"Generation Z."

Zipper and Grace stared at each other for a long while.

“I remember now,” Grace said slowly, eyes open with frightening clarity. “I can remember it all…”

Tears now formed at the corners of them. “You were right, Zipper. You were right.”

Zipper almost took a step back when Grace lunged for her, pulling her into a deep hug, like she was a security blanket or an important stuffed animal. Or maybe a good friend. Grace was letting out ugly sobs now, trying to simultaneously hold onto someone while also rubbing her eyes. Tears seemed out of place in Paradise, yet perhaps they were more human than anything else in Paradise at that moment.

“I’m so lonely!” Grace cried out into Zipper’s shoulder. “It’s just terrible, absolutely terrible! Each and every day, just not getting it, that emptiness inside you, like rats gnawing on your fingertips…”

Zipper really wasn’t sure what to do. She kind of pattered Grace’s head, rubbed her hair, but she kept crying anyway.

“What am I supposed to do? What are any of us supposed to do? We were born at the end of the world, the whole thing’s gone downhill, and we’re all stuck doing it alone, ‘cuz nobody can talk to one another anymore, tribalism and partisanship all that, and people are just upset all the time nowadays…everyone’s struggling, distracted. It’s a bleak, bleak world out there, and I’m supposed to face it by myself?”

Zipper decided honesty was the best policy, to speak right from the heart.

“I have no idea,” she admitted. “A part of me thinks I haven’t learned a goddamn thing this whole time. But maybe that’s because I’ve learned that there’s so much I don’t know. Most of us don’t know a whole lot in the grand scheme of things. Maybe thinking that we all got the answers, and only our answers are good, and not listening to other answers, maybe that’s what got us in this mess in the first place.”

Zipper held her close. “Human nature is seeking answers. Maybe we just need to make our answers respectful, and admit when we don’t know something. I dunno. I don’t have an answer for your loneliness. But I’m here right now, so I can at least listen to you. That’s something anyone can do.”

“But what if nobody was here for me?”

“I don’t know either. Maybe try your best to find someone. And if you don’t succeed, maybe you’ll at least find something good along the way. Getting angry and hurting others because you’re lonely doesn’t really solve much of anything.”

Grace sniffled. “That’s a whole lot of maybe’s.”

“Nothing in life is guaranteed,” Zipper said. “Because life just is. But I can tell you that a whole lot of good things can happen when you go outside and give life your best shot.”

“Maybe I don’t deserve happiness. I'm not good enough for it.”

“Everyone deserves happiness. We just have to try our best with the time given to us. You may have burned a whole lot of bridges. Just try to make new ones, however it ends up.”

Grace and Zipper walked past the tree, up to a ridge with a view of the infinite ocean.

“You sure we can’t stay here?” Grace asked.

“We already made that decision when we ate the apple,” Zipper answered. “Once you leave the womb, there’s no going back, dig. You can’t reverse time. You can’t stop time. You can only go forward.”

One last look at Paradise.

“I don’t know if things’ll work out,” Zipper said. “But I believe they will. And that’s good enough, at least for me.”

They returned to the clearing and fed Star-Man the last of the Apple. The galaxies forming his skin swirled, flashed, and then out from his mouth came the trillion souls of humanity, streaming white flashes like comets, heading upward into the sky, floating overhead. The sky darkened as time returned and the sun began to set. A magnificent shade of orange covered the disintegrating Paradise, the rushing rivers taking out the mud sculptures, all the birds and animals returning to dust and eventually light.

As the island crumbled, Grace cried the last of her cries. The collapsing ridges allowed them to see the Tree of Life from the clearing. Three shades or perhaps ghosts appeared next to the Tree - Jackson Mississippi, Doc Rooney, and the lever.

Jackson dipped his head in respect, finally at peace. The Doc saluted Zipper. The two then turned into the setting light, disappearing into stardust.

“No cap,” said the lever. “You did it, Zipper! Shit back there was absolutely bussin’.”

Zipper smiled. “God…the year 2025 must’ve sucked if people truly talked like that.”

“2025 was like any other year. It had its ups and downs. A lot of downs, maybe. But hopefully people didn’t overlook the ups along the way.”

Zipper nodded. “Take care, chum. And for what it’s worth…I think you’re straight fire, too.”

“Let that girl cook!” proclaimed the lever as it drifted away.

The ten warp gates at the ends of the settled universe disconnected from one another and then drifted off into the infinite cosmos, never to be seen again. The wormholes collapsed, the pocket universe bubbled up, and the settled universe returned to the surface reality, the adventure into escapism finally over. Time, entropy, death, sadness - all existed once more.

But a good kind of happiness, the happiness based on knowledge and understanding, of empathy, of recognizing limitations, of trying your best, of making your way in a world that may not care, but you certainly do - that returned as well.

After all, it’s only in a universe like this where you can truly say-

Gambare, everyone!