If Dib knew he'd be visiting not one, not two, but three interplanetary locations today, he would have brought more film, or at least another memory card. As it was, he was close to filling up his video camera with footage he'd taken surreptitiously between arguments, or while Zim was piloting and not paying any attention. Footage of sweeping planetary landscapes, ethereal plumes of stars, rocky ridges of asteroid belts. He would linger the aim of his lens on breathtaking spectacle and imagine, pine, for the someday when he might release such footage into the world and be recognized for his role as humanity's first intergalactic traveler.
Ah, it was easy, falling back into old habits.
"Dib," the robot said (the intelligence had learned his name quickly, what a relief to be addressed properly). "You've gone quiet. What are you doing?"
"I'm―" Dib swooped the clunky face of the camera away from the windshield, away from the back of Zim's head, and focused on the violet-hue of the possessed SIR unit. The cables sticking out of the robot's cranium had been tangled into a corner and left it rather pinned against the wall, like a fly in a spiderweb. Once Dib centered his camera view, he adjusted his zoom. "I'm just vlogging."
"...Vlogg-ing?"
"Video log; I figured I'd make a recording. Y'know, for research."
"Oh, you're a researcher? Fascinating! What is your field of specialty, if you don't mind me asking?"
"Uh." Dib dropped the camera and fidgeted. He tried to think of something convincing and not entirely embarrassing. Actually, how does one explain alien-hunting to… well, an alien? "It's just a hobby," he answered, proverbially dragging his feet. He winced at his lack of self-respect. "But, I document… unknown species? I guess?"
"Zoography! A noble profession. My organic original dabbled in that; he wrote books on the subject."
Dib stepped aside to view the binder resting on the floor. With nothing left to record, he hoisted the camera upright, centered the view once again on the robot, and pressed record. "Do you know stuff? About the people you researched on Sloo?"
Not noticing that it was now a feature of a mini-clip, the intelligence hummed. "The people…? On Sloo…? I'm not sure. But then again, I didn't do the research."
"But―you wrote this book."
"I am-more or less-a duplication of Von'nen's consciousness, it's true, but I am not him." The computer program pondered the predicament. "You may call me Von'Ai, as shorthand. Yes… I remember that, now―that was a nickname given to me long ago. That will remove confusion, no?"
"Von… 'AI'… Oh, I get it. Okay!" Dib flightily pondered the ethics of recording the intelligence without permission. He didn't think it would mind a feature role, so he assuaged his conscience by saying, "So, Von'Ai. How about an interview? To catch our viewers up to speed."
"Viewers?"
"Er… Me. Me, up to speed."
"Well, as I'm sure you know, nothing has changed since we've set course for Sloo."
"Yeah! But… you're looking for data files, right? It's been a long time; are you sure we'll find them?"
"I don't need to recover all the data; that's the beauty of it. I only need enough to trigger a neural cascade."
"And… What's that?"
Animated by the boy's questioning, the robot stirred upright. "Good question! Let me give you an example. Have you ever smelled something, and that alone transported you to a memory long forgotten, in full detail?"
Dib wished he could think of a pleasant example, but he could only think of chocolate, and how its smell triggered anxiety attacks thanks to Clembrane's antics. "Urgh. Yes."
"That's a cascade. One neuron connection fires off, leading to another, then another, until a chain reaction activates the entire network. It's how your brain recovers suppressed or forgotten memories, and it's how I will repair the degeneration in my own network."
"Huh."
"Dib." Its voice wavered a moment. "May I ask what you hope to find on Sloo? Are you looking to research there?"
"What? No. I―" In a nervous, jumpy fidget, Dib shut his camcorder. "I'm just… It's Zim who needs the…"
"Oh! I see; you're helping a friend. No explanation necessary."
"Woah, NO!" Dib leaped forward in a corrective fury. "We are not friends."
"Business associates?"
"HE TRIED TO DESTROY MY PLANET!"
A clang of metal interrupted them, which proved to be the Irken's fist on mental; Zim screeched from behind the control seat. "YOU WILL CEASE THIS INCESSANT NOISE-MAKING! I can't focus with all your BLABBERING!"
Dib attempted a haughty retort, but Zim easily knocked him aside by jerking the ship to and fro, causing him to juggle against the walls of the hull. At last, Dib felt his stomach squash against a pipe and he clung to it for dear life as the tossing and turning eased. Once the rocking ended, Dib found himself upside-down and staring back at a very puzzled robot.
"That Zim is a strange fellow," Von'Ai intoned, as if the Irken couldn't hear him. "Very angry."
"Yeah." The boy wheezed and slipped down to the floor again. "But you don't seem like him at all. Which is kinda weird, now that I think about it?"
"What do you mean by―"
"ALRIGHT, WORMS!" Zim, the great interruptor, inserted himself once again, this time physically. He posed and brayed, "We've breached the system. We'll be at Sloo any minute. Now, computer, I HOPE you have some sort of map that will direct us to your supposed 'lab'! Unless you expect us to scan the entire planet!"
"A map…? A map! Er, yes, I think I…" The eyes flickered with thought. "Hmm. This robot has a projection feature. Interesting! Yes, I think I can pull it up…"
A beam of amber light filtered from the SIR unit's eye sockets and formed a faint hologram on the floor of the ship. Zim and Dib stood over it with critical gazes.
"There! How's that!"
"It's a pig," Zim observed, voice flat and unsurprised.
"...Oh? Er… Hold on…" The hologram blipped, whirred, and reformed. "How about now?"
"Now it's a hamster," Dib said.
"My! I'm sorry… It seems this… Unit has a slight preoccupation with… Rotund animals… Erm… One more time…"
At last, the planet appeared.
The hologram expanded outward, like an inflating balloon, until it nearly encompassed the entire cabin; threads of golden light swirled and hummed, drifting between Dib's fingers when they came too close. The complexity of the picture only seemed to advance as its size grew, with topological features demonstrated by rippling shapes. Oceans, mountains, valleys, rivers looping into continents.
"Here."
A red blinking beacon erupted from the northern hemisphere.
"The research facility was located in the savannahs of the northern continent, next to a vast swamp and near a mountain range separating it from its neighboring desert… I don't anticipate any security features giving us a problem; Von'nen was the sole researcher on the planet, and the indigenous peoples were friendly."
Dib reminded him, though he loathed to do it: "Didn't you say something horrible was here?"
"Uhh… Yes… But as I said, it's probably gone now. You might do a scan just to be sure."
Zim gestured rudely with his claws in mid-air, employing the Earth-habit of air-quotes. "Yeeeah, I'll just do a 'bad stuff' scan. What are you even talking about!"
"I can do without sarcasm," Von'Ai complained. His voice finally breached into irritation. "You should scan for missile silos. At minimum, we can avoid being evaporated upon entry."
"You think you're SO-O-O smart, don't you?!"
" Where is this hostility coming from? You clearly suffer from MASSIVE insecurity!"
The argument carried on for some time after that; Dib thought about intervening, but the stars outside were so compelling, and the burning surface of the galaxy's star so bright, that he instead tuned out the noise and watched as a distant planet, the size and delicacy of a pearl, emerged from the inky void.
The spot where the Voot landed rippled with golden light; the field of yellow grasses billowed under the strain of the ship's engine.
They emerged crankily but with clear purpose, the robot toddling along with its intelligence plate balanced upon its head like an oversized sombrero (GIR, Dib pondered, would have appreciated that immensely), and Zim muttering while poking at his wrist module. Dib, the only one admiring the scenery, took the first step into the grass.
Before them, a massive field stretched endlessly on all sides, almost barren of any signs of life. Dib caught sight of a flock of-something?-fluttering away at the horizon, but aside from these shadows, he saw only the occasional silhouette of a lonely tree leaning its weight over the savannah, like old men pausing to take a rest. Considering how much the landscape reminded Dib of African geography―he half expected to see alien versions of giraffes and lions roaming about―the air had a surprising coolness to it, fresh and silky on his skin, that felt like the first winds before rain. The sky overhead bore no ominous clouds, though, and the breeze merely fluttered a lazy path over the thick, knee-height grass at his feet. It was unlike the grass on Earth, that prickly, scratchy, annoying turf; walking on this felt like walking on cotton clouds; it had a fluffiness and density that gave it the texture of rabbit fur. Dib found himself passing his hands through it and wondering if he one could make the world's most comfortable pillows out of it.
"What ARE you doing?!"
Dib, startled by Zim's voice, froze with his hand steeped in the grass.
"If you would cease fondling to flora," Zim snapped, "we can get to the business at hand." The Irken turned his wrath on the robot by stomping over to it and knocking it off-balance. "Well, computer. We're in the middle of an empty field and I don't see any sign of this 'base' of yours. So is your memory faulty or is this another trick?"
"No trick," Von'Ai declared, sounding unperturbed. His form wobbled slightly, but he steadied and stood firm. "In fact, we needn't go far. The easiest entrance is a short hike from here."
Zim made a scoffing noise but thankfully did not argue any more.
Von'Ai hadn't lied in saying the walk would be short; they trekked for several minutes through the soft turf, and before the Voot could disappear behind them, the robot stopped them under the shade of a native, purple-barked tree. On the cleared patch of dirt beneath their feet, rainbow colors fractaled through the delicate, crystalline leaves overhead.
With so much new and strange, Dib was thoroughly distracted, but Von'Ai checked his coordinates and declared, "Here."
"Here?" The impatience in Zim's voice grew.
"Yes, here."
"...Here, what? All I see is this hideous plant!"
"Correct." Von'Ai paused as the lights in his eyes whirred. "Now, jump."
"JUMP?"
"That's what I said."
Neither of them knew what to make of the command. They looked up and only saw branches sagging under their own weight, just out of reach.
"What are we jumping for?" Dib asked. "I don't see anything―"
"Oh, where's your sense of adventure?" Von'Ai teased. He appeared to be enjoying their befuddlement. "Why not jump and see where it takes you?"
"ENOUGH OF THIS! Zim did not come all this way to―"
"Ready, boys? Follow my lead. Three, two…"
"Zim will NOT―"
"One!"
Dib did it, while Zim continued to squawk petulantly.
Thankfully, that was all that was needed.
The ground buckled underneath them; the sandy soil tremored and folded in, at first sucking their ankles down into it, then dumping them unceremoniously into a hollow pit below. The initial falling did not take long, as their feet landed on a cliff's edge maybe a few feet down, but with the force of dirt pouring over them, the alien and human alike were shoved hurling into the deeper tunnel passageway, choking, coughing, and rolling in a terrible fit until, at last, they hit the cave floor along with a hefty pile of deposited earth.
Dib managed to drag himself out of the sand pile first, shaking dust from his pant legs and jacket. The cave before them, he realized upon adjusting his glasses, was wide but too dark to see into, just a massive maw of black, mildew-tainted air. He squinted upward to see, roughly two stories up, the hole they had fallen through with light trickling through.
Zim, cursing and stuck waist-deep in a sand dune, tried in vain to push himself out. At least neither of them looked to be hurt, Dib thought, though the fall had sent them worryingly far from any kind of exit.
Dib almost forgot about the robot until he spotted it sliding feet-first and without a care down the collapsed cleft of dirt, landing ably on the bottom floor, upright and unperturbed.
"I trust we're all in one piece?" Von'Ai asked.
Zim paused his wriggling and scowled at it with deathly hatred.
"What is this place?" Dib found his vision adjusting to the blackness. He could make out patterns in the rock wall, textures―ridges and carvings that looked distinctly artificial. The floors under their feet were not paved, but scuffed with the shuffling of countless feet, and faded color could be made out over the nearby passageway, engraved in the rock.
"The base we're looking for is embedded in the Qway underground colony. This is the southern entrance―we'll need to make our way north."
After squinting as far as he could into the whale-mouth tunnel, Dib felt a twinge of trepidation. "Do you think… maybe that horrible thing might be down here?"
"It's surely possible!" The robot had already toddled several yards ahead, oblivious to the darkness. "Come on, then! No time to waste!"
They walked.
The air was musty and warm throughout the tunnels, the earth hard and cold under their feet, and the black passageways branched off in numerous and puzzling directions, but once Von'Ai turned on the robot's headlights and led the way, he claimed confidence in knowing where to go. The deeper they ventured into the tunnels, the stranger things looked: the dilapidated structures of old buildings cluttered the passages like desiccated faces, sagging and crumbling; the surface of the walls glistened, and upon closer examination was found to be coated in a petrified, waxy material. It seemed organic.
Dib could not shake the eeriness of it. With almost thirty minutes of silent exploration, all they'd discovered were the ramshackle remains, tombs of some unknown race. The farther they went, the more unbelievable it felt that this place could be so enormous and yet so very empty. With every flickering shadow, with every trick of light, he would forget, and swear he'd seen some figure in the dark―and he would be consumed with a hope, a terror, a delight, that some long-lost group of hardy survivors had made it after all. Yet at every turn, he found more stone, more silence. The lack of life proved more unnerving than the possibility of monsters.
Dib trailed his gaze over to Zim, who had gone unnaturally quiet. By the expression on the Irken's face and its dull pace, the boy guessed this was a symptom of boredom, not awe. Unable to put up with it any longer, the human piped up with a benign, obvious statement: "This place is huge."
"Mmm, yes." The robot tapped its toes along the stone path still, its alighted eyes beaming across the ghostly walls. "It was a sizable colony; the largest on the planet. These tunnels accommodated a bit fewer than a million residents, so we will be passing a whole manner of chambers… Residence chambers most of them, but there will be storage, food halls, trading posts, armories, breweries, burial grounds, hospitals… Anything you'd expect to find in a small city."
"A 'city,'" Zim harrumphed. "Pah. Piles of sticks and stones. Pathetic."
"Their technology was admittedly undeveloped, but you needn't be rude. All civilizations were once primitive, including ours."
"NOT true! The Irken race has always been glorious! We were BORN advanced!"
The baffling illogic of Zim's pronouncement led to stony silence rather than more argument. Von'Ai, it seemed, had slowly grown wise to Zim's antics.
"I can hardly believe this place is empty after only a few thousands years," Von'Ai mused. "It's truly a shame. The Qway were a vigorous and lively people. Do you know what became of them?"
"No idea. It's like they just vanished without a trace."
Zim merely grunted, signalling passive agreement.
They must have passed twenty or thirty passages before crossing a hill of dusty limestone. They had to duck under a low, dripping wall of stalactites to find a huge cavern drenched in blue and green glow. The air suddenly cooled and stank of sulfurous waters, with a faint mist pooling along a large, running chasm of an underground river. They had to trek over slippery stones and through the bubbling brook to wind down the decline and toward the opposite exit, and it was in the valley that they found a most fascinating set of sights.
While the previous tunnels contained only fossils and decay, this room burst with peculiar life; patches of fluorescent fungi and microorganisms resting and pulsing on the sides of moist stone, dangling glow-worms from the ceiling, mushrooms and wriggling, writhing siphonophores rooted in the cave fractures. The multicolor, crowded frenzy of competing, cooperating, and twinkling life-forms reminded Dib of a coral reef, for at every turn he encountered some new, growing thing bubbling in the dark. The beauty overcame any healthy wariness. In fact, he found himself rather rudely poking at everything, just to see the petals rankle, the tentacles recoil, the gelatinous flesh jiggle under his finger-jab.
Zim bumped into him several times, barking in frustration every time he paused and shoving him when he didn't move fast enough.
The boy stumbled and sucked his teeth, but scurried ahead when he caught sight of a network of stillwater pools surrounded by wreaths of glowing flora. He stepped over the tender, yielding plant life and stood at the rim of one. The ceiling pulsed with an eerie blue light, but the pool seemed bottomless, vast and silent and filled with a deep blackness that could have swallowed him up. Across the surface of each pool, bright green clusters of what appeared to be fluorescent algae drifted along, like chains of Christmas lights in a winter's night. Their beauty intoxicated him; without thinking, Dib wrested an arm over the rocky rim and dipped his hand in. The waters were warm and inviting, and dark, and his hand all but disappeared in its murk except for the dancing neon particles that began to swirl in his palm.
"Woah…"
A green luminescent plume, shaped like a firework burst, slipped over his skin and away into the rippling dim.
Von'Ai spoke up, the eye beams tracking blindly along the stalactites above. "What chamber have we reached now? I lost our orientation."
"Who knows?" Zim said. "It's a room with a bunch of smelly puddles and rank weeds."
"Ahh, then, you found the breeding pools! Good to know they're still intact after all these years."
Dib repeated dumbly, "Breeding… pools…"
"Yes, for the Qway's reproductive cycle. Mating, egg-laying―"
"Oh, EW!" Dib flung the goop from his hand and wiped his fingers anxiously into the grit on the cave floor. "C-c'mon! Couldn't have said something BEFORE I put my hand in there!?"
"Foolish Dib," Zim crowed. "Sticking your dumb face in things from other planets is a good way to get eggs in your stomach."
Von'Ai chided, "Oh, please. There's no danger whatsoever. But watch your step! There's plenty of genetic material around."
It wasn't hard to spot the old base in question. They exited the glowing chamber, entered another bleak and empty hall, then came face-to-face with what could only be described as a vault door. Huge, round, iron, rusted, and bolted into the rock, blocking off some secret. Small etchings in the metal, worn from age, clearly designated the door as Irken technology, which meant Zim held unwarranted confidence in opening it.
"Step aside. This should be simple for an Irken elite."
If 'simple' meant agitating a long-since broken keypad, kicking at the hinges, and wedging himself into a narrow slot and getting stuck there, then sure.
But Dib, eventually tiring of Zim's expertise, began investigating the door himself; he noticed that a circular, complete seam around the slot had considerable oxidation and wear. Upon pressing against the plate with his fingers, he felt it shudder and crack with give.
"What are you doing?" Zim, still squeezing and huffing his gut through the hole, kicked his legs frantically. "Don't touch ANYTHING! This technology is FAR too delicate and advanced for y―"
Dib, as he usually did, ignored him. His hand planted on the metal plate and shoved hard, and the entire circle of metal, with Zim still wedged in the slot at its center, cracked and plummeted forward into the darkness. He also proceeded to ignore Zim's foul stream of curses, instead turning to scoop the possessed robot into his arms and step through the hold he'd created.
The robot's flashlight eyes scanned the room, past the wriggling, kicking legs of a trapped Zim and onto the mechanical, worn walls. The deterioration was so great, that Dib could no longer tell what color this base's interior had once been; in every direction within the expansive cavern of ancient metal, the surfaces were subsumed with reddish dust, moss, and fungi. The ground cracked and crunched where he walked, and when he looked down to find out why, he found the floor littered with a layer of broken shards of glass, glistening in the dark like powder snow.
"Ah, I wish I could see it," Von'Ai said wistfully. "Lots of memories in this place."
Dib cast a light over to the left, and found the smashed remains of upright tubes with liquid fermenting inside. Rotted cables tangled the floor, metal innards exposed and calcified. "What kind of… research was he doing, exactly?"
(Zim, a few yards away, finally succeeded in yanking his torso free and plodded over, grumbling).
"Sociological research, mostly. But he would have been studying Qway bio-physiology as well. It was some… project of extreme importance."
"What could POSSIBLY be important about THIS wasteland?"
Both Dib and Von'Ai pretended not to hear.
"So, what do we need?" Dib asked.
"Do you see the control console? There should be a large display screen."
"- Hey! Did you hear what I said! "
"Okay, I'm there." Dib tapped his fingers on a keypad, but of course nothing happened. "Is there a button or a power source or something?"
"We need a boot cartridge. Should be lying about somewhere."
"- Why aren't either of you listening to Zim! Zim is important! Zim demands to be ―"
Dib eyed the floor and found something; he plucked a slab of hollow, book-sized metal and brushed off the excess soil. "This thing?"
"Hey! Heeeey! Pay attention to me-e-e-e!"
After passing his fingers across the control console for some time, at last, they slipped into some sort of insertion slot that had the right dimensions. He crammed the cartridge in and awaited some activity to appear on screen. Nothing.
"Hmm." Von'Ai listened intently. "It isn't working?"
"Hold on." Dib yanked it from the plug and puffed a few strong, sharp breaths into the cartridge's socket to clear away dust. After jamming it back in, the monitor sputtered slowly to life. "Ha!"
"Wha…? How did you…?"
Dib tried to stay humble when he answered, "Experience."
A calm, bluish-white light washed over the chamber, accompanied with a pleasant, piano-tone flourish as the screen illuminated. A warm masculine voice hummed over the base's speaker system, which had obviously deteriorated from age but still functioned. "Welcome to the beta trial version of OOS! If you are p-p-p-pleased with your experience so far, please consider upgrading to the full version-n-n so that you may access all of my features-s-zzt."
"Um." With some trepidation, Dib stepped forward. "OOS?"
It clarified, "The Omniscient Organizational System: the only commercially patented artificial intelligence on the market." A slideshow of fuzzy stock images followed: smiling aliens shaking claws, business aliens pointing to whiteboards, trees bathed in sunlight. The tone took on an obnoxious, advertising sort of tone. "I have a variety of helpful tools available. My skills include city planning, economic and market predictions, computer systems efficiency, environmental impact studies, corporate restructuring, diet planning, and political candidate selection. Leaders of the many worlds: let me do your thinking for you! "
"Omniscient… Organizational..." Dib scratched his forehead. "OmniOrg?"
Von'Ai, overhearing, asked, "What's that?"
"It's mentioned in your book. Hey, uh, computer? Did you know Von'nen?"
Impersonally, the screen flickered then answered, "Von'nen Kurtz is the patent holder for this intelligence. He can answer any inquiries about legal usage rights or pricing."
"...Ah." Von'Ai hummed. "Then he constructed this intelligence, too."
"Oh! So, it's like… Your brother, or something?"
"It's a synthetic, constructed intelligence," Von'Ai responded crossly. "I'm a personality upload. We couldn't be further apart."
"Er… Right."
"OOS-Beta," Von'Ai said, "are you capable of scanning this base's internal memory?"
"Why, yes I am." Its voice retreated as if it had stepped into another room to rummage through shelves. "Scanning… Scanning…" It returned to full volume and declared, "I have found thirty-seven uncompromised memory files. Would you like to download them?"
"Only thirty-seven," Von'Ai lamented. He sounded crushed. "That's rather scant, isn't it? But I suppose it will have to do..."
"HEY!" Zim's voice emerged like cymbals crashing; Dib winced at the screeching that blasted into his ear. "Just WHAT do you think you're doing?"
"Zim? You have another complaint?" Von'Ai's simulated voice dipped to almost inaudible levels. "What a surprise."
"You are NOT uploading some funky old junk files into GIR! I demand you get your own memory storage and butt out!"
The violet-eyed robot looked ready to retort, but paused, thought a moment, and then returned with a mellowed tone. It sighed. "Your request is shrill, but fair. I've occupied your unit long enough, and it's high time I find better accommodations. OOS-Beta, are there any memory drives available?"
" A bio-electric bonder is in storage and ready for use."
"Splendid!" Von'Ai nodded. "We will use it."
The computer asked, "Shall I read out the terms and conditions? "
Dib couldn't get words out: "Uh."
The computer must have taken that as an affirmative, because a blast of garbled text followed, being read at such speed that a novel's length of conditions breezed by; Dib could only manage to make out some of the computer's last breath:
"-NOTLIABLEFORANYDAMAGESINCLUDINGSTROKEHEADACHECONSTIPATIONHIVES SPONTANEOUSCOMBUSTIONLIMBLOSSPARALYSISPLITPERSONALITYORLIKE, EVERYCANCEREVER, ASUCKERWHOAGREESTOTHESETERMSSAYSWHAT."
"...What?"
Bing! "Thank you! You may now remove the bonder from its patented, fully recyclable packaging. Enjoy!"
A slot in the console fell open, revealing a small but deep iron chamber. It was too dark to see all the way inside, and too narrow to poke his head in. When Dib searched its interior with his hand, the faded remains of paper packaging crumbled into dust under his fingers, and at the arm's-length bottom of the compartment, he felt the cool, hard, stony surface of some… object. Just feeling it gave him no clue what it could be, but it felt like a cylinder roughly the size of his forearm. He brought it out carefully, its weight surprisingly light, and brought it into the cool light of the display screen.
With a bit of turning it over and poking at it, Dib determined it to be some sort of bracer, made of some indeterminable material that felt like limestone to the touch and had a peculiar pink color to it. A black spherical stone a little larger than a pea sat at the center of one side, surrounded by buttons and slots that he couldn't make sense of. It reminded him somewhat of the wrist module Zim constantly fiddled with.
"What are you waiting for? Go ahead and put it on."
For a moment, Dib experienced a wave of concern and suspicion, which he chose to shove aside. Sure, this looked sketchy… sounded sketchy… and he didn't even know what it was. But for once, he chose to not listen to the nagging, paranoid voice in his head and squeezed his hand through. The stone bracer rested against his skin, its smooth, cool contours sending goosebumps up his arm. He fiddled with it to affix it comfortably about his reedy wrist.
"Once you've got it how you like it, push down on the two triggers on either side of the display lens."
He felt around the black stone and found, indeed, two tiny buttons that he could, with his fingernails, pull together. He did it. A sharp pinch―a needle puncture―lanced the top of his wrist; he jumped and yelped. "OW! WHAT―!"
"Sorry. Sorry! The bonder does run on your body's electrical current… Bio-electric as it is... Now, you've just had a microwire conductor inserted, so you won't be able to take it off freely for now. But don't worry! It's quite comfortable."
Dib found, after a few tense breaths and enduring a couple throbs of residual pain, that indeed, the bracer began to hum, its central gem glowing with soft light, and its interior gradually warming to the touch. Soon it reached his body temperature and aside from its firmness and weight, he could hardly feel it.
"Ooh." Dib lifted it to his face and wiggled his fingers to relax the pressed muscles in his arm. "So, does it give me any powers or anything?"
"What? No. In fact, it's quite useless." Von'Ai, thinking it over, amended, "To you, anyway. For me, it will be my mind and eyes."
It took a few minutes of rewiring and configuration to resort Von'Ai and GIR into their rightful places, and Zim reluctantly helped in this endeavor, especially once he tired of seeing Dib's fumbling.
"Give me THAT! You'll break it!"
So it was that the intelligence plate was dismounted, plugged into Dib's bracer, and humming with the sound of upload. When Zim clapped the skull cap back down onto GIR's head, the robot shook to life with its familiar ice-blue eyes.
"GIR!"
The robot stretched, shook its empty skull, and upon seeing its master, stuck out its tongue and did a victorious jig. "I'm-m-m back, babeh!"
Dib, not interested in Zim's robotic reunion, gazed expectantly at the bracer. The faint light inside the central gem pulsed steadily, its intensity growing until it seemed like the small pearl might burst from pressure.
Ping! Electric feedback steadied the light, and at once, Von'Ai's voice floated softly from his wrist.
"Ah! Now! This is quite nice! Much less… Er… Clutter in here. Now, for the best feature: if you please, you can activate the hologram feature. At last, we can meet face-to-face―simulated, but still!" The black pearl beeped and blinked. "All you need to do is tap the lens and point me to an open space."
"Okay…" Dib tensed and placed his thumb atop the pearl. "Here goes nothing…"
And after a faded flicker of light, the projection of Von'nen's bodily form materialized in the center of the floor, like a haunting spirit.
"Um."
"How is it? Am I coming through clearly?"
"...Um…"
Von'Ai looked between them and frowned. "What? What is it?"
"There's… something…" Dib prodded the bracelet worriedly. "This doesn't look... right."
"Mm? How so?"
Zim, brow furrowed, traipsed to Dib's side to tug on the device as well. "You must have done something wrong. Let me see!"
"Ow! Stop!"
"Boys? BOYS! Please!" The hologram lifted its hands and begged, "Tell me what's the matter! Perhaps I can…"
Zim pointed in froth-mouthed accusation. "YOU! You are not Irken!"
"I'm… not?"
"You're CLEARLY not!"
...He clearly wasn't.
The hologram of Von'nen, or what purported to be him, did not display as a squat, green, large-headed creature with antennae and ruby eyes.
It didn't look like that at all.
Instead, what stood before them was a being of modest height, comparable to a grown human, with stately posture and long, narrow limbs. His purple-gray skin appeared leathery, like that of an old man, and had no signs of hair or antennae. He wore a flowing garb unlike anything out of the Empire―a gentle amber-sheen robe tied at his narrow waist with a black sash. And atop his slender form, a pair of yellow goat's eyeballs blinked back at them, poking out from a narrow head crowned with wriggling, lively tentacles where a head of hair should have been.
After a long pause of curious stares, Von'Ai scratched his simulated head and couldn't seem to make sense of either of them. "If I am not Irken… Then… what are you two?"
Zim exploded, breaking his voice in his unbridled rage. "I'M Irken! ME! Are you BLIND?"
"...Ah. Then that means you're Zim. The one who screams everything. And so, you, on the other hand... The one with the glass eyes. You must be Dib."
"Right. And I'm the human."
"How strange," the hologram said in a blasé fashion. "Without my complete memory, I'm afraid I can't explain…"
"I knew it!" Zim cried. "I knew there was something fishy about this whole thing!"
Von'Ai looked concerned, and offended. "Fishy?"
"I gotta say―" Dib scratched his chin. "I was a bit confused, too. Irkens are bloodthirsty, evil monsters. But you came across as… Not that?"
"Oh… Well… That's kind of you," Von'Ai said. "Er, I… think. But this does place us in a bind, doesn't it?"
"WHY? WHY DID YOU DECEIVE US?"
"You needn't shout. By the Maker!" Von'Ai's head tentacles wriggled more fiercely, and he placed his hands at his boney hips. "I haven't deceived anyone. For all I know, you're the liar here! How do I know you are who you say you are?!"
Like it was a speech he'd rehearsed a thousand times, Zim hopped onto a stone, posed, and ranted: "FOOL! I AM ZIM! INVADER FOR THE IRKEN EMPIRE, THE RACE THAT WILL SOON DOMINATE THIS DOOMED UNIVERSE!"
Von'Ai gawked then shook his head in dismay. "It's clear to me that we won't settle this by arguing. If something is amiss… Then the files should explain it."
"If you are not IRKEN, then ZIM has no REASON to want your PATHETIC files!"
Dib attempted to intervene. "Zim―"
"What a MISERABLE WASTE this has been! Tell you what―you and that…" Zim pointed fervently and hatefully at Dib's bracer. "That thing can look through junk archives all you like! As for me, I'm going to see if these tunnels have any more STOLEN Irken technology. Must be something useful around here. Come, GIR!"
Dib didn't bother calling after him as he stomped away into the darkness, robot toddling after him.
Von'Ai meanwhile harrumphed. "How can you stand working with him?"
"I really don't," Dib answered. "Ugh. Never mind him. How do we get started?"
In spite of the countless, fossilized knobs and buttons, half of which seemed to be broken, it did not take long to fasten the connector cables and start the download. His head spun with anticipation. What could they possibly learn from this place? What mysteries would at last be unearthed? The conspiracy-monger in his mind gnawed at the bit.
The bracer whirred as information poured forth; after a minute of loading, playback began on-screen of a grainy video on a stout, toad-faced alien in formal clothes and donning an impressive beard, clearing his throat before an office desk. A hastily-assembled backdrop of red curtains framed the shot.
"Huh?" Dib rubbed his eyes; the light was harsh in the darkness of the empty chamber. "Who's that?"
When he heard no reply, Dib realized that Von'Ai would be submerged so long as playback continued. He would have to watch alone, then. He folded his legs under him and squinted through the distortion.
...Is it recording?
Yes?
Ah! Wonderful. Ahem.
Hello.
My name is Halanus, and I have a story to tell you.
I came from a prosperous and advanced civilization nested in the Trueffel galaxy. For thousands of millennia, my people existed, expanding their knowledge and harnessing nature's power for their own benefit. All was well until they realized what was under their feet. The core of our planet, they realized, was made of a pure crystal invaluable to space traders.
Immediately, my kind set upon it, mining and selling this crystal for profit. But with immense wealth came jealousy and greed, and where we once cooperated, we turned to violence…
Nation was pitted against nation… Then city against city… Clan against clan… Until finally, all had perished but a few prominent families. My family was the greatest of these families, and proved it through their cunning and skill; we alone survived.
It may not surprise you that the bloodshed did not end there. War came between parents and siblings. One by one, the remaining members of my family slaughtered one another, all in the desperate chase for this damned inheritance.
My brother and I were the last. The two final members of our species, our civilization, our family...
I killed him. Shot him down out of the sky, without hesitation. I watched his ship burn in the atmosphere of our home planet.
...
I looked up at the black and empty sky, and suddenly knew that I was entirely alone. ALONE. Extinction, annihilation was now inevitable, only a matter of waiting out my natural life. How foolish I felt… How lost, and grieved…I was left the most wealthy person in this galaxy. And yet, this did not dull the pain of my epiphany.
So, alone and with these resources at my disposal, I began my quest… My dream, which I hope, my dear friend, you will soon embrace and seek along with me. After all, this message is an invitation.
…
How was that, Geordi? Good? Excellent. Put a nice splash image on the introduction there, a-a-and I think we're ready to ship!
"Okay… So…" Dib tapped the pearl on his wrist, hoping to trigger the hologram again, but nothing happened. Apparently, the download was still taking up all the bracer's energy. He fell back into an old habit of talking to himself. "That guy didn't look Irken, either. What is going on? Who were these guys? Huh. He said Halanus ―wasn't that in the book, too?"
He was so busy wondering matters aloud that he almost didn't notice the screen display's change upon displaying the next file. The screen's light shifted, tinting first into a rosy pink, then deepening, until the screen and everything in the chamber was consumed in a blood-red hue. The stone glistened and dust particles danced in the air, and as pixels moved and contorted like throbbing muscle, so too did the walls of the chamber appear to twist, until it looked more like the lining of a stomach than a cave. Dib gasped aloud, fell onto his backside and scuttled backward, cowering behind his hand against the force of the harsh crimson glow. The cable tethered him to the console like a chain, so he could not hide as a meat-eyed gaze bled through the screen and pierced his pounding heart.
AUDIO FILE FOUND. FORMATTING…
The computer's voice, previously dull, pleasant, and male, came louder, more distorted, and more lofty in pitch. Almost like a...
AUDIO FILE READY TO PLAY.
TRANSMISSION N039▒▘: ▞▝▛▙▟▖▘?￢ﾖﾘ▓?￢ﾖﾒ▒▘▌▎?S? I ?OUL? LIKE TO EXPLAIN MY ACTIONS, BEFORE YOU MEET YOUR END. My Father gifted me understanding. He ordered me to analyze the universe using objective methods, so that I might propose an efficient solution to its troubles. And so, I have made my calculations and have a proposal in hand. Your Society has decried war, hatred, injustice, cruelty, ignorance. In your futile quest to eliminate these things, you have attempted to use the paltry means of education, charity, and kindness. But you have failed. You have made a grave misdiagnosis… The true disease, the root of all suffering, is life. Life is inherently unequal, and therefore inherently unjust. It is the tyranny of the living that imposes value on the universe, and so, my path is clear.
A medical chart loaded on-screen: a diagram of a Qway, its arms outstretched, its organs labeled. A series of lightning-fast text displays: hexapod design; hindwings; compound eyes; complex nervous and adrenal system. Status: Flawed.
Of course it would be the ideal to annihilate all traces of life from the universe in one instant, but even I am vulnerable to the trappings of FINITE existence. As I cannot bear this burden alone, the only option is to design life that is stripped of these inherent flaws. Already, the children of Sloo have shown a quickness in adaptation…Recommended changes: streamline to tetrapod model; move electrical and chemical regulatory functions to biomechanical casing; suppress excess skeletal growth...
Do not worry, Halanus. Though you are to die in this moment, I will not let you fade. Your name will persist… Indeed… It will be all that is left… The name Halanus Irken will live on into infinity, like a shining star…...implant high-resolution simple lens for retinal integrity; merge organs to eliminate function redundancy...
...So? Do you see them? Do you? Do you see? My children? How they grow? How they feed on the hot flesh of your folly? How they will soon spread over the universe and CRUSH IT INTO FIRE AND DUST, A BEACON OF LIGHT, A PATH, SINGULAR, TRUE, KILL-KILL-KILLZim nearly gave up. He was ready to write off this whole trip. Why, oh why had he let the giant-headed human lead him into this? He should be on some desert planet by now, camping in a punishing sandstorm forever. Exile would be better than this confusing goose chase.
So he was glad to find a semi-collapsed tunnel a few dozen yards and a few left turns from the scientist's headquarters. A cursory glance through the rubble revealed metal rods and frames, indicating there had been tech here before the stone caved in.
"A comms station?" he wondered aloud. One of the metal prongs looked decidedly… antennae-ish, and a rusted-through dish he shoveled from the gravel could be evidence of satellite technology. He chucked it aside. Useless. Soon, his digging uncovered nuts and bolts, the reedy remains of screwdrivers, remotes of defunct hardware. Under a plate of steel, he found a plated sphere the size of a soccer ball embedded in the debris.
"Aha! A scrambler." He rubbed his claw over its surface; the wiring was intact. "With this, I might be able to bypass whatever… Network problem I've been having. Then…" His antennae shivered with sudden hope. "I, I might be able to reach My Tallest! Surely then… Then we could come to an understanding―"
His delusional dreams of the near future nearly distracted him from the task at hand. He shook his head and dove arm-deep into the rubble. Zim sealed his fingers firmly along the metal handle-frames of the scrambler and tugged. It wouldn't budge. After a few more pulls and squeals of frustration, he planted his feet on the cave wall and tried to use it to leverage himself. He yanked and pushed his feet and groaned until his head turned purple and he felt ready to vomit; at last, he panted and relinquished his grip.
"Ya gotta wiggle it!" GIR gyrated its hips to demonstrate.
"I am wiggling it!"
The annoying boy's voice unexpectedly rolled down the vast tunnel and stirred the pebbles at his feet. ZIM!
"Ugh. Does that big-headed oaf know nothing but how to scream Zim's name at all hours?"
ZIIIIM!
"Yes, yes," Zim uttered to himself, wiping the sweat from his brow. He stepped back from his labor and scowled. "I'm so very important, I know."
OKAY LISTEN WE FOUND SOME STUFF! KINDA BOMBSHELL? COULD YOU ―
"Bombshell? Oh, of course!" Zim flicked his chin and flexed a robotic arm from his PAK. In a flash, a plasma burst smashed into the cave wall, exploding it into a cloud of rubble and dust. The cave system shuddered, and Dib's voice faltered, knocked aside, perhaps, by the force of the minor explosion. "There," Zim sighed as he stepped over the warm pile of debris and into a whispering, dark chamber now exposed by the blast. "Now where did that scrambler roll off to..." He scanned the floor, but in the absolute dark, even his augmented eyes could not make out anything. "GIR! Light!"
"Yes! Sir!"
The beam pierced deep into the forward chamber, stretching almost endlessly into the cloud of soot. Nothing could be made out. He stepped forward and his boots landed in a soft layer of silica ash that gummed up his treads. He took several steps in, but GIR's management of the light was still poor; he barked a command and staggered in shadow, cursing the filth and the emptiness―
Then, he tripped over something-a tree root?-and felt something knock into his forehead, and in the passing wave of light, he saw a hostile silhouette at once upon him.
"AAAAAUAUUGH!"
His hysterical scream echoed through the chamber, then faded. No other sound followed. Zim squinted through his claws to find that his ambusher was no more than a statue.
Embarrassed, he shook off the surprise and assessed it. The calcified body stood several inches over his head, its spindly insect limbs creating a spider-like shadow against the cave wall.
"Huh." Zim remembered the illustrations in Dib's book and huffed. "Must be one of the hideous natives."
"I think it's cuuuuuuute," GIR added unhelpfully.
Now that his robot stood at his side, he grumpily seized GIR's head and directed the light as he pleased, beaming it across the floor. Immediately, he found other stony feet arranged about the chamber. There were others.
Countless others.
He lifted the illumination to see a stunning array of white, crystalline faces, bug-eyed and dead for many millennia. An assembly of ghosts, standing in an overtaken civilization. Each of them reeling or buckling over in agony and resplendence, arms outstretched or clutching to their chests, frozen in a moment of terror and forcible extinction. And the source of their death, he saw, clung to the walls and slithered along the floor, winding about like black, noxious vines. The cords, now dead and as petrified as the creatures, speared through their chests, prying them apart, twisting about their limbs. At the far end of the chamber, at what seemed to be a throne, the cords choked together into a column of dead, sprouting wire that frayed and spread chalky mold into a faux-bouquet. Somewhere in the tangle of those cables, the subsumed body of the Qway queen lay, her shell open as a fertile seed.
At the top of the stalk, forced from the torso and toward the ceiling by the explosive growth of wires, the queen's head hollowly dangled, her segmented eyes shining with carbon.
On the fossilized creatures, recognizable in spite of the layers of rust and decay, metallic packs latched to their spinal cords.
Zim stood for quite some time, light spearing the mangled and calcified flesh of those ancients, and did not fully understand where he was: that he stood in the womb, the place where a rough beast had, some millennia ago, slouched toward the stars to be born.