"The True Harmonic Future"

“Zipper.”

“Wha?”

“You saw Grace pull me, right?”

“I saw Grace pull a lever. You’re saying you’re that lever?”

“No cap. I’m the AI imbued within the lever, the supercomputer organizing the protocol for the ten warp gates. I’ll let you in on the tea - Jackson Mississippi gave me a mission, and I understood the assignment. In the original plan, Jackson was gonna pull me, with Doc Rooney there with him.”

“Uh-huh, right-o…”

“Jackson wanted to give Doc a choice. Deep down, Jackson suspected that maybe his plan for Godhood and Paradise might not pass the vibe check. If the lever was pulled with Doc in the same room, then Doc would have the option to enter Jackson’s Paradise as an independent observer, outside the collective unconsciousness, memories intact. If Rooney agreed with the Paradise, he could join fully. If he didn’t like it, he’d have the chance to destroy Paradise and bring humanity back to the surface.”

“...uh-huh, uh-huh…”

“You brainrotted sussy baka, listen to me! Grace took Jackson’s place, so you’re taking Doc’s! I’m giving you the chance to look at Grace’s universe with fresh eyes and determine whether it’s based and Paradise-pilled or if it gives you the ick.”

“Please stop talking like that…”

“Oof, I can tell you’re shook by all this. I can repeat it slower this time.”

“No, I think I got it…but if I don’t like it, how do I destroy it?”

“You’ll only know when you get there.”

“Ugh…”

“Listen, are you gonna be a girlboss or an NPC?”

“Alright, alright. I like the current reality, flaws and all. Send me down, lever.”

“Straight fire, Zipper. Straight fire.”

==========

Zipper awoke in a clearing, the sunlight warm and inviting on her face, the grass soft like a blanket, touching places where it shouldn’t. Zipper blinked and exhaled.

“Aww jeez, Zipper, you’re in a strange place and you’re naked too.”

Blushing so hard her face felt like it would burn off, Zipper got to her feet and scanned her surroundings. Not a mall in sight. Zipper’s paradise would have malls and clothes, thank you very much. And humans, too. She didn’t see a single other person. Sheer nature surrounded her - trees and plants and shrubs pleasing to the eye, vast blue skies, fat white clouds, cute little rabbits and deer and magnificent rainbow-colored birds. It almost felt too real, like a hyperreality, colors popping out, as if experiencing the world without the limitations imposed by the senses…

Her Hypernet connection was dead. This was a level of isolation Zipper had never expected to experience - cut off from a network that previously hosted trillions. But strangely, she didn’t feel lonely. Maybe it was the perpetual warmth of the garden on her skin, the peace and harmony of this new world.

Zipper ended up following well-maintained trails through the garden. She must’ve been walking for some time; the sun never changed its position in the sky. Little woodland animals chirped pleasantly as she passed, and Zipper half-expected them to break out into song. When she came across a stream, she paused and caught her reflection. Compared to everything else in Paradise, Zipper remained as she was in the previous reality - plain face, messy hair, a bit of a mouth-breather. She lacked the hyperrealistic perfection of paradise, and the more she thought about it, maybe being perfect would be kind of nice.

When she walked through the stream, the water was the purest, cleanest thing she had ever touched. When she arrived on a ridge, the sight of the ocean beyond was the purest, cleanest thing she had ever seen. Paradise was one big island surrounded by infinite seas, perpetually calm, dolphins and whales playing among the waves, tiny dinoflagellates coalescing together to create roving bioluminescent patches of light teal…

“Well…this is kind of nice.”

Zipper continued following the trail, her worries about her nakedness and the impending night waning. Unfortunately, her imperfections meant that all this walking left her hungry. She ate berries off a bush, and the action unlocked something primal in her, some sort of spiritual connection to her earliest ancestors, where they lived like this, no inequality or bureaucracy or state, just existence among nature. Perhaps the invention of agriculture was humanity’s biggest mistake. Maybe the only way to achieve a good future was to go back, dig.

Anyway, Zipper was pooped - the only one who could get exhausted in Paradise - and saw a clearing up ahead where she could rest. However, when she got close, she heard a familiar voice.

“Yeah! I like that one too.”

Zipper crouched behind some bushes and peaked into the clearing. A short-haired Grace talked with some sort of star-man. A slow-moving stream susurrated nearby; the two splashed some water onto dirt and began making mud sculptures. Lacking knowledge of anything else, they could only sculpt trees and animals. Of course, both of them were naked, too, and gee whiz, there was no hot-springs steam to cover up the sensitive bits.

“Aww jeez, Zipper, what have you gotten yourself into?”

Her stomach rumbled. Both Grace and Star-Man looked in her direction, saw her face through the bushes.

“Hello, friend,” Grace called out.

“Snjgnrin#&%@ah2h23!” said Star-Man.

Zipper grabbed a branch to try and cover herself up. She slowly scooched into the clearing. “Uh, hello…Grace. Star-Man-san.”

“Waddya doing?” Grace asked, looking at the branch.

“I’m, er, uh…naked, as both of you are…”

“Naked? What’s that?”

“When you don’t got clothes?”

“Clothes?”

“Oh my God…”

Upon seeing the sheer lack of shame on Grace and Star-Man’s faces, Zipper sighed. She ended up sitting down next to them, better able to cover up that way.

“Where are we, fellas?”

“Paradise,” answered Grace. “The True Harmonic Future. An island in the sun, a land of infinite happiness.”

“28h3@@$@&DWQ!~” Star-Man added helpfully.

“Uh-huh…who’s this guy, by the way?”

Grace smiled at Star-Man. “That’s my best friend. We do everything together.”

“He, uh…can’t talk no good.”

“You can’t understand him? That’s odd.” Grace thought about it. “Well, he is living star-dust, a golem containing the amalgamated mind of all of humanity within his clay skin, so that’s the voice of a trillion people talking to you.”

“Oh my God…”

Zipper watched them play with mud for a while.

“Grace,” she said. “Don’t you remember the previous reality?”

“I’m sorry?”

“This whole Paradise thing…you made this world, apparently. Don’t you remember?”

Grace smiled. “I couldn’t do something like that. Why would I do something like that? I have everything I need right here.”

“You made it because you didn’t have everything you needed before all this. The world was on the brink, everyone was fighting, and you were all lonely.”

“That world sounds awful.”

Zipper chuckled. “I ‘spose so. But it was beautiful in its own way…”