"Entropy"

“Uh, hello everyone,” Zipper greeted as she awkwardly stood back up. Fortunately, it wasn’t too awkward because everyone had just been shot.

Billy was knocked out completely. 

Kajanas, strawberry staining his ribs, struggled on one knee, teeth gritted. 

Nixon clutched his arm. 

Grace disappeared into the shadows.

Lawrence crawled across the ground, crimson spreading across his chest, reaching for the lever-

Nixon shot him.

Lawrence skidded away, sprawled on his back, gasping like a fish. “N-Nixon? Why? Once I pulled that lever, our pie armada would've been launched, and Mars would be no more. We would’ve won!”

Nixon’s jowls bounced as he spoke. “Grace and I modified the protocol controlled by that lever. Pulling it doesn’t activate Doc's code and launch the pies. Pulling it activates Jackson's code and launches the pocket dimension.”

Nixon crouched down to eye-level. “I never cared for Earth or Mars, boss. I only care about power. Nixon, a God? Can you imagine!"

He tilted his head. "Careful with who you make allies with. They might not always have the same agenda as you do.”

Another pie-gun shot. Lawrence’s face slumped.

A moment later, Kajanas gave out, collapsing on the ground.

Nixon suddenly spun. “Now, as for my allies-”

Grace shot him first, the raygun stunning him into unconsciousness. 

The lever remained unpulled.

Zipper let out a little heh-heh, unsure how to feel. “Grace, I think…I think we won!” 

She rushed over to her old club president. “No cities got pied and I dunno what a pocket dimension is, but we did it! We stopped the coup, we can haul Lawrence over to Congress, and things’ll go back to normal-”

Grace pointed the raygun at Zipper now. “Not so fast, my friend.”

Zipper slid to a halt, Grace’s sights aimed at her chest. Zipper only now realized that Grace’s right hand, the one holding the raygun, was heavily bandaged, with some angry red poking through, as if it had been frozen recently.

Grace stepped towards the lever. “Once I pull this, we’re all going to Paradise. I’m the Caesar-Messiah, Zipper. For too long, we’ve had the elites running the show. The presidency, Congressmen, bureaucrats, generals, admirals…all cut from the same cloth, no matter how populist they claim to be. Whoever pulls this lever rules over Paradise. They can decide the rules of reality for the pocket dimension. And it’ll be me. Just a normal person. By the people, for the people.”

Zipper eyed the lever. “I, uh, don’t think normal people call themselves messiahs. But why do we need to go to Paradise or whatever? We have the real world right here.”

“Take a good look around you,” Grace said. “You think things are going fine in the real world?”

“Uh, well…just recently, they were, before things went to hell.”

“And that’s the problem,” Grace explained, as if they were back in the club room. “From human lives to civilizations, everything rises and falls. Golden ages and dark ages. We were unfortunate to be born into the beginning of a new dark age. We just missed out on the good times. We had a taste of it, a mere glimpse, but now the world’s collapsing. You think we can simply ‘solve’ wars and poverty? They can be rendered dormant. But rendered extinct, beyond the zero? As long as time passes, things will fall and decay, and the old problems will return. We’ll be doomed to this cycle forever as long as time passes and entropy is inevitable.”

Her hand closed around the lever. “The only way to achieve a harmonic future is to have no future. We need to eliminate entropy. We’re born just to die, and we were born into a time that doesn’t even allow us to have fun along the way. Utopias can’t exist. Not under the current rules. But thanks to this technology - once I install the Law of Man, I can change reality for the better. Imagine a world with no entropy. No time! No more decay, no more collapse, just a perpetual peak, unceasing happiness, a true utopia…”

Zipper didn’t know what to say, feeling like she couldn’t compete with Grace’s college intellect.

“And why stop with entropy?” Grace continued. “Conflicts arise when two people have different solutions to the same problem. Why should humanity remain separate from another? I can remove that rule! We could be united as one, melded together, and nobody would ever be alone again, with true understanding of one another, no more conflicts over race or religion or nation, together forever…”

That's when Zipper's strongest muscle - her mind (though just barely) - pumped out another grand realization.

“Grace,” she said, picking her words carefully. “All this talk, all this smoke and mirrors…are you just sad because you’re afraid you’ll die alone?”

Grace didn’t say nothing, just slightly tilting her head, though her usual amused expression changed into a frown.

“I’m afraid of dying without finding my purpose,” Zipper admitted. “So maybe you got a point about the passage of time. Everyone’s probably a little afraid of dying without achieving their goals. Dying sucks, no other way to slice it. But…that’s just reality, isn’t it? Some dreams won’t ever get fulfilled. Some promises will be broken, some accomplishments will forever remain out of reach. And it truly does suck, but that’s just how it is.”

Zipper raised her head high. “I haven’t found a purpose yet, dig. But these past few months of searching, to be honest, have been some of the greatest of my life. I still don’t have a purpose, but I have a direction, and that direction brought me all over the world, helped me meet so many people, and gave me so many memories along the way. I didn’t accomplish my goal, but so many good things happened that it was still worth it in the end.”

Zipper stepped forward. “Don’t pull that lever. You inspired me to take that journey. Can’t I inspire you to take one now?”

Something unexpected happened. Grace started fuming.

“You. Have. FRIENDS! I have nobody, Zipper, nobody!”

“Those two followers-”

“They effing worshiping me! That’s not friendship!”

“Well, maybe don’t act like a weirdo-”

“Shut up!” Grace cocked the raygun. “You wouldn’t get it. You’ve always had friends with you along the way. I’ve never had anybody. Because nobody gets it. I’m always on the outside looking in, feeling alone in a crowd.”

Zipper grew brave. “You know what? I bet that all along, you’ve never got it.”

“Are you saying it’s my fault?”

“I’m saying that friendship is a two-way street. Did you try your best, or did you just dive headfirst into some sort of cosmic temper tantrum that’s gonna hurt innocent people along the way?”

“You wouldn’t get it,” Grace repeated. “How could you? People like you, always spouting off things like ‘just be happy’, ‘just be grateful’. You think I’d be here right now if I could simply do that? You don’t understand me, and nobody ever will, because the universe doesn’t care about justice, fairness, or equality. The universe is uncaring. The universe just is. There’s a chance I’ll die alone, and I’m not the only one. How can you call that a utopia? If I take humanity to a place where nobody will ever be alone again, to a caring universe, is that such a bad thing?”

It took Grace a moment to register the tears rolling down her face. Both hands moved to wipe her eyes.

Both hands.

Seeing her chance, Zipper made a mad dash, hoping to tackle Grace away from the lever. Grace gasped and fumbled, but her hand hurt from the earlier injury, and she was off-balance in general, struggling to see through ceaseless tears, and there Zipper was, closing the distance, ready to pounce.

But then Zipper tripped on her shoelaces. She smacked her face into the ground and saw stars.

When she blinked them away, she found Grace recomposed, hand on the lever, ready to pull. Zipper knew she would only have one more chance to change her mind.

“Have you tried, uh…making friends through a soccer beer league team?”

Grace pulled the lever.