"Z."

It was six years ago, year 2993, back when President Stanley Vice-President, with Amadeus Lawrence of Pioneer Defense Contractors standing behind him, announced to the trillions of listeners in the Human Union that he was officially declaring war on nothing. During these heady days early in the war effort, young Zipper Chute, in a romantic mood, decided to make her contribution by Doing Something. That something was joining the Bronx-12 High School Literature Club, namely to impress a guy she was crushing on (in the end, he only had eyes for Mary-Ann Sodenholzer).

It was the height of summer, the sun burning brightly, blue skies and warm weather, picture perfect. Despite it all, Club President Grace Pillow still wore a flannel, for she was always ahead of the curve, something that deeply impressed the impressionable Zipper. Grace was slick, short, sulky, with raven-colored hair falling to her shoulders, blending into the flannel. Whenever Zipper entered the room, her club president would always be sitting atop a desk, one leg crossed over the other, eyes deep in thought, old-school physical book in her hands.

It was just the two of ‘em that day. After entering the classroom, Zipper watched the way the sunlight fell through the tall windows onto Grace for a long while. When Grace finally noticed her, Zipper went red and pretended to rummage through her backpack.

“You’ve made it,” Grace said sweetly, closing her book. “You’ve missed club for a few days in a row now.”

Zipper averted her eyes. “Ah, you know…when we declared the War on Nothing, I was pretty excited and all, and I wanted to help by doing something. But then I realized, you know, it’s not like I really need to do anything.”

“Eden provides everything,” Grace supposed. She slipped off the desk and looked out the windows, loafers seemingly gliding across the floor. Her maturity and well, grace, was so apparent to Zipper that they almost felt tangible, tasting like plums, the same scent as Grace’s hair.

“I’ve been reading this book, see,” Grace said. “Do you know what the hierarchy of needs is?”

Zipper stopped her sniffing and thought about it. She badly wanted to impress her. “Ah, yah, it’s the…uh…you know…”

A smile appeared on Grace’s face. “To put it simply, it’s the list of things you spend life searching for, one after the other. We already have guaranteed food and shelter, see. But what comes after the basic needs? It’s identity, Zipper. Who are you?”

“Well, uh…” Twiddling her thumbs. “I’m Zipper Chute.”

“And who is Zipper Chute?”

“...me?”

A chuckle. “Everybody needs something, whether they realize it or not. An identity beyond the mere name. Lawrence is the Earth Planetary Manager, Vice-President is the President. I’m Grace Pillow, I’m gonna be a writer, I’m gonna be successful, I’m gonna have a penthouse in the orbital ring, I’m gonna write something so good that it’ll come to define the entire fourth millennium. The problem is that you gotta invent your own identity nowadays, and people can distract themselves long enough that the need gets submerged, forgotten, like you're trapped in quick sand, and then people wonder why they feel so empty…”

“Gee whiz, a writer,” Zipper answered dreamily, half-distracted herself, since her ne’er-do-well classmate Magenta Sue was busy brain-flashing her one of those four-panel Japanese comics-

INVASION

UFOs are shooting laser beams at Neo-Neon-Tokyo!

A fidgeting Funaki-chan gathers her courage in the underground bunker and turns to the other occupant. “D-Daisuke-kun, throughout all these years…I’ve loved you!”

Sitting next to her, her classmate ponders this.

“Who’s Daisuke?”

Zipper shook her head and focused.

“A writer, wow,” she said. “That must be why you read so much.”

“Physical copies are the best,” Grace answered, holding her book up to Zipper. “Most people have their Brain Implants read to them…well, most people use Five-Sense-Experiences nowadays…but reading’s good for you. When’s the last time you read something?”

“A-haha, well…”

“You should take a look at this.” Grace held up the book, titled Eden’s Apple. “Here, let me read you a passage. This is an old, old book.”

Grace and Zipper sat on a desk together, hips touching ever so slightly, as Grace began to read-

“It was a cold February evening somewhere in Chinatown, cheap Beijing beers to keep Jackson and the Doc warm, as they searched the streets for something to do, nowhere to go but trouble, just like any other collegiate night-”

And so Grace took Zipper back to the exotic city of Boston, in the fantastical year of 2025 when the book was published…

Jackson Mississippi and Doc Rooney, wearing black winter jackets, maroon-and-white Cushing College beanies, ambled through the squat, colonial, brick North End, hands in pockets, Jackson thinking of a K-Pop star, the Doc listing out-

“Pumpernickel…rye…sourdough…whole wheat…”

“What are you cooking up, Doc?”

“Bread, Jackson. Gyatt damn, I’m hungry.”

“But we literally just ate Chinese noodles. Shit was fire.”

ZIPPER: They really talked like this back then? Neat-o.

A scream cut through the wind.

The Doc replaced his hunger for bread with a hunger for justice. He and Jackson made a beeline in the direction of the cry for help, bringing them to a three-story building aged into a fine brown color. Two nods. Jackson kicked open the locked door and they stepped inside a dark hallway.

Another scream, two stories up. The crusaders charged up the stairs, moving even faster once they heard the dark laughter from above.

They arrived just in time. The top floor featured a large room, bathed in the green glow of test tubes, vacuum tubes, tubas, sensors, monitors, gauges, pipes, brass, steam. A massive man, skin bronzed by the notorious winter sun of Boston, laughed at his captive, a young blonde chained to the wall.

“Why, that’s Cushing College journalist-influencer Sarah Jessica Emily!” Doc realized. “She went missing yesterday…”

The man turned and snarled.

“Of course,” spat Jackson. “It’s our cross-town rival from freshman year, the dastardly Molasses Flood.”

Molasses Flood, of course, was born from an experiment gone wrong. When Jackson and the Doc exposed the plagiarism in his award-winning essay on viscosity, this cheating freshman fled from the school cops back to his laboratory, only to be exposed to a pot of radioactive molasses! The cruel concoction twisted him and turned him into half-man, half-syrup!

“I was investigating reports of an inhuman molasses smell in the area,” Sarah called out. “When this fiend caught me. Careful, he’s quite sus!”

“With the power of my human sacrifice,” Molasses explained, smiling quite evilly, “I will melt and transform the snow in the White Mountains into pure molasses, and this flood will wipe out New England, New York, and yes, even - Ohio!”

“Not if we can help it,” Jackson said, Doc nodding, rolling up their sleeves. The two sigmas charged the monster, intent on charging him with the fanum tax for his misdeeds.

Grace ended up reading the whole chapter, describing the fight between good and evil, Molasses’ plan an apparent metaphor for something called climate change, Sarah symbolic of the downfall of mainstream media (ZIPPER: What’s that?), the whole thing an apparent rip-off of some vestigial superhero trend, Jackson and the Doc connecting Molasses to an international financial system intent on squeezing every ounce of human capital from the waking lives of the servile class, the insincerity and duplicity of charismatic Caesar-esque demagogues, the coming hyperinflation, civil wars, microplastics in the water and protestors in the streets, and a lack of good magical girl anime in recent years.

Zipper found this world appalling, yet enthralling, so unlike her own, but so interesting, these people of a thousand years ago with their exotic problems. And soon, as Grace regaled her with the tales of Jackson and the Doc, Zipper found that old muscle, that thing called imagination, coming back to life, whirring, wheezing from the sudden exertion, gears grinding, as she suddenly got the idea that hey, you know, if I had lived a thousand years ago, this would’ve been my life…