Lab coats. There were lab coats everywhere - sweeping along in the hallways, fluttering in the corridors, being worn by almost every being within the building. The abundance of lab coats didn't seem to fit the building they were in. The place was more like a castle - a beautiful, elegant castle that, if it were a person, would probably highly disprove of lab coats. Of course, if it were a person, it would probably stride away with a long, rusty red coat dragging behind it and along the carpeted floor.
Within the crowds of the obscenely tall people that took up almost all of the space within the castle stood one human that was remarkably different. He was leagues away from the others, and in more ways than one.
The first thing that made him different was his height. Unlike the adults walking around, this young boy was scampering around on small, stubby legs. He was remarkably short, even for a boy his age.
The second thing was his outfit. He wasn't wearing a white lab coat, but a black trench coat that was obviously much too long for him. The sleeves were much longer than his arms, but weren't rolled up at all. The coat trailed along behind him as he walked throughout the castle.
This particular boy was four years old, and couldn't find anyone he knew anywhere. The lab coat-wearing people were unfamiliar to him - especially because he was too short to see their faces and recognize them. However, the nearest lab coat looked vaguely familiar...
"Hello?" the boy began, tugging on the end of the person's lab coat, "Hello?" His voice was quite high-pitched, but this was typical for a four-year-old.
The lab coat's owner's head immediately snapped down to stare at the boy. It was a woman, with blond hair that looked like it had spent too much time in the hairspray department. As her cold blue eyes stared down at the small boy, he instantly knew that she wasn't familiar at all.
"Do you want something from me, boy?" she asked sternly.
The child quickly retracted his pale hand from the woman's lab coat. "No," he replied, voice wavering just a bit, "Sorry, miss."
The woman kept watching as the boy darted back into the crowd of scientists. "Stupid kids," she muttered under her breath, "They don't have a clue of what they're doing." Perhaps her opinion on children was skewed a bit due to the fact that she had never raised kids of her own.
Meanwhile, the boy was desperately wandering throughout the castle, trying to find someone he recognized. Every lab coat looked the same, however - long, white, and unbearably sterile-looking. He almost had the urge to run up to one of them and find a way to get it covered in mud, just to create some originality.
The little boy froze when he heard a man's voice coming from what seemed to be directly behind him. He whirled around, almost tripping over his own trench coat as he did so. However, it turned out that the man was about five feet away from him, so his ears were mistaken. Not deterred by this, he rushed up to the man and began to tug on the edge of his lab coat.
"Um, sir?" the boy began, a little nervously, "Sir?"
The man was in a completely different world from the four-year-old boy that was tugging on his lab coat. He was deeply involved in a conversation with another man, as a matter of fact - they were discussing chemicals within the atmosphere that had the potential to destroy the entire planet. This man was quite the serious one, and wasn't very happy when he felt a peculiar pulling sensation on the hemmed edge of his beautiful, pristine lab coat.
"Stop that!" the man snapped, turning around and causing the boy to let go of his coat, "Do you know what I'm..." Before he could finish his sentence, he noticed that he was only talking to a four-year-old boy wearing a black trench coat. Behind a pair of thick glasses, his eyes were wide in shock, and he looked like he was about to burst into tears.
Realizing that he must have seemed like a horrid monster to the child, the man's features immediately softened. "Oh, I'm sorry about that, little boy," he confessed, "I didn't mean to snap at you." A small smile came to the boy's face, and he let out a small giggle that was barely audible over the voices of the other scientists talking.
"It's 'kay," the four-year-old replied happily, leaving the "o" in the word "okay" out for some weird reason, "I'm just looking for my daddy. Have you seen him?" Deciding that this conversation might take a little while, the man got down on one knee in order to get closer to the child's height.
"I don't think I have," the man told the boy, wondering if he had ever seen someone with a similar trench coat or similar glasses, "What does he look like?" It didn't really matter what the boy said at this point - practically everyone within the castle was wearing the same lab coat.
"He's dis tall," the child answered, standing up on his tiptoes and holding up one hand to emphasize his height, "As tall as you, sir! He has a coat like yours, too!" This was nothing but the bare bones of a description, but then again, these were the words of a four-year-old boy - how could someone be good at descriptions at that age?
"I haven't seen him," the man responded honestly, putting one gentle hand on the boy's diminutive shoulder, "but I bet he's going to be in one of the big rooms. Do you know where the big rooms are?" The child shook his head, which seemed a bit abnormally large. Maybe the man was just seeing things.
"Go this way," the man explained, pointing toward the right, "You'll probably find your father there." He let go of the boy's shoulder, and as soon as he did, he was racing away, trench coat billowing out from behind him like a cape. His hands were outstretched in a way that made him resemble a superhero, flying through the skies.
"Be careful not to trip over that trench coat of yours!" the man called as he watched the boy go, "Now, then..." He turned to face his colleague again, but was surprised to see that he had walked away and was now talking to someone else. The man could overhear them discussing the very thing he had been talking about less than two minutes ago.
"Ignorant fools," the man snarled under his breath, "Can't they see I was trying to talk to someone?"
The child had been trying to follow the man's description as well as possible, and ended up entering what was quite the big room. Thirty-five or so scientists were conversing within it, talking about whatever was on their minds. The child gazed at them in awe and wonder, hoping that someday, he could be as smart as they were.
The large room was shaped like a giant circle, and was covered in a carpet with a strange, swirling design on it. The boy, with arms still outstretched, raced around the swirls and circles, occasionally making what he judged to be "airplane noises" in the process.
After a few minutes of this, however, the child remembered his mission. He skidded to a halt, straightened himself up, and took a few seconds to push his glasses back up to the bridge of his nose before continuing to search for his father.
Amongst the lab coats, the mission became very difficult. Despite this, the little boy was very persistent, and wouldn't give up easily. He tugged on the lab coats of several of the scientists he saw, but none of them had seen his father. It didn't help that he didn't tell any of them his own name or the name of the very person he was searching for.
"Daddy looks a little like me, I think," he told one of the men he had spoken to, "His hair's kinda like this (he paused to make an elaborate curving motion with one of his hands here), see?" The four-year-old was very underdeveloped when it came to descriptions, however, and his childish words had no affect on the people he spoke to.
"Good luck, kid," one of the men had told him, ruffling his black hair, "I'm sure you'll find your father soon enough." The boy had laughed cheerfully as the man ruffled his hair and had immediately raced off to talk to someone else. The man stood there and watched, marveling at his extreme perseverance.
After a while, scientists were beginning to leave the room to go somewhere else - where, the child didn't know. He had spoken to about seventy-five percent of them, but nobody had been helpful to him in his search for his father. He hadn't lost hope yet, but he was teetering on the fine edge between losing it and staying strong.
The last person the small boy spoke to was a much younger man - probably around twenty-two or so. "He's probably not in this room," he told the child in an attempt to be helpful, "I don't think I've seen anyone around here with hair like yours! Really, kid - it looks a bit like a...a scythe!" His words were true, although the boy had never noticed that he had scythe-like hair before.
"'Kay," he replied positively, "I'll keep looking!" A bright smile came to the man's face as he watched the child scurry away. He had been quite the ray of sunshine - he had taken a great toll on the man's otherwise gloomy mood.
The small boy didn't seem to notice how thin the crowds were growing. Most of the scientists seemed to be headed in the same direction, although he had no idea what the point was in this. Why would everyone be going the same way? Wouldn't that just make wherever they were headed even more crowded?
A few minutes passed, and the fact that the child was getting more and more lost was left unnoticed. The people were getting colder and colder, unfriendlier and unfriendlier. One of them didn't say a thing, but her icy-cold gaze penetrated the boy's cheerful mood and sent him scampering away.
The last person the boy spoke to was even taller than the others, and his response was the worst. When he first felt the persistent tugging on his lab coat, he whirled around and screamed, "Go away, you little demon!" In response, the boy let out a little shriek and turned around in an attempt to take off running and get away.
As he turned, the boy accidentally tripped over his own trench coat and fell to the ground with a yelp of pain. He staggered to his feet and continued to run away, but it was hard when he kept tripping over his trench coat and his glasses kept slipping off.
The world seemed even darker, and the scientists seemed to grow even taller. Their words grew more hurtful, and the boy was afraid that he would never find his father. Tears stung his brown eyes as he ran, unable to find a friendly face in a sea of what felt like thousands of people.
Blinded by fatigue, pain, and an irresistible urge to cry, the boy finally gave up. He stopped running, sank into the corner of the room he was now in, and let himself sob. Tears poured down his cheeks as he buried his face in his hands, looking less like a human child and more like a tiny shadow within the dark room.
For quite a while, the boy's cries seemed inaudible to the scientists. A few of them - the ones he hadn't spoken to yet - saw him, but had no idea what a child was doing in a place like this. They then walked away, hoping that they wouldn't get wrapped up in whatever problem the boy was going through.
Most of the scientists had left now, but only one had just entered. Her eyes were beautiful pools of chocolate brown - like beacons of light to the boy huddled in the corner of the room. A bit of her straight brown hair fell over one of her ears as she knelt down next to the boy.
"Hey," she began in an effort to cheer him up, "It's okay. Don't cry." She reached out and gently touched his arm, which was constantly shuddering in a discombobulated rhythm to his sobbing.
The boy looked up, looking completely hysterical. "It's not going to be okay!" he cried sadly, "I can't find...I can't find my daddy anywhere!" He burst into tears again and buried his face in his trench coat, only causing the woman to lessen her grip on his arm. This slight gesture made him look up in vague confusion, unsure as to why this woman was trying to comfort him.
"Who's your father?" the woman asked soothingly, "If you tell me who he is, maybe we can find him together." These words reassured the boy just a bit, and he raised his head and stared into the woman's eyes. They were full of compassion, unlike the eyes of most of the scientists he had seen.
"His name is..." the boy began softly, speaking in a weak voice and between sniffles, "I think it's...Daddy's name is...M-Membrane." The woman's full, red lips curved up into an even brighter smile, and the boy felt himself smile just a bit in response.
"So you're Membrane's son?" the woman asked, grinning when she saw the boy nod, "You'll be pleased to know that I just saw him a few moments ago! Follow me - I'll show you where your father is." She let go of his arm and got to her feet, walking rather slowly so that the boy could keep up with her.
Occasionally, the woman would look back to see if the boy was still following her. He always was, occasionally wiping his tears away with the sleeve of his trench coat. He looked a lot happier now that he had been told that this woman knew where his father was - there was even a slight spring in his step as he walked.
There did come a point in which he lost her, however. He looked around in fright, unable to find the angelic woman who was helping him find his father. None of the scientists vaguely resembled the woman in any way, aside from the lab coats - but then again, almost everyone was wearing those, so it didn't really matter.
"I'm over here!" the woman called, and the child's head immediately jerked toward the direction of the woman's voice. When he saw her waving at him and telling him to come back, he laughed excitedly and rushed up to her, glad to have a friend in this chaotic mess of scientists.
Eventually, he was led into a brightly-lit room that he hadn't been in before. Renaissance-era paintings covered the walls, and everything was covered in an elegant gold finish. The room was occupied by a long table, and almost every seat was taken up by one of the many scientists the boy had seen earlier.
"...Wow..." the small child breathed, at a loss for words, "This is soooo cool!" He glanced around the room in pure wonder, taking in everything he saw and storing it in his memory banks so that he would never forget anything. A child's memory banks have their faults, however, and the memory of this night was definitely going to be at least a bit flawed.
"Your father's over here!" the woman told the boy, pointing toward a small crowd of scientists that was a mere fifteen feet away. The child squealed with delight and rushed up to them. Most of the crowd dispersed, which allowed the boy to see his father among them.
"Daddy!" the boy screamed ecstatically, "Daddy!" His father, the famous Professor Membrane, heard his son's calls and turned his head in their direction, looking away from the scientist he had been speaking to for just a moment. What he saw was a four-year-old boy, face slightly tear-stained, rushing up to him in a trench coat that was probably over four sizes too big.
"Hello, son!" Professor Membrane began, lifting the boy into his arms as he ran up to him, "Where have you been?" The woman watched, smiling pleasantly, as the child buried his face in his father's lab coat and squealed with happiness.
"Professor," the woman called, walking up to Professor Membrane with her shoes making a click-click sound against the floor, "I found your son in one of the rooms on the top floor, positively terrified and trying to locate you. Did you have any idea where your son was?"
"Unfortunately, no," the professor replied, seemingly having no expression in the eyes behind his goggles, "I didn't expect him to get lost!" He laughed lightheartedly, and both the woman and the young boy joined in.
"Well, you both should sit down soon - dinner starts in two minutes," the woman murmured, "Take care of yourself, you wonderful son of Professor Membrane." The boy giggled childishly as the woman gently ruffled his black hair. She then walked away to find herself a seat somewhere at the long table.
"Let's go find you a seat," Professor Membrane told his son, walking over to the table and scanning it in order to find an empty seat for the four-year-old boy. For a while, he just stared at the table, unable to find a seat, but then someone spoke up.
"Membrane!" a young man of around twenty-five cried from across the room, "Over here!" The man was standing next to a single empty chair on the other side of the table.
"Just a moment, Brian!" the professor called back, "I'm trying to find a seat for my son here!" The young man, apparently called Brian, immediately dashed around one end of the table and up to the famous professor, slightly long blond hair bouncing just a bit as he did.
"Oh, your son?" Brian asked, eyeing the small child with a curious look in his eyes, "We saved a seat for him next to your daughter. It's this way." Brian and Professor Membrane walked past about fifty scientists who were all sitting at the table and conversing amongst themselves.
The boy looked up from his father's shoulder as soon as he felt him stop walking, only to see a chair that was occupied by several heavy books. He guessed that this chair was meant for him, since the books would probably serve as a booster seat. He was correct - his father gently placed him on top of the books and walked away to sit down on the other side of the table.
The child looked to his left, grinning and revealing perfectly white baby teeth when he saw the tiny girl sitting next to him. She was sitting in a high chair and looking thoroughly disgruntled with her surroundings. However, the dark-eyed glare she gave her brother wasn't enough to ruin his mood.
"Hi, Gaz!" the boy began happily, directly addressing his two-year-old sister by name, "Guess what? I went on an...an avenchur! There were all these guys, and they were all wearing white coats! And this one nice lady helped me find Daddy!"
Gaz said nothing, but turned to face the table again in silence. Her irked expression had been replaced with a pensive one, which appeared to be a good sign. The small child let a short laugh escape him before turning to face the table and look at all the scientists who were sitting around him.
He had spoken to several of them, and although his father was a long way away, he could still see him. He managed a quick wave of his small hand before getting distracted by the most wonderful smell he had ever encountered. "Mmm!" he cried excitedly, "What's that yummy smell?"
The boy learned within just a few moments. Many different maids and butlers emerged from a door at the end of the room, each one carrying several trays of food. They placed the trays in front of the countless people who were sitting at the table - expertly-cooked food made under the hand of a specialist.
"Thank you!" the boy told the maid who put his plate in front of him.
"Don't mention it, little boy," she replied with a Russian accent, "It's my pleasure."
By the time the maids and butlers had left the room, almost everyone was buzzing with anticipation. After all, the food looked so good...who could resist? However, certain people had the ability to resist their insatiable hunger, and it was one of these people who held the megaphone up to his mouth.
"Scientists of America!" the man bellowed, "Thank you for showing up tonight for our annual Thanksgiving dinner! Although we may follow many different traditions than ordinary American citizens do, we still take time to give thanks on this wonderful day, so let's all give our thanks before digging in!"
Although most of the people at the table closed their eyes and mentally recited their thanks, not everyone did. The four-year-old boy closed his eyes and whispered his thanks ever so softly.
"I'm thankful for my twench coat. I'm thankful to be here with all these people. I'm thankful for this food. I'm thankful for Daddy, and Gaz, and...and...and everyone."
The boy didn't know that his life would just continue to get worse from here. He didn't know that his future obsession with the paranormal would greatly affect his chances of making friends with others. He didn't know that he would gradually become the most hated person in the entire city. He didn't know that, eventually, his life would be completely ruined by an Irken invader named Zim who only wanted to take over Earth.
But Dib Membrane was four years old. Who says a four-year-old can't give thanks?