"Neon Genesis"

Time didn’t pass, the sun never set. Only Zipper still needed to sleep. Grace and Star-Man watched her curiously as she gathered up leaves for a makeshift bed, still holding the branch the whole time. Zipper found herself laughing at their bumbling attempts to help. She expected to sleep with one eye open, but between the gentle atmosphere of Paradise and her exhaustion, she fell into a deep sleep.

When she awoke, Grace watched over with a big smile.

“Wanna make mud sculptures with me?”

Zipper smiled back. “I would, dig.”

She left the branch behind.

The three sat by the riverside and played in the mud. Zipper did her best to construct a mud castle, and then had to explain to Grace and Star-Man what a castle was. That led her to explain knights and peasants, jousts and battles, dynastic wars, industrial wars, the mechanization of society and rising inequality, The Big War, the perceived harmonic future and the end of history that was ‘sposed to arrive in 2999, only for everything to go sideways.

“That sounds terrible,” concluded Grace. “Especially that anime thing.”

The more Zipper thought about it-

“Yeah…I guess it was.”

“Days” passed, which was really just Zipper dividing the time between sleeping, of which she had less and less need of. Each "day", playing in the mud, Zipper had to re-explain the concepts she discussed earlier.

“You really don’t remember this stuff?” Zipper asked, feeling like a frustrated teacher.

Grace shook her head. “I don’t need to remember. I don’t need to know.”

“Wha? But gaining knowledge, why, that may be the most important thing there is. My whole shtick in the previous reality was trying to find myself and learn more about who I am.”

“But why?” Grace asked. “Is this about that human nature thing? About how…human nature involves conquest and expansion, about the need to know everything and dominate their environment? That sounds like it could lead to a lot of trouble. We don’t need to know anything, really. Just how the sunlight feels on your skin, how the grass feels beneath your feet…”

The more Zipper thought about it-

“Yeah…I guess you’re right.”

Zipper found herself no longer needing to…what was that word again? When you deliberately close your eyes and lie down to rest? But not knowing the word didn’t really matter no more. Nothing truly mattered here, and that was the beauty of it all. An eternal peace, hanging out with her best friends, and now that she could understand more and more of Star-Man, she was enraptured by the stories he told, of all the various intersecting thoughts and harmony among the trillions of humans he served as a container for…

Some “time” later, while eating berries just for the wonderful taste, Zipper supposed she could stay here forever.

Then she frowned.

“Staying here,” she murmured, “Implies that there’s somewhere else I could be.”

Zipper stood up, started pacing. “Why am I here?”

Grace and Star-Man looked up from their sculptures.

“Waddya mean?” Grace asked.

Zipper spread her arms wide. “Why am I here? Why are any of us here? What’s the purpose of this whole thing?”

Grace pondered this while Star-Man continued playing. “I guess it’s to be happy.”

“Yeah, but…who put us here? How does this whole thing work?” Zipper couldn’t stop pacing. “Why are trees different from plants? Why are the ocean and sky blue? Where do clouds come from? Why am I me, and you you? Why are we different?”

Grace waved her concerns away. “That doesn’t matter, does it? Will knowing all that really make you happier?”

Zipper started dreaming. “But if we knew all that, then maybe…we could learn how to cross the ocean. Fly across the sky. Maybe we could even find out what’s above the sky. I don’t wanna make mud sculptures by the riverside forever. I don’t wanna sit around doing Nothing. I want to…find my Something.”

“But won’t that make you sad?” Grace asked. “If you look for this Something, and you don’t find it, then you’d end up feeling bad. And the longer you don’t find it, the more worried you’ll feel about potentially never finding it. You should keep making mud sculptures with me. Searching for something greater can only make you worse off.”

Zipper gave her a small smile. “But if I find it, I’ll be better off. And I get the feeling that trying my best, even if I don’t succeed, will be reward enough.”

She extended her hand to Grace. “Now, c’mon. You mentioned that you couldn’t eat that apple on the Tree of Life, right? Let’s go eat Eden’s Apple. I bet it’ll open our eyes.”

Grace averted her eyes. “But…I just know that bad things will happen if I eat that fruit.”

“Good and bad,” Zipper answered. “But that’s just how life is. Deep down, in the furthest reaches of your heart…don’t you really want to know?”

Grace glanced at Star-Man. He was engrossed in his sculpture and hadn’t heard a thing.

“Alright,” she whispered. “I’ll take you to the Tree.”

They slipped off, down a winding trail through the Garden. The popping colors and hyperreality seemed to call to them, urging them to remain ignorant, and perhaps that would lead to perpetual happiness, but when you see birds up there soaring across the blue…don’t you just wanna take to the skies too? Even with the danger of falling?

They arrived at the tree, just a simple oak with a shiny red apple hanging from a lone branch. Grace swallowed and looked for support; Zipper nodded in encouragement.

Grace reached for the Apple. “I think I’d like to know why I’m here, too.”

She plucked it; nothing happened, no bad things occurred.

The two women tore chunks off the Apple.

Seeing that it was good, and desiring knowledge, the two ate pieces of the forbidden fruit.

Nothing happened for a bit. And then-

Grace’s eyes widened.

“Good Lord…I’ve been naked this whole time.”