Episode 14: Inside 5 minds
Dib frantically went through the selves of his dad's lab, hoping to find something that would help him against Zim.
"Hover dam!" exclaimed the large headed child. "Isn't there anything down here that can help me?" Dib continued to search through the metal bins, containing multitudes of miscellaneous junk, for about five minuets, finding many interesting, but useless, doodads.
"Hmm…blowtorch…rench…blowgun…carnival elephant ears…aug!" Dib collapsed in defeat over the last bin, having found nothing that could aid him.
"Why do I even bother?" he asked himself. "My attempts have been completely meaningless lately. I mean, half the time, it's like I'm not even there!" Dib gave one last groan before falling backwards in exhaustion.
As Dib hit the floor, his head made contact with a strange, almost telescopical, device that happened to be sitting on the floor.
"Ow!" screamed Dib in pain from hitting the lens equipped object. "What did I hit?" Dib looked to the ground to see a piece to one of his dad's tools. It was the transportation lens to his father's inter-dimensional sight machine (think back to the Halloween episode).
"Hey, I remember this," said Dib recalling the incident that happened on Halloween so many years ago. "One of the few times that Zim and I actually had to work together. …boy is my head scary." Dib gave off a brief shutter as he rubbed his head in horror.
Dib look back at the scope, up from it, then back at it, repeating this cycle about three times before getting an epiphany.
"Hey!" he exclaimed. "If my mind is so terrible and horrible, then maybe Zim's mind is just as bad. So if I send him into his mind, he may have to deal with the perils I had to go through in my mind!" Gaz was walking by when she over heard her brother talking out loud to himself again.
"You know Dib," she began. "Maybe your ideas wouldn't suck so much, if you would STOP SAYING THEM OUT LOUD!!" Gaz had obviously grown quite tired of her brother's voice.
"Sorry Gaz," said Dib.
"Don't be sorry, be quite!" snapped Gaz.
"SORRY!"
Gaz gave a quiet grumble to this, and continued about her way to the kitchen. She had been working on something for a few days now in there. Dib had seen her working on it, but had never understood why or what she planned to do.
Dib's curiosity got the better of him (as usual), and decided to go she what she was working on. He approached the kitchen with caution, still holding the lens in his hands.
"Gaz, what have you been working on in here for these past few weeks?"
"Nothing that concerns you," said Gaz. "But if you must know, I'm baking a cupcake." Dib puzzled at this for a moment.
"What? A cupcake? Why, and why only one?" Gaz just stood there silently, continuing her work on the delicious baked good.
"You know what," said Dib. "Never mind, I have more important things to worry about." Dib left his sister in the kitchen and headed up to his room to begin working on the scope. As he sat down at his work bench, Dib pulled out a screw driver, wrench, and a blow torch. He proceeded to make tiny little adjustments to the device.
Not ten seconds into the project, Dib pulled out the blow torch. He switched on the device. Upon doing so, the flame went up through the nozzle and into the main gas chamber, causing a spontaneous combustion of the tool. The explosion sent Dib flying into his closet screaming. As Dib hit the closet, a multitude of old toys and objects fell from the shelves within the storage space and onto Dib's head, causing more unnecessary screaming from the paranormal obsessed child.
"…Ow…" said Dib after about two seconds. "…this…is…going to take a while." Dib got up, rubbed his head, and headed back to the work bench to continue working, with the clock reading 9:02 PM
The clock in Dib's room now read 7:34 AM, and at this point, Dib had finished the device.
"At last!" he cried with very dark bags formed under his eyes. "It's finished!" (See, I told you.) Upon saying this, Gaz walked into his room, holding her Skool books under her arm.
"Come one Dib," she said with her usual stare. "Time to go to Skool." Dib snapped out of his trance of semi-victory and looked over to his sister.
"Oh yeah," said Dib turning back to the device. "I'll be right there Gaz…I'll be right there. Heheheh." (He's snickering very evilly)
As soon as Dib and Gaz reached the Skool, Dib darted off looking for Zim, in a hope to try out his new plan to stop the alien menace. Seeing as that Dib's path for looking for Zim was the same way to her first class, Gaz followed her brother into the halls. They weren't in the halls for more then twenty seconds before Dib spotted Zim being strangled by Tak.
Dib saw another opportunity, to take out both Zim and Tak with his new device. Seeing this, he turned up the amplification as to get both of the aliens.
"This is it Gaz," said Dib with a chuckle. "Today, I will have saved earth once and for all!" Dib practically screamed these words. The volume of his voice was easily heard by not only the masses of children in the halls, but also the two Irkens, who stopped what they were doing immediately to look at Dib.
"Huh?" said Zim looking at his long time rival. "How do you plan to do that?"
"Oh, I'm going to use this inter-dimensional transportation device to imprison you within your own mind," said Dib with a certain amount of pride in his voice. Dib stopped for a moment to think about what he just said.
"Wait, did I just tell you my plan?" asked Dib very worriedly.
"Yep," said Das, who was leaning against some lockers eating popcorn as he usually did when Tak was trying to kill Zim.
Dib's face went pale. He had just given up his most brilliant plan to stop Zim while falling for the oldest trick in the book.
Zim seized this opportunity of surprise to break free from Tak's death strangle and charged toward Dib to grab the device away from him. Zim soon reached the large headed child and jumped at him.
"Give me that!" yelled Zim, who was wrestling Dib to get the machine.
"No! It's mine!" Dib struggled vainly to keep the device.
"Hey," said Tak, who had decided to give dialogue. "I'm not letting either of you send me into my mind!" Tak jumped into the dog pile, and fought for the device as well.
Das and Gaz just stood there and watched as the three fought ever so stupidly over the small chunk of metal.
"Sigh, I guess I'd better get Zim out of there before he hurts himself," said Das with a sigh (But you already knew that).
"Yeah, and I'd get my brother out before he disgraces the family name even further," said Gaz, walking up to the brawl.
"WAIT FOR ME!!" screamed GIR in his doggy suit.
"GIR, why aren't you at home?" asked Das who was wondering why the little robot had come to Skool.
"Master took my milk shake…AND I NEEDS IT!!" Das just shrugged and continued to reach for his co-worker. As he did, Gaz reached for her brother, as she did this, her hand brushed slightly against Das' (GASP!).
"Oh, sorry," said Das, not looking up from what he was doing.
"What? Oh, yeah, that," said Gaz, not realizing what had just happened. As this awkward moment is cast aside, Mimi zipped up to the fight in and attempt to get her master out of the violence.
"It's a good thing that I was outside miss," said Mimi in her disguise. "Otherwise you could have been in quite a bit of trouble." The children all gazed in amazement at the talking cat, having never seen one before.
"Um…I mean…meow?" said Mimi fixing her mistake. The children all nodded at this, and went about watching the fight.
(We now see that Zim, Dib, Tak, Gaz, Das, GIR, and Mimi are all in a pathetic struggle to get either a pointless device, or a person in the fight In GIR's case, a milkshake. Among this confusion and struggle, we all know that something is bound to go wrong, and it did go wrong...somehow.)
At some point during the struggle, the device fell out of all hands and to the ground. About a second after hitting the ground, Zim pushed Dib right on top of the device with great force. Dib's weight on top of the shiny metal object caused it to press the activation button against the floor in very violent manner (Remember, this is all happening very quickly), causing the machine to activate.
In a split second, there was a great flash of light, causing everyone in, and outside of the fight, to gasp in aw at its shininess. However, as soon as the flash came, it left, and with it, Zim, Dib, Tak, Gaz, GIR, Mimi, and Das had all disappeared.
"Hm, that was weird," said Gretchen, who was watching the fight.
"I'll say," said Pinky. "Wait, what were we doing?"
"Beats me," said Zita. "Lets all go get some moose fries."
"Yay!!" screamed the crowd in agreement with Zita's idea. With that, the crowed picked up Zita, and rushed over to the cafeteria in joy, not caring what had happened to the seven missing individuals.
Meanwhile, Dib wakes up to see that he is in a dark, dank, room, and not being attacked by two angry aliens.
"Oh, where am I," said Dib, rubbing his head in pain. Dib's eyes soon grew use to the darkness and he could see where he was.
"Say this place looks a lot like Skool, just darker, and more mysterious." Dib thought for a moment. He knew that he had seen this place before, but he wasn't sure where.
"HEY!" yelled a voice from a strange creature that was outside of the window that was in the room. "It's the big headed boy! Get him…agian!"
"My head's not big!" yelled Dib back to the strange creature. "Wait a minute; dark, sinister, strange creatures…" Dib stopped and widened his eyes in horror. He knew where he was now.
"I'm…back?" asked Dib, who has now very frightened. He realized that he was back in the nightmare world. The world that existed in his mind.
"Well," said Dib with a sigh of relief after about two seconds. "At least I know what to do." Dib gave a brief smile and then began running as fast as he could, screaming at the top of his lungs.
"AHHHH!! I GOTTA GET OUT OF HERE!!" Dib ran past a multitude of creatures through the streets of his mind into the night, never to be seen again.
Zim shook his head in disbelief as to what he saw when he woke up. A giant burning earth city, with humans running about in terror all being governed and beaten by Irken guards.
"Hm," said Zim with a smile. "I could get use to this." Zim then snapped out of his gaze, still not quite understanding what had happened.
"What happened?" asked Zim, not expecting an answer.
"I dunno," said GIR who was still in his doggy suit.
"GIR, where is everyone?"
"They're running around in fear master."
"No, I mean Dib, Tak, everyone that was in that little brawl," said Zim.
"Oh…um…um…cricket?" asked GIR, not understanding.
"Oh, never mind," said Zim, who had begun to think. "WAIT!! When I pushed Dib, he landed on the device that he would use to imprison me inside my own mind. Apparently, the force from his body landing on it, activated it in such a way that it sent us all into out own minds!!"
"How'd you figure that out master?" asked GIR, in his cute little voice. Zim simply pointed to a flaming truck, that had exactly what he had just said written on its side. The truck also had written on the front the following phrase: "Intelligence Truck runs once a week."
The two began to walk through the flaming city, trying to find a way out. This was obviously Zim's mind. Burning human destruction, what else could describe it?
"Okay GIR," began Zim. "Until we can find out how to get out of here, we won't need our disguises, so take it off." Zim deactivated his creepy disguise.
"Okay," moaned GIR, unzipping the doggy suit. "But can I put it back on when we get home?" Zim just slapped his hand over his face in annoyance.
"Fine GIR, you can put it back on when we get home."
Tak had begun to go through her complex mind with Mimi. The two had already turned off their disguises, realizing quickly that they would not be requiring them (Because they're smart like that).
"Okay Mimi," said Tak, analyzing the situation. "As near as I can tell, this is what my mind is, seeing as how Dib's new device activated."
"I guessed that," said Mimi. "But I don't quite understand how this could be your mind, I mean, it's just a giant mechanical city, with random floating platforms and weird useless turning gear things. Why is your mind nothing more then clock work?"
"Well, Mimi, the fact that I have and artificial vein sticking out of my head my account for that." Mimi looked at the tube sticking out of Tak's head.
"Oh yeah, how did you get that again?"
"The waiting for my chance to take my final test got really annoying, and I popped a vein out of anger," said Tak very coldly.
"You really need to control your anger Miss."
"I DO NOT HAVE ANGER PROBLEMS!!" screamed Tak at the poor little robot. Mimi drew back in fear and her master's anger.
"Sorry ma'am, please don't dismantle me!!"
Gaz drew back in fear at what she was seeing. Large fuzzy, adorable creatures where advancing their cuddly little faces down toward the horrified child.
"Get away," said Gaz clenching her fists. The creatures did not seem to hear Gaz's order, as they continued to advance on her.
"I said get away you fluffy death creatures, and I mean it!!" screamed Gaz who had now set loose on a giant pink bunny, tearing chunks of cotton stuffing from it's throat with her teeth.
"I am so going to kill my brother when I get out of this," said Gaz coldly, as she ripped the head off of a teal walrus.
Das got up from the ground after much hesitation. After shaking his head free of any dirt that may have fallen on it, he looked up into the dark foggy abyss before him.
"Ah man," began Das. "It would appear that Dib's little device went off, and now I'm apparently stuck in my mind." Das looked out into the blackness, seeing nothing but the dirt ground beneath his feet, and the light mist that covered it. "Wow, my mind is really dull."
Das began to walk. Not five seconds into his walk, he was tripped by a mysterious stone that was in his path.
"Woah!" yelled Das as he fell to the ground. "What was that?" Das looked over to see what he had fallen over. It was a head stone with no writing on it, it was a blank slate, but obviously was a grave marker.
"Who put this here?" asked Das who was now slightly agitated. Das looked up to see something that he had not noticed before, more head stones, all in vast numbers stretching beyond the eye's sight line. Each head stone had a very strange thing perched on it. Skeletons strumming acoustic guitars in no particular melody or harmony. Das gazed upon the vast stretches of his grave yard, skeleton guitar strumming mind in aw.
Among all the mild amazment, Das had only one thing to say.
"…what the hell?"
Back to Tak's mind, Tak and Mimi had now gone to the near interior city regions of her mind.
"Ma'am," said Mimi. "We've been walking for hours and we haven't found anything that could help us." Tak stopped and thought for a moment.
"Come to think of it, we haven't seen a single living being since we came," said Tak. "We haven't even seen dead things. No grass, animals, complex beings, nothing. This place is a ghost town. I wonder why?"
"Well, you are a very spacey person," said Mimi. "I mean, besides me and the DP, you have no social interaction with anyone except your enemies and the tallest."
"I don't need friends Mimi, they just get in the way," said Tak continuing her stride.
"I'm not your friend?" asked Mimi.
"Silly Mimi, robots don't have feelings. If they did, we would consider them people and not property." Mimi widened her eyes in sadness.
"Is that all I am to you? A chunk of hard wear?" Mimi was now obviously upset.
Tak looked at her small companion not believing the tone that she was giving her.
"Are you suggesting that you 'feel'?" asked Tak.
"I'm not suggesting anything," said Mimi, who was near crying. "I'm just saying that maybe you don't know everything about the things you create."
"Mimi, did I accidentally give you feelings?"
"I don't think you gave them to me by accident!" yelled Mimi. "Wasn't it you who said that it would be better? You were alone and needed a friend! That's why you made me!"
Tak saw that there was liquid forming outside of Mimi's eyes. But that was impossible, robots can't cry. Well as far as she knew. But the fact of the matter was not that Mimi could or couldn't cry, the matter was that she was crying, and a demoralized soldier is no good at all. Knowing this, Tak gave Mimi the only cure she could think of for something like this; a hug.
"I'm sorry Mimi," said Tak very sincerely. "I didn't mean to hurt your feelings." Mimi sniffed and hugged back.
"It's okay…JUST DON"T DO IT AGAIN!!" (She says that last part very angrily.)
The two soon finished their hug, and continued on their way into the city.
About an hour later, they came up to a large building in the center of the city that was Tak's mind.
"Oh," said Mimi who was much incited. "What's in here?"
"Hopefully a way out of this place," said Tak opening the door.
As the two walked in, they saw displayed before them a giant room covered in photos of the same person; Zim. Now these weren't admiration pictures, they were target practice pictures. They were all either covered in slash marks or bullet holes, or they had hatchets, throwing knives, or darts pinned up on them.
"Hm," said Tak. "I believe I rather like this room." Mimi looked up to see stacks of untouched pictures that would be used to replace the current ones once they got to worn out. Mimi picked up a fresh one from the pile and looked at it for a bit.
"You know what I'm wondering?" asked Mimi, who was still looking at the photo. "I'm wondering why you would take the time and trouble to get all of these." Mimi looked up at her master raising an eyebrow. Tak ignored Mimi's comment however, focusing her attention toward another door that was in front of them.
This door had a sign posted above it reading: "Tak's sub-conscious, do not enter".
Tak looked at the door with glee. Not many people got opportunities to look inside of their sub-conscious.
"Oh," said Tak very excitedly. "Let's see what's in here!" Mimi observed the sign posted above the door.
"I don't know Ma'am, maybe that sign is there for a reason."
"Oh nonsense Mimi," insisted Tak. "I mean, what could be so horrible in there anyway?" With that, Tak opened the door and walked in, leaving Mimi outside. Tak had not strayed ten feet into the room when she came across something very unusual.
"What the…!?" said Tak wide eyed in a semi-horror/ disbelief. "It can't be…no…why…how…AHHHHHHHH!!" Tak ran out of the room screaming at the top of her lungs (or as Irkens call them; breathalorgs). As soon as she left the room, she slammed the door shut and quickly grabbed an inconspicuous lock that had just ever so conveniently been sitting outside the door, and threw it over the door, grabbed Mimi, and sprinted out of the main entrance.
"What on Irk did you see?" asked Mimi.
"You don't want to know Mimi," said Tak in fear as she ran with the robot tucked under her arm. "You don't want to know!"
Back in Das' mind, Das continued to stare at the unusual spectacle of corpses playing music that took place in his mind. Das was staining his veins in anger as he stared at them until he finally gave in to the question he had been pondering, which was a simple 'why'? Not being able to take it any longer, Das cracked.
"I DON'T GET IT!! WHY!?" Das quickly grabbed a guitar out of one of the skeleton's hands, and broke the instrument over the skeleton's skull. He then proceeded to do the same to other skeletons for the duration of his time there.
About thirty minuets into his tantrum, Das began to grow transparent, much like a ghost.
"I'll show you all not to make sense!! Wait, what the heck is…?" before Das could finish his sentence, he had disappeared from sight.
By a strange coincidence, the same was happening to the rest of the gang in their minds, all of them repairing in the same spot, where their little brawl had started.
Going back a bit in the real world, we see a random child stepping on the device, reactivating it, causing a reverse effect, which was the cause for there returning phenomenon.
The seven all stood in disbelief and question, as they had no reason for why the machine would reverse, and why Zim, GIR, Tak, and Mimi where back in there disguises when they returned.
"Whew!" yelled Dib in relief. "We made it back alive…" Dib's sentence was cut short by his sister's hand grasping very tightly around his neck.
"Most of us did anyway," said the stuffing covered child.
"I…just…don't…get it," was all Das could say.
"Aw, I wish I could have stayed their just a bit longer," said Zim with a sigh.
"I like my little milkshake," said GIR as he happily drank a soda.
Tak just ran down the child filled halls of the Skool still with her 'cat' tucked under her arm, screaming in horror at what ever it was she had seen.
With everyone either beaten up their siblings, being beaten by their siblings, enjoying a soda, feeling sad about leaving a nice trip, wonder who their mind made sense or no sense, screaming in horror, or being carried off by one of the screaming ones, there was nothing much left to ad to this pointless and still funny venture.
Seeing this, the narrator, saw fit to end the episode, until next time.
…I'm an unstoppable death machine you know.
End of episode 14
Sorry for the unusual ending, I just wanted to get this done tonight, so it is once again very sloppy at the end. The next time I post, I can guarantee that it will be like the earlier episodes, promise.
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Copy right Jhonen Vasquez/ Invader Zim