“Neither of these Augusts are the August you’re looking for,” he announces. “They’re a pair of morons; they can’t tell you shit.”
I’m half offended, half dumbstruck.
But Actually-Not-An-Asshole-At-All August says, “I’m the August you want. End me. Let them both go.”
My beautiful August speaks how full both our hearts are, only he does it in the most reckless and ridiculous way possible. “That’s a lie! Don’t say that. Why would you say that? I did it all!”
“That’sa lie!” I shout. “It was me! Why won’t you believe me?”
The August with the gun on my August sighs dramatically. “Look, my arm’s getting tired of holding this thing. Is there any chance we can put these down while we figure this out?”
My August again, but with his voice perfectly steely. “Not if you’re intent on killing one of us.”
“It’s not that wewantto kill you,” he argues.
“Yeah, Augusts keep telling me that.”
“Well, do you have a better solution?”
“Yes.” His jaw sets, and he seems to stand a foot taller when he explains, “We’re heading for the black hole at the centre of the galaxy. We’re on course for it, or we thought we were. We’re going to take all that…” His brow creases over it. “We’re going to tap into the dense conglomeration of subatomic particles there. We’re going to use the accelerated expansion of the fledgling universe on the other side of that black hole, take all the energy, and smash it back through the way we came. An equal and opposing force to the one that’s destroying worlds—that will obliterate the quantum wave I created. We’re going to utilise the innate memory of atoms, the natural order of the universe, to put everything back, just the way it was.”
A moment of quiet passes. I’m torn between hopeful they’ll help us, and terrified that little speech just labelled August as the evil physicist.
Finally, Navy Coat pipes up, “Paleo quantum physics. Fascinating.”
“P-paleo?” August’s voice comes hoarse on the word.
“Completely outdated. It’s incredible you were able to do any of this, working with whatever rudimentary understanding of physics and the multiverse you had back there.” He shakes his head, but the smirk never drops. “Let me illuminate you. This is it. This is the end of the line. You’ve reached the end of the known multiverse.”
“Theend?” The words burst out of me.
“Yeah. The entire multiverse. The lot of it. It’s not…” He looks over at August Sixth. “What did they used to say, August?”
August Sixth answers, “That it’s infinite.” He chuckles. “They just couldn’t measure it back then.”
“It’s not infinite?” Not-an-Asshole August asks, pallor setting in with his growing horror.
“This one’s not,” says August Sixth. “Distant multiverses have been detected, but we’re assuming they’re the same as ours. Regardless, that’s not a wall even the Blackthorne particle can pierce. We’re completely cut off from them.”
“Wait.” My mind’s stuttering trying to keep up. “This is a multiverse… within a multiverse?”
“Correct,” says the August with a gun on my August.
“If you keep going the same direction,” Navy Coat reports, tossing his head backwards like that’s the direction we were headed, “you’re going to hit a wall. There’s nothing on the other side.”
“How can there be nothing?” I gasp out. “The universe is expanding. It never stops. It just gets bigger. There is no ‘nothing.’”
“Hate to be the one to break it to you,” says Navy Coat, “but technology’s come a long way since you were around. There are about four hundred universes left in this multiverse. And now this one, the last in this specific row, is about to go boom. We’re in touch with some of the other, more advanced universes, which exist on a different dimension, much harder to break into. I’ll be moving over to one of those just as soon as I get my fifty million, and I’m hoping your expansion can’t follow up there.”
“But won’t there be other Augusts already living there?” asks Non-Asshole August. “Won’t the problem with the physics of two Augusts messing shit up just happen again there?”
“So long as I don’t fuck him, it should be fine,” Navy Coat mutters.
A guilty twist pushes some colour into my cheeks, but August, more bright-eyed than ever, pounces on the comment. “Wait. The universe can hold you both? If you don’t… do that?”
“Yeah. I mean, it’s not ideal,” Navy Coat replies with a small shrug. “It might fuck a few things up, but nothing catastrophic. It’s your runaway inflation that’s wrecking all the things wherever you go. The pair of you ‘exciting particles’ is just speeding up the process.”
August ignores that last bit, staying on a track that unsettles me—that unerring hope he always has, that I hate to see crushed out of him. “So if… Do you mean, if August and I were to just find a nice, quiet universe, we could go there? Together? And-and live there?” His eyes are so big and his hope so genuine. All his vulnerability on display as ever.
