Bob, Everlasting by mrbrad

AN #1: Best to read Bob, Parts 1,2 and 3 first.

AN #2: I had toyed with the idea of bikini'd baby slayers having wrestling matches in a pool of Bob, but naah.

# # #

When Xander got to Nights just before opening time, Bob was perched on one of the chairs at the bar. Bob was teetering a bit, but a couple thick ribbons of goo flowed down and gave him balance. A couple more went out to the bar in front of Bob, well as much as Bob could be said to have a front. The combination of two goos to the floor and two goos to the bar gave him almost a humanoid look, if you're a humanoid who just completed a long bout of jello wrestling.

Xander finished up the bulk of the chores and walked over to Bob. Xander stood there for a moment and then shrugged.

"What can I get you?"

Xander watched as a small pucker appeared in what would be the middle of chest if Bob had one. There was sudden *tweet* as the bulk of Bob positioned on the chair suddenly expanded in a bubble as air was pulled in through the pucker which clamped closed.

Xander stared in amazement as the pucker jiggled and opened and closed and wriggled around while air got pushed through it. At first it was pretty much just a drone.

"muuuuuuuuuuuuuuuueeeeeeeuuuuuuuuuuoooooooo*tweet*llllllllllllllllllssssssssssssssssssoooooooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn*tweet*".

"I didn't quite catch that".

"mmmmmmoooooooooooooollllllllllllllssssssss*tweet*ssssooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnn".

"One more time".

"*tweet*mmmoooolllllsssssooooonnnnn"

"One Molson, coming right up".

Xander opened the beer case, dug around for a few seconds and pulled out the Molson, and paused.

"Glass?"

"*tweet*yyyyyeeeeessssss".

Xander poured the Molson into a glass and set in on the bar in front of Bob. "Definitely better than generic. Enjoy".

... and with that Xander returned to opening the bar. After all, paying customers, mortgage, the eternal circle of commerce.... Xander scowled as he realized he had been watch too damn many Deep Space Nine re-runs and was starting to sound like a Ferengi.

Later that evening, Xander took a short break from his duties to check up on Bob, who was still sitting at the bar, still with half a glass of Molson.

"So, Bob. What's up? What's your story?".

There was a short pause, then Bob started speaking. By this time either Bob had gotten better at the air thing or Xander was just filtering out the *tweet*.

# Bob's Story #

"For uncounted eons I must have been a possibility. All the combinations of atoms forming molecules across time and space. I was born near a stellar nursery and near a stellar graveyard, where for billions of years atoms were created on the one hand, atoms across the periodic tables, created by the old stars and roiled and churned by the new energetic stars."

"Billions, perhaps trillions of years, uncounted quadrillions of atoms, infinite combination. Somehow from the random chance I emerged. Perhaps given the span of time it was inevitable. After a while, how long I don't know, I became aware of where I was, what I was doing. I was drifting, barely more than a gas, converting random organic molecules to more of me."

"In the fullness of time I come across a world. That first world was little more than rock. What little there was of material there became me. That world in time fell apart and I came to another, and another. That became the cycle then. I would arrive at a world, and what was there became me. Worlds of algae, worlds of water, worlds of animals, worlds of intelligent life."

"I learned. First by sheer thought, after a while by what was left by the organics I eventually came to know as life left behind after I consumed them. I know all that can be known by life. If I desired I could build, create... But I know it will all crumble and I will be left. I need no legacy. I am."

"And I cannot stop. I have tried. But the hunger, the hunger... Either I am too small to form the thought that I should stop, or so large the hunger overwhelms me."

"In the end, the hunger always wins."

"An eon ago, I consumed a world, a world seemingly much like many others, a jungle world, a hothouse. Yet, from what I have been able to piece together, another random chance had produced a molecule in an obsure plant that interacted with what I am and changed me. I would not say it changed me forever, since forever is no longer part of me."

"From what I have seen, you, and others like you are an instant in an infinitely short life, your consciousness, your sense of now is one moment of your life, moving from the instant of your birth to the instant of your death. Mine began that way. At the moment of consuming the plant, like a catalyst the molecule ripped through me, my consciousness expanded in both directions."

"As I sit here, I am also coming to consciousness drifting in endless reaches of space, sitting on your shelf, absorbing countless worlds, watching suns die, taking uncounted ages to complete a thought at the end of everything, reduced to echoes in the quantum fluctuations as the universe winds down to stasis. There are no moments, only one moment that is my entire existance. There is no past, there is no future, all times are now."

"Soon I must go. At my current size I can 'sip' a beer. But soon...".

"In the end, the hunger always wins."

"Before you knew I was coming I was already here. I have always been here. The illusion of choice does not exist for me. I am allwhen always."

"I wanted you to know, before I leave, that this is the place I am the most, the place I have always known and will know as the center of me. Here I was accepted, useful, contained, cared for. And I find that *I* care. I must leave."

With that, Bob flowed to the closet, protruded a tentacle, opened the door and paused.

"The hunger always wins, except here." The door closed behind him.

Xander was silent for a long while, then took a marker and plucked Bob's jar from the shelf and wrote on the label, changing just "Bob" to "Forever Bob".

He put the jar back on the shelf and turned to the next customer.