Chapter 41: Integrating the Household

I SHOULD SAY a little about how the infinity room had developed over the past 4,000 years. You’d think that with the different eras and cultures represented there, it would either be a total mishmash of people, or it would be a divided land with people constantly at war. It was neither. There were various areas where people with similar heritage dwelled together. For example, no one was really sure where the Bobbobbob Aboriginals had migrated to. They’d never mixed in with the other cultures. Racially, there seemed to be a pretty even number of black, red, yellow, and white. And there were many among the children and grandchildren who blended all four colors. Religion did not divide people because they soon discovered the old gods didn’t exist in the infinity room. I was as close to a god as the room had, and I encouraged people to keep rituals and customs that were meaningful to them and blend them into the practices of others. We had the height of religious and cultural appropriation. By the 2020s, there were well over three million people in the infinity room. No one knew how far over.

It might surprise you to find that we were pretty low-tech in the infinity room. Oh, technology wasn’t absent entirely. Each age had its own technology and people who came into the infinity room from that age brought technology or tech knowledge with them. We had to figure out how to get television to work in the infinity room, for example. Anyone who arrived from the natural world after about 1950 expected some conveniences and entertainment. But when it comes down to it, technology is driven by war. With no religion, nationalities, borders, or resources to fight over, there was no real cause for major disputes. As a result, the weapons technology we had, for example, was only what we had found and needed when sojourning in the natural world.

“Bob,” Nimia said as we toured our little world, “We need a name. Most of our population has no idea what the infinity room is or what it means. The world needs a name so people can refer to it.”

“Oh, please, let’s not call it Bob’s World,” I pled.

“No. That, too, is meaningless to most people.”

“Well, take the idea to the family and see what they come up with. I’m happy with whatever you decide,” I said.

“Leaving your fate in the hands of others might have unexpected results one day, love. Be careful how much power you leave in our hands.”

Hmm. That was a warning I would need to consider.

Nimia, my first wife. Remember? She had been with me in Knossos when Ariane died. We both secretly wept for the woman who had claimed me on my first exposure to the world. She was justifiably the only person in the infinity room who could claim to be older than me by a few years, but she looked as young and fresh as the nineteen-year-old she’d been when I first opened the infinity room and pushed her and Portia into it. Portia had elected to stay with Bao and age with her and die with her. But Nimia stayed mostly in the infinity room. As my first wife, she was the de facto queen. If there was ever a dispute that arose in the world, Nimia heard it. She typically made the disputants settle between themselves. If they could not...

Let me see. A dispute arose among some of the librarians as to whether the world was round or flat. They meant, of course, the world of the infinity room, not the natural world. They were trying to equate the way things worked in the infinity room with the natural world.

“If you cannot settle this dispute and consider it so important that you must carry on arguing and upsetting the other librarians, then you are required to prove your theory,” Nimia said. “You will set out from the palace in opposite directions. If you never meet each other, the world is flat. If by some chance you do find one another, then we can assume the world is round. That is the judgment of Bob.”

“But, madam, in either instance, we must leave the library and be gone forever. Even if we meet, we might be unable to ever return,” said one of the disputants.

“Yes? So, what is your point?”

“We would be leaving everything we love behind,” said the other.

“Yes? So, what is your point?”

“It occurs to me that this might not be important enough to prove. I am willing to put aside the argument.”

“And I.”

“So be it. Do not let me hear of the two of you arguing about this again, nor do I wish to hear of parties being formed that support one view or the other. Now go in peace,” Nimia said. Dispute settled.

Josie had the second most seniority in my household, but she was not counted as a wife. I possessed her—body, soul, heart, and mind. Josie managed my desires. She always knew what I needed or wanted. She was as quick to organize an orgy as a war party. I wanted every person in the infinity room trained in the martial arts and in the tantric sex practices. Josie orchestrated our education program. I wanted the priestesses cared for; Josie saw to it that they received anything they needed. Josie was my go-to girl and right-hand woman.

After masquerading as Odysseus for a decade, I returned to his home and his wife Penelope insisted that she was therefore my wife. I had no objection to this at all. While Penelope was a bit older than the other girls when she entered the infinity room, she was still young and beautiful. In fact, she seemed to have moved back in age to be closer to my other wives and possessions. Penelope was the mistress of trade, both within the infinity room and between the infinity room and the natural world. She kept track of what was needed, what was available for trade, and who could best fill the needs.

My next possession was Pari, a Persian girl given to me from Nebuchadnezzar’s harem. She too had responsibilities, managing my harem. No matter how hard I tried, I could not sleep with all of them every night. Not and do more than sleep. Someone had to determine whose turn it was to share the bed with my wives and possessions. Pari was the one.

Lakshmi was my third wife in the infinity room. She had the most experience among all my women in being a man. She’d been a man for the better part of the twenty years I’d been a woman. She was a wonderful relationship counselor and traveled around the infinity room a lot, teaching tantric meditation and relationship resolution. She’d become quite a guru.

And then there was Princess Agora. She was the daughter of an island ruler who thought his island was the entire world. She had gone into shock when she discovered how vast the world really was. Hers was the only possession I’d made without her consent. She was catatonic and far beyond consenting to anything. I brought her out of that state by possessing her and gave her a calm mind. She still did not stray from my house, which had become quite a palace over the millennia. I could almost always find her in my bedroom, fussing about things that didn’t need to be fussed about, like smoothing the sheets on the bed or dusting corners of the room where dust never collected. I’d once tried to set her free, but she clung to me and begged me to continue possessing her. I swore, however, that I would never again possess someone without their explicit invitation.

Esmeralda was my fourth wife and was the only one with whom I had endured a ‘Christian’ ceremony. I disguised myself as a young Spaniard and we went to a priest to be declared husband and wife. Then we’d slipped off into the mountains for a honeymoon. Esmeralda did not return to the natural world after that except on rare occasions when she wanted to see what had happened or to tend to one of my businesses. She and her husband simply disappeared as I returned to the shape of the despised priest of the inquisition.

Maya was as strong-willed as the goddess she had represented when we met. Her Mayan Indian features were distinctive among my wives, and her attitude was unrelenting in support for me. When we’d brought Mayan refugees into the infinity room, she had taken charge of their adjustment to the new life and surroundings. That was a role she continued to fill with new additions to the infinity room for the next five centuries.

And then there was Liz, my fifth—and I believed final—possession. She was an independent women’s liberationist of the sixties and seventies. She began writing books on feminism, women’s bodies, and twentieth century relationships, which she published up through the mid-1980s, when her parents died. She chose that time to quietly slip into the infinity room and fade out of her public life. Even her parents had begun to suspect something with her not aging past her twenty-two years in the seventeen years we’d been together. There had been a few instances in which she had made guest appearances on television talk shows, but we had to transform her for those appearances so it would look like she was getting older. I assumed that eventually, we’d need to stage her death because just fading away didn’t work in this day and age.

Oh, I had also collected Zhi during the Chinese exploration era. I did not count her among my wives or possessions. She had a position all her own as a devotee of Bob. I won’t say she worshiped me, but she was dedicated to the service of Bob and all that was his. She was the chief trainer of the martial arts and traveled throughout the infinity room to teach younger men and women born in the room how to meditate and transcend themselves through the martial arts.

And into this mix I brought my newest wife, Peninnah. She was a financial genius and manipulated my wealth in the natural world in such a way that we always had plenty for any project we wanted. We could also disappear and all my wealth would be absorbed by the populace without upsetting any economy in a major way.

Peninnah had no difficulty adjusting to life with my wives and possessions. She was definitely junior to all of them, but was accepted and honored as my primary wife in the new age. She had moved into the infinity room the day after we were married and came out during the daytime when there was work to be done. She was even accepting and tolerant of my nearly 100 concubines, collected over the years. Some of them neared Zhi in their devotion to Bob, like Chione, who might have asked me to make her a possession if she’d had a voice. She was Egyptian, given to me by Nebuchadnezzar, and followed Pari around like a shadow. And some of the concubines were very independent, even having their own lovers and in many cases, families, but always available to the Bob.