish at your own hands, just as my kind will do the same. Our laws are written as such. Observe, but do not interfere. Interference, in fact, like so much on my planet, would be illegal.”

  “So, your people are observing us?”

  He shrugged. “Not so much.”

  “Huh?”

  “Ag
ain with that word?” He exhaled exaggeratedly. “Anyway, you were interesting to watch, as a species, at first, but then it got old. It’s like watching a television show. It might be good for a few years, maybe seven, eight, at most, but then you change the channel. Same with your kind. We have nothing to learn from you, scientifically, medically, or any other assorted lys.”

  “But here we are, you and me,” I said. “We’re communicating. You’re no longer just observing. In fact, you’ve now changed my life, just by us talking, and so you are, in fact, interfering. Isn’t that, like you said, breaking the law?”

  He nodded. “Sure, but you’re, you know, cute.”

  My head pounded. My dick did the same. Usually, it was the reverse, my dick in the lead. “So, you’re gay, too?”

  He shrugged. “This is a human construct. On my planet, we are all simply the same species. There are no divisions of race or gender or sexuality. We are all children of God.”

  My eyes went wide. “God? You believe in God? The same God as my God? The in the beginning God?”

  “Same God, different beginning,” he replied. “In the beginning, God belched. He created our universe. Yours was fourth in line. We got all the good stuff; you got the remainder. Since there was more of God in our belch, there were more of the basic building blocks, and so our universe evolved dramatically faster than yours, as did our species.”

  Yeah, that was a lot to take in. I mean, my family wasn’t religious. God was like a distant uncle you saw once or twice a year. You loved him, sure, but in a hazy, peripheral fashion. In fact, you weren’t even sure you were related to said uncle. Maybe by marriage. Maybe twice removed. Something along those lines.

  “And you know all this how?”

  He shrugged. “Legend. Lore. Mythos. How does one know anything when it comes to the supernatural?”

  “And yet you believe?”

  The shrug remained. Even that was adorable. Plus, it allowed me to see the faintest hint of shoulder. “It does explain my world and yours adequately enough. We do, after all, look the same, evolved similarly, have the same genetic makeup, more or less.”