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 cancloseportals with this?”
“Nothisportal,” he clarifies. “I can close my portal.”
“Have youtriedto 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. “Bothof 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?”
“They expand faster when they’re first born. Rapid energetic growth that slows as the universe ages.” Her black-tipped fingernails gently touch down on one paper covered in green ink which she moves in front of August. “If you can harness that power of a fresh, sapling universe, I think it’s enough to blast your way through the other side. If you can pierce a hole in a universe that contains enough energy to combat the one you accidentally pierced at the start, you’ll create a new quantum wave that will reverse the events you put in order.”
“Reverse them?” August flings his eyes down the paper, taking it in with a speed that’s both intimidating and deeply admirable. “But it’s gone. All of it’s destroyed.”
“It’s not.”
The atmosphere turns thick as he considers her words, wanting to believe, doubting. “I witnessed it with my own eyes. You can see it happening right outside your window.”
“I can see it’s a mess, but the particles are still there. They’re just disordered. But atoms have a memory, do they not?”
“That’s right, they do,” says Assassin August. “They hold patterns. They respond in an orderly manner. They’re drawn to order, and recreate those forms naturally.”
