He stared at his claws, bandaged in white rolls of gauze, stained deep green.
Real stupid, Zim. Don't hit glass with your bare claws. Duh!... Good Irk, was that a Zim thought or a Dib thought?
And what on Irk was I doing telling Dib what happened? I have to keep hold of myself. I don't have the Tallests to look to anymore. Zim looks to Zim.
What about Gaz and Dib?
Smeets, barely crawling by Irken standards.
But your age in Earth standards.
Flackle-siln. Zim is over a hundred years older than either of them. Even on Earth, experience equals… equals… what does it equal?
It doesn't matter. Don't depend on anyone but Zim now. Dib, Gaz, and GIR need Zim. Zim needs no one.
Right?
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Professor Membrane sat on his cot. Occasionally she had come in to probe him with questions he had no answers for, or give him a tray of food that was almost, but not quite like, Earth fare.
On the right side of the door hung three pictures. Dib, Gaz, and Zim. Zim was in his victorious Irken pose, his antennae swept back and his mouth frozen in mid-exclamation. Gaz's hair hung in her face as she bent over her Gameslave. Dib stared cluelessly at something just outside the picture frame.
He averted his eyes from Dib's confused features, stabbed by the memory of the betrayal on his son's face.
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"I protected him. They could have taken him and Gaz apart, but I didn't let them!" Membrane yelled.
Dib gazed at his father with hate-filled eyes. "Look me in the face and tell me you wouldn't have let me die in that hallway, that if I died you wouldn't have cut me open to look at my insides. Tell me you would never have run experiments on me for the good of mankind."
Membrane straightened, but avoided Dib's eyes. "Son, science is everything. I cannot expect you to understand, being a child, but there is more at stake than just—"
"TELL ME!" Dib screamed.
Membrane brought his eyes up to Dib's and said stoically, "I would never have done these things to you."
Dib's face twisted in rage. "LIAR! I saw what you did, I remember!"
The Professor drew himself up and said coldly, "Dib, the world is bigger than you. You may not understand how unusual your position is, but I do, and I had to make full use of the resources at hand."
"Sure Dad, forgive me for forgetting that even your own children are expendable for the sake of the world." Twisting his neck around, he told Zim, "Up the stairs, to the roof quick!"
Zim bounded for the stairs, leaving one speechless professor standing by his flashing barricade.
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The Professor frowned. "Science, it's all for science. Nothing is more important. Nothing."
Not even your kids?
He clenched his fists. They're not children. They're specimens, freaks of nature. Products of races that never should have mixed. Stok should have taken that seriously.
Why did it have to change when she told you? You loved her…
I didn't know!
But before you knew—
Doesn't matter! I was ignorant, and I'll make up for that ignorance no matter what!
Grimly he set about eliminating his emotions about the situation by imagining three empty autopsy tables waiting for his use back on Earth.
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The first thing you noticed on Hunderdacy was the profound lack of noise. All over the planet, thousands of mouths moved, beaks clicked, tentacles writhed, splorgens vibrated. But not a single sound could be heard. The waterless surface of the planet teemed with Doblexars, 5-mouthed Devorrahs, Irkens, Slorbeasts, Gasqueedlasplorches, PlanetJackers, and the occaisional Morflar. Each being moved about in its own laser enforced bubble, to keep away foreign diseases from the multiple races that poured through the planetary system every trinam1. The bubble kept out odor, bacteria, viruses, and sound.
But communication was not dead, far from it. One had only to picture a person or creature for the telepathic matrix of the bubble to cross reference with all the bubbles of planetary visitors and link with that being's bubble. The process took five seconds, but promising scientists swear they'll fix the time-lag problem within the next four trinams.
In the middle of the soundless atmosphere, a good-sized Vortian cruiser dropped down for a landing.
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"No, we need a set of four-way connections. Con-nec-tions you fool, not complexions! GRAH! You revolting, irritating, idiotic machine!" Zim banged on his console. It was his fifth attempt to order the bubbles, set to his specifications, and he had no patience for the chipper personality of the order machine.
So let me get this right, five bubbles with an interconnected communication system?
"NO! FOUR BUBBLES!"
Four bubbles, coming your way. Chirped the machine.
Zim's eyes widened. "No, wait! Don't forget the interconnected communication system!"
The what?
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Dib sighed as he removed the bandages from Zim's claws. They showed faint scarring, but the nanobots had done their work well. He didn't ask why Zim hadn't just had the computer help. He doubted Zim knew why himself.
"Don't go punching out monitors again, alright?"
Zim rolled his orbs. "Right, Zim will keep that in mind."
"Are you two gonna play doctor all day or are we gonna deboard?"
"Coming Gaz." The boys mumbled in unison.
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Four bubbles descended from the ship's bay doors. Purple, green, blue, and cyan. Zim connected his bubble with the parking payment device and put in some moneys.
"Where we goin'? Where we goin'? Where we goin'?" GIR bounced, using his bubble to cartwheel around the spaceport.
Zim pointedly ignored the manic SIR as he led the little band down a lifter and into the jostling crowd. He had been to Hundredacy a few times on interplanetary assignments, and most of the rented dwellings were unsafe places, unsuitable for smeets, run by swindlers or thugs. But he knew of a decent place that would not cost his antennae. Weaving through the lines and tangles of bubbles, he led the entourage toward a line of dwellings.
Zim.
He froze. That was not Dib, Gaz, or GIR. That voice… there was something familiar about it…
Haha. I found you, Zim.
He shivered, but shrugged it off. He had to get the smeets to shelter. Irk knew they couldn't take care of themselves if their lives depended on it. He called to them impatiently, and led on.
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She laughed quietly to herself. From her view above the crowd, she could see she'd unsettled him. His eye was twitching and he wrung his claws occasionally.
Soon, my little Invader. Soon.
1 Trinam is equal to three Earth months.
