Months passed. The intangible energy of the music Zim worked to produce slipped beyond his grasp time and time again. He flung himself into the mastery of it, holing up underground. The skin under his eyes became hollowed and darkened, his fingers ached, and his mind struggled with concepts relatively foreign to him. He re-constructed instruments of human make based on information gathered by his computer, studied their properties and how they made sound, mastered the technique of drawing from them the notes he wanted and could identify with his finely tuned Irken hearing, guarded them against GIR, and worked further on his own composition. He could not see how the humans who were revered as composers had done their work. He spent long hours working through every note of any composition he laid his claws on, easily storing relevant pieces of information in his efficient cyborg brain. He absorbed theory, memorized harmonies in fifths, thirds, seconds, ninths, sixtieths, in and between the ninety-six individual tones he could hear in the octave'. He trained his mind to feel what was right and wrong about them, and constantly tested out his experiments on the human girl. He put her under rigorous testing and scans, used his computer to analyze the musical wiring of her brain. He built a synthetic reproduction of that wiring, tweaked and perfected it over time, working with the girl's musical sense (which was quite substantial, for a human) closely.
The day came when he struck a series of chords on his interpretation of the Phantom's pipe organ. It was far superior to anything a human could build, of course, but the sounds that reverberated and pitched back and forth from it made the two figures at his side stare. His robot slave leaped and cheered eagerly, the human stink-girl stared with wide eyes, and the lights on the screen fed into his synthetic reproduction of the human-brain wiring lit up in a series of circular patterns that spoke one thing to the delighted alien—success. He cackled maniacally, rippling his fingers across the keyboard of the pipe organ, forcefully drawing sounds from it that threw the reproduction into a light-blinking frenzy. The human girl too, seemed to be enjoying it greatly. But something was wrong. She was not getting hypnotized. What had he done differently, Zim wondered, as his fingers moved to produce the sounds of the age-old Phantom of the Opera song on the organ. There was something different when he rode not on intense desire of mastery, and instead on his elated feeling of power that encompassed every feeling he lived for, every emotion that was even allowed a Soldier such as he, the one reward of his merciless and cold-hearted existence. The feeling of accomplishment, of having proved his ultimate worth, of being in control possibly, even, of winning the appreciation of his Tallest.
He spun around on the organ bench to look at the human girl. She had grown taller, and no less filthy, but he had gotten used to her filthy alien presence. She, at least, did nothing to try and sabotage his VERY important work, like that disgusting Dib creature. Zim was fully aware of the futile attempts of his enemy to root him out and expose him, but as he had withdrawn into his project, which had taken him deeper and deeper underground and into himself, his encounters with the Dib-weasel-PIG-monkey had been far fewer. A definite blessing. Perhaps the filthy human child would leave him alone to complete his mission of conquering the world with his mighty powers of hypnosis. It was a certain kind of energy, that could work through the channel of the music that affected the wiring of the human brain, and this energy was the key to drawing their minds to his command. Once he mastered the music, he would hold Earth in the palm of his gloved hand, and offer it up to his Tallest, with all his being and devotion as an Invader to the glory of the Irken Empire. What a day that would be. A day when he was finally recognized, a day when he had no more need to lurk among filth-creatures on this planet of dirt, a day when the Tallest upheld him to the rank and prestige he TRULY deserved!! Zim's fingers grew tense on the organ keys. He had been born short. But he was tall at heart, more AMAZING than anyone in the Empire! Except, of course, the Tallest, in their mighty Tallness he paused thoughtfully, then turned back around to the organ, and began to play again. A light chuckle crept from his throat. He was amazing. He had mastered this key of controlling the minds of humans, and everything would now fall into place at his very will. His fingers struck up and down the keyboard in a harmony of chords as his laughter grew and swelled, filling the entire room. GIR's high-pitched, eager giggling joined in, but there was nothing but silence from the human girl next to his robot slave. He turned his head slightly and saw the glazed look in her eyes. He had done it. His laughter escalated to wild heights, matched by the music pouring from the organ pipes and wrapping itself around the hapless human's brain.