Chapter 1: Normality
Late at night, Dib Membrane leaned against the edge of the kitchen table, papers sprawled over the surface as he examined the graphs on a projected screen. The other lights in the house were shut off, save for the kitchen and the glare that filtered through the window from the glow of their security fence outside. The young adult sat alone in nothing more than a baggy t-shirt and a pair of boxers, perfectly prepped to leave at whatever time for the night, but he decided a while ago he wasn't in the mood to sleep.
While his eyes continued to scan the graphs, footsteps came from the doorway to the hall. Quickly turning his head, Dib saw his dad walk out from the dark, wearing a long lilac-colored nightshirt along with a flopped-down hat to go with it.
"Ah, intriguing to see you're still awake son!"
"Hey Dad," he said plainly, getting back to reviewing data he had printed out in front. The professor walked up behind him, resting a hand on his shoulder and making his son stiffen at the touch. Dib didn't understand why he did it; he didn't understand why he got so defensive around people like his dad. Mentally he knew that he could trust them, that he should be comfortable around them, but for some reason no matter who he dealt with, his reaction was always the same. Whether it was his dad, Gaz, or a homeless man on the streets, the slightest bit of contact made him tense, and he narrowed it down to just a natural reflex he had. It was troublesome, but he decided to just accept it , since there was no doing away with it.
"And what's my pleasant, non-insane son up to at this hour?"
"Not much. I finished all my required work so I'd figured I'd track a couple of meteors for now."
It wasn't really necessary, but after collecting all the data for their future gizmo that could turn virtually anything into a spoon, he wanted to clear his head with a little bit of astrology. While his dad was getting more work taken off of him, that was because on his part he was having to fill in for him more often. Not that it was that much of a problem, but it was tiresome. He had to stay awake most nights and only went to sleep around 2 AM. if he got lucky. Still, he was glad to say he had a better job than most people that were nineteen.
Even if he still technically had to live with his parent. . . it paid off well.
"Hmm. . . well by the looks of it I'd say it's coming close to hitting Mars, son."
Hmm? Dib looked back at the screen and changed with a quick click of a button to show a 2-D model of their solar system, and with a quick selection it pin-pointed the rock he was looking to find. His dad was right, logically the meteor he was looking at would be coming close to Mars. Given the velocity and Mars' position, there was a chance the rock could even breech its atmosphere.
He was just about to dig further into the chances when a small thought pierced his mind, and disturbed his regular notions. He could picture Mars being right in front of him, moving out-and-about miles away from it's orbit, until it was eventually left to rot in the belt. For a brief moment, he felt a spark of doubt for the asteroid's predicted course.
That image was gone in a flash, however, and all of his doubts about Mar's positioning got pushed aside. No, it was right. Mars was right in it's orbit, he had just been. . .being stupid, for a second. That was it. Mars was exactly where it was suppose to be, the thoughts that countered that were nothing more than illusions. Dreams. Made-up fantasies he had.
That was all it was. Just made-up.
Fake.
Unreal.
Imaginary.
A small wince cornered his lip at the last word, his mind playing it little bit more intense than the others. He chose not to think of it any longer and decided to stare absent-mindedly at his papers again.
"Now make sure not to stay up too late, son. We still have that big presentation to give tomorrow!"
The weight on Dib's shoulder disappeared, and without bothering to turn his head, Dib gave a sharp nod. "Sure thing Dad." The sound of his voice was flat and bland. Not that having emotion would've made a difference for his dad's reaction. Dib listened the the disturbance of his father's slippers as they padded the ground in the otherwise-silence of the house. He could hear it fade down into the hall, and now that he was keyed in this time, he could faintly make out the sound of his Dad's bedroom door being shut. In a moment after that, Dib let his head fall into his hands.
He was tired. Very tired, but he'd stayed up so long that his body felt that it had to stay awake at this point.
Taking another look at the 2-D model, he frowned, thinking about how the meteor was going to skim Mars again. What good was this information for him, anyway? He wondered if he could find any use for collecting data like this. Right now, it didn't seem like there was any need for it; all of it was just useless calculating. The scientist folded his arms against the desk and set his face down on top of them, with an exhausted breath out his nose. It was sad, he had absolutely no reason to track meteors down but he found it a lot more compelling than the rest of his concerns. Nothing about astronomy came across as important to anyone, though. Especially considering the . . . well accusations he'd made in the past. His dad usually wanted him to stay away from this field as much as possible.
For the past couple of months, though, his dad seemed to be easing up on him a bit, which was relief. As long as he could prove to his dad that he wasn't going to get carried away at all, then his dad would probably be alright with his extra studies.
Deciding that now was the time to call it a night, the projection was shut off and all of the papers were pushed and slid together in a rough, disorganized pile. Everything got shut down save for the light in the kitchen, and he was more than ready to head up to his room.
Not before making a quick snack, though.
At the edge of the counter, it took only a couple of seconds for the family's automatic-toasting-device to electrocute a perfect piece of toast for him. While it looked a bit extreme to have two giant lasers zap a slice of bread, it had a lot of credit for getting things done faster than a toaster ever could.
Looking outside of the kitchen window, Dib gnawed on the crust of his toast and barely broke off a chunk as he dully gazed outside. The electric fence was buzzing just as usual. There was the figure of a man walking just down the street. A small part of Dib itched to wonder who the random lurker was, what he was doing, but at the same time he mostly figured it was no more than some other towns person and it didn't matter whatever the person was up to. He'd seen plenty of people and creeps walk out and around his street, and he never saw anyone different from the next.
Everyone was always just another regular, ordinary person.
Bored the window after a little longer, the young scientist turned his attention further down the counter where one of the phone systems was set. It was blinking repetitively with a red light, and he knew what that meant. With a few steps he was right in front of it and pressed for the speaker to play.
"Residence has received TWO messages." It spoke aloud, and even though he could've felt bad for making noise in an otherwise-soundless house, he didn't. Out of spending his nights staying up, over time he figured his dad was the most concrete sleeper you could find. Whether he messed with the toasting-device or played the phone, or if he skidded the chairs all across the floor, nothing he did could wake his dad up.
Letting the audio play on, it read out loud the addresses that the two messages were arrived from—since his dad for some reason thought that was a requirement. It turned out that both of the messages were from the same person, and both were from-
As soon as the speakers started the beginning of the address, Dib's eyebrows arched the slightest bit. He sighed softly, feeling a little bit sad with knowing who the messages were from. He patiently waited a second or two, before turning the system off.
He always felt a little bad to leave Gretchen unanswered. She was a really nice girl. At the moment though, he really wasn't in the mood to hear from her, be by recording or not. Whatever she wanted to talk about, he'd probably just contact her tomorrow, or the day after. Maybe he could even pay her a visit if he found the time. It didn't interest him too much, but it wasn't really something he wanted to neglect, either. She was nice, and was probably one of the only girls who could look past the history he had. It didn't really make sense. He figured it had something to do with her being a reject back in school that made her so un-judgmental towards him, but either way he couldn't take her for granted.
Considering a background like his, you'd think a girl wouldn't even want to go near him.
Once he called it a night and left the kitchen, Dib went to go straight to the family bathroom. When he went in, he leaned over the the sink and kept his face close to the mirror as he reached up to take his contacts out. He had to wear them for almost three years now, ever since his glasses got lost back when he was sixteen. A lot of people told him to get contacts since they were apparently a lot easier and a lot cheaper to use.
Now, taking them off-and-on he never considered easier, but all the rest proved to be beneficial.
As soon as he was done, he left to head for his room. When he walked in through his door and shut it closed, he hesitated before actually going to bed. There was something bugging him, biting at him, but he couldn't put his thumb on what. It had to be something he forgot about again. That tended to happen a lot, especially with the lack of sleep he got. It could be a deadline, a project. . . sometimes he'd forget to buy groceries for the week. Despite how organized he tried to keep himself, ever since he started taking up piles of work, he always had something put off and it was irritating in the end.
Forget it, he thought. Whatever it was, he'd probably have to deal with it in the morning.
With a tired exhale, Dib walked over to where his bed settled and pulled the sheets back, crawling in. There was also that huge presentation he and his Dad had to give on the mass-expansion of midgets and, "Midgetitis," and explain how it was "in fact!" a disease, and declare that they were on their way to finding a possible cure for it. As much as he secretly disagreed with his Dad on this one, he couldn't let it turn out to be a disaster.
He needed at least an hour or two of sleep if he was going to make sure of that.
His eyes heavily began to droop, all of his body recognizing the soft, cushioning feeling around him. His head felt numb, clear and empty. It was a relief letting his body finally shut down after another long day. It would be the same tomorrow, when he would be by his Dad's side to give his presentation, and then start another project the next day, before something else would come up, and they'd have to get started on something else. It would just keep going, going and going working with regular science, improving things only so they could later be improved even more.
That's probably what would've happened, if not for the gigantic sound that stopped Dib from falling asleep that night.
A huge, starling crash made Dib flash his eyes open, seconds before he slightly lifted his head up to tiredly get a glimpse of the room. There was admittedly a small sense of paranoia in him as he searched for whatever caused the sound, but nothing seemed to be out of the norm. It could just be that something fell. That was the most logical thing.
Dib easily let go of the issue, deciding he'd put that off until the morning too. The young man settled his head down against his pillow again and was ready to shut his eyes, before some weird, mechanical sound gave him second thoughts. Something similar to a mechanical car jerking back-and-forth, it was soft and barely noticeable at first, but then grew loud and repetitive really nearly lifted his head up again when out-of-nowhere, he felt something land directly on his chest and make his upper body bounce up-and-down, his eyes shutting close in the process.
What the hell?!
Dib immediately snapped his eyes back open, and he reared his head up for his nose to touch the cold surface of a cold sheet of metal, and with a jerk backwards all he could see were two gigantic turquoise tubes radiating at him.
"HIYA!"
"GYAH!" Dib screeched out of the blue, swinging his arms to shove whatever-the-fuck-it-was off of him. His hands hit metal sending the thing barreling across his room, hitting the side of his wall. It squealed loudly, and he heard a small, "Oomf!" sound when he watched it hit the wall. The machine dropped down to the floor, and Dib threw his covers out to stand up and stare down at it.
"Eeehehehe!" It laughed in a tone that made Dib's stomach quench, before it moved up from the ground and stood up, on, two small. . . what, what were they, stubs? It was really hard to make out. "Let's do it again!"
What the-? Staring at the blur of a contraption, the familiar look and sound of it started to make the man's heart race. It- no, it wasn't. . . It couldn't. . .His breathing grew heavier while he started to fight the thought that this thing could really be what he was expecting. While he couldn't see too much detail with his contacts out, he was recognizing the shape, the colors . . but that voice. That high-pitched, squealing voice. There was no mistaking it.
A very sick feeling settled in the pit of his stomach the more the item squeed and shouted, soon taking off to wander around his room. Dib groaned and clutched his head tight, taking his attention off of the bot but still hearing the obnoxious, pitched sounds as he stumbled back and sat down on the end his bed.
Oh no.
A/N: Thank you for reading the first part. Yes, this chapter is dull. It's meant to be dull, and bland, so I hope that got expressed to you people well enough! I'm going to hold back on explaining things for the story, all you need to know is that . . . well, yeah, I'm going to be turning it into ZADR. Everything else is a surprise. Mostly because I'm only half-certain of where it's going anyways.
(Please note Midgetitis is not an actual thing and is not meant to be offensive towards dwarfism which is a regular genetic condition. It's only put here as a simple joke; I could just as well base it on blondes, Adam's apples, or lobe-ears. If anyone finds this or any other material too offensive message or contact me privately and respectfully please.)