"Please Please Z."

With their shift over for the day, the Dime Boys jostled around the sewer, since Zipper could’ve sworn she saw on the map that there was a shortcut to Crash Landing on the surface. That pissed Sue off, ‘cuz of course Zipper just had to keep taking ‘em into the unknown, of course they couldn’t just retrace their steps, nah that’d be too easy. She could feel her brain matter melting in real time.

Zipper was upset about the death of Franky Foo, who doted on his wife and two daughters, liked to pump iron, just wanted to earn an honest wage, and all the other stories she made up about the dead rat. The holographic projection coming out of Nat’s eye showing off the various cocktails at Crash Landing wasn’t particularly helping. To be fair, Nat was doing it on purpose, ‘cuz according to Zipper, she was a murderer now or something. It’s a rat! A toxic-rat! It was radioactive, for crying out loud, and it most certainly didn’t dream of one day breaking out big in the musical scene down at Rat-Hollywood, on the other side of the sewer…

Yes, the Dime Boys were quite upset. The 9-5 grind had run them ragged, the death of Franky hung in the air like something noxious, and they were wandering aimlessly around in the sewers. For the first time, they knew what Wednesdays used to feel like, back when you had to work for a living.

Just when all hope seemed lost, they came across the first signs of civilization - man-made lights. A soft blue glow emerged from tiny bulbs stretching across X-Polymer walls. The women followed it, their pace quickening, and they rounded a few chambers before coming across a long subterranean street.

“The shortcut is somewhere ‘round here,” Zipper said, her mood picking up slightly. "There's an elevator to the surface."

But then they remembered they were in the underground society, a-and you’ve heard the stories, right? They say murderers (Eden murder rate: 0 per capita) and cannibals (Eden cannibal rate: 0 per capita) lived down here, along with con men, smugglers, bandits, timeshare salesmen. The underground was where you went when the surface just wasn’t for you.

“What brave girls we are,” Zipper said as they advanced, hands gripped tight on their flamethrowers. “Walking through skidrow unarmed.”

The walked down an old colonial street, eroding brick building rooftops supporting the X-Polymer ceiling, blue streetlamps jury-rigged together with previously trashed Plutonian fractal ice. There were several junkyard piles of old electronics and robotics, the occasional scavenger drone hovering around, scanning materials. Zipper felt grateful for the hum - the surface was constant noise. Without the drone’s droning or hum of the streetlamps, it would’ve been dead silent down here.

Zipper nearly jumped out of her skin when a Neanderthal emerged from a pile of junked drones. The three women leveled their flamethrowers at him, but paused at the sight of the man’s own flamethrower and plutonium pack on his back.

“Oh, hullo,” the hairy man said, shaggy hair down to his shoulders. “Guess, uh, we’re both ratcatchers, eh? Groovy.”

“What’s with that?” Zipper asked.

“Ah, the accent?” he said, voice nasally. “I’ve been pretending to use it for so long that it’s become real, dig…”

He introduced himself as Rango Stark and invited them over for a drink with the lads. The Dime Boys, knowing of stranger danger, yet not seeing a van or hearing an offer of candy, agreed. The safeties remained off on their flamethrowers, though.

Rango brought them to a house with a sign that said POLYMERMEN HQ. Inside was a small beige living room with two ratty gray couches, two ratty men on said couches, and a kitchen off to the side, where a yellow blanket covered with little stitchings of French horns lay discarded. The ratcatchers discarded their flamethrowers for the time-being.

“I got guests, fellas,” Rango said, introducing the Dime Boys to Walrus Jackson and “Slow” Dogwaddle, posteriors fused to the couch by this point, and then introduced Joe Weeze, pointing at the blanket. Zipper squinted, but then the blanket started moving, and out popped mop-topped Joe.

“Sorry,” Joe said, draping the blanket ‘round him. “I’ve been feeling blue recently. Or all the time, maybe. A girl stole something of mine.”

“Ah…” said Zipper, not sure how to react. “You mean your heart?”

“Nah, something literal.”

“Oh…”

Things grew quiet. The Dime Boys generally stuck to their rooms, see, their only interactions coming from talking with each other or arguing with Europeans online. The f/k/a Polymermen generally stuck to their rooms, see, their only interactions coming from talking to each other or the waifus on their dating sims. The arrested development meant these youths had little understanding of how to talk to strangers, let alone the other gender.

Sue, feeling socially confident because she aced the ratcatcher interview (which only involved talking with an alternative intelligence who was not programmed to test her sweating, clamminess, nervousness, or off-handed negative remark about Martians, only her criminal history), approached the two on the couch, recognizing the game. “Say, I’ve played this one too. It’s pretty good.”

Like a nature documentary, we can see men and women of the modern generation struggling to interact, for Walrus said, “You get to the part where you can [REDACTED TO COMPLY WITH CONTEST RULES REGARDING EXCESSIVE SEXUAL CONTENT]? You wanna [ENGAGE IN SAID CONTENT] with me, hee-hoo?”

Sue grew red and slapped him. “Baka!”

Walrus didn’t understand. That kind of stuff always worked on the (two-dimensional) women he talked to.

The girls sort of aggregated to one side of the room, the boys to the other. Things fell quiet, so they all defaulted to moving through the Hypernet, eyes flashing as they caught up on the news, sports, random posts. Joe might’ve coughed a few times. Having never had a group of girls over before, the f/k/a Polymermen didn’t know how to politely kick them out. Having never been over a guy’s apartment before, the Dime Boys didn’t know how to politely leave.

Zipper frowned, ‘cuz she said she was a brave girl and all.

“Do you play the horn?” she asked Joe, pointing at the little stitches.

“Ah, nah, I found this in a dumpster. I play the guitar.”

“Wow, so you put the words into the self-playing program? People can make such good music nowadays.”

Joe shook his head. “No, love. I play it old-school, fingers and pick.”

Zipper gasped. “Really? You gotta show us.”

Joe tugged at his collar. “Ah, I don’t know, we’re not that good. We only picked it up a few years ago, on-and-off, after this girl told us we really were Polymermen, just plastic in human form.”

“A few years? That’s some dedication. Nobody can do things for that long no more. It’s always onto something new…”

Joe still looked reluctant, but Rango motioned them all to follow him down the hall. They arrived in what must’ve been the dining room once, but was now emptied out in favor of their musical equipment, an old rug, and a few tables. Joe showed off his guitar, made in Neo-Neon Tokyo, which made Sue gasp in pleasure. 

When Joe played a few riffs, and Zipper felt that electric current drift through the room, drift right through her, she forgot all about heat death and entropy and the dead Franky Foo for the moment, or at least accepted that sometimes, that’s how things are. I mean, she had never just sat around and listened to a friend jam out, how neat-o was that?

Ringo showed off the drums to Sue and Nat, and then Walrus and Slow wandered in, offering them microwaved pizza. Rango made tea which Nat spiked with whiskey, and that old muscle - communicating with someone new and making friends - awoke in all of them, ‘cuz humans are social animals, ‘cept we forget sometimes…

At long last, the band with no name got behind their instruments - Joe on guitar, Walrus on bass, Slow on keyboard, Rango on drums.

“Fun things are fun,” supposed a red-faced Joe, and off they went, playing one of their songs, electro-blues, light music, made for light times. They gave Zipper a basic rundown of music theory or something, something about chord progressions, beats, riffs, solos, but Zipper didn’t really understand. Music wasn’t made for words, maybe. How can you make theories about something intangible? Some things don’t need names. Some things just oughta be.

Sitting on the rug, Zipper started clapping along, so did Sue, and Nat held up her lighter, moving it back-and-forth slowly like a drunk firefly. Lightning flashed from the guitar, rolling thunder off the drums, giddiness of a new love, fireworks and flames on the beach, handcrafted feelings, artisans behind the wheel. An original song, built over three years - this is what it’s like to create something, not regurgitate, not vegetate, but to come alive and put forth something into the world.

That’s what Zipper was thinking. Out of her came, “Wwooooooaaaaaah, yeeeeah!”

When the performance ended, Joe grabbed a microphone from the table and handed it to Zipper. “Your turn, love. If we’re gonna play again, you gotta sing.”

“Me? Sing?” said Zipper. “I don’t know...I’m not too good at remembering lyrics, my kind of music is more instrumental-psychedelia, dig, and I don’t even know how to sing or what to sing.”

Joe smiled and tapped on his chest. “It’s all in here. Sing a whisper from the heart.”

Before she could protest, Sue and Nat hauled Zipper to her feet. She swayed back and forth, beige room spinning ‘round her, but sometimes in life, you gotta shit or get off the pot. Zipper wanted to start shitting more.

The band began playing, and Zipper reached deep into her heart, letting emotions with a dash of whiskey do the work, and she sang to rhythm and electro-blues:

Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh

I’m a do-nothing kid

On a do-nothing skid

No place in the world for me.

I scratch my ass

In ol’ Boston, Mass

Something something ya see.

But I wanna do something

And change my ways

I got a job and it blew.

Nothing seems fun under this ol’ suuuuuuuuuuuuuun

Na-na-na fuck you Sue.

“Slander!” Sue cried out, but Zipper did a bow, face flushed, feeling halfway between embarrassed and a happy sort of goofy. The band finished with a triumphant sound and clashing of metal before taking bows of their own.

When Joe approached, Zipper grinned and started shadow-boxing, so Joe did it right back. 

“Here’s to doing something,” they said, the electricity staying in the air and in the heart long after the last note for the evening.