A/N: A big hello to all my readers and especially my reviewers. Your
support keeps me from thinking my writing must be crap. If you go and
see my fan art at http://www.mediaminer.org/fanart/agal.php?id=61483
please remember to leave me a review there to. I know the art's not
very good but it's the best I can do at the moment. I'm working on
getting on elfwood to.
If anybody here's a fan of Harry Potter and/or thinks making fun of
Mary-Sues is really funny, go read my short humor/parody fic, Mary-
Sues Guild.
Disclaimer: What is this 'koppirite' of which you speak? Lejindarybunny
knows not of your barbaric earth concepts of thought ownership.
Chapter 5...In which Kiir plays mind games and what the hell are the
Oranges doing anyway?
Kiir's hooded eyes drooped, glazing with boredom. She drummed her
gloved fingers slowly on the desktop. She was the only person left in
the classroom while everyone else was at lunch. Well, not quite the
everyone, the dumpy teacher-human sat behind her desk eating something
out of a bowl, some sort of liquid with chunks of stuff in it. Probably
some sort of earth soup. Every once in a while the teacher would look
up at her, shake her head and go back to eating.
The alien girl figured that the woman was probably suspicious of her,
after all, these humans couldn't possibly be as stupid as they looked,
could they? And Kiir certainly wasn't very well disguised, even though
the sensation of having her antennae bound back was driving her nuts.
For a human it was a sensation equivalent to having a rubber band
stretched between your ears and across your nose, only worse. She would
have dearly loved to shake them loose, if only for a minute or two, but
she suspected that doing so would most likely shatter whatever thin film
of possibility that she was human existed. She tilted her head back and
looked blearily at the ceiling tiles. One...two...three, she counted.
How long did these humans have for lunch? It must have been hours by
now. She glanced over at the clock. Twenty minutes, it had only been
twenty minutes. Why did it feel like time was going so slowly? Maybe
Earth revolved more slowly on it's axis than planets in the Irken
system did. Or maybe this 'Skool' thing was just boring her to death.
It felt more like organized torture than education, and she'd thought
the Academy had been bad. She was beginning to count her blessing, half
breed or no, that she hadn't been born an Earth child.
Ten...eleven...twelve ceiling tiles. Or was she at thirteen? She'd
lost count. She yawned widely and put her head down on the desk. She
tapped the button on the side of her optic enhancers, opening the link
to her ship's computer, but repairs weren't done yet and all she got
was static. With a sigh she closed the link and looked up at the
teacher, who luckily hadn't noticed. She ran a finger over the symbol
on the front of her shirt, the insignia of the Irken Underground. From
what she had seen of the human alphabet, the rebel design looked
something like a swirling letter 'd' intertwined on it's right side
with a 'c'. She sighed for the loss of her pet revolution, not exactly
for the people themselves, or even for the goals, but for the
experience. The life of a space bandit was rough and thrilling. The
life of the leader of space bandits was rough, thrilling, glorious and
profitable. Up until of course, as always seemed to happen in data files
and old stories, that fatal time when everything fell through and the
authorities caught on to you. Then it simply went back to being rough.
There was no telling how long she was going to stay on this planet, so
far out of the way that as far as she knew it didn't even have so much
as a way station for interstellar travelers. It had precious few of the
comforts of home and fewer still those she was used to as High Commander.
Well, she supposed that was all the better for a fugitive.
And fugitive she was. Surely her absence from the dead and captured
had been noticed by now. There would be police searches, inquiries, a
reward definitely high enough to attract citizen prank calls and
wanna-be bounty hunters. Skragg, maybe even high enough to attract some
serious bounty hunters. She was after all a highly dangerous personage.
And behind it all would be her uncle. There was no doubt in her mind
that if anyone was to blame for all the trouble in her life, everything
from her being expelled, the extreme fervency of the man-hunt it was
her dear old Uncle Purple.
She gave a derisive snort, causing the teacher to glance up at her.
But a bored frown and a shrug gave the woman no reason to keep watching
and Kiir went back to her thoughts, rueful as they were. Yes, amazing
as it was for others to believe she was flesh and blood of one of the
'almighty' Tallest. That was the problem. She was a source of
embarrassment to her Uncle, he feared what people might think were they
to know that their leader's bloodline had been 'despoiled'. Or at least
this was what Kiir surmised, she didn't technically have any proof.
Although their meeting were few and far between even when she had been
on the 'right' side of the law, her Uncle had never been at all hostile
or even veiledly discourteous, but then, he was a politician after all.
She looked up at the clock again and found that no more than five
minutes had passed. She shook her head irritated.
"Hey, um, teacher," she said, breaking the thick silence.
The woman's gaze snapped up. "My name is Mrs. Drone," she said in a
touchy sort of way.
"Ah, right, hey, when exactly does lunch end anyway?"
The dumpy human looked up at the clock. "The bell will be ringing in
just a moment. As you are not actually my student I can't force you to
pay attention, but I trust when we return to lessons you will not do
anything to distract the class?"
"Yeah, sure," she waved nonchalantly.
The teacher gave a her a look, silently for a moment and then spoke
again. "So, do you have the same skin condition as Zim?" she asked
carefully.
"Ah, yeah, actually." Kiir winced inwardly, wondering where the
question was going to lead. She KNEW she should have had a better
disguise.
The Earthling looked apprehensive. "It is contagious is it?"
Kiir snorted, biting back a laugh. "No, its, uh... hereditary." True,
in a sense.
She frowned. "So then, you and Zim are related?"
"...distantly."
The woman raised an eyebrow. "I thought you were Dib's cousin."
Skragg, she forgotten that! Um, um, think on your feet Commander!
"No, I'm an alien." she said with a big grin.
It had the desired effect. Mrs. Drone shook her head and rolled her
eyes. "Playing games at such an age, honestly, that boy he's so smart
but he must have more neurosis," she muttered and then looked squarely
at Kiir, "And you, young lady, shouldn't be feeding into his fantasies.
You'll all end up delusional, unable to separate fact from fiction. I
have a minor in psychology you know and one of the first things I
learned was it's never possible to believe two opposing things at once
and not come off the worse from it."
"I am not delusional," she snapped huffily. How come everyone always
told her she was delusional? Her father, Zim, the headmaster of the
academy...Just because they didn't want their perfect little models of
the Universe knocked over by a swift kick of the truth. They were the
delusional ones.
All the response that prompted from the teacher was a knowing 'hmmmm'
as she looked back down at her soup.
Kiir pursed her lips. "And if I really was an alien, what would you
do then?" she asked. Maybe it was impulsive, but if as it seemed, the
human wouldn't see anything that didn't fit with her world model it
was completely harmless. If not, well, Kiir was always one to test the
boundaries of what was safe and logical. (Prompting of course, the
popular theory that she was completely off her rocker.)
The woman gave her a stern look at the query. "I'm afraid you'd have
a hard time convincing me of that."
She shrugged. "Hypothetically speaking, out of curiosity."
"Hypothetically speaking," she answered, "I'd want to see your ship and
your alien technology before I believed a word of it."
"And supposing I proved it to you," she smiled, enjoying the game.
"Supposing you had undeniable evidence that I was from another star,
what would your reactions be?"
The woman gave her a sardonic look. "It would depend on your motives.
Are you here to enslave the human race or do you bring a message of
peace, hope and enlightenment?"
Kiir snorted. "Sanctuary. If I were here to live among you because my
alien race no longer accepted me."
The teacher furrowed her brow. "I don't think I'd have a problem with
that." She paused. "You don't expect me to believe that you are from
another planet do you?"
Kiir smiled with an impish, knowing delight and ran a hand through
her hair, stopping as she came to the binding of her ponytail. "Of
course not Mrs. Drone," she said, tugging the rubber band out and
shaking her antennae free, "I'm just a kid with a skin condition and a
weird hairdo."
The look on the teacher's face that was puzzled, dismissive and warily
suspicious all at once, along with the feeling of no longer having her
sensitive antennae smothered in her hair, was well worth any danger she
had bought herself in the process by way of the doubt she had placed in
the woman's secure world view were. Delusional indeed!
She grinned again as the bell to end lunch finally rang.
***
Dib trailed exhaustedly into the classroom behind Zim's confident
stride. It had been all the he could do to convince the Irken that he
did NOT need to go to the nurse's office and was perfectly fit, if a
bit tired and bruised, to return to class. He had, as he pointed out,
endured worse before this as a result of Zim's own plans.
In the last twenty minutes the alien had definitely become more of a
mystery to him than ever before. Why Zim should even deign to rescue
him, let alone accept a tentatively proffered peace overture was quite
beyond his current skill to fathom. The best guess he could come up
with was that he, upon rejection by his superiors, had decided to go
completely against them. A sort of sour grapes reaction, i.e. 'you don't
want to give me what I want? Fine then I don't want it.' Zim seemed
to have decided to take it as far as latching on to the exact opposite
of 'it'. Of course this was only a theory, but Dib couldn't really come
up with a better explanation for what seemed to be such out of
character actions.
One corner of his mind was deeply suspicious of this turn of events,
it was the part of him that saw Zim as a real threat, the part that
trusted the green alien about as far as he could spit a rat. That part
of him was urging the rest to recognize it as all some sort of trick to
make him drop his guard. It kept whispering all the terrible things
that Zim had ever attempted. You can't trust him, it hissed. He'll
double-cross you the moment you back is turned!
But another part of him, the part his cynical mind would call naive,
urged him otherwise. Why would he? What would it gain him?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, the cynic dismissed. But don't you think it's a
little odd, if not a bit too convenient? You decide you're in love with
him and he suddenly decides to be all nicey nice. I bet he can read
your mind.
He was trying to think of a suitable reply to himself when something
snapped him back to reality. Kiir's antennae were clearly visible. He
stopped, and stared at her. What was she DOING?
She must have noticed him, because she grinned and waved lazily. "Hey
Dib, like my hair? Or do you think they're 'alien antennae'?"
He was probably the only one in the room who could hear the second
layer of irony underneath the heavy sarcasm. "Oh, oh yeah! Hey, every
body, can't you see? She's an alien!"
Somebody shoved him. "You're such a dweeb, Membrane. Get a life."
Dib had stumbled, catching his side painfully on the edge of a desk.
He grimaced, it would almost certainly bruise. He looked up as he heard
a crash and the classes laughter. The tough guy who had shoved him was
on the floor. He must have tripped, people like that were nearly always
too stupid for simple motor functions. He took his seat.
***
Zim scowled from his chair at the stink monkey he'd tripped when no
one was watching. He'd been doing such things for a while now, and Dib
never seemed to notice. Which was good. There had been no room for
subtlety, however, a few minutes before, when that orange thing had
seemingly been sucking the life out of Dib. The human had certainly
been surprised by the rescue, hadn't he? Zim smirked, then frowned
again. What was going on with him? A truce had been that last thing
the Irken would have expected, and yet there it was. He was surprised
that Dib didn't think he was trying to lead him into a false sense of
security, both of which would have been in keeping with their respective
images. But the 'paranormal investigator' was probably more preoccupied
with his new quarry.
Now there was something that gave pause for thought. The creatures
scientifically shouldn't be able to exist. It would just take too long
for them to evolve all those traits and be sentient and anthropomorphic.
Unless they were enhanced by technology of course. What were they doing
on Earth anyway? Well, maybe they'd find out something this afternoon.
Energy signatures could sometimes tell very long and complex tales.
***
They had no names; they were above them. But for the sake of
simplicity and the understanding of what they would call inferior
creatures they will be referred to them collectively as Dib has, as The
Oranges, an apt descriptor for something so little is known about.
Separately however to keep better track of them, the white-eyed creature
will henceforth be known as Buntch, and the blue-eyed termed as Koil.
The place, however, had many names coined by the countless races of
the Universe. On earth alone it was known as void, or as limbo,
purgatory, no where, antimatter the space between, or any of many other
words. In Irken it is called Bastitch. The place, whatever you chose to
call it was a Universal fact, no culture or race has ever failed to
recognize it. It is a place on the edge of the senses, it is Not Space,
inside and outside of the universe, beside and around it. Humanity has
wondered what would happen were one to come to the end of the Universe
and step over, and the answer is that you would come out in this place.
Completely colorless, featureless, senseless to the utmost. It simply
is not, and yet it is more real than anything that exists.
As this nothing runs through all points in the Universe certain
technologies can be used to tap in and through it for instantaneous
transport. This however is difficult and hazardous for even the most
advanced of cultures and most don't bother with it, preferring instead
to create ever faster and more aesthetically pleasing types of space craft.
After all a sleek 'Voot Blazrag Mark 7' with all the extras makes a much
more appealing status symbol than a room full of ungainly machinery that
will zap you instantly to wherever you destination is and possibly
switch your limbs with those of traveling companion in the process.
Another downfall of the instant transport system is of course, the
instantaneousness of it. No one, no matter how much money they pour
into funding of crackpot scientist for the purpose, has ever been able
to discover a way to entertain guests while traveling by this method.
The problem lies in the fact that although you go through the void you
arrive at the exact millisecond that you left, leaving very little time
in between(in fact literally none at all) for expensive hors devours to
be served or for making small talk with all the other very rich beings
that you have invited. And since the only creatures in the Universe who
could afford to own instantaneous transports are the type of beings who
practically live to host expensive showy parties on their expensive
showy vehicles, the idea will most likely never catch on.
Buntch walked through the colorless nothingness toward where their
ship was parked, the hull opened as he approached and he strode in.
Koil looked up and emitted a series of twitters to her partner. You
were not expected to return after such a brief duration.
It appears the human is not so easily dealt with.
You can not dispose of one small human? There was a note of
disbelief to the blue-eyed creature's response.
It has an ally. Not an earth creature. Buntch waved and the hull
sealed itself.
Improbable. Preliminary scans showed that this planet has not made
interstellar contact.
Irrelevant. There is at least one non-earth creature in residence.
Did you procure an energy sample of it?
No, only of the earth being, but you will discover the results most
interesting.
Show me.
Buntch placed a hand on a white panel beside a screen. On the monitor
the image of a dancing stream of red light was displayed, beside it
strange letters, an analysis of the energy structure.
Koil's eyes grew slightly larger. Remarkable. The creature's
bio-energy is far more complex and potent than most beings is it so
with all these human?
Negative. Regard. He placed his other palm on the panel and the
image was replaced by a far more slender and docile string of grey.
This is the average I have noted among humans.
Pitiful. What could cause such a discrepancy?
Unknown, more research is necessary.
You will return tomorrow?
Negative. Identity has been breached. Change is imperative.
I will go. This human's wave-length intrigues me.
Beware. It is a fragile creature.
Understood.
To be continued...
Sorry the chapter's so short. I had a lot of homework and had to be
filmed for a documentary on VH1 about immortality. It airs on March
22. Next chapter will be up very soon Tomorrow probably. Definitely day
after. That's when they'll go to the park and see what they can find
of the oranges. And just why is Dib's energy so different than the
normal humans? There's a reason alright, but I'm not telling'! Yet.
And much more of our heros, I promise!
support keeps me from thinking my writing must be crap. If you go and
see my fan art at http://www.mediaminer.org/fanart/agal.php?id=61483
please remember to leave me a review there to. I know the art's not
very good but it's the best I can do at the moment. I'm working on
getting on elfwood to.
If anybody here's a fan of Harry Potter and/or thinks making fun of
Mary-Sues is really funny, go read my short humor/parody fic, Mary-
Sues Guild.
Disclaimer: What is this 'koppirite' of which you speak? Lejindarybunny
knows not of your barbaric earth concepts of thought ownership.
Chapter 5...In which Kiir plays mind games and what the hell are the
Oranges doing anyway?
Kiir's hooded eyes drooped, glazing with boredom. She drummed her
gloved fingers slowly on the desktop. She was the only person left in
the classroom while everyone else was at lunch. Well, not quite the
everyone, the dumpy teacher-human sat behind her desk eating something
out of a bowl, some sort of liquid with chunks of stuff in it. Probably
some sort of earth soup. Every once in a while the teacher would look
up at her, shake her head and go back to eating.
The alien girl figured that the woman was probably suspicious of her,
after all, these humans couldn't possibly be as stupid as they looked,
could they? And Kiir certainly wasn't very well disguised, even though
the sensation of having her antennae bound back was driving her nuts.
For a human it was a sensation equivalent to having a rubber band
stretched between your ears and across your nose, only worse. She would
have dearly loved to shake them loose, if only for a minute or two, but
she suspected that doing so would most likely shatter whatever thin film
of possibility that she was human existed. She tilted her head back and
looked blearily at the ceiling tiles. One...two...three, she counted.
How long did these humans have for lunch? It must have been hours by
now. She glanced over at the clock. Twenty minutes, it had only been
twenty minutes. Why did it feel like time was going so slowly? Maybe
Earth revolved more slowly on it's axis than planets in the Irken
system did. Or maybe this 'Skool' thing was just boring her to death.
It felt more like organized torture than education, and she'd thought
the Academy had been bad. She was beginning to count her blessing, half
breed or no, that she hadn't been born an Earth child.
Ten...eleven...twelve ceiling tiles. Or was she at thirteen? She'd
lost count. She yawned widely and put her head down on the desk. She
tapped the button on the side of her optic enhancers, opening the link
to her ship's computer, but repairs weren't done yet and all she got
was static. With a sigh she closed the link and looked up at the
teacher, who luckily hadn't noticed. She ran a finger over the symbol
on the front of her shirt, the insignia of the Irken Underground. From
what she had seen of the human alphabet, the rebel design looked
something like a swirling letter 'd' intertwined on it's right side
with a 'c'. She sighed for the loss of her pet revolution, not exactly
for the people themselves, or even for the goals, but for the
experience. The life of a space bandit was rough and thrilling. The
life of the leader of space bandits was rough, thrilling, glorious and
profitable. Up until of course, as always seemed to happen in data files
and old stories, that fatal time when everything fell through and the
authorities caught on to you. Then it simply went back to being rough.
There was no telling how long she was going to stay on this planet, so
far out of the way that as far as she knew it didn't even have so much
as a way station for interstellar travelers. It had precious few of the
comforts of home and fewer still those she was used to as High Commander.
Well, she supposed that was all the better for a fugitive.
And fugitive she was. Surely her absence from the dead and captured
had been noticed by now. There would be police searches, inquiries, a
reward definitely high enough to attract citizen prank calls and
wanna-be bounty hunters. Skragg, maybe even high enough to attract some
serious bounty hunters. She was after all a highly dangerous personage.
And behind it all would be her uncle. There was no doubt in her mind
that if anyone was to blame for all the trouble in her life, everything
from her being expelled, the extreme fervency of the man-hunt it was
her dear old Uncle Purple.
She gave a derisive snort, causing the teacher to glance up at her.
But a bored frown and a shrug gave the woman no reason to keep watching
and Kiir went back to her thoughts, rueful as they were. Yes, amazing
as it was for others to believe she was flesh and blood of one of the
'almighty' Tallest. That was the problem. She was a source of
embarrassment to her Uncle, he feared what people might think were they
to know that their leader's bloodline had been 'despoiled'. Or at least
this was what Kiir surmised, she didn't technically have any proof.
Although their meeting were few and far between even when she had been
on the 'right' side of the law, her Uncle had never been at all hostile
or even veiledly discourteous, but then, he was a politician after all.
She looked up at the clock again and found that no more than five
minutes had passed. She shook her head irritated.
"Hey, um, teacher," she said, breaking the thick silence.
The woman's gaze snapped up. "My name is Mrs. Drone," she said in a
touchy sort of way.
"Ah, right, hey, when exactly does lunch end anyway?"
The dumpy human looked up at the clock. "The bell will be ringing in
just a moment. As you are not actually my student I can't force you to
pay attention, but I trust when we return to lessons you will not do
anything to distract the class?"
"Yeah, sure," she waved nonchalantly.
The teacher gave a her a look, silently for a moment and then spoke
again. "So, do you have the same skin condition as Zim?" she asked
carefully.
"Ah, yeah, actually." Kiir winced inwardly, wondering where the
question was going to lead. She KNEW she should have had a better
disguise.
The Earthling looked apprehensive. "It is contagious is it?"
Kiir snorted, biting back a laugh. "No, its, uh... hereditary." True,
in a sense.
She frowned. "So then, you and Zim are related?"
"...distantly."
The woman raised an eyebrow. "I thought you were Dib's cousin."
Skragg, she forgotten that! Um, um, think on your feet Commander!
"No, I'm an alien." she said with a big grin.
It had the desired effect. Mrs. Drone shook her head and rolled her
eyes. "Playing games at such an age, honestly, that boy he's so smart
but he must have more neurosis," she muttered and then looked squarely
at Kiir, "And you, young lady, shouldn't be feeding into his fantasies.
You'll all end up delusional, unable to separate fact from fiction. I
have a minor in psychology you know and one of the first things I
learned was it's never possible to believe two opposing things at once
and not come off the worse from it."
"I am not delusional," she snapped huffily. How come everyone always
told her she was delusional? Her father, Zim, the headmaster of the
academy...Just because they didn't want their perfect little models of
the Universe knocked over by a swift kick of the truth. They were the
delusional ones.
All the response that prompted from the teacher was a knowing 'hmmmm'
as she looked back down at her soup.
Kiir pursed her lips. "And if I really was an alien, what would you
do then?" she asked. Maybe it was impulsive, but if as it seemed, the
human wouldn't see anything that didn't fit with her world model it
was completely harmless. If not, well, Kiir was always one to test the
boundaries of what was safe and logical. (Prompting of course, the
popular theory that she was completely off her rocker.)
The woman gave her a stern look at the query. "I'm afraid you'd have
a hard time convincing me of that."
She shrugged. "Hypothetically speaking, out of curiosity."
"Hypothetically speaking," she answered, "I'd want to see your ship and
your alien technology before I believed a word of it."
"And supposing I proved it to you," she smiled, enjoying the game.
"Supposing you had undeniable evidence that I was from another star,
what would your reactions be?"
The woman gave her a sardonic look. "It would depend on your motives.
Are you here to enslave the human race or do you bring a message of
peace, hope and enlightenment?"
Kiir snorted. "Sanctuary. If I were here to live among you because my
alien race no longer accepted me."
The teacher furrowed her brow. "I don't think I'd have a problem with
that." She paused. "You don't expect me to believe that you are from
another planet do you?"
Kiir smiled with an impish, knowing delight and ran a hand through
her hair, stopping as she came to the binding of her ponytail. "Of
course not Mrs. Drone," she said, tugging the rubber band out and
shaking her antennae free, "I'm just a kid with a skin condition and a
weird hairdo."
The look on the teacher's face that was puzzled, dismissive and warily
suspicious all at once, along with the feeling of no longer having her
sensitive antennae smothered in her hair, was well worth any danger she
had bought herself in the process by way of the doubt she had placed in
the woman's secure world view were. Delusional indeed!
She grinned again as the bell to end lunch finally rang.
***
Dib trailed exhaustedly into the classroom behind Zim's confident
stride. It had been all the he could do to convince the Irken that he
did NOT need to go to the nurse's office and was perfectly fit, if a
bit tired and bruised, to return to class. He had, as he pointed out,
endured worse before this as a result of Zim's own plans.
In the last twenty minutes the alien had definitely become more of a
mystery to him than ever before. Why Zim should even deign to rescue
him, let alone accept a tentatively proffered peace overture was quite
beyond his current skill to fathom. The best guess he could come up
with was that he, upon rejection by his superiors, had decided to go
completely against them. A sort of sour grapes reaction, i.e. 'you don't
want to give me what I want? Fine then I don't want it.' Zim seemed
to have decided to take it as far as latching on to the exact opposite
of 'it'. Of course this was only a theory, but Dib couldn't really come
up with a better explanation for what seemed to be such out of
character actions.
One corner of his mind was deeply suspicious of this turn of events,
it was the part of him that saw Zim as a real threat, the part that
trusted the green alien about as far as he could spit a rat. That part
of him was urging the rest to recognize it as all some sort of trick to
make him drop his guard. It kept whispering all the terrible things
that Zim had ever attempted. You can't trust him, it hissed. He'll
double-cross you the moment you back is turned!
But another part of him, the part his cynical mind would call naive,
urged him otherwise. Why would he? What would it gain him?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, the cynic dismissed. But don't you think it's a
little odd, if not a bit too convenient? You decide you're in love with
him and he suddenly decides to be all nicey nice. I bet he can read
your mind.
He was trying to think of a suitable reply to himself when something
snapped him back to reality. Kiir's antennae were clearly visible. He
stopped, and stared at her. What was she DOING?
She must have noticed him, because she grinned and waved lazily. "Hey
Dib, like my hair? Or do you think they're 'alien antennae'?"
He was probably the only one in the room who could hear the second
layer of irony underneath the heavy sarcasm. "Oh, oh yeah! Hey, every
body, can't you see? She's an alien!"
Somebody shoved him. "You're such a dweeb, Membrane. Get a life."
Dib had stumbled, catching his side painfully on the edge of a desk.
He grimaced, it would almost certainly bruise. He looked up as he heard
a crash and the classes laughter. The tough guy who had shoved him was
on the floor. He must have tripped, people like that were nearly always
too stupid for simple motor functions. He took his seat.
***
Zim scowled from his chair at the stink monkey he'd tripped when no
one was watching. He'd been doing such things for a while now, and Dib
never seemed to notice. Which was good. There had been no room for
subtlety, however, a few minutes before, when that orange thing had
seemingly been sucking the life out of Dib. The human had certainly
been surprised by the rescue, hadn't he? Zim smirked, then frowned
again. What was going on with him? A truce had been that last thing
the Irken would have expected, and yet there it was. He was surprised
that Dib didn't think he was trying to lead him into a false sense of
security, both of which would have been in keeping with their respective
images. But the 'paranormal investigator' was probably more preoccupied
with his new quarry.
Now there was something that gave pause for thought. The creatures
scientifically shouldn't be able to exist. It would just take too long
for them to evolve all those traits and be sentient and anthropomorphic.
Unless they were enhanced by technology of course. What were they doing
on Earth anyway? Well, maybe they'd find out something this afternoon.
Energy signatures could sometimes tell very long and complex tales.
***
They had no names; they were above them. But for the sake of
simplicity and the understanding of what they would call inferior
creatures they will be referred to them collectively as Dib has, as The
Oranges, an apt descriptor for something so little is known about.
Separately however to keep better track of them, the white-eyed creature
will henceforth be known as Buntch, and the blue-eyed termed as Koil.
The place, however, had many names coined by the countless races of
the Universe. On earth alone it was known as void, or as limbo,
purgatory, no where, antimatter the space between, or any of many other
words. In Irken it is called Bastitch. The place, whatever you chose to
call it was a Universal fact, no culture or race has ever failed to
recognize it. It is a place on the edge of the senses, it is Not Space,
inside and outside of the universe, beside and around it. Humanity has
wondered what would happen were one to come to the end of the Universe
and step over, and the answer is that you would come out in this place.
Completely colorless, featureless, senseless to the utmost. It simply
is not, and yet it is more real than anything that exists.
As this nothing runs through all points in the Universe certain
technologies can be used to tap in and through it for instantaneous
transport. This however is difficult and hazardous for even the most
advanced of cultures and most don't bother with it, preferring instead
to create ever faster and more aesthetically pleasing types of space craft.
After all a sleek 'Voot Blazrag Mark 7' with all the extras makes a much
more appealing status symbol than a room full of ungainly machinery that
will zap you instantly to wherever you destination is and possibly
switch your limbs with those of traveling companion in the process.
Another downfall of the instant transport system is of course, the
instantaneousness of it. No one, no matter how much money they pour
into funding of crackpot scientist for the purpose, has ever been able
to discover a way to entertain guests while traveling by this method.
The problem lies in the fact that although you go through the void you
arrive at the exact millisecond that you left, leaving very little time
in between(in fact literally none at all) for expensive hors devours to
be served or for making small talk with all the other very rich beings
that you have invited. And since the only creatures in the Universe who
could afford to own instantaneous transports are the type of beings who
practically live to host expensive showy parties on their expensive
showy vehicles, the idea will most likely never catch on.
Buntch walked through the colorless nothingness toward where their
ship was parked, the hull opened as he approached and he strode in.
Koil looked up and emitted a series of twitters to her partner. You
were not expected to return after such a brief duration.
It appears the human is not so easily dealt with.
You can not dispose of one small human? There was a note of
disbelief to the blue-eyed creature's response.
It has an ally. Not an earth creature. Buntch waved and the hull
sealed itself.
Improbable. Preliminary scans showed that this planet has not made
interstellar contact.
Irrelevant. There is at least one non-earth creature in residence.
Did you procure an energy sample of it?
No, only of the earth being, but you will discover the results most
interesting.
Show me.
Buntch placed a hand on a white panel beside a screen. On the monitor
the image of a dancing stream of red light was displayed, beside it
strange letters, an analysis of the energy structure.
Koil's eyes grew slightly larger. Remarkable. The creature's
bio-energy is far more complex and potent than most beings is it so
with all these human?
Negative. Regard. He placed his other palm on the panel and the
image was replaced by a far more slender and docile string of grey.
This is the average I have noted among humans.
Pitiful. What could cause such a discrepancy?
Unknown, more research is necessary.
You will return tomorrow?
Negative. Identity has been breached. Change is imperative.
I will go. This human's wave-length intrigues me.
Beware. It is a fragile creature.
Understood.
To be continued...
Sorry the chapter's so short. I had a lot of homework and had to be
filmed for a documentary on VH1 about immortality. It airs on March
22. Next chapter will be up very soon Tomorrow probably. Definitely day
after. That's when they'll go to the park and see what they can find
of the oranges. And just why is Dib's energy so different than the
normal humans? There's a reason alright, but I'm not telling'! Yet.
And much more of our heros, I promise!