Optical implants didn't run cheap on the galactic internet. But getting the material separate from the procedure was a different story, thanks to Vortian slave labor.
A purchase screen popped out of the console. Zim, humming with anticipation, hit the "Buy" button.
INVADERS ONLY flashed in digital block-lettering under his gloved fingertip.
"What the—" He tapped it again. Pressed harder. Trembled with the effort. "Come on! I am an Invader!" He slammed his fist on the console. "Computer! Bring me Skoodge."
The base computer produced a transport tube, and dumped Skoodge onto the floor face-first. It retracted into the ceiling by the time Zim turned around.
After Skoodge peeled an in-progress copy of 1001 Sci-Fi Mad Libs off his face, Zim jabbed a finger at the screen behind him. "How did you break it this time?!"
Skoodge set the Mad Libs aside and stood. "Break what? I never break anything." He walked up to the touch-activated screen generated by .vrt. The "Buy" button spun in stereoscopic 3D, and Skoodge gave it a little tap.
The screen gave a friendly beep-boop and said, "Thank you for your patronage!" before vanishing back into the console.
Zim's voice contracted to an indignant squeak. "But—how did you—"
"What do you mean, how did I..." Skoodge lifted his gaze from the console to the main monitor, and his eyes bulged. "Wait. Did I just buy optical implants? Is it really okay to do that?"
Zim scoffed. "Of course it is! As a future Invader, Flip was eventually going to get them, anyway."
"Oh." Skoodge suddenly found the floor fascinating. "Yeah, that makes sense." Without looking at Zim, he backed away from the console, then turned and left the room.
In the estimated week before optical implant delivery, Zim started Flip on weapon creation and modification. Crafting destruction was a favorite pastime of Zim's, and therefore perfect for his student.
Except Flip had zero aptitude for it. He was slow at taking things apart, slower at reassembling, and never returned anything to the right place. He kept dropping small parts, and spent much of his time hunting under machinery for components.
In response, Zim replaced all tutoring plans with weapon-modding until further notice. Why Flip would struggle with something so simple was beyond him. However, he was positive that drilling muscle memory into those clumsy little hands would render it a non-issue.
Flip's failures began exploding instead. They weren't even that spectacular—just a quick puff of black smoke, a dead weapon, and a crestfallen smeet. He'd become increasingly reluctant to go underground for training over the past few days.
Zim shoved aside the thirty-seventh ruined subatomic disperser, and placed the next one on the work table. "Again!" The smeet turned doleful eyes toward him. "We're not stopping until you get it right."
Flip glowered at the weapon, then balled up his tiny fists. "No! This is stupid!"
"Don't back-sass your superior!" Zim snapped, all stern military instructor. Flip cringed. "You're going to re-assemble this into something deadlier, or else you'll never—"
"I don't wanna!" Flip deployed his Pak legs, jumped on the table, and leaped into the ceiling's tube network.
"Get down from there!" Zim yelled.
Flip stopped spidering upward for a second. "No!"
Zim's gloves creaked as he clenched his fists. "Come down here and rip this weapon apart right now!"
A Pak laser fired from above, and blew the thirty-eighth subatomic disperser to bits.
"Fine! Be a failure!" Zim stormed out.
The next day marked the beginning of the third week since Flip's activation. Zim worked alone in one of the base's many labs; he hadn't called Flip down for any lessons. Not until his student expressed regret for his earlier insubordination.
Zim was busy welding spiked wheels to a duck when something crashed just outside the room. He clicked off the laser-torch, and lifted his face shield. "GIR! That better not be you I hear breaking things!"
No response. Zim grunted, pulled the shield back down, and continued weaponizing a live, squawking bird.
It took another hour, much of it spent trying to restrain the feathered specimen, but the Ducky Roader was complete. Designed to run down and impale enemies on land and water, Zim considered it undeniable proof of his inventive genius.
Even though Zim was finished, work-related noises continued from another room nearby. He approached the source in a brisk huff. Skoodge was going to regret using Zim's equipment without permission.
Zim entered the Making Stuff Room, took a breath to yell, and stopped. Round green eyes and notched antennae peeked above the work table as Flip used a step stool on tiptoe to reach it.
"Flip?" The smeet didn't look up at Zim's inquiry. "What're you doing down here?" Flip remained engrossed in his work as Zim walked up to the table, only taking his hands away when Zim arrived.
Zim picked up the cell-disruptor gun lying on the work table, and scrutinized it from every angle. The modification was slim; along with the usual Stir and Scramble settings, it now had Liquefy. More importantly, it was in one piece, without a single dropped or ruined component in sight.
He set the weapon down. "You finally did it. There may be hope for you as an Invader after all." Flip's face lit up like the city at night. "But how'd you do it? You destroyed all the other ones I gave you."
Flip ducked his gaze to the table's scorched surface. "I went real slow. I can't do it all fast like you want me to."
Zim perked an antenna. That had never crossed his mind. "Well... we'll work on that."
Grinning, Flip pushed the weapon across the table toward his mentor. Zim pushed it back.
"You made it, so it's yours," Zim said. Flip blinked up at him. "You'll need it to destroy your enemies."
Flip picked up the disruptor with newfound reverence. "Okay."
Using the table for support, Flip lowered himself off the step stool, one foot at a time. He rounded the table and passed Zim, plodding for the doorway with the gun cradled in his arms.
"Wait," Zim said. Flip stopped, facing the exit. "Now that you've modded your first weapon, it's time we moved on to—"
Flip tilted where he stood, and collapsed on his side.
Zim stepped up to him. "This is no time for games. We've much work to do."
Flip uncurled from the undamaged disruptor, and pushed himself up with both arms. He struggled up a few inches, trembling, then flopped to the floor.
"Flip?" No response; it wrenched at Zim's insides. He dropped to his knees and shook Flip by the shoulders. "What's wrong?!" Flip stayed limp, his disruptor gun lying forgotten in front of him.
One panicked transport to the medical bay and a detailed scan later, that twisty feeling in Zim's gut formed into a giant knot. The smeet his Almighty Tallest had trusted with him had a life-threatening congenital defect: tissue micro-perforation. Due to poor cell regeneration, the outer layers of Flip's internal organs were covered in microscopic holes. The base's medical AI gave a prognosis of immunodeficiency, infection, and most inevitably, death.
Even with the Pak slowing the damage, the holes would eventually increase and expand at a rate too quick for it to keep up. Moreover, it couldn't fix the self-sabotaging genes making it happen in the first place.
Worst of all, the scan claimed the deterioration had started upon activation. It had advanced, undetected, for a full two weeks.
Zim studied his unconscious student through the pink translucent shielding of a medical containment unit. He'd secured Flip in it to keep his condition stable, but beyond that, Zim was at a loss. Irken knowledge contained no information on repairing genetic defects post-activation, and he didn't have much time to puzzle it out. It was more complicated than splicing human and bologna DNA on a vengeful whim, after all.
Zim extended the communicator from his Pak, and set it to House PA Mode. "GIR, Skoodge! Get down here immediately." A squeak sounded from the other end. "Stay upstairs and watch the house, Minimoose."
He put his communicator away, and turned as GIR clanked to the floor in a tiny robot belly-flop. Skoodge descended from a nearby lift.
Skoodge took one look at the containment unit, and made a dismayed beeline for it. "What happened?!" He pressed his hands to the glass. "Is he okay? What's going on?"
Zim was already at the elevator Skoodge had just left. "Alert me if anything changes. And keep GIR away from the controls." He hopped in and sped upward to escape further questioning.
Once he reached the house level, Zim got out his usual disguise. His only other option was Professor Membrane's home laboratory, but that meant dealing with Dib.
Dib lounged on the living room couch, taking up most of it in a lazy sprawl as he read True Psychic Tales #255. He'd found it sticking out of a dumpster, so it smelled like rotten peanut butter, but he'd been trying to find that particular issue for weeks. Besides, the action was solid.
Small feet tapped up the front steps. The second Dib lowered the comic book, a Pak leg stabbed through the doorbell, and unlocked the door from outside.
Dib sighed; so much for a relaxing evening. He sat up and tossed his comic on the coffee table nearby as Zim let himself in. "Was that really necessary?"
Zim kicked the door shut, heedless of post-unlocking debris, and stepped up to the coffee table. "I require the use of your father's lab equipment."
"C'mon, you already know how I'm gonna answer."
"Yes, yes. But I think you'll find my reason trumps your consent." Zim looked up at Dib, who already had a height advantage sitting down. "The Tallest sent me a smeet to train as a future galactic Invader."
Dib was fourteen. He'd known what all those things were for three years. "You mean the little guy that ran around school last week?"
Zim cringed. "You saw that?" He shook his head. "Anyway! They assigned me as his mentor, therefore acknowledging my greatness as an Invader. But there has been an... anomaly in the smeet's DNA that requires immediate repair."
"Wait, your glorious leaders gave you an Irken baby with birth defects?" Dib said. "Don't tell me they didn't know it was—"
"Of course they knew!" Zim slammed his palms on the coffee table. "It's just a test. They know nothing is too difficult for me." He angled his gaze at the carpet as he spoke. "But if he dies, I'll be the one punished."
"So they sent one they knew would die anyway?" Dib crossed his arms. "That sounds like a set-up."
Zim's gloved claws squeaked on the glass surface as he screeched, "Filthy, slanderous lies! I won't permit some Earth-pig to speak that way about the Almighty Tallest!" He turned his back on Dib, shoulders hunched and fists clenched. "Forget it! I don't need you. Your primitive human technology is useless to me anyway!"
As Zim stormed toward the door, Dib asked, "What do you guys normally do with birth defects?"
The Irken stopped, then stared at his feet, unfocused. Dib had seen Zim do this before, apparently conducting an internal search through his Pak's knowledge banks.
"They're disposed of," Zim said. "It's more efficient to start over with a new smeet than it is to accommodate a defective. It'd be a waste of time and resources to train one that won't even survive to maturity." He stared at his hands. "But then, why would they..."
Zim continued muttering at the front door about impossible mistakes from glorious leaders. Dib caught snippets of how preposterous it was, as Zim's hands clutched into his wig.
Dib stood up from the couch and sidled around the coffee table. "I'll need a DNA sample before I can do anything."
Zim jerked his head up and spun to face Dib. Something like hope registered on Zim's face a split second before he shot a metal tentacle out of his Pak. Dib shut his eyes as shiny chrome whipped toward his face.
He opened them. A tiny glass cylinder sat inches before his nose, clutched in the tentacle's claws.
"Here it is," Zim said, and Dib took the cylinder in hand. Zim retracted the metal tentacle, and headed for the basement lab ahead of Dib. "Now hurry up! You're wasting time."
Dib had killed a lot of time over the years conducting experiments on any trace of DNA he could get from Zim. Irkens didn't shed hair or skin flakes, which made that somewhat of a challenge. It was easier to just throw stuff at Zim to see what stuck, fused, burned, or bounced off. Most of Dib's lab experiments confirmed things he already knew, but some produced utterly confusing results. A few gave outcomes so terrifying, even he dared not try to reproduce them on Zim himself.
But through all that, Dib gained a decent grasp of Irken DNA structure. It bore similarities to the DNA of various Earth organisms, making him wonder if life on all planets began the same way. Most of it remained a mystery, however. He couldn't yet determine which allele made Zim short, or which one made his eyes red. It simply wasn't comparable to Earth-DNA alleles, let alone human ones.
Zim handled the Irken DNA particulars. With Membrane's equipment, they quickly found the genetic source of the smeet's tissue degeneration.
"Can't his Pak take care of this?" Dib ran his eyes down the virtual prognosis, making mental corrections to account for human results based on an Irken specimen.
"It doesn't work on a genetic level," Zim said. "It's only going to accelerate, and outpace his Pak regeneration."
"Then we'll have to use gene therapy." When Zim gave him a blank look, Dib said, "Humans use it all the time. Dad made a breakthrough on it about fifteen years ago, and the global infant mortality rate dropped to... It'd take too long to explain, so I'll just show you how it works."
As it turned out, Dib didn't have to explain much. Together, he and Zim created a virus-sized vector to introduce the new gene. Dib wasn't sure if Zim's dedication to the task was scientific fascination, or wanting to finish it as soon as possible. He couldn't help suspecting the latter, as the prognosis claimed the smeet wouldn't live to see morning.
Two hours later, Zim snatched the still-steaming vial from the machine the instant the final step of the process completed. "I'll take it from here," he said, securing the vial in his Pak and making quick strides for the door.
"What, you're just gonna leave?" Dib fumbled with his safety goggles, trying to take them off without catching his glasses on them. He dropped the goggles to the floor in his haste to catch up with Zim at the already-open front door. "You're not even gonna thank me for betraying the human race?"
Zim looked back at Dib, one hand on the doorknob. "I'm not the one who should be thankful," he said, and left.
Zim returned to the base to find GIR curled up sleeping against the medical containment unit, one drool-soaked hand crammed in his mouth. Skoodge had apparently gone out for a late-night snack run, but had made sure to leave a disturbingly realistic moose figurine in GIR's arms. The controls remained untouched.
Flip hadn't moved an inch from where he'd been placed inside the unit. Zim stared at the monitor keeping track of Flip's vitals. When they remained steady, he let his breath out, and took the vial out of his Pak.
Zim grabbed GIR by the back of his thin neck and tossed him toward the ceiling, moose toy and all. A transport tube shot down to receive them, and took them up to the house.
With that hazard out of the way, Zim operated the controls on the unit's exterior to teleport the vial inside the shield. He manipulated the sterile robot arms inside, and injected Flip with the vector.
A holo-screen popped up as Zim retracted the tools, showing a digitized representation of the vector releasing the gene into the first cell's nucleus. Nothing happened—until the cell split. The resulting cells split faster as Flip's Pak encouraged propagation of the healthy gene.
Zim swiped the screen sideways to a list of rapidly fluctuating percentages. Abnormal tissue degeneration decreased, while cell regeneration steadily climbed.
Once the former reached zero, and the latter stayed at a hundred, Zim leaned both hands against the medical unit and exhaled slowly. The human's gene therapy had actually worked.
He tapped the holo-screen away, and jerked his attention back to the containment unit when Flip started moving. Flip stretched into wakefulness, met Zim's gaze, and beamed.
"Hi, Teacher!" he chirped, rising up on his knees and pressing his palms against the inside of the translucent pink shield. "What am I doin' in here?"
Zim shook his head. "Nothing. You were just getting out." He hit the release on the unit, and the hatch opened with a small hiss.
Flip jumped out and hugged Zim's face with all four limbs. Zim squirmed his hands under Flip's little arms and pried him away, only for Flip to immediately latch onto his torso.
Zim's fingers twitched; his student could put a leech to shame. Then Flip snuggled his head under Zim's chin, and sighed.
The knot that had been in Zim's gut for too many hours melted. When he settled his arms around Flip, it didn't feel terrible.
Red and Purple stared, slack-jawed, at the bright-eyed smeet on-screen. Purple pointed at Flip and said, "Well, he's looking awfully... alive."
"Indeed! The terror he'll rain upon his future enemies will be enduring." Zim stood with ramrod-straight military crispness, the smeet standing next to him in a best-behavior pose. "There was a minor snag, but I handled it. You'll be ecstatic to know that the mentorship is going smoothly."
Purple shot Red something of a betrayed expression. Red took great care not to notice while Zim was watching and said, "Good to know! You just... keep at it."
Zim whipped up an arm to salute. "Yes, my Tallest!"
He nudged the smeet with his elbow, who imitated the salute like some kind of Mini-Zim. He shrieked with enthusiasm, "Yes sir my Tallest sir!"
The call screen blipped off, and Purple rounded on Red. "You said his organs would be mush by now!"
"Well, they're not," Red said. Purple seemed miffed by the lack of justification. "This has gone completely off the rails. He can't get nailed with an automatic smeet-death execution bounty if he keeps it alive."
"Did we send him the wrong one?" Purple put a hand out to one side, and a subordinate Irken scrambled to place a small, paper-thin monitor in it. He ran his eyes over the text displayed and said, "Wait, no... it was the right one. Huh."
"He must have fixed its genetic defect somehow." Red couldn't fathom how Zim, of all people, could come up with that solution, let alone pull it off. Not to mention why—solving a genetic defect post-activation defied all reason. "If the smeet's no longer defective, then there's no reason to keep it on Earth. You!" He pointed at a random operator on the Massive's bridge. "Send a retrieval unit to Earth. I want that smeet returned to Irk for proper training."
Purple tossed the small monitor over his shoulder, ignoring a pained scream from one of the bridge rabble. "Why bother? Zim's probably ruined it already."
"That's not the point." Red narrowed his eyes. "It was never his to mess with."