32. Good August #3
“So you see,” he focuses on the new August, who’s remained perfectly silent throughout, “that’s how easy it was.
Yes, I wish, my god, I wish every day of my life, over and over, I’d never pushed that button.
I wish I’d never got a job there. I wish, August…
” He turns back to me. “That I never got that degree. I wish I’d stayed here and fallen in love with music instead.
I would give anything to turn back time and do that. That one moment. I ruined everything.”
I can’t stand his sadness. It rips me apart, like so many atoms cast asunder. I take his hands back and press my lips to his. “I think you’re brave. And I think you’re strong. Not many people could have kept going, trying to fix this. I think you’re amazing for what you’ve done.”
“August…” He lets out a small laugh, like he can’t believe I’ve said that. Tears streak his cheeks, lips taut, trying to fight the emotion.
I do my best to kiss the tension from his mouth. “Stick with me, alright? We’re going to fix this.”
His eyes close, soft and slow, like he’s locking those words away somewhere deep inside. His head tilts down, and it’s a promise I have to believe he’ll keep.
Assassin August asks Shashi quietly, “Does that all fit with what you’ve figured out?”
“Perfectly,” she says. She’s softened now she’s heard the whole thing. Her mannerisms aren’t so sharp as they were when she pushes some papers towards August. “It looks to me like the first universe you tried to open—it merged with your original universe via inflation, correct?”
“Yeah,” says August. “That’s my guess too. It leaked in. I thought I hadn’t hit anything. But in reality… I’d hit pure energy. A newborn universe, I’ve been assuming.”
She nods, as if that’s exactly what she’d expected him to say. “So, if I’m not mistaken, what you’ve created is a quantum wave.”
“That’s exactly correct,” says Assassin August, and it’s kind of sweet how he’s taken up the narrative for August, seeing him so upset. Shashi looks at him with raised eyebrows, so he explains, “I’m also a particle physicist, like him, only I’m not a villainous one.”
“You’re literally here to murder me,” August mutters.
“Only because you’re a supervillain,” Assassin August throws back.
I fill Shashi in quickly, that he’s come through to kill August so he doesn’t keep hopping universes.
“Well, killing him would be a start,” she offers, and I don’t think that’s particularly helpful. Until she adds, “But we’d still be fucked.”
“But it’s the Augusts creating chaos, right?” argues Assassin August, as though he’s not an August who’s currently creating chaos. “You said they’re a friction point.”
“Oh, you very much are, all of you,” she replies. “Especially them, but you’re not innocent in all of this.”
My August smirks at him. They’re incredibly immature, but Assassin August really had that coming.
Shashi continues, “The quantum wave will continue to grow whether he’s here or not. He can’t stop it now. You can’t stop it now. Kill him, and it will probably slow things down, but that’s all the effect it will have.”
“No,” my August protests. “I’m key to this. The next rift, to the next world, the tear—it opens wherever I am. It follows me.”
There’s a sweet sympathy about Shashi when she answers, “You’re the friction point, the thing that doesn’t belong.
But you, personally, can’t hold back the tide.
The wave is too powerful, and without your existence creating a weak spot between worlds, it will just rip one open elsewhere.
It will keep inflating, punching into one universe after another, destroying them as it tries to find stasis. ”
“Stasis?” I throw the word out like it might solve the whole problem.
But August’s voice when he responds is apologetic. “That’s basically what I’ve been searching for. The coffee cup big enough to hold all the coffee.”
“That’s exactly where you’re going wrong,” Shashi says, and his brow shows both irritation and intrigue while he falls quiet to let her speak. “What you need is an equal and opposing force. Something that will push back against the wave you’ve created.”
“I mean… I have thought of that…” The other August steps forward, leaning over my August’s shoulder to look at the calculations. My August grimaces at him and talks on. “But with nowhere to go, I’m pretty sure it will just create an enormous explosion, fuck the whole thing up even worse.”
Assassin August nods down at the paper, referencing one of Shashi’s calculations. “Not if you have somewhere for the energy to go. If you could smash it back through, back the way you came…”
My August hisses out half a laugh. “I can’t open a new portal back the other way.
I mean… in theory, I could, but you’d need a particle accelerator.
I’m not sure even the one you’ve got in Switzerland in this world is up to the job.
That’s if we could get enough time with it, rework it to isolate Blackthorne particles. ”
Assassin August slightly shrugs his shoulders. “Can someone untie me?”
“No,” August and I both reply at the same time, and I wonder if he’d also forgotten Assassin August is still restrained with Jon’s belt.
Jon, who’s been quietly by Assassin August’s side the whole time, suggests, “I can hold your tea for you to drink.” He accompanies the frankly bizarre suggestion with a grasp of the still-hot cup.
“No.” August pulls back from the sloshing drink, yet finds the time for a half smile at Jon. “That’s very kind. But the belt kind of hurts. And my shoulder’s itching. But also, I have a particle accelerator in my pocket.”
“You have a what?” August cries.
Meanwhile, Amber makes a choking sound, Jon’s and Amber’s eyes lock, and the two make a pretty pathetic show of trying to hide their laughter at the comment.
I’m somewhere in the middle of this. It is kind of funny. Also, what the fuck?
“I have a particle accelerator in my pocket,” August repeats, evidently not seeing the humour. “How do you think I got here?”
“Rode my coattails?” August jibes.
“You wish,” Assassin August snipes. “My science is so much more advanced than yours.”
“Only because you were literally born in a lab,” August returns childishly.
“Can I see the accelerator?” Shashi asks.
“Can I get it for her?” Jon asks.
“I will,” I suggest. He is, after all, me.
But Assassin August’s head turns towards Jon with another smile. “He can do it. Front right pocket.”
“Should I scratch your itch first?” Jon’s already rubbing a hand over the rise of August’s shoulder.
Assassin August lets out a groan that makes most of us blush. “Ahhh, that’s so good. Back a bit.”
“Here?”
“Down.”
“Here?”
“Yeaaaaahhh, that’s the spot.”
Jon sucks his bottom lip under his teeth while the new August sighs over his fingers, and this is fucking appalling.
Then it gets worse.
“Can I put my hand in your pocket?” Jon asks lasciviously.
“For fuck’s sake,” my August exclaims.
Jon reaches in, and I’m pretty sure that August subtly flexes a hip towards him. Then Jon says, “Oh, it’s so hard.”
“This is ridiculous,” my August whines.
But it’s actually kind of cute. Shame Jon’s incapable of committing to anyone, really.
Not sure he needs to press his thigh against August’s like that either, but anyway, eventually he pulls out a small, rectangular black metallic device.
He passes it straight to my August, who moves closer to me to examine it.
It’s got a few buttons, no labels, and the control panel is enclosed with a hard, clear-plastic covering.
“You just carry this around?” August asks.
“It’s simple enough.” Assassin August shrugs. “Open portal, close portal.”
“What the fuck?” I grab the thing like it’s the Holy Grail. “You can close portals with this?”
“Not his portal,” he clarifies. “I can close my portal.”
“Have you tried to close his portal?”
“Well, no, I never got the drop on him in time.”
August pinches the bridge of his nose, eyes shut tight. “Let me get this straight… You decided to put a bullet in my head before it occurred to you to just close the open rift?”
“I didn’t know I could even do that!” Assassin August shouts back at him.
“You could have just asked!” August also shouts
“Okay, quiet.” I lock warning eyes with Assassin August as he attempts to speak again. “Both of you. The next person who speaks, just tell me why this won’t work.”
“The wave,” says Shashi, putting down the cup she’s been quietly sipping from this whole time. “August doesn’t ‘open’ the portal to the next world. It’s a tear. If you close that one, it will just tear somewhere else.”
“Okay, so…” Amber pipes up tentatively. “Does that mean… we’re fucked?”
“No.” I say it fast and clipped. Not that I have any clue how to solve this. But no.
“August might be right,” Shashi says slowly, and I love her for it. “If you can find that opposing force, open a rift there, then open another that leads back the way August came, you should be able to push the energy back through.”
“And what?” asks my August. “Destroy a new universe on the other side? Suck all its particles into this one?”
“And would that even work?” asks the other August. “Wouldn’t the momentum of the current wave just obliterate it?”
“Not if it was energetic enough,” Shashi replies.
She flips open a huge book on the table that I’ve paid no attention to so far.
On the page is a deep space photograph of galaxies that I can’t help but feel is for my benefit.
Maybe Jon’s and Amber’s too. “Every spiral galaxy has a supermassive black hole at the centre holding it together. Now, this is all theoretical, but let’s say, as many scientists believe, each one crushes up the particles they inhale, and spews them out into a new universe on the other side.
That creates another Big Bang, and boom, life starts again. New expansion. New inflation.”
“Okay,” Assassin August says, meeting her eyes warily. “So you have baby universes. What then?”