"The Rat Race"

The Dime Boys waltzed through the old sewers of Big Dig, plutonium packs on their backs, flamethrowers in hand. They woke up bright and early this morning, mainly excited about the fact they were gonna shoot honest-to-God fire, ‘cuz it’s not like you get to do that when you’re sitting around at home all day! Sure, they’ve done similar stuff with the Five-Sense Experiences, but they discovered that nothing quite beats the real thing.

“Maybe Jackson Mississippi and Doc Rooney were on to something,” Zipper supposed as they headed down a crumbling X-Polymer walkway, murky teal water on their left, pipe-lined wall to the right. Flashlights attached to the flamethrowers provided them with light. “They wrote that getting the internships at Proton Industries really helped them out with structure and adult things like that.”

“Never thought I’d get a job,” Magenta Sue said, excited bespectacled eyes on the flamethrower’s snout. “I guess it’s kinda nice. We had to go interview last week, and we aced it. And we had to wake up at 8 this morning, 8 in the damn morning, and we did it! I feel like I could run a marathon or something, dig?”

Nat Cool nodded along, arms swinging wide, bounce in her step.

“I could work for a living!” Zipper declared. She deepened her voice to mimic one of those mythical salarymen you mostly saw on television nowadays. “Honey, I’m home. Work was awful. I got passed over for promotion and was told to work this Saturday.”

Sue giggled and did the same. “You think that’s bad? I got a meeting with HR in an hour, and haven’t even had my coffee yet!”

Low, stupid giggles.

Nat mimicked getting stuck in traffic and beeping on the horn.

The sewer erupted in laughter.

Inspired by the heroes of Eden’s Apple, the intrepid trio got volunteer jobs with the Eden Department of Infrastructure, Animal Control Sub-Department, Ratcatcher Services, Auxiliary Committee. Ratcatcher Services had a surprising number of staff, perhaps disproportionately so, but the Toxic-Rat-Uprising of years ago resulted in Eden still keeping a vigilant eye on what lies below. The trio weren’t convicted felons, so they got the unpaid volunteering job on the spot. But when you already have housing, food, clothing, sweet video games - do you really need to get paid?

Three days in, the Dime Boys decided that yes, they did need to get paid.

“This is absolutely effing awful,” Sue mumbled. She walked hunched over from the weight over working a 9 - 5. “And you’re telling me people had to do this all the time?”

“What a way to make a living,” Zipper muttered, heavy bags under their eyes. “It’s tough, not being able to work from home. The commute is awful, can you believe we gotta go fifteen minutes both ways…”

Nat had already developed a mild alcoholism, and everyone ‘round the office knew she mixed whiskey into her coffee, but nobody was sure how to bring it up in polite conversation.

“How could Jackson and Doc Rooney find meaning in something like this?” complained Sue.

Zipper watched their shadows dance along the walls. It almost seemed like the weightless black shapes were mocking them. “I guess it’s ‘cuz they got to do something they liked doing. They got to work in some engineering stuff. Do we like ratcatching?”

“I like shooting fire,” Sue answered. They came to a large chamber, a pool of water in the center. The roof was X-Polymer, but the walls had cement mixed in - this must’ve been real old. Sue stopped the group and marched forward, hips thrust forward, flamethrower in combat position.

“Hey, wait.” Zipper put a hand on Sue’s shoulder. “It’s against the rules to shoot the flamethrower unless it’s at a rat or something rodent-adjacent.”

Sue shook her head. “I’m starting to understand how people could survive the grind. They and their coworkers would do stupid shit to pass the time.”

Trigger pulled. The flames jetted out from the nozzle, a beam clashing into the wall, flames licking outwards. Orange and red flickered across the faces of the Dime Boys, all of them staring slackjawed at the phenomenon. It’s kinda like, Zipper supposed, when Doc Rooney drove a forklift for the first time, and the whole warehouse stopped to watch.

Smoke rose from the wall as Sue released the trigger. The trio glanced at each other.

Three jets of flame now smacked the wall. The low, stupid giggles returned, and then laughter bounced around the sewers again.

“Lunch break!” Zipper declared.

One hour later.

“Smoke break!” Sue declared.

One hour later.

The flamethrowers finally went silent. Their tanks were still half-full. The three left the smoke-filled chamber in good spirits.

Zipper glanced at her hands, feeling like she was building something in her mind or something. “That was a blast! For two hours, I just got in the zone and worked. Only passing thoughts here and there, but I was in that flow state, yanno, the one Shaolin monks get into.”

“If we weren’t watching toons tonight,” Sue said. “I’d say we should watch some kung fu movies.”

“Oh yah, speaking of toons - say, Sue, why do all the girls in your Japanimations talk about their boobies so much? Is that what girls are supposed to do? Should we be doing that?”

Nat instinctively covered her chest.

“Aw, don’t worry,” said Zipper. “There’s nothing for you to talk about there, nyuk-nyuk-nyuk.”

Nat frowned.

Sue rubbed her chin. “Ah, I remember now. It’s a cultural thing. You see, in Neo-Neon-Tokyo, most girls grow up to be big-chested mothers and older sisters that say ‘ara ara’ to young boys.”

“What’s that mean?”

“What’s what mean?”

“Ara ara.”

“I don’t know, I don’t speak Japanese.”

“Ah, well I guess that cultural thing makes sense.” Zipper beamed. “Look at us. Working hard, learning hard, being multicultural! Maybe jobs aren’t so bad after all.”

“Say that in an hour from now,” Sue answered, smiling, teasing, so the two started shadow-boxing, errant streams of flamethrower going off, forcing Nat to duck and cover.

“You got any other fun facts for me, Sue?”

Sue raised a finger. “Here’s a fun one I learned the other day. The universe is gonna die one day.”

Zipper stopped smiling. “Wha?”

“Yeah. It’s called heat death. Entropy.”

“W-waddya mean?”

“Well, energy can’t be created or destroyed, right?”

“Is that true?”

“Yeah, that’s what the Hypernet sez.”

“Really?”

Sue took the lead down the next patch of sewer. “Energy can’t be created or destroyed, but it can either do work, or it can be useless. Energy that can do work can be made useless, but useless energy can’t be made to do work again. Every little interaction is this grand cosmic enterprise of ours makes a microscopic amount of energy useless. But it’ll add up. One day, all energy will be useless, and that’ll be that. No more tacos, no more movies, no more movement, no more stars. The universe will still exist, but nothing will ever happen again, just a dark, cold existence for all time, except time won’t even have any meaning anymore, it’ll be as dead as can be…”

Zipper thought about polar bears and extinction. Shadows fell on her.

“Even the sun’ll be gone?”

“Oh, it’ll blow up long before that. It’s gonna fry Earth one day.”

“You’re not pulling my leg, right? ‘Cuz if this is true…we gotta tell someone. Why is nobody talking about this? T-This should be a priority!”

Sue shrugged. “Well, it won’t happen for trillions and trillions of years.”

“But still. Death. What a sad way to go.” Zipper shook her head. “Why can’t we get them back to work?”

“Dunno. Once you stop working for a while, I guess it’s hard to work again.”

Zipper ran her fingers along the flamethrower. “I ‘spose so…”

“Uh-huh,” Sue said, ‘cuz her stomach was rumbling and she didn't care for the deeper implications of cosmology. Nat nibbled on some cheese and crackers she brought, frowning when Sue stuck a hand out. Then her eyes widened, and she pointed at an upcoming bend in the sewer.

“Rat!” Zipper and Sue yelled, since they had a wager over who’d get the first kill (loser buys the other a drink!). This was the first one they’d seen, and those primal instincts kicked up, ones dedicated to conquering and all that, and they leveled their flamethrowers at the target. But this rat was no square, not like the dumbos from his nest who got picked off earlier, so he scurried away before the triggers were pulled.

“After him!” the rat heard, not understanding the words, but understanding the intention. Little feet pounded the X-Polymer floor, sneakers behind getting closer. The rat breathed hard, ‘cuz it was in new territory now, away from the nest, and didn’t his momma always squeak at him never to stray too far? But it’s hard, being a sewer rat, because they haven’t solved things like war, pollution, disease, and scarcity. Only the humans have, and they don’t share things like that with sewer rats. Those who live above regarded the rats as little more than varmint. Constant extermination campaigns can take a toll on your psyche. Why do you think the toxic-rats revolted in the first place? Who do you think made them toxic? Perhaps the sewer rats should’ve had a Meiji Restoration, or converted to Christianity, or made themselves subservient like cattle, and then the humans would’ve shared the fruits of the future with ‘em, but the toxic-rats revolted, guided by the backroom politicking of rat kings fat on cheese who sent the gnashing teeth of their starving juveniles off to war on the surface, and now the rats as a whole were reduced to the status of prey for bored twenty-somethings…

Dead end! The rat stumbled to a halt in a small chamber, a concrete wall ahead of it with no openings to squeak through. Before he could turn around, the trio arrived, flamethrowers ready.

“Like a cornered rat,” said Sue, dead serious.

Zipper nodded. “Cheesed to meet ya.”

Sue paused. “...I don’t get it.”

Zipper edged in front of the confused Sue and prepared to win the bet. No sights on the flamethrower, just point and shoot. Zipper put her foot forward, bracing herself. She and the rat made eye contact. They stared at each other for a long while, thinking about time, fate, circumstances, human nature, good and evil.

“Death,” Zipper finally said. She lowered the flamethrower. “What an awful way to go-”

Nat roasted the rat.

“N-Nat, what the hell?!” Zipper cried out.

Nat shrugged.

“Hey, look!” Sue pointed at the wall. “It’s still alive-”

Nat roasted it again, turning on the plutonium for good measure. When she stopped firing, all that remained was ash and bones.

Zipper struggled to speak. “I just…I just…I just had some big thing about death, and how death sucks, and how the universe doesn’t care, and death is merely another state of life for it, but we humans, we have ability to care, and to prevent death, and you j-just up and roast the thing-”

Nat held Zipper’s shaking hands. When Zipper calmed down, Nat let go, revealing a coupon for margaritas at Crash Landing.

“Are you serious?” Zipper called out as Nat departed. “Did you just wanna win the bet?”

Nat simply glanced back and held up a white sign that said

EASY COME, EASY GO.