Author's Notes: This is a story that's been in the back of my mind for about a year, ever since I published my first Zim's Computer/Dib friendship story, "A Weekend at EARL's." People wanted some kind of a sequel, and I---stop, don't hit that back button yet! Honestly, you can probably get through this story without even reading the prequel, and anyway, it was only a one-shot, barely longer than this chapter and should be no problem if you want to look it up. I'll even provide this convenient link for ya (insert the "dot" where necessary):
http://www.fanfiction(DOT)net/s/4333834/1/A_Weekend_at_EARLs
Anyway, this story will be multichaptered, and the point of view will mostly alternate between EARL (aka "Zim's Computer") and Dib each chapter. Anyway, without further ado, on with the story, and I hope you enjoy!
Chapter One
Tricky Transmissions
(EARL'S POV)
"ER! COM-PU-TER!"
I sighed. "What, Zim?"
"Run a diagnostic on this laser cannon! It's still not working right!" he demanded, pointing angrily at the offending machine.
"I'm telling you, it's not working right because you're supposed to hook up the red wire to the central energy conduit, not the—"
"Do not question my orders! I AM ZIM!"
I sighed again. "Alright, alright…"
I snapped a wire off from the ceiling and sent it down to connect with the laser cannon of Zim's latest doomsday device. The scanning process lasted only a few seconds. "Diagnostic shows the cannon is working fine, but is not hooked up properly."
"But that's impossible! GRR!" Zim ripped at the wires and cables inside the cannon with his gloved claws, red eyes twitching in annoyance. "What could the stupid problem be with this thing?!"
"Well, maybe if you hooked it up to the central energy conduit—"
"Silence!" He went back to work, hooking the wires up in entirely the wrong order. Minimoose floated over his shoulder, frowning slightly before turning to me with a slight squeak.
"Yeah," I agreed. "He never does learn, does he?"
Zim growled but otherwise ignored my comment. I repressed the urge to sigh again and instead switched my attention to other points of the base. GIR was coming down the hall towards the lab. I opened my sliding metal door for him, and he skipped into the lab, happily slurping on a suckmunkey.
"HIYA, MASTAH! HIYA, MOOSY!" GIR said, waving. I waited for a "hiya" too. I didn't get one.
It's pretty sad when not even GIR is nice to you. But then, sometimes I wonder if he even knows I'm here; probably he just mistakes me for one of the other disembodied voices he hears in his head.
"GRR!" Zim stood up again and kicked the laser cannon, hard. Then he let out a scream and began to hop around on one foot, cursing angrily. "Stupid piece of junk! Oh, I know what this is. This is the Dib's doing! He must have broken this the last time he broke into the base!"
"No, he didn't," I said; I was trying to be patient, but I couldn't help but let my annoyance creep into my voice. "You weren't even working on it then. The problem is that you—"
"Do not speak! Especially you! It's your fault that this is happening in the first place!" Zim accused, pointing up at my main screen. "If you had been paying attention like you were supposed to, he never would have broken into the base in the first place, and this piece of junk would still be working!" He threw his wrench angrily at the cannon; it suddenly glowed green, vibrating rapidly. Zim blanched as it powered up for a few seconds, then shot a burning blast of energy right at him. He let out a scream as he was thrown across the room, smashing into a collection of equipment beside one of the room's main ventilation shafts.
"AAAAAGGGGGHHHHH---CURSES!"
Zim got up, steaming; almost literally, my sensors could detect the angry rise in his body temperature, heart rate and so forth. The equipment clattered around him as he stood. Despite the urge to laugh, I stayed quiet, tense. But Zim didn't seem to hear the slight noises of movement that were coming out of the ventilation shaft beside him.
Good.
Zim groaned and stormed back over to the laser cannon, glaring at it. "Stupid Dib-monkey," he growled, crossing his arms. "Oh, once I get this completed, I'll—" He froze. "What was that?"
Another small clang of movement from the ventilation shaft. "I didn't hear anything."
Another small noise. I glared through my sensors at the shaft as Zim turned around, eyes wide.
"That! That sound! Computer! Run a scan, what was that?!"
"Oh...uh..." I made a small noise like the clearing of a throat. "Probably the...rats."
He gaped at me. "Rats?!"
"Yeah. You know, those annoying little Earth creatures?"
"I know what they are!" Zim snapped, then turned back to the shaft. "There are rats in that pipe?"
"Yeah..."
He grimaced, then approached the pipe, a PAK-leg extending out and crackling with energy. "Well...we'll just see about tha---"
"Uh, I wouldn't go in there."
Zim turned. "What? Why?"
"Well, because Earth rats? They usually just stay in the dark and don't mess with you, but if you go after them...well, Zim, they're basically the same as Blorchians. Do you...really want to go hunting a bunch of them down through that air shaft?"
Zim blinked, then scowled. "Ha! Silly Computer. No Blorchian scares Zim! ...Although," he added, in a somewhat more nervous voice, the spidery leg returning to his PAK, "maybe you're right for now. Just remind me to invent some sort of a…rat-killing robotic death squad later. Or something."
"Can do. But it might be easier just to get a cat."
"Oooh! I wants a cat!" GIR cried, suddenly distracted from his precious drink. "Can we gets a cat?! I'll feed her and hug her and name her Sally!" He hugged the suckmunkey to his chest tightly, an enraptured look on his face.
Zim opened his mouth to answer—loudly, from the look of it—when a loud beeping filled the room. Zim's face shot up. "What's that?"
"Uh, incoming transmission." I was as startled as he was.
"Transmission? From where?"
"Uh, somewhere on Earth—that's weird—re-routing the transmission signal, lemme just—agh!"
Suddenly the signal broke through my programming, and against my own will my screen filled with an image—a boy sitting in front of his computer, an unnaturally huge grin on his face, eyes wide and excited.
Uh-oh. I knew that face.
"Keef?!" Zim cried, jumping backwards, eyes wide.
"HI BUDDY!" Keef screamed, eyes closed in the utter rapture of the moment. "How are you?! Oh, man, this is so great, I've been trying to call you forever and—hey, Zim?" He opened his eyes and frowned. "Where'd ya go?"
Zim---wisely---had dove out of the way just in time, hiding behind his chair, looking terrified. It took me a second to realize why: Keef was getting a view of the subterranean base, the main lab filled with Irken experiments and equipment. And both Zim and GIR were out of their disguises.
Uh-oh again. I tried to close the screen. But Keef's signal was somehow keeping me from doing it. How on Earth—
"HI KEEF!" GIR cried, running over to try to get into view. I let out a cry and grabbed him with one of my robotic arms—it shot from the ceiling and clamped down on him, hard, before he could reach the chair. I drew him back out of sight, metallic claws carefully closed around his face; I could feel him speaking under nevertheless, jabbering on stupidly as though completely unaware he was unable to speak.
Keef looked around, startled. "Zim? Was that you?"
Zim, hidden from sight, shot my nearest sensor a furious look. "Close it!" he snapped, his voice a mere whisper. "Close it!"
"I'm trying—I—er!"
Finally I managed to close off the signal—Keef's face went statickfy and vanished as my firewalls went into effect. I added a few force fields around the base just to be extra careful, then sighed. "Well. That was close."
"Close?!" Zim raged, jumping up from his hidden crouch. "You idiot! That could have cost us the entire mission! What is wrong with you, opening a signal like that?!"
"Hey!" My sensors burned red with indignation. "That wasn't me! That signal opened itself! It overrode all of my firewalls! I don't know how he did that," I muttered, quickly running a diagnostic to make sure they were all in working order. "That kid is just so persistent…"
Zim growled. "It's always an excuse with you!" he raged, throwing up his claws. "You let in the Dib, you let in the Keef…what on Earth am I paying you for?!"
"You don't pay me."
"I don't have to! I give you free room and board!"
"I am the room and board! And I—"
I was interrupted by more beeping. Zim spun around again. "The Keef again?!"
"No," I said, my tone confused. "This one is coming…from the Massive?!"
Zim jumped; his antennae jerked straight up like rigid horns.
"The Tallests?! The Tallests are calling? Calling Zim?! That's never happened before—well, open it, open it!"
"Okay—"
My screen turned staticky again—for a brief moment Tallest Red's face became visible, and Tallest Purple in the background, but then almost instantly the two vanished, then reappeared, then vanished again. At the same time audio began coming through, equally spotty.
"Zim!" called Tallest Red's voice. "We're under—sssttt—attack—sssttt—Meekrobian fleet—sssttt—need your—sssttt—amazing piloting skills—sssttt—near Motelia 6—sssttt—Massive in great danger—sssttt—hurry!—sssttt—poopy cheeze! And---"
BOOM! There was the sound of an explosion, and a look of shock from Tallest Red's face as it suddenly flickered out. The screen went to full static. "That's the end," I said, my voice shaking. "The signal got cut."
Zim was frozen for a moment, mouth hanging open. Then he suddenly spun around and ran for the lift.
"COM-PU-TER! Prepare the Voot Cruiser for immanent departure! Open the hanger gates! HURRY!"
"YAY! Roadtrip!" GIR cried, as he and Minimoose ran after him. The two jumped onto the lift (well, Minimoose just floated) just as it rose out of sight with Zim inside, taking top speed to the attic where the spaceship was docked. I opened the roof up for them, creating a quick hologram around it to keep any nosy neighbors from seeing (as if they would).
I paused; I watched through my numerous sensors as they flew up through the levels, watched as Zim jumped into the Voot Cruiser with the others behind him, and watched as they took off, flying through the Earth's sky. I waited just another few seconds to be sure…
"Heh-heh-heh. They're gah-ahn," I sang, chuckling wickedly just as my long-range sensors felt them leave the atmosphere.
The grille on the ventilation pipe suddenly burst open, and a young, large-headed human child came tumbling out, covered in dust and laughing hysterically.
"HA---oh man, I can't believe they fell for that!" Dib said, climbing to his feet and straightening out his shirt and trench coat, a grin spread across his face. "I mean, 'amazing piloting skills?' Do his leaders even talk to him like that?"
"No," I said, chucking along with him. "But I think that's what he hears them say."
Dib laughed, running his hand through his hair to get all the dust out. It shot instantly back up into its strange, scythe-like formation. "And that was a great save with the rat thing, by the way. But what was that with Keef calling? Were you trying to distract him or something?"
"What? Oh, no, that was a real call."
Dib blinked. "Keef called the base---er, you? How?"
I shrugged. "I don't know. But it was just a normal call, normal human technology as far as I can tell. I'm not sure how he managed to break through our barriers...but then, it's Keef."
"Yeah, that's true." Dib paused, then suddenly grinned. "So, Zim'll be gone for the whole weekend?"
I chuckled. "At least. That's if he doesn't run into any traffic. Motelia 6 is in a very busy solar system. It could be three or four days before he even gets there, only to find out that the Massive is on the other side of the quadrant."
He laughed again. "EARL, you're a genius," he said, wiping a tear from under his glasses.
EARL. That was the name he had invented for me. It was a human name, and a pretty dumb one at that, but I liked it. It was certainly a lot better than just being called "COM-PU-TER!" all day.
Dib climbed into the lift. "Hey, could you…" He pointed up.
"Huh? Oh, sure."
I brought the lift up. Which was fine; I was just as much there as in the lab, after all.
"Going to get the popcorn?" I asked. The microwave in the kitchen instantly lit up in anticipation.
"What? Oh, no, I actually need to go home for a little bit—you know, get some stuff, leave a note for my dad, make a few calls…"
"Oh." That was a bit disappointing.
The lift reached the kitchen; Dib emerged through the toilet and jumped deftly down onto the floor, practically skipping into the living room. "But you'll be back soon, right?" I asked.
He looked up at the ceiling. "Totally."
"Okay. Um...cool."
I opened the front door for him. He stepped out, then quickly stuck his head back in and gave a small wave.
"See you in about an hour, EARL."
"I'll be here."
He laughed, stepped outside and ran down the lawn. The gnomes, of course, did nothing; I had deactivated them before he even arrived.
I watched him walk down the sidewalk. Then I turned my attention back into the house. The lights brightened instantly with my mood.
Another weekend without Zim. And another weekend with Dib. Another weekend of goofing off, joking, playing computer games, eating junk food (well, okay, me watching Dib eat the junk food, which was still somehow enjoyable), making fun of Zim, watching stupid videos on the PooTube…
What would we do first, I wondered. I should start getting ready. Maybe I should order the pizza? Or start downloading the movies off of the Earth Internet? I had already found dozens of scientific inaccuracies in the Star Walk movie we could make fun of…and I still hadn't shown Dib the Irkenet, you could find anything there…I could hook up the Control Brains and download Zim's entire file, Dib would just love hearing about the first Operation Impending Doom…
Ah well. Plenty of time for all that, I thought, chuckling. "This weekend is gonna be great."
(???)
Far away from Zim's base, hundreds of thousands or more sharp Irken letters filtered on a huge computer screen, glowing a radioactive green.
A figure, hunched in shadows, watched the screen closely, a dark look across the hidden face.
Suddenly a new clump of Irken letters appeared among the rest, blood-red against the glowing green. The letters beside them began to redden, spreading out.
"This weekend is going to be great," EARL's voice said, chuckling to himself through the computer's speakers.
The figure watching the screen grinned.
"Why yes. Yes it is."
A/N: And that's the first chapter. I honestly don't know when I'll be able to get back to this, since I already have several other projects I'm juggling...but I'll try to get back to it soon, so don't worry. Until then, please review!
