Entropolis

Chapter 1. Morning of a Criminal

The alarm clock wheezed at seven in the morning. The sound was nasty and rattling — the spring inside had weakened long ago, and the case had cracked when it fell three years ago. A perfect, expensive alarm clock.

Mark opened his eyes with difficulty and, first thing, inhaled the musty air of the room with pleasure. The window had been tightly closed for a month so that, God forbid, fresh wind wouldn't blow in and carry away the precious dust. A sunbeam struggled through the glass, which was covered in a greasy, oily film. Dried flies lay on the windowsill — a sign of stability and comfort.

Mark sat up in bed, lowered his feet to the floor, and grimaced. The parquet creaked under his feet.

"Too quiet," he whispered.

He stood up, walked to the rickety wardrobe, and examined the floorboard with anxiety. Yesterday, he had accidentally spilled glue there while trying to loosen a chair leg, and now a patch of parquet was gleaming treacherously. It was smooth. Disgustingly, defiantly, vilely smooth.

Mark's heart stopped. If the Housing Supervision inspector came by today and saw this shine... The fine for "unauthorized improvement" would eat up half his salary. And if they decided it was done intentionally, they could slap him with corrective labor at the city dump, forcing him to sort trash by color, which was considered a humiliation worse than death.

Mark darted to the kitchen. He had to act fast. He opened the trash can — thank God it was full — scooped up a handful of coffee grounds mixed with ash, returned to the bedroom, and began furiously rubbing the dirt into the clean spot on the floor.

"Come on," he hissed, smearing the greasy substance. "Dry up, crust over. Be normal."

The spot resisted, shining with sterile whiteness through the dirt. Mark sweated. It seemed to him that his very apartment was looking at him with condemnation, as if at a vandal who dared to bring order into a temple of chaos.

The doorbell rang. The ring was short and demanding. Mark froze, his soiled hands hanging in the air.

"Not the building manager," he prayed. "Not now. I haven't even had time to tear my sock before leaving..."

Mark wiped his palms on his pants, leaving saving greasy streaks on the fabric, and trudged to the door. The lock turned softly, silently. Mark mentally cursed the mechanism: he should have poured sand in there a week ago.

On the threshold stood the Inspector of Housing Decay, Mr. Mr. Rotts. He looked impeccable. His jacket glistened with ancient dirt, a magnificent, complex ketchup stain shaped like a continent adorned his lapel, and a heavy, respectable smell of the dumpster emanated from his boots.

"Rotten morning, citizen," Mr. Rotts creaked, not offering his hand. He unceremoniously stepped inside, shuffling his soles on the parquet so as not to wipe the street soot off his boots, God forbid. "

And to you... decomposition," Mark muttered, stepping back. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Readiness check," the inspector grunted, pulling a crumpled, greasy notebook from his pocket. "The Day of the Great Ruin is coming up. The city must meet the holiday in total decline. But you..."

Mr. Rotts narrowed his eyes and ran a finger along the doorframe. The finger remained clean. The inspector squeamishly shook it off, as if he had soiled himself with something sterile.

"The jamb doesn't wobble," he stated in an icy tone. "Are the hinges oiled?"

"Oh no!" Mark exclaimed in fright. "No oil! Just humidity... the rust hasn't set in yet..."

"Don't make excuses. I heard you open it. Not a single squeak. That sounds like music to my ears, but like a death sentence for your social score." The inspector scribbled something in his notebook with a pencil stub.

"Let's move on."

Mr. Rotts walked into the room. Mark watched his gaze with horror. The inspector wasn't looking at the smeared spot on the floor — his attention was drawn to the window.

"What is this?" Mr. Rotts poked his pencil towards the glass.

"A window..."

"I see it's a window. Why is it whole?"

"There is a crack!" Mark rushed to the glass, poking his finger at a tiny scratch in the corner.

"Here, look, a stone hit it last Tuesday..."

"That is not a crack, that is a disgrace!" the inspector barked. "Light passes through it almost without refraction! Where are the cobwebs? Where is the layer of soot? Where, finally, is a piece of plywood instead of one of the panes? Do you live in the center of Entropolis or in the wild wilderness?"

Mr. Rotts walked right up to the window and tapped on the frame with disgust. The frame responded with a dull, solid sound.

"The wood isn't rotten," the inspector delivered his verdict. "The paint isn't peeling. Are you mocking us, citizen? The whole building is preparing. The neighbors upstairs flooded their bathroom on purpose yesterday so the ones below would get magnificent yellow stains on the ceiling. People are trying, creating emergency situations. And you? It's..." he lowered his voice to a whisper, "...cozy in here."

Mark felt his back go cold. It was the most terrible accusation.

"I will correct it," he whispered. "I'll break the ventilation window today. I'll bring mold from the basement..."

The inspector slammed the notebook shut. A cloud of dust burst from under the cover.

"The deadline is two days. Until the holiday. If the commission sees this shine, this... wholeness," he spat on the floor (Mark mentally thanked him for the gesture), "blame yourself. We will not tolerate latent creators in our society."

Mr. Rotts stepped toward the exit but turned around at the threshold. His face, etched with noble scars, was stern.

"Do you know where people like you are sent? To the Sterile Zone. There are white walls there, citizen. They wash the floors twice a day. With bleach. And there..." the inspector paused theatrically, "...it is forbidden to litter."

Mark's throat went dry. His legs gave way.

"I understand everything, Mr. Inspector. I swear by the Great Dump, by the holiday there will be a real hole here."

Mr. Rotts grunted and left, slamming the door with force. The plaster above the jamb did not crumble. The door closed tightly, without the slightest gap. Mark leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. It was a failure.

---

Chapter 2. The Forbidden Fruit

As soon as the door closed behind the inspector, Mark grabbed a hammer. He was determined. If society demanded ruins, it would get them.

He walked up to the perfectly flat wall in the corridor. The task was simple: knock off a piece of plaster, exposing the brickwork. It was considered chic, a "design move" in the Early Decay style. Mark swung his arm. His hand trembled. He imagined the hammerhead smashing into the smooth surface, the dust flying, this divine symmetry being violated...

His hand dropped on its own. He couldn't do it. It was like hitting a child.

"Wimp," he hissed at his reflection in the mirror (which, to his shame, he wiped every morning with a handkerchief). "You're just a sick maniac."

A familiar, agonizing feeling began to grow inside. An itch in his fingers. He urgently needed to organize something. At least arrange books by height. Or straighten the rug. But he couldn't. It was dangerous at home — Mr. Rotts might return or peek through the keyhole. He needed a "dose." A real one.

Mark pulled up the hood of his old jacket, which he had deliberately rolled in the vacuum cleaner dust before leaving, and slipped out into the street.

---

The "Rusty Pipes" district had a bad reputation. Here, in a labyrinth of leaning garages and foul-smelling dumps, the most desperate elements of society gathered. Here you could buy anything forbidden by the Chaos Protection Law.

Mark walked quickly, looking around. Sludge squelched under his feet — the pride of the municipality, an artificial swamp maintained even during droughts. In the shadow behind a dumpster stood a man in a long coat covered in mold.

Mark approached, trying not to look him in the eye.

"You got the goods?" he asked quietly.

The dealer looked him over appraisingly, spat thick saliva at his feet, and nodded.

"Depends on what you're looking for, pal. I got 'Mole' for clearing pipes. Hard stuff, eats through any clog in seconds. Pipes will be clean as a baby's tear. But it's expensive. Heavy felony."

"No, something simpler," Mark whispered. "Solid. Bar. 72 percent."

The dealer's eyes narrowed.

"Household soap?" he whistled. "You're a risky guy. Dogs will track the smell of that soap instantly. It stinks of..." the dealer lowered his voice, "...freshness."

"I'll pay double."

The dealer looked around and opened his coat. In an inner pocket, next to forbidden rolls of electrical tape and a set of screwdrivers, lay a bar wrapped in oiled paper. Brown, rough, with embossed numbers.

Mark held out the crumpled bills with trembling hands. The dealer shoved the bundle at him.

"Hide it deep. And watch out, don't get hooked. I knew a guy; he started with soap and ended up ironing curtains. Now he sits in the 'White Room,' howling from longing for stains."

---

Returning home, Mark locked the door with all bolts. He curtained the windows so that not a single ray of sun would betray his secret. Then he went to the old wardrobe in the bedroom and moved the back panel aside. Behind it lay a tiny niche — a former pantry.

This was his temple. Here, in an area of two square meters, reigned a perfect, criminal order.

The floor was tiled with ceramic he had stolen from a construction site (they were going to smash it into crumbs for garden paths there). The walls were painted white. In the corner stood a mop — brand new, with a fluffy head, never having touched dirt.

Mark unwrapped the paper. The smell of laundry soap hit his nose. For some, it was a stench, but for Mark, it was the scent of paradise. The smell of alkali, purity, destroyed bacteria.

He filled a bucket with water (he had to let the rusty sludge run until it came out relatively clear), soaped the rag, got down on his knees, and began to wash the floor.

The movements were rhythmic, meditative. The rag glided over the tiles, collecting non-existent dust motes. Mark closed his eyes, enjoying the sound of wet fabric.

"Clean..." he whispered, feeling the anxiety recede. "So clean..."

He knew it was wrong. He knew he was betraying the covenants of his ancestors, who had accumulated trash for centuries to create this great city. But he couldn't help himself. In a world of chaos, order was his only drug.

Suddenly, plaster showered down from the ceiling. Mark froze. The sound was strange. It wasn't the usual crumbling of a dilapidated house. It was a dull rumble coming from somewhere deep within the walls. The pipes trembled.

Somewhere below, in the basement, a catastrophe was beginning that the whole building dreamed of. But Mark, clutching the bar of soap to his chest, felt not joy, but cold horror.

---

Chapter 3. Life-Giving Moisture

The rumble grew. It sounded like the rumbling of a giant stomach about to succumb to overeating. The walls vibrated slightly, and whitewash — so precious to everyone else but hated by him — showered from the ceiling of Mark's hideout, staining the perfectly washed floor.

Mark frantically hid the soap in a cache behind the baseboard, slid the false wardrobe panel back, and rushed into the corridor.

The hallway was already filled with heavy, damp steam smelling distinctly of sewage and rust. For the residents of the house, this smell was sweeter than French perfume. Apartment doors flew open one after another.

Madame Rotmouth, the neighbor from below, rolled out onto the landing. She was delighted. Her robe was open, dirty rags were wound around curlers to better fix her hairstyle.

"Do you hear, Mark?" she shouted over the noise of the water. "Do you hear that divine sound? I think the main line burst! Finally!"

She offered her face to the stream of rusty water spurting from a pipe joint under the ceiling.

"Oh-ho-ho, how greasy! How thick! My wallpaper will finally peel off! I've been praying for this for three years!"

Mark did not share her joy. His gaze darted around the walls. What was a blessing for Madame Rotmouth looked like a death sentence to him. He saw a crack snaking along the load-bearing wall. With every second, it widened, pulsing in time with the water hammer in the pipes.

"This isn't just a burst," he muttered. "This is a water hammer. The pressure is too high."

He rushed down the stairs, jumping over puddles. "

Where are you going, dearie?" the neighbor shouted after him. "Bring buckets, we'll water the hallway! Housing Supervision will write us a bonus for dampness!"

A crowd had already gathered in the first-floor lobby. People were laughing, slapping sandals in the water, congratulating each other. Children were sailing boats made of trash in the murky stream rapidly flooding the floor.

"The foundation," Mark whispered. "The water is going under the foundation."

Mark knew the structure of this house: he had secretly studied the blueprints in the library in the "Forbidden Literature: Strength of Materials and Engineering" section. If the valve in the basement wasn't shut off now, the water would wash away the soil in a couple of hours. The house, which was already held together by a wing and a prayer and centuries of dirt, would simply fold like a house of cards.

Mark squeezed through the cheering crowd to the basement door. It was welded shut — a long-standing tradition so no one would dare repair communications.

"Hey, kid!" called the building manager, that same Mr. Mr. Rotts, standing ankle-deep in water and proudly writing something in a wet notebook.

"Don't interrupt the process! Look how magnificently it's flooding. By the holiday, we'll have our own swimming pool with mold."

"The house will collapse!" Mark shouted, forgetting caution. "It's a pressure pipe. It's washing away the piles. We'll all die!"

The crowd went quiet. Mr. Rotts slowly turned his head. His eyes narrowed.

"Collapse?" he asked. "Are you saying the house will reach absolute entropy? Move into a state of pure chaos?"

"Yes!" Mark shouted in despair. "But we'll be inside! Dead!"

Mr. Rotts broke into a blissful smile.

"What an honor... To die under the debris of history. This is the highest degree of civic duty. Thank you for telling me, son. I will put this in the report: 'House No. 8 showed initiative and decided to self-destruct for the glory of Destruction'."

The crowd buzzed approvingly. Someone clapped their hands.

"Glory to ruins!" shouted a father from the third floor, lifting a child over his head. "We will become part of the trash!"

Mark looked at them with horror. They didn't understand. They were truly ready to die for a beautiful picture of destruction. Fanatics. Madmen.

The water was rising. The cracking of the walls became louder; now it resembled cannon shots. A piece of concrete fell from the ceiling, nearly hitting Madame Rotmouth, but she only squealed joyfully, taking it for a special effect.

Mark realized: he had no choice. Words were powerless here. He needed a tool. His hand slipped into the inner pocket of his jacket. There lay a monkey wrench, stolen from the same dealer who sold him the soap. A heavy, cold, chrome-plated instrument — a weapon of crime.

He had to go down to the basement. He had to commit sacrilege. He had to fix this damn world, even if the world didn't want it.

---

Chapter 4. Act of Creation

Mark struck the lock of the basement door with the heavy monkey wrench with a full swing. Metal clanged, the rusty shackle flew aside.

The crowd roared with joy.

"Go on!" someone yelled from the darkness. "Break it! Knock that door off its hinges! Let chaos penetrate everywhere!"

They thought he was one of them. That he wanted to speed up the process of destruction. Mark didn't dissuade them. He kicked the door open and dived into the black, mold-smelling womb of the basement.

The water here was already waist-deep. It was icy and thick with dirt. Mark made his way by touch, stumbling over pieces of rebar and rotten crates. The noise of the burst was deafening here — the pipe wasn't just leaking, it was roaring, spewing a powerful stream that was washing away the brickwork of the foundation with every second.

Mark turned on a small flashlight (another contraband item, as a true citizen should love the dark). The beam of light snatched a monster from the darkness — the main pipe. A huge jagged hole gaped in it, the edges bent outward.

"Can't weld it," whispered Mark, assessing the damage with the eye of a professional no one suspected him to be. "Only shut it off."

He reached the main valve. The huge wheel, covered in centuries-old growths of oxidation and calcium, looked like a fossilized monster. No one had touched it since the building was built. Annual reports from Housing Decay claimed the valve had grown solid, becoming part of the natural landscape.

Mark fitted the jaws of the wrench onto the stem nut. Metal clanked. Mark put his whole weight on it. Nothing. The valve wouldn't budge. It had fused with the pipe in a unified ecstasy of corrosion.

A dull thud came from above — the house settled another centimeter. Cracks appeared on the basement ceiling, and concrete crumbs showered down. There was no time left.

"Come on, you bastard," Mark growled through his teeth. "Work! You're a mechanism! You were created to work, not to rot!"

He braced his feet against the slippery floor, gripped the wrench more comfortably, and yanked with all his might. Muscles ached, his vision darkened. He hated this chaos, hated this water, this dirt, this philosophy of death. All his life he had dreamed of fixing something. And now all his hatred for entropy was concentrated in this jerk.

Crr-crack!

The sound was dry and sharp like a gunshot. The layer of rust burst. The valve wheel turned half a rotation. Mark almost fell into the water but kept his balance. He began to turn the valve, scraping the skin off his palms. A turn. Another one. Another turn.

The roar of the water began to subside. The jet weakened, turned into a pitiful trickle, and then dried up completely, dropping rare, heavy drops.

Absolute, ringing silence fell in the basement. Only Mark's heavy breathing and the splashing of water settling at his feet could be heard.

Mark straightened up. He had done it. Stopped the catastrophe. He saved their lives. "Now I'm done for," he realized clearly.

Mark slowly trudged towards the exit. Climbing the stairs was hard, his legs felt like lead. He walked out into the lobby of the first floor. Silence reigned there too. Dead silence. The water was draining into the cracks in the floor, leaving dirty puddles on the parquet. But there was no new water.

Twenty pairs of eyes stared at Mark. There was no gratitude in them – only horror and disgust. People looked at him as if he had just dismembered a puppy at a children's matinee.

Mr. Rotts stood in the center; his notebook had fallen from his hands and was floating in the sludge. The inspector's mouth was open. He slowly raised a trembling finger and pointed at the monkey wrench Mark was still clutching in his hand. A shiny chrome wrench, from which drops of clean water were dripping.

"You..." Mr. Rotts whispered in a voice full of superstitious fear. "What have you done, you maniac?"

"Fixed it," Mark answered quietly.

The crowd gasped and recoiled. A woman covered her child's ears. A terrible forbidden word had been spoken.

"He stopped the process!" squealed Madame Rotmouth. "He killed our accident! We could have died as heroes, but now... now we will live in a dry house?!"

"Seize him!" barked Mr. Rotts, regaining his power of speech. "Seize the vandal! For damaging public property! For using tools! For creation on a particularly large scale!"

The crowd recovered and moved towards Mark.

---

Chapter 5. The Verdict

Mark's arrest was short and brutal. He wasn't beaten — the guards were too squeamish to dirty their hands on him. Instead, he was bound with dirty, sticky tape, which the "Rapid Contamination Group" fighters wore instead of handcuffs.

The shiny sterile monkey wrench was packed into an airtight bag as a biologically hazardous weapon. Mr. Rotts personally carried it with outstretched arms, with horror and reverence.

The trial took place that same evening. Entropolis didn't like bureaucracy — it ordered life too much. Justice here was dispensed on ruins – quickly and chaotically.

The courtroom was located in a former theater whose roof had collapsed long ago. Judge Junk sat on a mountain of construction debris that served as the judge's bench. He wore a robe sewn from body bags, generously splattered with fuel oil.

Behind the judge rose the surviving wall of the stage backdrop. Once it had been white, but now it had turned into a giant chalkboard covered in layers of soot. On it, traced by a finger through the greasy soot, burned ten lines — the Commandments of Chaos. Mark had known them since childhood, but now they looked particularly ominous:

1. Thou shalt not make for thyself Order.
2. Thou shalt not repair.
3. Thou shalt not clean.
4. Honor thy Rust and thy Mold.
5. Thou shalt not covet a whole thing.
6. Stain thy neighbor as thyself.
7. Thou shalt not straighten the crooked.
8. Let not the left hand know what the right hand breaks.
9. Blessed are the holey, for they are drafty.
10. Remember the day of Destruction, to keep it festive.

Mark looked away from the wall. Every letter there screamed of his guilt.

"Defendant," croaked Junk, hitting a tin can with a rusty hammer. "Stand up! Or lie down! Or fall! Do whatever you want, just don't stand straight! Your posture insults the court!"

Mark, wrapped in tape, tried to slouch, but his shoulders treacherously straightened.

The prosecutor, a short little man with a face looking like a baked apple, stepped forward. He theatrically unrolled a scroll of toilet paper covered in accusations.

"Your Rot," he began. "Before us is not a man. Before us is a monster. A maniac. An Engineer!"

A moan of horror swept through the hall filled with spectators. The word "engineer" was a slur here, worse than "pedophile" in the old world.

The prosecutor poked a dirty finger at the wall above the judge's head, where the sacred lines showed through layers of soot.

"The Second Commandment states: 'Thou shalt not repair'!" squealed the accuser. "And this heretic used a wrench! He violated the First Commandment — 'Thou shalt not make for thyself Order'! He spat in the face of our faith!"

"This subject," the prosecutor sharply shifted his finger to Mark, "is accused under three articles of the Criminal Code of Chaos. First: Intentional repair of a main pipeline with the aim of preventing natural destruction. Second: Illegal possession of a Class 'A' tool (monkey wrench). And third..." the prosecutor paused, savoring the moment. "During a search of his apartment, in a cache behind the wardrobe, was found... THIS."

An assistant prosecutor in protective gloves brought out material evidence on a tray: a bar of laundry soap.

The hall roared. Someone fainted. Madame Rotmouth, sitting in the front row, covered her face with her hands.

"He washed himself!" she screamed. "I felt it! He didn't smell like a dump, he smelled of... lavender! Pervert!"

Judge Junk looked at the soap with disgust, then at Mark.

"Do you have anything to say in your defense? Maybe you were drunk? Maybe you couldn't control yourself? Maybe you wanted to break the pipe, but your hand slipped, and you accidentally tightened it?"

Mark looked around the hall. He saw faces distorted by malice, rotten teeth, torn clothes. He saw a world that voluntarily rotted alive.

"No," Mark said loudly. "I did it on purpose. And I washed the floor twice. With bleach."

The silence became ringing. Judge Junk turned pale under the layer of soot. Such a sincere confession had never been heard within these walls.

"You are not just a criminal," the judge whispered. "You are a heretic. You reject the very essence of life — the striving for decay. The death penalty by burial in trash is too lenient a punishment for you. You might enjoy that." J

unk stood up. The robe rustled.

"In the name of Sacred Entropy, I sentence you to the highest measure of social isolation: exile to the 'White Room'. For life."

The crowd gasped. Even the prosecutor shuddered. The "White Room" was a legend, a horror story used to scare children. They said there wasn't a speck of dust there. They said that there... it was symmetrical.

"Take him away!" barked the judge. "And burn his clothes! They are too whole!"

Guards grabbed Mark by the arms. He was dragged to the exit, and curses and clods of dirt followed him. But Mark was smiling.

"The White Room," he thought as he was shoved into the back of a paddy wagon with windows painted black. "They think they are punishing me. Fools. They are sending me home."

---

Chapter 6. Ideal Hell

Special Regime Prison "Sterility-1" was located on the outskirts of the city, in a building that had once been a hospital. It was the only building in Entropolis that didn't look like ruins.

It was frighteningly, unnaturally rectangular.

Guards in protective suits (so as not to catch cleanliness) pushed Mark into the disinfection airlock. He was forcibly washed under powerful jets of hot water and shampoo. The noble urban soot, layer of grease, and dust of ages were washed off him.

Mark stood under the shower and wept. But these were tears of happiness. He felt his skin breathe. Then he was given a white uniform, ironed and crisp with starch. Without a single hole. He put it on, feeling the fabric against his skin like the gentlest touch.

"Into the cell, scum!" shouted a voice from the speaker.

The door slid aside with a quiet hiss. Mark stepped inside.

It was magnificent. The room was a 4 by 4-meter cube. The walls were dazzlingly white, covered in smooth plastic. The floor shone so that one could look into it like a mirror. The bed was made perfectly evenly, corner to corner. A table, a chair, and nothing superfluous. No trash, no cracks. Absolute geometric harmony.

The door closed behind him. Mark walked to the wall and pressed his cheek against it. It was cool and smooth.

"God," he whispered. "Thank you. I'm in paradise."

He began to pace the room, measuring it with steps. Four steps there. A 90-degree turn. Four steps back. Perfect. He sat on the chair. The chair didn't wobble. It was strong, reliable. Mark ran a finger along the tabletop. Not a speck of dust.

An hour passed in ecstasy. Mark enjoyed the order. He counted the tiles on the floor. He admired the even light of the shadowless lamp. There was no need to hide here. No need to stain cuffs with sprats. One could be oneself.

"I will stay here forever," he said aloud, enjoying how the room's acoustics purely reflected his voice without rattling. "Let the world outside rot. And I will be here, in eternal purity."

And at that moment, a strange sound came from above.

Crr-crack!

Mark raised his head. 

A thin black line appeared on the perfectly white, flawless ceiling. A crack.

"No," whispered Mark, jumping up. "No, no, no. Just not here."

The crack crept further, widening like a living snake. Small branches began to branch off from it, violating the holy geometry of the square. Plaster showered down. White dust fell onto the perfectly clean floor, creating a chaotic pile of debris.

"Don't you dare!" screamed Mark, rushing to the wall, trying to cover the crack with his hands. "Stop! This is a sterile zone! You can't break here!"

But the prison building was part of Entropolis. It was built by the same people as the rest of the city. Its foundation was poured into mud. Its load-bearing beams were stolen back at the excavation stage. Even the "ideal Hell" in this world was a hack job. A system built on the cult of destruction could not create anything eternal — even a prison.

The walls shuddered. Plastic panels burst, exposing rotten, crumbling brick. The shadowless lamp flickered and fell out of its socket with a crash, hanging on bare wires.

"Please!" sobbed Mark, trying to gather the scattered plaster into a neat pile, but there was more and more of it. "Just not now! Give me at least a day! At least an hour of order!"

The building groaned. The floors couldn't hold. The prison, which was supposed to stand forever as a monument to sterility, could no longer hide its rotten core.

A crash drowned out Mark's scream. The ceiling collapsed.

---

Epilogue

Mark opened his eyes. Above him was the gray, soot-covered sky of Entropolis. He was lying on a pile of debris. Around him lay pieces of white plastic mixed with mud, broken brick, and rusty rebar.

Prison "Sterility-1" ceased to exist. Now it was just another magnificent, picturesque ruin. The biggest pile of garbage in the city.

People were already running to the collapse site. He heard the joyful shouts of onlookers rushing to see the new attraction.

"Look!" someone shouted. "How beautifully it fell! What scale! What chaos!"

Mark sat up. His white uniform had turned into rags. It was torn, stained with earth, blood, and dust. His face was in soot, his hands in scratches. He looked at his dirty black palms. And yet – alive.

He tried to brush himself off, to brush away the dust, but there was too much of it – the whole world consisted of it. And then Mark began to laugh. He laughed loudly, hysterically, until he hiccuped. He grabbed handfuls of dirt and tossed them into the air.

"You won!" he shouted into the sky. "Do you hear?! Chaos cannot be ordered! It will get through anyway! Even in a white room!"

A breathless Mr. Rotts ran up to him with a notebook. He looked puzzled but pleased.

"Citizen!" he shouted. "Are you alive? This... this is incredible! You destroyed the prison from the inside! You destroyed the last stronghold of purity in the city!"

Mr. Rotts grabbed Mark's dirty hand and shook it with admiration.

"I was wrong about you! You are not a vandal! You are the greatest destroyer! To demolish such a building in one hour... That's a record! We will recommend you for the 'Golden Crowbar' award!"

Mark looked at him with mad eyes. Then he looked at the ruins of his dream and stopped brushing himself off. He ran a dirty palm over his face, smearing the soot.

"Yes," Mark said quietly. "I destroyed it. I destroyed everything."

He stood up, swayed, and, limping, walked away over the debris. Now he was an ideal citizen. Broken, dirty, and devastated. He had nothing left to fix.