“Thank you.”
Okay, my bad. But it was worth that blush.
And it’s fact too. With any other August, this might have been hard. But he is delightful in every sense of the word.
Brain, get back to work.
“Um, I was saying…”
Biceps. Biceps. Biceps.
“Big crunch?” he prompts.
I’d like to crunch you…
“Yes!” I clear my throat to make myself feel vaguely professional. “So, if we know the expansion of our particular universe is slowing, a younger universe might be expanding faster, might it not?”
“It might, yeah.”
“Okay, keep all that in mind for the next bit. And now, think about last night.” I have no idea why he’s looking away with that shy smile. For once, I’m not actually hitting on him. “Youknow now, better than anyone, that it’s just a matter of particle arrangement to step into Victorian London, in our universe at least. It’s not hard to imagine a way across to the same world in another universe. People see ghosts, right? People believe in ghosts. That’s just other realities bleeding through.”
He lets out a small laugh. “Now, I know that’s not true.”
“Not true of all ghosts, maybe,” I concede, “but in a lot of cases, that woman in white descending the stairs—she’s really a woman in white descending the stairs. She’s either caught in a time slip, or the person seeing her is, or… she slid through a weak spot.”
“A weak spot…” That fast flash of understanding floors me. “As in, from one of these parallel universes?”
“Exactly correct. And if that weak spot can be identified, have a hole poked in it, that can, in theory, be a crossover point.”
“Holy shit. So you were—that’s why you know so much about time slips. You’d already been to eighteen forty-four? You were studying for…” His brow furrows as he sets his thoughts straight. “You were finding the differences between a slip and a crossover?”
It sounds so simple when he says it. So interesting and good-natured. And maybe it was, for a time, before it all turned really fucking dark.
With my next breath, I find I’m defending myself to him in advance of what’s coming. “You need to imagine the possibilities to understand what ‘they’did. Imagine, August, if you could step back in time, see a loved one who’s now gone. Just spend a little more time with them.” I watch the light in him dim a little, but his understanding never sways. “But then imagine if you could cross over to a world so very much like your own, and you could visit them. Imagine finding the world, in all the infinite worlds, where one horrible thing just didn’t happen. And you could slip across for a cup of tea with someone you care about, then sliphome like nothing ever happened. And they live on. They grow older, they age with you. And you can go see them whenever you like. And what happened here… it would maybe feel a bit like… like it never really happened at all.”
I feel as though I’ve already confessed. I feel flayed and exposed. But the empathetic regard in his expression is proof enough he hasn’t seen inside me yet. “It’s a lovely idea. Beautiful, but for the inevitable consequences that must come from messing with timelines. But in theory…”
This is where I have to push on. This is where I have to watch the scales fall. “What if it’s not ‘in theory?’ What if someone found a way to punch a hole into a reality next to their own and connect those two universes? But…” His attention stays locked onto me, rapt, even as he pales, even as his lips part. He knows something awful’s coming. I spit it out. “But what if, instead of finding a reality like their own, they broke through to the wrong universe? A young one that’s expanding fast. Too fast.”
He falls quiet for a time, and when he speaks again, it’s with a gravelly voice and a faraway look in his eyes, like he’s calculating all the horrific variables at the same time. Something I once did. Only I didn’t care enough to let it stop me. “But you said… your coffee… your coffee that was too much coffee for this coffee. Everything’s in balance, and then you take a young universe, violent and full of explosive energy, then just… let all that into your own?”
“It creates a quantum wave. But not an abstract one, a real one. One that’s expanding, but as it’s expanding it has nowhere to go, because every atom is sucked into the confines of its new universe. So it has no choice but to try to merge. And that’s not stable. If the conditions aren’t exactly right for it to merge…”
He’s terrified. I can see it right at the back of his eyes. But he’s also unflinching, listening to me, listeningforme.
“Think of it this way. Here on Earth, you have the exact right physics for your gravity to hold your body to the ground, but not just that. Your body is strong enough to stay stable, to jump, to walk. Your muscles formed in this environment, so they’re perfectly adapted to keep your organs in place and your blood in your body. But if I stick you in space without a suit…”
He answers without hesitation. “Then all the liquid in my body boils in an instant.”
“It’s one hundred kilometres that way.” I point towards our concrete ceiling. “We are in this tiny, fragile cocoon, and it would take the tiniest shift in the wrong direction, relatively speaking, for the particles that form that environment to become unviable for life, for?—”
“For a wave of death to annihilate all human existence.” He’s got it, and his ashen complexion and frightened eyes drive the point home. “But why would someone do that? Why would they take that risk? I have zero education, and even I can see this is a very bad idea.”
“I think…” The shame. The shame of even coming close to admitting this. “I don’t know. I don’t think everyone thinks about life the way you do. Or maybe they didn’t at the time. I mean, think about it. We’re talking infinite parallel universes?—”
“But all those lives?—”
“It’s not like that intheory. It doesn’t count the same way when there’s another August next door, only this August has one extra hair on his head. And there areinfiniteother Augusts, all still intact.”
