The bright light in the sky was so small at first that Dib took it for just another star. He sat with his hands wrapped around his knees and his laptop propped open beside him, still gazing out at the night sky. The PEG generator buzzed and hummed around him like a living creature as it worked to bring the two spheres in from space, but he had grown used to it by now. He let out a small sigh through his nose. This was taking longer than he'd thought… much longer.

Above, the speck of light grew larger and larger and finally split in two. Dib's head jerked up, his eyes locking on the spots and his heart beating more quickly. That was it! That had to be it. He jumped to his feet and snapped the laptop closed, pressing it against his chest. He could make out two little orbs now. They seemed to be gaining speed as they zipped toward the generator.

Wait. If they were coming to the generator, which made sense, then that meant they were speeding right toward…

With a yelp Dib plunged off the side of the bunker-like wing of the generator he'd been waiting on, not bother to try to locate the ladder that he had used earlier. He attempted a roll as he hit the ground to absorb the impact but his legs were jarred nonetheless and his hands, thrown out to catch himself, skidded on the pavement and the skin of his palms split. The laptop clattered to the ground next to him and Dib, gasping, tried to crawl away from the generator before just curling up and covering his head protectively with his arms.

A mere second later one of the orbs crashed into the enormous glass dome covering the main part of the generator, bounced off, and plowed into the top of the bunker just where he had been standing. It came to a rest there, spewing up sparks and flames.

The second orb sail over Dib's head and smashed into the pavement several feet away with a terrible crunch, burrowing into the ground and forming a shallow crater. Rubble rained down on him and he held still, not daring to move for a few seconds. Finally he lowered his arms and blinked.

The night was eerily silent now. Dib slowly uncurled himself and stood up, wiping his stinging palms on his pants and only dimly realizing that the hum of the generator had shut off.

His heart sank at the sight of what he had done, his gaze roving between the two wreckages. One sphere had smashed into the ground, the other was smoldering on top of the bunker. Both of them had crashed at high speeds. How could they possibly have survived that? He'd never know what they actually were, now. Sighing, he turned away and tried to think of what to do next. Maybe I should've waited five months…

"SPAAAAAACE!"

Dib jumped about a mile at the unexpected noise.

"Space! Where'd you go. Where'd you go. Where'd space go? Back on Earth. Yay! Bring back space. Space. Wanna see Jupiter. Wanna meet the sun."

He pinpointed the voice, electronic and processed-sounding, as coming from the sphere that had collided with the ground. The other sphere, the one that had hit PEG, had so far made no sound. Cautiously he stepped over to the sphere that had spoken.

It was shivering and had two twitching metal handlebars that protruded from the top and bottom on one side. Its mechanics whirred and creaked as a circular part in its center, made up of glowing yellow streaks like an iris spanning from a black circle in the middle, flicked to face him. It looked, for all intents and purposes, like an eye.

Two metal shutters closed over the yellow circle and opened again, giving Dib the distinct impression that this globoid robot-thing had just blinked at him.

"Space," it said again.

"Oh," Dib said awkwardly, and stared. He should've been overjoyed. He'd pulled this thing from space—and it was still functioning! After he nearly gave up hope, here it was. Maybe the other one was still working, too! "Um, wait right here."

The sphere gave no acknowledgement that it had heard or understood him. Dib retreated back to his wheelbarrow, picking up his laptop off the ground along the way and making a mental note to check it for damage later. He traded his laptop for the contents of the wheelbarrow: the fire extinguisher and the oven mitts, bringing the items back over to the yellow-eyed sphere.

"Ba ba baba ba bababa," it was saying, its "eye" veering wildly in every direction. Dib wondered if the crash had knocked a few of its circuits loose. He leveled the nozzle of the fire extinguisher at it, spraying it a few times until the sphere was engulfed in a white cloud of powder that got everywhere. Donning the oven mitts, he then gingerly picked up the sphere by its handles. Not a shred of heat made it through the mitts. Good thing this was one of his dad's products that actually worked.

"Hey! Are we going back to space?" the sphere babbled. "Are you going to take me back to space?"

Dib tipped his head to the side, examining the strange little sphere. "Are you… sentient?" he asked.

The sphere bobbed its "face" up and down. "Yep. Yep. I say yep. SPACE CORE! That's me. Space. I'm the best at space. Mmmm…. put me back in space?"

Space Core. So these things were called "cores," then?

"What about the other one?" Dib jerked his head to where the other sphere had crashed. "Is that one sentient, too?"

"My space buddy. Don't know. He says sorry. In space." The "Space Core" then appeared to lose any semblance of lucidity it had had and began rambling incoherently about space jail or something.

His thoughts whirling, Dib brought the core over to his wheelbarrow and set it inside next to his laptop. Once he was sure that the core was secure he picked up the fire extinguisher again, still wearing the oven mitts, and looked up at the top of the generator's flat structure where the other robot had landed. Oh, great. He cast a doubtful look at the ladder leading up to the top. Well… he couldn't just leave that core up there, could he?

Resigning himself, he tucked the extinguisher under his arm as best he could and clumsily scaled the ladder.

When he climbed over the top a wave of heat hit him and he flinched, raising an arm to shield his face. The core burned a few feet away near one of the generator's ventilation shafts, completely immobile and silent. The area of the roof where it had hit was charred, scuffed, and dented, as was the core itself. A few flames licked from its sides.

Dib sprayed the fire extinguisher at the core until the fire died completely. When the whitish fog of powder settled, he dropped the extinguisher back over the side of the generator for want of something better to do with it. It hit the ground with a clunk but luckily didn't, well, explode or anything. Dib adjusted the oven mitts on his hands before hefting the core up by its handles and holding it out to inspect it. The thing was pretty much identical to the other one, except it looked like a train wreck by comparison. If Dib had to guess he would've said that this thing had been through a war. There wasn't a spot on it that wasn't scratched, dented, or blackened from heat. The metal shutters over its eye were shut tight and the spherical body swung freely on the handles.

It was dead.

Or broken, anyway. It was kind of heavy, too; fifteen pounds, at least. With a grunt he clasped it by the upper handle in his right hand and clambered unsteadily back down the ladder. By the time he reached the bottom, his shoulder ached and he quickly grabbed the core's lower handle in his other hand as he made his way back to the wheelbarrow. He placed this core next to the other one.

So here they were. The two unexplainable moon satellites. He stood back and regarded them for a moment. They really didn't resemble any Irken equipment he'd ever come across. They both looked somewhat beaten up, too—especially the one that appeared to be broken—and they were coated in a thin film of powder from the fire extinguisher. Oh, that reminded him. Dib went over, picked up the extinguisher from the ground, and put it in the wheelbarrow by the cores and his laptop. His hands had become cold and slick with sweat inside the oven mitts so he pulled those off and dropped them in as well.

"Hey! Hey! You taking us to SPACE?" the Space Core demanded.

"…No, sorry," Dib said. The core put up a string of protests but Dib did his best to ignore it, picking up the back end of the wheelbarrow once he was satisfied that he had everything and rolling it back through the gap in the fence. When he was out he made sure to close the gate and secure the padlock once more.

Then, with his two ramshackle prisoners in tow, he headed off toward the house of a certain someone he knew would be extremely interested in what he had just brought in from space.

Rap-rap-rap.

The knocking echoed through the strange little house and was amplified by several speakers mounted around the interior. Deep in the bowls of a strange-looking laboratory, a small figure paused in his work. His yellow-green skin looked even more sickly than usual in the poor lighting, and his dark, raspberry-colored, insectoid eyes glistened.

"What is that?" he demanded, one of the thin, jet-black antennae that sprouted from the top of his head lifting half an inch.

"There's someone at the door!" a male, computerized voice said in response from speakers in the ceiling.

The green figure snorted, despite the fact that he had no visible nose. "Let the Roboparents get it! Why d'you keep telling me about—"

"It's the big-headed human," the voice interrupted.

The green figure whipped around, his gloved, three-fingered hands clenched into fists. "The Dib!" He spat the name like a curse. "Fine! I'll take care of him MYSELF." He marched over to an elevator set into the wall, the doors of which slid open with an acknowledging beep. However, he paused before getting in. "Computer, what time is it, anyway?"

"Almost half an hour past midnight, Zim," the Computer replied.

Zim scowled. "The human's trying to break in and attack me in my sleep! Little does he know, Irkens don't engage in that repulsive habit. HAH!"

"Break in? But… he's knocking on the door."

"SILENCE!" Zim snapped, stepping into the elevator. As it rose he hurriedly donned a disguise that consisted of two large contact lenses slipped over his eyes, which gave them whites like a human's along with blue-gray irises. The other component of the disguise was a scratchy wig of black hair that he plopped on top of his head to cover his antennae. By the time the elevator stopped at the house level of his base and he climbed out through the secret entrance in the kitchen trashcan, he looked like a short fifth-grade human boy with honeydew-colored skin, enormous eyes, no nose or ears, and strange three-clawed hands.

Never mind, he didn't look like a fifth-grade human boy at all. Although he seemed to think he did. All in all, it didn't concern him much.

Zim cracked open the front door of his house, his eyes shooting daggers at the person standing just outside. "What do you want, Dibworm? Why didn't my lawn gnomes shoot you?"

The boy on Zim's doorstep glanced over his shoulder, bewildered. "They're not even on."

"Wha—" Zim opened the door a bit wider and proceeded to smack himself in the forehead. "The gnome field—Broken! GIR!"

"I didn't do nuffin'!" a high-pitched squeak of a robotic voice sounded from somewhere in the house.

Zim clutched the edge of the door with splayed, rigid fingers. "I'll have the computer shoot lasers through your overly-large head, then!" he spat to Dib.

The human glowered. "My head's not big! And, besides." He took on a smug expression. "I just wanted you to know that I've captured your space probes! You won't be using them to try to conquer Earth. You'll have to try something else, but you won't get the chance because I'll—!"

"You captured my what?" Zim broke in.

Dib cut himself off right in the middle of his gloating speech and started over. "Your space probes. The ones orbiting the moon?" He pointed upwards to drive home exactly where the moon was located, and then chuckled. "You programmed them really badly, too. One's broken and the other one's completely obsessed with space. What were they even supposed to do?"

The Dib-thing had captured space probes? Zim couldn't help smirking, and he planted his hands on his hips. "Stupid, foolish Dib. I don't have any space probes."

"Oh really?" the human taunted. "Well, what do you think of THIS? Huh? Huh?" He reached for something on the ground behind him and picked up some sort of circular robot with no limbs and one eye, whirling back around to display it to Zim.

"Eh…" Zim dropped his arms. "It's… round?"

"Space!" the sphere announced.

Dib lowered it, his hands gripping the two handlebars that protruded from the sphere, and gaped at Zim. "That's it?"

"It's not Irken design." Zim cast the sphere a disdainful look. "The mighty Irken race would NEVER construct something so… so…" He trailed off. "What is it?"

The human scrutinized the sphere a bit sheepishly. "Um, I thought it was some sort of Irken moon probe."

The little sphere rotated its yellow optic up to gaze at Dib. "The moon? The moon's in space!"

Dib didn't respond. However, a small figure peeked around Zim from inside the house, wide cyan eyes locked on the sphere.

"CAN I PLAY WITH IT?" GIR burst out, loudly, right next to Zim's antennae. He winced. The robot lunged for the sphere but Dib yanked it away.

"Hey! I need to keep this as evidence!" he said.

"Are you done?" Zim drawled, not bothering to call GIR back and about ready to slam the door in this filthy human's face.

Dib put the sphere back down on the ground, where it rested upright on its lower handle, and held out a hand to keep GIR away from it. "These… really aren't your space probes?" he asked Zim weakly.

"NO!" Zim snarled. He thought for a second. "…And if they were, I wouldn't tell you. I've got a super-secret and evil plan for them. They're programmed to explode right in your meaty arms! MEATY ARMS! Innat right, GIR?"

"KABLAM!" GIR shouted, probably just as a response to the word "explode."

Dib simply narrowed his eyes, unperturbed. "Well, if you didn't make these things, I have to go find out who did. See you later, Zim." He picked up the sphere once more with a grunt and lugged it back to the wheelbarrow he had parked on the sidewalk on the other side of Zim's fenced-in yard.

"Be ready for an explosion!" Zim called, a sadistic grin plastered on his face. He at last took hold of GIR's wrist and dragged him back inside, shutting—and locking—the door. Just in case.

It was a slow and worrisome trek back home. The wheelbarrow, which had seemed to weigh almost nothing before, now felt approximately like trying to push around a steamroller. Dib stopped for the umpteenth time and eyed the two cores.

What are you?

"I'm the best at space," the yellow-eyed core gurgled, as if in answer to the unasked question. A creeping sense of foreboding crawled down the back of Dib's neck but he did his best to shrug it off.

So, he'd been wrong to think that these cores belonged to Zim. Unless, of course, the alien was lying, which could certainly be the case. But Zim's attempts at lying were as transparent as glass (a clichéd simile, of course, but the best that Dib could come up with at the moment). Zim had appeared to be telling the truth. Also, the cores really didn't look Irken-made. Upon closer study, Dib noticed that they both had the same circular, shutter-like insignia under their optics. He'd never seen it before.

When he finally reached his house, every light was off except for the sizzling electricity that made up the security fence around the walkway leading to the front door. It let him pass through with ease, recognizing his DNA signature immediately. The wheelbarrow and its occupants were allowed through as well.

Dib glanced at his watch. It was now well past one in the morning. With a sigh, he rolled the wheelbarrow through the house, too tired to worry about trying not getting dirt everywhere. He placed the two cores and his laptop on the living room floor; the fire extinguisher and the oven mitts he left in the kitchen. Then he shut the wheelbarrow in the garage, pushed the two cores into a corner of the living room, picked up his laptop, and retired upstairs to his room for bed and some serious thought.

In the morning he'd show the cores to his father. That was it. He'd do his best to repair the broken one and then show them both to his dad. Surely the great Professor Membrane would know something about them.

"SURPRISE! We're doing it now."

It was such a well-laid trap. Ingenious, really—yes, he… hhHHe would go so far as to call it that. The test subject and her little potato friend flew through the air after foolishly setting foot on the springy plate-thing (He'd never figured out what they were actually called… Although He could look it up! That was definitely a thing He could do! If He was so inclined) that He had rigged to launch sideways of all things. He wished He could have seen their faces. Well, the test subject's face. The potato had probably just continued to look like a potato.

"You've probably figured it out by now, but I don't need you anymore," He said. There was no response to this. At least, none that He could hear. "I found two little robots back here—built specifically for testing!"

Still no reply. At long last, the lab rat and the potato speared on the end of her portal gun like a starchy shish kebab fell through the air and landed on the platform He had set up, just as He knew they would. He broadcast His image over no less than six monitors grouped together in front of her. His blazing optic alone towered high above the pair standing forlornly in the midst of the mashy spike plates He had set up, poised to strike their deadly blows.

"Hallo! This is the part where I kill you!" His chipper tone masked the boiling rage that had been stewing ever since the test subject had stopped solving His test track correctly. The lab rat's eyes flitted quickly over the spike plates that surrounded her, maybe counting them. As if it mattered how many there were… "Had a bit of a brain wave," He continued. "There I was, smashing some steel plates together, and I thought, 'yeah it's deadly, but what's missing? What's missing?' And I thought, lots of sharp bits welded onto the flat bits. Still a work in progress, don't judge me yet! Eventually I'd—" Wait. "—I'd like to get them to sort of—" Wait. "…To shoot fire at you, moments—" Stop! "—moments before crushing you—" STOP!

His speech had become halting and now He lapsed into silence. The test subject was staring at Him through hardened eyes, every line in her body taut as if she were ready to leap at a moment's notice. Like a spring. Like a coiled spring. He had eyes only for her—and ignored the potato, who wasn't speaking anyway. "That's… that's what I'm aiming for but, you know, sm-small steps…"

No, I don't want to see this!

He simulated a gulp. "I—"

I changed it! I bloody changed it! Go back to the edited version! Edited is better. MUCH better. Don't make me watch this again don't make me

His optic glitched, probably as a result of the giant bloody crack in it, and the whole room blurred for a moment. Then it snapped back into focus and everything became clear again; and H-H-he jerked in his chassis, optic shields narrowed in an expression of determination. "RIGHT! Sorry about all that. No need for any more of that, lady, completely over with, because WE ARE GETTING OUT OF HERE. How does that sound?"

It wasn't too late. Not yet. They could still escape, they could still get out of here, together, him and the lady, just like they'd planned. And they would. He'd make sure of it this time.

"Hold on. Couldn't we just use that conversion gel?" the tinny voice of the potato bleeped, evidently not getting the memo about the changes.

He glared down at her. "Shut it, you. We're not doing that anymore." Hurriedly he turned his attention back to the lady. "Well, you heard her! C'mon, use the conversion gel and just… portal up there! Like you do!" As best he could, he twisted in the chassis and indicated an opening in the wall to the right of the monitors with his optic. "Do hurry though. Like it or not this place is still about to explode, and I still don't know how to stop it."

"Conversion gel. It's dripping out of that pipe there," the potato said.

"Yes, yes, we've got it." He nodded at her, a bit irritably. "Anything else you'd like to add? I should edit you next."

"Yes it is! We can use it to get out of here!" the potato crowed.

He turned back to the lady. "Hurry, hurry, c'mon, you have to get out of this. I'm not turning the mashers on this time, so I suppose it's not as much of a hurry, but as I said the facility is still going to explode. So, er, yes, we are on something of a time limit here. Sorry if I haven't made that quite clear."

"Then we'd come and find you," the potato droned, "and rip your gross little stupid sphere body out of—"

He was about to give her another biting remark, but she was cut off. Not by him, by…

"Hello? Can you hear me?"

He jumped in surprise and faced the lady again, his optic wide. "…Luv? Did you just… did you just talk?"

While the lady's face remained stoic, her mouth moved. And words came out. "It's still not working. I've tried everything but I can't reactivate it! Dad, do you think you could—"

He backed up a bit, frantically trying to make sense of what he was hearing. "What are you talking about? You have a dad? But I thought you were adop—have you been able to talk this whole time?"

"It's not her talking, you idiot," the potato spoke up.

His optic looped in his casing. "Oh, oh, and now you go off-script. Okay, so who's talking, then? You?"

The potato scoffed. "Look, does that sound like a girl's voice to you?"

"Okay, but Dad, I've got another one!" the lady said. She was talking, plain as day, or… or at least the voice was coming out of her mouth. And he had to admit, it wasn't a feminine-sounding voice.

His casing flared out a bit. "I, er, didn't want to judge," he said. "Heh, for all I know, she's just learned to talk! Just now! Who am I to—well, obviously, you would make fun of her voice, that's all you—"

"Wait, this one works!" the lady said. "All it talks about it space, but…"

"Do you have any idea where you are right now?" the potato asked.

He glanced around. "Yes, of course I do! I'm right here! Right in Her—your—chamber, same place I've been for the past, erm… day?"

"No, you idiot, where you REALLY are."

He narrowed his optic. "I'd appreciate you not calling me 'idiot,' thanks. Or 'moron.' I know that one hasn't come up for a while, but it's still there, still there, and still hurtful. Also, I would rather not think about where I am right now. With you, probably, and you are most definitely not a potato anymore. Or maybe I'm still hurtling through Earth's atmosphere, who can say? Or I could be dead, in which case this whole scenario here really doesn't make any—agh, you made me think about it!"

He writhed, the chassis in which he now resided swinging wildly in its ceiling mount. "I don't know what's going on. Okay? What is this, a memory? A dream? I can't have dreams—what is going on?" He stopped rocking and his optic darted about in a panic. "Hold on, and now the room's fading. Why's the room fading?"

"Maybe you're dying," the potato drawled.

The curved metal panels that made up his casing spread completely. "OR WAKING UP! Ohnoohnoohno waking up will be even worse than being here—!" He bore down on the little potato, his optic almost entirely filling all six monitors. "Okay, look, I know I told you to shut up earlier but talk now, okay? Say anything! Anything you like, anything in the world! Anything to keep me here! All right?!"

"All right then," the potato replied, and he could imagine her wearing an expression of lazy satisfaction. "You're a moronic, disgusting, talkative, cowardly little disgrace to Aperture, and you will never amount to anything. Unless, of course, 'anything' includes making incredibly stupid plans and being a complete failure in every way. You were built to make mistakes and if you've ever gone past your programming it was to make even bigger mistakes than anyone ever thought you'd be able to make. Oh, and the test subject you're trying so hard to save in this pathetic little dream of yours? SHE HATES YOU." The potato's yellow optic glinted cheerfully. "Feel better now?"

"No!" he wailed. The Central AI chamber was blurring, disappearing, his vision going dark. "Try something else!"

"Oh, well, if you insist. I could go on about your failings all day… perhaps I should make a slideshow…"

He didn't hear anything she said after that. As she spoke, his world vanished completely.