“If it makes you feel better, you have added a whole bunch of stuff to our workload,” Aparna said.
“Well, good,” I said. “How did I do that?”
“Technically, you didn’t, the poor exploding kaiju did,” said Niamh. “And not just us, everyone. Turns out exploding kaiju within traveling distance don’t happen that often.”
“They do for us,” Aparna noted.
“Yes, strictly going by numerical averages it happens to us four far more often than most people here,” Niamh agreed. “Today has been all about looking at the data you two tumors have brought back, plus the material we got from the aerostats.”
I nodded at this. Aerostats were what we had instead of satellites—Balloons with instruments, up where the kaiju won’t try to fight them or eat them. It’s how we knew about that kaiju in the first place. An aerostat picked up the radiation from the kaiju venting.
“See.” Kahurangi pointed with a fork. “They definitely did not need us there. They could have covered it all with an aerostat.”
Aparna shook her head. “No. Your video of the kaiju was useful. A much better angle. We got a better look at the parasites running away.”
“Not that it did them any good,” I said. “It’s hard to outrun a nuclear blast.”
“You did,” Niamh pointed out.
“We didn’t outrun it, we outflew it.”
“Barely,” Kahurangi added.
“Oh, come on,” Niamh said. “Stop with your whining already. Today you outran a horny kaiju and a mushroom cloud. If you can’t enjoy that, there is a problem with you.”
“Thank you for the horny kaiju footage, by the way,” Aparna said. “That was … interesting to see.”
“You should have caught the live show,” I said.
Aparna nodded. “I’ll bet it was something. Unfortunately, it’s on the back burner for a while because of the exploding kaiju. It’s a huge disruption to the ecosystem.”
“A nuclear explosion will do that,” Kahurangi said.
Aparna shook her head. “It’s not that. Well, it is that, just not the way you think it is. The creatures here have a different relationship to radiation than we do, or life back home does. It scrambles our DNA and is lethal to us in high doses.”
“Turns us into tumors,” Niamh said, toggling fingers between me and Kahurangi.
“Here they use it,” Aparna continued. “It’s not a danger to them like it is to us. A nuclear event happens, anything that isn’t immediately killed by the blast starts heading to the blast site.”
“To do what?” Kahurangi asked.
“To feed, basically. A kaiju going up like that is just part of the life cycle here.”
“So, you’re saying there’s a migration of life to the blast crater.”
“There is. From small insects all the way up to other kaiju. They’re all on the move.”
“Which is the other thing,” Niamh said. “You remember how they said something as powerful as a nuclear explosion thins the wall between this reality and ours?” Kahurangi and I nodded. “Well, we just had a big damn nuclear explosion, and right now the barrier between our world and this one is tissue thin at that location.”
“What’s there on our side?” I asked.
“Apparently, nothing,” Niamh said. “It’s part of a Canadian provincial park or something. No people and nothing larger than a moose, and I’m sorry for any moose who wanders over here. But on this side, we’ve got kaiju. Lots of them. Fucking Kevin and Bella and Edward, and some others, too, all starting to head in that direction. They can accidentally push through to our side. So our job until the breach seals enough to block them is to keep them away. Which means you”—she pointed at Kahurangi again—“will be making lots of your time brewing avoidance pheromone to keep them out, and you”—they pointed to me this time—“will be spending lots of time taking helicopter rides to spray it into their faces.”
CHAPTER
12
So here is what happens when a kaiju explodes with the force of a nuclear bomb.
First, there’s the actual explosion and what comes immediately after.
To start, there’s a nuclear fireball about 250 meters in diameter vaporizing anything inside of it, including the kaiju in question. This made an impressive crater on the shore of that unnamed lake, which because it was on the shore, was now filled in by the lake itself.