Disclaimer: I don't own Invader Zim. And I sure don't own the concept of karma.
After my last two fics, I figured the Professor needed a break.
The Fingerprint of God
"... artificial life... success... if you can call it that... trouble... all the time... and before that, I found Dib... trouble is... don't know what to do about it now... "
The door to the Professor's study had fallen just slightly ajar so that Gaz, slipping past the door on her way to the fridge for some leftover pizza, could hear snatches of his conversation as he was huddled intently behind the hoverscreen.
"... yes, of course I'd still miss my best friend... taking care of what he left me the best I know how... not easy with that other one around... don't know what to do about it now... no, can't do that... "
An evil smirk crept across Gaz's face. Silently, she pushed the door until it was almost closed, then hurried away to find Dib. She found him downstairs in the living room, sitting over his laptop, closely watching something on the screen even as he worked the keys. She knew how to get his undivided attention, however. With a smug smirk, Gaz reached out a finger and firmly pushed the on/off switch.
"GAZ!" Dib howled in protest, as the images on his screen died. "Why'd you do that? I wasn't doing anything to bother you!"
What made it even harder for Dib to stomach this was that when Gaz was playing one of her video game, she vigorously resisted all interruptions. Indeed, even being in the room when Gaz lost a game was suicidal; Gaz had an unnatural attraction to video games, the flashing and the electronic beeps that no human sense organs could tolerate for longer than a few hours.
But the look Dib now noticed on Gaz's face made any additional protest die in his throat.
Gaz walked up to Dib and slitted her eyes, glaring down at him. "I know something you don't know. Dad didn't tell you, did he? You weren't born."
Well, that made no sense at all. How could Dib not be born if he was already here? "Huh? What are you talking about?"
"You had no mother. You're a freak." Gaz sounded like she was trying to laugh but it came out wrong. "You were a genetic experiment. Dad wanted a super intelligent baby but you came out stupid."
Dib's frowned. "I'm not stupid."
"If you were good enough then why did he want me?"
Finding no reply to this, a question that has plagued all firstborn children since time began, Dib's eyes faltered and he looked away.
Gaz gloated in triumph. "I heard him talking. You were grown in a test tube. Like a fruit fly. That's all you are, a fruit fly." She waved a fingertip close to Dib's eyes. "Bzzzzzzz... And nobody would call me a murderer for swatting a fly."
Dib closed his laptop and walked away, desperate to escape this conversation. Gaz chased after him, and Dib began to run. Dib ran into the garage, where Gaz cornered him.
She reached around the belt sander and picked up another power tool. Dib never saw it coming because he believed tools are for making things, not for throwing at people.
- - - - - - - -
When Dib came to, he realized he had been strapped to the table saw. One of each wrist and ankle was tied to each leg of the table. Something kept digging into his back. With a bolt of horror he guessed what it was and tried to leap off the table. As he realized he was tied down, Gaz snorted with what passed as her laughter.
"G-Gaz...?" Dib gulped. "P - Please Gaz... "
"Whiner."
She calls me that because I want off here? What am I supposed to do? Dib thought wildly. I'm not about to threaten her, that's suicidal even when I'm NOT tied up... I can't free myself... does she expect me to just lie here and let her... just... do... what...
Gaz came over to the table saw and plugged it in. Dib jerked as if shocked; this close to the tool, all too vividly he could feel the electricity now running through it. Gaz now began to playfully twirl her finger around the "ON" button. Dib forced his arms and legs to lift his back free of the saw. Hot liquid began trickling down his side.
Upside down, Gaz's face looked even more unnaturally calm and evil than ever. She sure knew how to make herself sound charming enough, though, and that kept anybody else from realizing just how intensely spiteful she could be. "Do you know what you are, Dib? You're a test tube baby. Do you know what that is?"
Dib was more concerned with the saw under his back. His eyes strained to see around his head to see if that was indeed the saw or something else put there to scare him.
"I SAID... do you know what that is?" The tip of Gaz's finger was now resting against the button as if to turn it on, and began to restlessly twirl around its edge.
"Yes Gaz," croaked Dib, "I know."
"Then what is it?"
"It's a baby grown in a test tube," Dib stammered, trying to keep his chin steady.
"Correct. But that isn't how you make REAL babies, you know. You never were a real baby, Dib."
His head snapped in her direction.
"You were a mistake, Dib, a BAD mistake. Something went wrong when he made you. I heard him. And I heard this too." She leaned in to breathe in his ear. "I could kill you. I could kill you right now, and he wouldn't care. You're not human. You have no soul. Killing you wouldn't be a sin, or even a crime. It would just spare him the bother of trying to figure out what to do with you."
"Then what are YOU Gaz?" Dib croaked. "If he made me he had to make you!"
Gaz laughed mockingly. "His best friend is my - was my father. Dad agreed to adopt me right before my real parents died in a car accident. I'm the closest thing he has to a REAL child. If he'd known he was going to get me, he wouldn't have even bothered to keep you. You're just an experiment. He knows he can create life. You're just the by-product."
Dib's eyes widened as his horror deepened. Finally he could stand it no longer. "DAAAD!" he screamed in panic, screamed the only name by which he'd ever called the only father he'd ever known. "DAD HELP ME! HELP ME PLEASE!" He struggled in panic to get free of the cords; one foot nearly slipped and remembered just in time the blade beneath him.
"Wrong move, Dib." The loud, terrifying buzz of the saw blade just beneath him filled Dib's ears and covered his frantic screams as he stretched himself taut...
The Professor's shouts began to push through the sound as it trailed away. "Don't lie down Dib! Whatever you do, do not lie down...!"
Then the Professor was slipping an arm beneath him, a strong supporting arm between Dib's back and the saw as it sighed, slowing down slowly. "I've got you, it's okay."
Dib slowly turned his head and saw the plug in the Professor's hand. "You kids... I knew I didn't leave that saw running this time!" He went to pull the cords free, but they were wires and tied in knots.
"It's okay, you can relax now, I've got the plug, it won't start up again," the Professor kept repeating, at least as much to calm himself as to calm Dib. Frantically he pulled and tugged the cords free, occasionally sparing a glance over his shoulder at Gaz. "What on earth did you do to him this time?" the Professor hissed. Gaz stared back up at him as if she had not a clue in the world what he was talking about.
Finally the Professor finished untying the cords, and with both hands now free, reached under Dib's back and lifted him free of the saw, then sat him on the table and pushed aside the shredded remains of the boy's coat, pushed up the T-shirt and urgently searched the little back for injury. Somehow, mercifully, no injury. None. Not even a scratch.
The Professor, still shaken by the horrible sight, drew in a long shaky breath. He continued holding Dib while still casting a suspicious eye now and then toward Gaz. To himself he muttered, "I knew this day would come. I can no longer allow my creation to run loose. My best friend... your father, Dib... tried many times to talk me out of it. He told me a child grown in a test tube would always be lacking something. How I wish I could tell him how right he was.
"Gaz lacks compassion, has no human empathy, and cares not a whit about anyone else but herself. I brought her into this world, but I cannot take her out of it. Now that I know just what she is capable of, she must be locked up and watched closely. She will never be left alone with you again."
"No, Dad!" Dib begged, imagining himself locked up and deprived of freedom. He still shuddered from Gaz's accusation that he wasn't natural, and with the memory of those icy eyes boring into his, he could all too readily believe that at least one of them wasn't. "We can take turns being locked up! She won't be able to get to me either way!"
"That's exactly what tells me you don't need to be locked up." The Professor patted Dib's hair scythe. "You're not like her. You ARE human. You have compassion. She'll be locked up from now on, Dib. You needn't fear her any more."
"But you can't lock somebody up!"
"Dib, she tried to kill you. That's wrong!"
"If I did something wrong would you lock me up too?" The Professor wasn't sure if the fear quivering in Dib's eyes was for himself or for Gaz.
"Don't worry, Dib, no matter what you did I'd never lock you up with her."
"No, Dad." Dib shook his head earnestly. "Locking up somebody is wrong too! You can't lock her up! You can't! It isn't right! Or at least let me visit her! I'll bring her games so she won't be bored! I'll talk to her so she won't be lonely!"
The Professor peered closely into Dib's face. He had never before believed in any sort of higher power. Now, however, looking into Dib's eyes as the boy pleaded for forgiveness for someone who had very nearly murdered him, he felt shaken and humbled. Professor Membrane knew that he was looking straight at God's own fingerprint.
It was all too easy for men to hate each other, to kill each other and to seek revenge. Men could create beings that did tasks, that destroyed, hated, and sought revenge, but no human being could create something that did what no human being could ever explain. Compassion and forgiveness on this scale could be nothing less than divine.
The Professor crouched to look Dib in the eyes. "Dib, let me tell you something. You are... you were... my best friend's son. We were friends all our lives, ever since shortly after that day in kindergarten when I accused him of stealing my hair. He was the only person I'd seen who had hair like mine." Briefly he allowed a weak, watery smile to show through. "Even though his parents were both agnostics, from somewhere or other he got this idea to believe in God.
"My family accepted him as a friend for me because they thought he'd influence me, and I suppose his family was okay with me for the same reason. But nobody influenced anybody. Instead, we each became more and more attached to our own viewpoint. By the time we went to college, I was a firm atheist and a science major, while what did he go into? Religious philosophy. Go figure. That was the only thing we never agreed on.
"When he got married, I was his best man, and not long after that I gave him my word that I would adopt you if anything happened to both him and his wife. He was an only child of a very small family, you see, and everyone agreed that I was the best choice.
"Then, one day, they were coming back from a road trip and I was babysitting you. It began to rain... heavily... there was a terrible crash...
"Not long before this happened, we'd gotten into a terrible argument about this experiment I was doing, the experiment that turned out to be Gaz. He always kept on at me about how wrong it was to play God, how there are some things that will always belong to God and God alone. I said that since there WAS no God, I needn't worry. Oh, we'd fought before, but this time it was different. It was the only time I ever wondered if we would still be friends afterwards.
"And now I know he was right. You're still alive... thank... God... "
He held Dib closely, so he wouldn't see the tears. Dib could think of only one thing to say.
"I love you Dad."
The Professor choked back a sob. "I love you too... son."
The End
(A/N) That bit about the table saw isn't mine. It was inspired by a piece I stumbled across on dA. I just now went looking for it, but unfortunately I can't remember who drew it. I'll just say that it wasn't Gaz who did that in the original drawing.
The rest of my inspiration for this fic came from the book "Embryo" in which Charles Wilson suggests that a baby grown outside a human womb would lack empathy.