I DO NOT OWN SOUTH PARK

Chapter Track: Dare - Gorillaz

I haven't done a chapter fic since my hair was long. Anyways this was a thought that popped up a little while ago, and I decided to pursue it. I'll be honest, it's a tad more science fiction than I'm used to working with. And after a few months of just deleting everything I wrote and hating my rather boring writing style, here I am ready to head the trash throne on this dying website.

TRIGGER WARNINGS FOR: Existiential Crisis, Death, Minor Gore, and Swearing.

They salvaged his body just in time.

However, they clotted the heavy, pulsing flow of blood far too late. Wires ran from drilled out bits of his skull to a machine like a hard drive feeding memory to a computer. A machine pumped artificial life into him, indicated by the soft rise and fall of his chest. His eyes were half-lidded, shimmering life fading from them with every passing moment. If you let you concentrated to the point where you became disillusioned, you could almost see his fingers twitch and the small tremors wracking his body like dropping pebbles in still water.

But nobody in the room could deny the simple fact:

Tweek Tweak was dead.

Apparently, he had been walking home when a lethal knife wound was inflicted upon his chest cavity, and he would've died of blood loss had I not found him exactly twenty six minutes thereafter, and too late.

I had found him curled up upon himself in a dirty alleyway by the railroad tracks, chittering soft nonsense to himself to keep his eyes from slipping. "Seventy-two, purple. Ticks, ticks, ticks. Gah. It's cold out."

And now, his parents had relucatntly consented to allowing some crazy psychologist 'innovators' mess with his mind.

"What are you doing now?" I asked, jaw stiff. My anxiety was a two litre bottle of Pepsi, and the events of this day was dropping Mentos into it, leaving me to helplessly try and hold the leaking cap shut. The first scientist, a heavy set man with a thick stubble trailing down his neck answered impatiently.

"We're attaching his memory core to the visual. This way we'll be able to see his memories as we reconstruct them," he grunted, fixing yet another metal jack into Tweek's head. He looked surreal, like an illustration inspired by a dystopian cyborg flick. Weird stuff happened all the time in South Park, I tried to remind myself. And yet, I couldn't remember a time where weird stuff drilled holes into my best friend's head to uncover a murder case.

I twirled the discolored yellow braids attached to the earflaps of my aviator's hat to release some of my nerves. Tweek had been avoiding me lately, and that's the thought that made me nervous. He'd just been uncharacteristically introverted and withdrawn, and quiet. He'd always been a bit antisocial, but never had he shelled himself away from me. I cringed and bit my lower lip, forcing myself to my surroundings.

"It's coming up," the second scientist, a lean woman with a face and pixie cut that reminded me of the pictures of the authors who wrote Every Successful Woman's Autobiography Ever. "We're blurry, Steven. Up the processor."

"That's a tad dangerous at this state. His body's still unstable," the first scientist, Steven, hummed nervously, adjusting his wireframe glasses atop the bridge of his nose. He checked Tweek's vitals, and then reluctantly switched a knob that worked the processing machine.

Tweek's body tensed for a moment, and then went slack, clearing up the fuzzy edges on the monitor. What I saw then was an expanse of white followed by an ever-shaking monitor.

"Yes! It's there!" Steven jumped up, pumping his fist in the air. He waddled over to Tweek's bedside and yelled: "You hear me alright?"

The camera buzzed out a pattern of noise that only barely resembed what Steven said. The camera jerked, and then I head him.

"W-what the hell? Where am I? Am I dead? Jesus, tell me I'm not dead!" Tweek screamed, collapsing in on himself. The monitor showed his hands covering his eyes, and then there was nothing but the cracks of his palms.

"Well we're getting a responsive first person point of view, but the bad news is that his sensory receptors are completely blown. He won't be able to hear our commands, not to mention reconstruct an entire memory." The woman sighed, adjusting some of the metal jacks and rechecking his vitals.

"What now?" I muttered, staring helplessly at Tweek's monitor. He was panicking. You could hear his rapid breathing and soft whines echo around the room. I couldn't just sit here and do nothing.

The scientists talked for a moment before they caught my eye. They chatted some more, and then they broke their whispering to address me.

"We've got an interesting proposition for you," they hummed.

Silence overtook the room. Only the desperate pleas of help from Tweek could be heard. I couldn't take one more second of it.

"What do you need me to do?" I asked determinedly.

The scientists shared an uneasy look before nodding in silent pact.

"We may have a solution -and we don't think there's much time to dote on the situation, so a simple yes or no in short time will suffice- but what we need you to do is go after him, per say." Steven explained lowly. "If we can hook up receptors to you, and connect you to Tweek's subconscious, we may be able to transmit messages to him to help reconstruct the memory."

"You're gonna drill holes in my head?" I asked, knitting my brow.

"No! No no! Since we don't need to see your memories or point of view, that'd be rather unnecessary. No, instead we're just going to inject you with a serum that should connect you wirelessly." The woman assured hastily.

"Should," I stressed.

"Yes, should. Now we're running out of time and the added stress levels in your friend is tragically compromising our time, so if you could please agree or decline?" The woman snapped.

I thought for a moment. I didn't have much to lose, and I'd only regret not getting to say goodbye if I didn't. So I did. I nodded, and let them sit me down on a plastic chair and drive a needle into my neck. It stung like hellfire, but the pain ebbed away almost instantly. What replaced it was mind-numbing wooziness and drunken vision. I swayed back and forth slightly, trying to resist the hazy drug, but it put me to sleep faster, and the next thing I saw was blackness.