I'm typing this... ON MY BRAND-NEW COMPUTER! WH00T! Okay, so it's not brand-
new, it's about five years old and I only got it because I've been making
good grades all year and got a 1300 on the SAT, I've been begging for one
for two years, and we got a new one and didn't know what to do with the old
one, but hey! "Take what you can, and give nothing back." Anyhowzit,
welcome to chapter 7!!
Vortianized: Haven't seen The Secret Window (yet), but thanks for the comparison anyway! I shall continue before you snap. So there.
KitKat the great: Yeah, still in denial, isn't he?
Invader Alex: SURE, let's be friends! Yeah, Dib is nice to help Zim and all, but I think he's more doing this to clear up things for himself. He's freaked out and all. Let's face it: Zim's utterly terrifying him. Mur is mean, but it's not like he can help it. She's not real. She's actually just performing the duties of Quifosenkis and making sure his personality changes correctly so he's the NEW Zim instead of the OLD Zim... it'll be a lot clearer after this chapter.
Dragon Of The Rose: Sorry I couldn't give you that chapter... Writers, they live spontaneous lives, inspiration hear, writer's block there, and somewhere in it all we have to work in fanfics.
Eks: "It rocks like a thing that rocks almightily." I'll remember that phrase. Thanks! And, if you think "holy fandango" is funny, which it is, then you should try "holy frijoles" next time. I luv that phrase...
Keeper of Memory Pepperochu: Okay, okay, next time I get a game I'll get VII. They all sound neat, so whichever is fine.
Ashsema: Well, of course the water didn't REALLY cause the "warp." It's just the only excuse Zim can think up. Erm, maybe I didn't make it clear, but Zim's "good friend" is the imaginary Mur. See, she keeps telling him he's so amazing and a great Invader, and even if she does yell sometimes she makes sure he stays in-character and doesn't start questioning his loyalties or the mission or anything. Guess I didn't write that well enough? Of course, she isn't really a friend. She isn't really an ANYTHING. But she works that way for Zim. Yeah, some stories DO write themselves, don't they? And thanks for the compliment. The one thing a writer likes to hear more than a compliment to their stories is a compliment to their abilities as a writer. Thankee!
Pirate Monkey: I hate being banned from the Net. Which is why I haven't updated Crossover in weeks, even though I have the next chapter. I was banned. gasp Thanks for the review.
Silent Knight I: I think you can let Zim out now. Glad you like Mur, she keeps him from completely snapping. Trust me, without her, Quifosenkis would've made Zim go mad years ago. And not the mad he is now. The padded- room mad.
Dragon of the Rose (again): You live near Muir Woods? I was wondering how long it'd take someone to make a connection. I went to California two summers ago on vacation, and visited the Muir Woods. That was also the vacation I discovered Zim, watching Nickelodeon in a hotel room. Well, several months later I was coming up with the original Quifosenkis, which at the time was called The Truth and had no diseases involved. Quifosenkis was the title of a completely different story with a very different disease. I was trying to come up with a name for a character. I wanted to make some human girl Zim communicated with telepathically years before he reached Earth (yes, I made a stinkin' Mary Sue. I was a n00bie, okay?!). I wanted a three-letter name, since all the main characters have three-letter names, and I saw my souvenir coin from Muir Woods. So, I cut out the "I" and named my character Mur. Of course, several months later I realized "The Truth" was pitiful and "Quifosenkis" lacked drama, so I combined the two stories. Instead of a psychic girl talking to Zim in one fic and a mental disease making Zim stupid in the other, I combined them into a mental disease with a side-effect of a not-real girl talking to Zim's mind while he's going crazy and becoming stupid. Long explanation for a short comment, neh?
Heh Choke On This Puppy: Gad, I know your pain. I know what it's like to wait and wait and wait and maybe she'll never update? Then wait and wait and wait until you've just about given up hope, or maybe you already have, and she UPDATES! whoot But, I swear upon my extensive collection of Zim merchandise, that this fic will eventually be finished. I won't let this die, I won't forget it, I will get the whole story out to you all, or may my merchandise turn into tuna salad.
CDingo: Gee, thanks! You squinted your eyes for me! yee! I'm glad you think I've mixed the IZ world and normal sci-fi well. I spend a lot of time getting the whole Quifosenkis stuff to work in the IZ world smoothly.
We'll be on Irk most of the chapter, but we'll still get to see Zim and how his disease is going. And, an important discovery is made. Don't worry, Dibby-lovers, he's not about to disappear from this fic! I was planning on making Dib disappear into the depths of the Unused Characters Dimension (from your friendly builders of the Twilight Zone and the Room With a Moose!!), but he'll be back later. He won't be a star character (hardly even a co-star), but he WILL INDEED BE THERE! Do not fear!
Note: Quifosenkis cannot think. Quifosenkis cannot talk. Quifosenkis has no physical identity. It is a disease. Can hysteria think? Can schizophrenia think? No. Quifosenkis can't either. Just thought I'd clear that up before the chapter. Remember that.
Now (despite the fact that I'm SUPPOSED to be working on Sanctified By Oppression), fic time! I had writer's block on SBO, anyway...
Disclaimer: I don't own Zim, Red, Purple, Gir, Irk, the Irkens themselves, and all the other little things I don't own but wish I did. I do own Mur, Kayna, Nakay, Quifosenkis the story, and Quifosenkis the disease, compares the lists and sighs Nickelodeon: 7. Ckret2: 4.5. Big corporations beat the individual yet again. Way to go, Bush. Oh, and I don't own the name Doctor Scratchandsniff. That is stolen from Animaniacs, but it's such a cool name...
Twitch Twitch Twitch twitch twitch twitch...
Red and Nakay were on Conventia briefly. Red and Purple were there to give a speech to smeets who were going to be Invaders, and Nakay was going to give a series of lectures to Nurses and Scientists about Quifosenkis. She'd be staying there for a couple of months, but after Red and Purple gave their speeches they'd leave Conventia to go to a recently conquered planet. This would be the last time Red saw Nakay in awhile, so they were at one of the smaller food courts on the planet drinking smoothies and talking.
"I know Quifosenkis kills people," Red says, "but what does it do before that? I mean, you don't just die, do you?"
"No," Nakay said. "There's a period of degrade before they die. And it takes a long time to kill. Years, in fact. You start off by slowly losing intelligence and sanity as your brain tries to wipe over the personality programming in your ID pak. It's more visible in gradual Quifosenkis, because the only thing your brain is doing is wiping over personality. It takes longer to show in sudden, because half of your brain's efforts are dedicated to wiping over memories, not reprogram personality. Irkens with sudden Quifosenkis suffer amnesia, sometimes, but they don't just forget everything. When they're closer to dying, the process speeds up, and not only do they get dumber and crazier but they also start to lose physical energy, too, as the personality wipe slowly spreads to motor functions. The Irken dies either when his brain gives out from the reprogramming, all motor functions are wiped, or the ID pak's start-up disk is wiped. These usually happen at about the same time, but only one needs to happen to kill of the Irken."
Red nodded. "So, they start getting stupid and crazy?"
Nakay nodded. "Yeah. And, of course, they get weaker at the end. But unless they're already receiving mental therapy, by that time they're doomed. Almost no one can overcome Quifosenkis with that much time on their clocks."
A little virus was moving through Zim's systems. It was a computer virus, and a mental virus at the same time.
This little virus was called Quifosenkis.
Now, this virus can't really think or talk, but to help the audience understand exactly what's going on in Zim's brain and ID pak right now, we'll pretend it is a physical sentient thing, and it can think and talk.
Quifosenkis, with Zim's supposed personality of cockiness and confidence and bravery and loyalty to the Tallest stored in its metaphorical mind, swam back and forth from Zim's brain to his pak, making all the necessary adjustments to make sure Zim was being run by its rules.
Quifosenkis was currently in his pak, going through his memories. "Hmm, memories of the Cold Unfeeling Robot Arm?" Quifosenkis muttered. "Zim wasn't supposed to hug it! He's tough and brave, not sentimental." As Quifosenkis moved towards the memory to replace it, it had a change of heart. Zim was a smeet them. Smeets could be sentimental. Instead, Quifosenkis changed Zim's memory of the Download Chamber so he would look like the smart Irken Quifosenkis thought he should be. Satisfied, Quifosenkis moved on, as the change was added and spreading through Zim's ID pak and making a bunch of other minor adjustments.
"Zim's been getting too many conflicting memories lately," Quifosenkis said, changing Zim's memory of the Tak incident so Zim would think he'd had Dib and Gaz hypnotized, instead of worked alongside them. "And I can't change all his memories. It'd take too much time to come up with new ones, and during that time Zim will have even MORE experiences I'll need to change. I need something quicker."
Quifosenkis passed Zim's memory of the night before and groaned out loud. That was a complete disaster! Mur's existence was being called into question, and Zim had been completely at the mercy of Dib! Now, not only was Zim wondering if something was wrong with himself – heaven forbid! – he had also acted weak, compromising, resigned, and all-around pitiful. And Quifosenkis couldn't let Zim question Mur's existence. Thanks to Quifosenkis, she was the most real thing Zim had. All the other memories? Easily changed material. They were as insubstantial as Zim's old personality. Mur was Zim's present and future life. Quifosenkis had to make sure Zim remembered that.
But how was it going to clear up THIS mess? This huge jumble of stuff Zim couldn't think! There was no way to slightly change the reality to fit with what Quifosenkis wanted. The memory was incorrigible.
"Hey..." Quifosenkis said quietly. "When you're building something and you mess up badly, what do you do? Throw it away!" Quifosenkis laughed triumphantly, deleting the old memory entirely. Memories from around crowded in to fill the blank space, and in a nanosecond it was like the memory had never been there. Laughing triumphantly again, Quifosenkis zoomed around Zim's brain with increased speed, finding files unworthy of keeping and deleting them. The second Thursday the eighth? Delete! That whole conversation with Purple was relating to Thursday the eighth. Delete! Every time Dib had talked about Mur? Delete! Delete! Delete!
Quifosenkis laughed again. "This is easy! Why didn't I think of this before?" But in the rush of filling in the empty space, important memories were getting knocked out and valuable programming was getting written over. Zim's biological brain was tiring from the new info it was getting. And thus, Zim started dying.
Red and Purple were in their private lounge playing a video game, "¡mEEkrOb.splAt!"
"Is it just me, or is everything spelled weird these days?" Red commented. "I mean, bItter hOpe had the second letters caped, and this game has the punctuation and random caps."
"They're not random, only the vowels are capped," Purple said. He had, after all, spent two weeks tracking down the creator so he could throttle him for making another game he lost at. He also learned the name of the color of the paint the m, second E, and t were in: not green, or even neon green, but Ectoplasmic Moss Green #9887. "We should consider ourselves lucky we aren't named Glossy Candy Apple Reddish-Maroon and Glittery Deep Mist Purple Mountain Majesty instead of Red and Purple."
Red glanced over at Purple. "Since when did you know that much about colors?"
"Oh, you don't know the half of it." Purple had learned those colors from previous creator-throttling expeditions. The colors were easier to find than the creators themselves. Go fig.
"Wait a sec," Red said, pausing. "Are you calling me 'Candy Apple'?!"
Purple gulped, but took the challenge. "What if I am?"
Red's eyes narrowed and he moved forward threateningly. "We'll see about that." Smiling cruelly, he unpaused, and savage Meekrobians swarmed on Purple's player.
"Hey!" Purple said. Furiously pounding the buttons, he knocked the Meekrobians back. Screeching in terror, the pixilated opponents ran to the other side of the battle arena, where they attacked and killed Red.
Red's eyes widened. "What the—?!"
"I just beat them..." Purple whispered. Cheering, he charged the remaining Meekrobians. "Take that, energy creatures! And take that, Mr. Candy Apple." Red grumbled.
Suddenly, the screen went blank, and "Incoming Message" flashed across it. "NOOOOOOOOO!!!" Purple wailed. Ignoring him, Red answered the message.
"What do you want, Zim?"
"It's ZIM?!" Purple cried. "Zim made me stop my glorious massacre? And I was just starting to like him better because of that time warp thing!"
"Is this a bad time, my Tallests?" Zim asked uncertainly.
"No, not at all!" Red exclaimed, actually glad to see Zim. He'd set up a tape to record all incoming messages, so that when he got one from Zim he'd be able to show it to Nakay and let her psychoanalyze him. "So, what are you calling about, Zim?"
"Just reporting in, Sirs. Err, Sir, I guess. Where's Tallest Red? He was just there."
Red's eyes narrowed. "I'M Red. HE'S Purple. My name's Red and I have red eyes. HIS name is Purple and he has Purple eyes. It's... that... simple."
"Oh, right, sorry my Tallest. If I may ask, where's Tallest Purple?"
"Banging his head against something." Red glanced to the other side of the lounge. "Looks like the Plexiglas window. Hey, wait, don't DO that! You'll BREAK it!"
"Fine!" Purple huffed, floating up beside Red. "Hey, Zim, how's that time warp project going?"
Zim's brow furrowed. "What time warp project?"
"You know, the repeated day? After the rain?"
Zim looked increasingly perplexed. "I don't know about any repeated days..."
"Aw, c'mon! It was only a few days ago."
Zim blinked. "I have no idea what you're talking about." Suddenly his attitude shifted. "YOU'RE CRAZY! You're all talking... CRAZY talk! Yep. I know NOTHIIIIIIIIIIIIING about a repeating day. OKAY?!"
Purple's eyes narrowed. "Don't talk to me like that. I 0wnz0rz j00r b0x0rz."
Red glanced at Purple. "'I ownzorz joor boxors'??"
"It's 1337!" Purple defended.
Red looked again at Zim, who was only half on the screen. He was arguing with someone off-camera. There was something weird about this... Zim's sudden mood shift...
"Hey, Zim, who're you talking to?" Red asked.
"Eh? I'M NOT CRAZY! SHE'S THERE!!"
Red arched a non-existent eyebrow. "I... didn't say you were. Whoever you're talking to is off-screen. Who is she?"
"Oh," Zim said. "It's Mur. Hey wait... she's not off-screen!"
"Yes she is," Purple said.
"Oh really?" Zim said. He glanced to his side a second, then did that mood- swing. "YOU LIIIIIIIIE!"
"Okay, fine Zim," Red said soothingly. "We'll just call you back later."
"Right," Zim said. He sat there a few seconds. "Does that mean I hang up?"
"Yes," Red and Purple said simultaneously.
"Okay." Mood-swing. "I will call back AS SOON as I make more progress, SIRS!" He hung up.
"Jeez," Purple said, rolling his optikos at the ceiling. "Has Zim always been that stupid?"
"I don't think he has..." Red said thoughtfully. He turned off the game.
"What was THAT for?!" Purple whined.
"Shut yer hole," Red commanded, logging on to the files of every Irken in existence. "Lessee... M through Z... Maalox? No... scroll down... Vexorz is still too high... Zillah closer, Ziltax, Zimrekay? Who's Zimrekay? Erm... goes to Zinry after that... Who's Zimrekay?
Red clicked on the link, and a picture of Zim popped up. "Zim's whole name is Zimrekay?"
"No kiddin'?" Purple said, sitting behind Red.
Red scrolled down. "Ah! Annual Manditory Invader IQ Tests!"
"What's that?" Purple asked.
"Every year, every Invader or Invader-in-training has to take an IQ test to make sure they meet minimum requirements. I want to see Zim's," Red explained. He clicked on the link, and his jaw dropped.
"What? What is it?" Purple asked.
"Three hundred years ago, Zim's IQ was two hundred fifty-eight..." Red whispered, awed. This was Zim??
"I dunno," Purple said dubiously, but he was obviously stunned. "I heard he cheats on all his tests."
"The IQ tests take info directly from your ID pak. You can't cheat on it."
Red scrolled down slowly. 258, 258, 259, 259, 259, 259, 258, 259, 259, 259, 259, 259, 260... On and on, gradually going up until...
"Zim's score dropped to 210 two hundred years ago!" Red exclaimed. He read on. After that, every few years Zim's IQ dropped another few points, irregularly. It wasn't even possible. He was down to 105 when....
"Where's the rest of the list? This stops a long time ago!" Purple griped.
"After that it has a long list of... excuses," Red said. "Every year since then he's come up with a way to get out of the tests." That was fifty years ago. Fifty years ago, Zim's IQ had been 105 and it was dropping rapidly.
Red turned around slightly so he could see Purple. "Did you either hear or see this Mur?"
"No..." Purple said. "I didn't. She was off-screen, right?"
"But Zim was arguing with her. And he said she was on-screen."
"Hmm," Purple replied. "What's the name of his crazy robot thing? Maybe that's Mur?"
"I don't think its name is Mur. And if it was that robot, we would have heard it. It's noisy. All I heard was Zim."
Red closed Zim's file. He had a hunch. All he needed was that disk, the recording of the meeting...
Red ejected the disk, and called another branch of the Massive. In a few seconds, a face popped up.
"May I be of service, my Tallest?" the saluting Irken said, wearing the crisp uniform of the Irken Doctors and Nurses.
"Yes, I'd like you to run a test on the Irken taped in this disk. Invader... Zimrekay." Behind Red, Purple choked down a laugh. "I want you to see if his optikos bi are vibrating."
The Doctor's antenna perked up. "You... are familiar with the way to identify sudden Quifosenkis, Tallest Purple?"
"Tallest Red has red eyes, Tallest Purple has purple eyes," Red droned. He was used to this by now. "And yes, I am. I think this guy might have it."
"Of course, we'll check, my Tallest. But there's a very slight chance... is this Irken male?"
"Yes."
"Does he have red or green eyes?"
"Red eyes."
"Is he less than five hundred years old?"
Red faltered. He turned to Purple. "How old is Zim?"
"Oh, I dunno..." Purple said. "'Bout three hundred? Three-fifty max."
Red turned back to the Doctor. "Yes. He is."
"Have his optikos ever reached maximum heat or cold?"
Again, Red turned to Purple. "Has he?"
"Didn't he tell us about Earth's sun being booby-trapped?" Purple asked. "He said something about the flesh burning off his eyes."
"Oh yeah." Red giggled. "Stupid, that happens on Irk, too! Yeah, I'd say he's reached maximum heat."
"All right. Send us the disk, and we'll get right on it."
"Fine." Red teleported the disk to the Doctor.
"Thank you, my Tallest. We'll have the results in an hour."
Zim had just made it to Mrs. Bitter's class and sat down in his desk. He yawned. He didn't know why, but he was exhausted. He'd stayed up all night... was that it?
"Hey," Mur said, floating down beside Zim. "Whatcha doin'?"
"Sitting," Zim replied crankily. He really was tired. "Say, Mur, I forgot. Do Irkens sleep?"
Mur looked at Zim, eyebrows raised. "Well, duh!"
"They do?"
"Yeah!" Mur rolled here eyes. "Don't you remember the time you called the Tallest and they were asleep?"
"Lemme think..." Zim said.
Quifosenkis quickly got to work. Mur was the most real thing to Zim. She never spoke lies. Her reality was the correct one, Quifosenkis made sure of that. It fabricated a scene for Zim's memories.
"Yeah, I do," Zim said.
Quifosenkis looked around Zim's ID pak, and quickly flew back to Zim's brain. They were getting sluggish from all the stuff Quifosenkis put them through. They needed to be off for Quifosenkis to get any good work done.
Quifosenkis separated some neurons in Zim's brain from each other, flew back to his ID pak, and flipped the sleep switch in the start-up disk.
"You know, you look really tired," Mur commented. "And school isn't really that important to an Invader like you."
"I guess you're right..." Zim yawned, and fell fast asleep.
There was a knock on the lounge's door. Red and Purple were still hanging out there. The Massive was, currently, on autopilot.
"Who dare enter the lair of PURPLE?!" the aforementioned Tallest screamed at the door.
"... Doctor Scratchandsniff?"
"Ignore Purple. He got good at one game and went crazy." Red opened the door, letting the Doctor in.
"Thank you, my Tallest," Scratchandsniff said, stepping in. "We have the results on Invader Zimrekay. Would you like the synopsis or the complex stuff?"
"Complex stuff," Red decided, hoping he'd learned enough from Nakay to understand it.
"All right." Scratchandsniff popped the disk into the nearby terminal, and clicked play. "Okay, this is how it normally looks." He slowed the disk down to shot-by-shot slo-mo. "You can't really tell here..." he fast forwarded to where Zim had started arguing with Mur. "But here you can really see the optikos bi vibrate." Sure enough, when the Doc slowed the disk down again, the bi were vibrating. And they weren't just going up and down like Red though they would. They were kind of swimming around in crazy patterns, not very much at all, but enough to unnerve you.
Red shivered. "Zim really has Quifosenkis? Whoa. So that's why he's so weird."
"Isn't that the thing Kayna had?" Purple asked. Red glared at him, baring his teeth. He didn't want to hear about it. He might start feeling sorry for Zim, and try to save him, and... he didn't really care about Zim, and he didn't want to.
"He's obviously talking so someone, but no one's there," the Doctor continued. "See the direction Zim's shadow is falling? If there was someone where Zim is looking, its shadow would fall on part of Zim's face. But it isn't. And right before he has those mood swings, he antenna perk up a little and he glances in that direction. Someone over there, who isn't really there, is telling him how to act and he's obeying them."
"That's ironic, if you think about it," Purple said. "Zim has dedicated his life to getting others to bow down to him and tend to his every desire, but in reality the only one he can control is himself and he doesn't even know he's doing it."
Red blinked. "I didn't know you were poetic."
"That ain't poetry, that be the facts, fo' shizzle!" Purple said, doing a weird sign with his hands.
"More 1337?" Red asked.
"You're kidding, right?"
Red shook his head. "So, what do we do about Zim?"
"Erm, if I may..." The Doctor started.
"Nothing!" Purple said. "Duh!"
"There's something you should know..."
"Right," Red said, grinning. "How stupid of me. Why would I want to waste MY time helping the likes of Zim? Please!"
"My Tallest?"
"Why would I care about Zim anyway? I have no connection to him at all!" Red declared. "Besides the fact he keeps calling us, that is."
"Yeah," Purple said. "And when he dies, the missing calls will be a welcome relief." The co-rulers high-fived.
"Tallest Red?" Scratchandsniff said.
Red spun to face him, grinning enthusiastically. "You remembered my name!"
"Yes, well," Scratchandsniff said dismissively. "Before you make a final judgment on what to do with Zim, you may want to see this first.
The Doctor rewound the tape a little. He hit play, and Zim started talking on screen. "What time warp proj–" He paused the tape. The light was shining on Zim's eyes, so the lights in Zim's base brilliantly illuminated his post oculus.
"Wow," Red breathed. Zim's eyes were criss-crossed a thousand times over with glowing pinkish-gold wires. Red had only seen an Irken's eyes like this once, in a picture by a famous photographer. It was nigh on impossible for the light to catch an Irken's eyes so they glowed like that.
"Now, we got this rare little footage of Zim's eyes, and did a scan of the prints and compared it to all the ones we had in our database," Doctor Scratchandsniff said, "and we found a near match."
Scratchandsniff opened the medical files through Red's computer, pulled up an ink prink of two eyes, and super-imposed it over Zim's. They were almost a perfect match. "As you can see, the owner of these prints is one of Zim's parents. It's too close a match to be anything else. And when we checked for the owner of the prints and saw he had red eyes..."
Red's stomach dropped. "Oh, no. You're joking. You've got to be." The Doctor slowly shook his head.
Almighty Tallest Red, one of the two tallest Irkens in existence, lord over the Irken Empire, and deemed as one of the best Tallests of all time, was the father of Invader Zimrekay, shortest Irken in the history of the species, laughing stock of the entire Empire, and the most insane, self- centered, moronic Invader to ever graduate from Devastus. And, thanks to his promise to Kayna to protect their children, he had to help Zim.
The tabloids would be aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall over this.
Heh. Who say that one coming? that's a cue for you all to raise your hands. And did anyone notice anything interesting about Zim's full name? ZimRE-(D)-KAY-(NA). Yes, I did that on purpose.
So, hope you like. Henceforth, we shall be treading unexplored territory in Quifosenkis. Even I'm not 100% sure what's gonna happen now. I do know this much: Red's not just going to let Zim die, and Zim's sister will become VERY important VERY soon. Expect more Zim, Gir, Mur, and maybe Dib in the next chapter.
Vortianized: Haven't seen The Secret Window (yet), but thanks for the comparison anyway! I shall continue before you snap. So there.
KitKat the great: Yeah, still in denial, isn't he?
Invader Alex: SURE, let's be friends! Yeah, Dib is nice to help Zim and all, but I think he's more doing this to clear up things for himself. He's freaked out and all. Let's face it: Zim's utterly terrifying him. Mur is mean, but it's not like he can help it. She's not real. She's actually just performing the duties of Quifosenkis and making sure his personality changes correctly so he's the NEW Zim instead of the OLD Zim... it'll be a lot clearer after this chapter.
Dragon Of The Rose: Sorry I couldn't give you that chapter... Writers, they live spontaneous lives, inspiration hear, writer's block there, and somewhere in it all we have to work in fanfics.
Eks: "It rocks like a thing that rocks almightily." I'll remember that phrase. Thanks! And, if you think "holy fandango" is funny, which it is, then you should try "holy frijoles" next time. I luv that phrase...
Keeper of Memory Pepperochu: Okay, okay, next time I get a game I'll get VII. They all sound neat, so whichever is fine.
Ashsema: Well, of course the water didn't REALLY cause the "warp." It's just the only excuse Zim can think up. Erm, maybe I didn't make it clear, but Zim's "good friend" is the imaginary Mur. See, she keeps telling him he's so amazing and a great Invader, and even if she does yell sometimes she makes sure he stays in-character and doesn't start questioning his loyalties or the mission or anything. Guess I didn't write that well enough? Of course, she isn't really a friend. She isn't really an ANYTHING. But she works that way for Zim. Yeah, some stories DO write themselves, don't they? And thanks for the compliment. The one thing a writer likes to hear more than a compliment to their stories is a compliment to their abilities as a writer. Thankee!
Pirate Monkey: I hate being banned from the Net. Which is why I haven't updated Crossover in weeks, even though I have the next chapter. I was banned. gasp Thanks for the review.
Silent Knight I: I think you can let Zim out now. Glad you like Mur, she keeps him from completely snapping. Trust me, without her, Quifosenkis would've made Zim go mad years ago. And not the mad he is now. The padded- room mad.
Dragon of the Rose (again): You live near Muir Woods? I was wondering how long it'd take someone to make a connection. I went to California two summers ago on vacation, and visited the Muir Woods. That was also the vacation I discovered Zim, watching Nickelodeon in a hotel room. Well, several months later I was coming up with the original Quifosenkis, which at the time was called The Truth and had no diseases involved. Quifosenkis was the title of a completely different story with a very different disease. I was trying to come up with a name for a character. I wanted to make some human girl Zim communicated with telepathically years before he reached Earth (yes, I made a stinkin' Mary Sue. I was a n00bie, okay?!). I wanted a three-letter name, since all the main characters have three-letter names, and I saw my souvenir coin from Muir Woods. So, I cut out the "I" and named my character Mur. Of course, several months later I realized "The Truth" was pitiful and "Quifosenkis" lacked drama, so I combined the two stories. Instead of a psychic girl talking to Zim in one fic and a mental disease making Zim stupid in the other, I combined them into a mental disease with a side-effect of a not-real girl talking to Zim's mind while he's going crazy and becoming stupid. Long explanation for a short comment, neh?
Heh Choke On This Puppy: Gad, I know your pain. I know what it's like to wait and wait and wait and maybe she'll never update? Then wait and wait and wait until you've just about given up hope, or maybe you already have, and she UPDATES! whoot But, I swear upon my extensive collection of Zim merchandise, that this fic will eventually be finished. I won't let this die, I won't forget it, I will get the whole story out to you all, or may my merchandise turn into tuna salad.
CDingo: Gee, thanks! You squinted your eyes for me! yee! I'm glad you think I've mixed the IZ world and normal sci-fi well. I spend a lot of time getting the whole Quifosenkis stuff to work in the IZ world smoothly.
We'll be on Irk most of the chapter, but we'll still get to see Zim and how his disease is going. And, an important discovery is made. Don't worry, Dibby-lovers, he's not about to disappear from this fic! I was planning on making Dib disappear into the depths of the Unused Characters Dimension (from your friendly builders of the Twilight Zone and the Room With a Moose!!), but he'll be back later. He won't be a star character (hardly even a co-star), but he WILL INDEED BE THERE! Do not fear!
Note: Quifosenkis cannot think. Quifosenkis cannot talk. Quifosenkis has no physical identity. It is a disease. Can hysteria think? Can schizophrenia think? No. Quifosenkis can't either. Just thought I'd clear that up before the chapter. Remember that.
Now (despite the fact that I'm SUPPOSED to be working on Sanctified By Oppression), fic time! I had writer's block on SBO, anyway...
Disclaimer: I don't own Zim, Red, Purple, Gir, Irk, the Irkens themselves, and all the other little things I don't own but wish I did. I do own Mur, Kayna, Nakay, Quifosenkis the story, and Quifosenkis the disease, compares the lists and sighs Nickelodeon: 7. Ckret2: 4.5. Big corporations beat the individual yet again. Way to go, Bush. Oh, and I don't own the name Doctor Scratchandsniff. That is stolen from Animaniacs, but it's such a cool name...
Twitch Twitch Twitch twitch twitch twitch...
Red and Nakay were on Conventia briefly. Red and Purple were there to give a speech to smeets who were going to be Invaders, and Nakay was going to give a series of lectures to Nurses and Scientists about Quifosenkis. She'd be staying there for a couple of months, but after Red and Purple gave their speeches they'd leave Conventia to go to a recently conquered planet. This would be the last time Red saw Nakay in awhile, so they were at one of the smaller food courts on the planet drinking smoothies and talking.
"I know Quifosenkis kills people," Red says, "but what does it do before that? I mean, you don't just die, do you?"
"No," Nakay said. "There's a period of degrade before they die. And it takes a long time to kill. Years, in fact. You start off by slowly losing intelligence and sanity as your brain tries to wipe over the personality programming in your ID pak. It's more visible in gradual Quifosenkis, because the only thing your brain is doing is wiping over personality. It takes longer to show in sudden, because half of your brain's efforts are dedicated to wiping over memories, not reprogram personality. Irkens with sudden Quifosenkis suffer amnesia, sometimes, but they don't just forget everything. When they're closer to dying, the process speeds up, and not only do they get dumber and crazier but they also start to lose physical energy, too, as the personality wipe slowly spreads to motor functions. The Irken dies either when his brain gives out from the reprogramming, all motor functions are wiped, or the ID pak's start-up disk is wiped. These usually happen at about the same time, but only one needs to happen to kill of the Irken."
Red nodded. "So, they start getting stupid and crazy?"
Nakay nodded. "Yeah. And, of course, they get weaker at the end. But unless they're already receiving mental therapy, by that time they're doomed. Almost no one can overcome Quifosenkis with that much time on their clocks."
A little virus was moving through Zim's systems. It was a computer virus, and a mental virus at the same time.
This little virus was called Quifosenkis.
Now, this virus can't really think or talk, but to help the audience understand exactly what's going on in Zim's brain and ID pak right now, we'll pretend it is a physical sentient thing, and it can think and talk.
Quifosenkis, with Zim's supposed personality of cockiness and confidence and bravery and loyalty to the Tallest stored in its metaphorical mind, swam back and forth from Zim's brain to his pak, making all the necessary adjustments to make sure Zim was being run by its rules.
Quifosenkis was currently in his pak, going through his memories. "Hmm, memories of the Cold Unfeeling Robot Arm?" Quifosenkis muttered. "Zim wasn't supposed to hug it! He's tough and brave, not sentimental." As Quifosenkis moved towards the memory to replace it, it had a change of heart. Zim was a smeet them. Smeets could be sentimental. Instead, Quifosenkis changed Zim's memory of the Download Chamber so he would look like the smart Irken Quifosenkis thought he should be. Satisfied, Quifosenkis moved on, as the change was added and spreading through Zim's ID pak and making a bunch of other minor adjustments.
"Zim's been getting too many conflicting memories lately," Quifosenkis said, changing Zim's memory of the Tak incident so Zim would think he'd had Dib and Gaz hypnotized, instead of worked alongside them. "And I can't change all his memories. It'd take too much time to come up with new ones, and during that time Zim will have even MORE experiences I'll need to change. I need something quicker."
Quifosenkis passed Zim's memory of the night before and groaned out loud. That was a complete disaster! Mur's existence was being called into question, and Zim had been completely at the mercy of Dib! Now, not only was Zim wondering if something was wrong with himself – heaven forbid! – he had also acted weak, compromising, resigned, and all-around pitiful. And Quifosenkis couldn't let Zim question Mur's existence. Thanks to Quifosenkis, she was the most real thing Zim had. All the other memories? Easily changed material. They were as insubstantial as Zim's old personality. Mur was Zim's present and future life. Quifosenkis had to make sure Zim remembered that.
But how was it going to clear up THIS mess? This huge jumble of stuff Zim couldn't think! There was no way to slightly change the reality to fit with what Quifosenkis wanted. The memory was incorrigible.
"Hey..." Quifosenkis said quietly. "When you're building something and you mess up badly, what do you do? Throw it away!" Quifosenkis laughed triumphantly, deleting the old memory entirely. Memories from around crowded in to fill the blank space, and in a nanosecond it was like the memory had never been there. Laughing triumphantly again, Quifosenkis zoomed around Zim's brain with increased speed, finding files unworthy of keeping and deleting them. The second Thursday the eighth? Delete! That whole conversation with Purple was relating to Thursday the eighth. Delete! Every time Dib had talked about Mur? Delete! Delete! Delete!
Quifosenkis laughed again. "This is easy! Why didn't I think of this before?" But in the rush of filling in the empty space, important memories were getting knocked out and valuable programming was getting written over. Zim's biological brain was tiring from the new info it was getting. And thus, Zim started dying.
Red and Purple were in their private lounge playing a video game, "¡mEEkrOb.splAt!"
"Is it just me, or is everything spelled weird these days?" Red commented. "I mean, bItter hOpe had the second letters caped, and this game has the punctuation and random caps."
"They're not random, only the vowels are capped," Purple said. He had, after all, spent two weeks tracking down the creator so he could throttle him for making another game he lost at. He also learned the name of the color of the paint the m, second E, and t were in: not green, or even neon green, but Ectoplasmic Moss Green #9887. "We should consider ourselves lucky we aren't named Glossy Candy Apple Reddish-Maroon and Glittery Deep Mist Purple Mountain Majesty instead of Red and Purple."
Red glanced over at Purple. "Since when did you know that much about colors?"
"Oh, you don't know the half of it." Purple had learned those colors from previous creator-throttling expeditions. The colors were easier to find than the creators themselves. Go fig.
"Wait a sec," Red said, pausing. "Are you calling me 'Candy Apple'?!"
Purple gulped, but took the challenge. "What if I am?"
Red's eyes narrowed and he moved forward threateningly. "We'll see about that." Smiling cruelly, he unpaused, and savage Meekrobians swarmed on Purple's player.
"Hey!" Purple said. Furiously pounding the buttons, he knocked the Meekrobians back. Screeching in terror, the pixilated opponents ran to the other side of the battle arena, where they attacked and killed Red.
Red's eyes widened. "What the—?!"
"I just beat them..." Purple whispered. Cheering, he charged the remaining Meekrobians. "Take that, energy creatures! And take that, Mr. Candy Apple." Red grumbled.
Suddenly, the screen went blank, and "Incoming Message" flashed across it. "NOOOOOOOOO!!!" Purple wailed. Ignoring him, Red answered the message.
"What do you want, Zim?"
"It's ZIM?!" Purple cried. "Zim made me stop my glorious massacre? And I was just starting to like him better because of that time warp thing!"
"Is this a bad time, my Tallests?" Zim asked uncertainly.
"No, not at all!" Red exclaimed, actually glad to see Zim. He'd set up a tape to record all incoming messages, so that when he got one from Zim he'd be able to show it to Nakay and let her psychoanalyze him. "So, what are you calling about, Zim?"
"Just reporting in, Sirs. Err, Sir, I guess. Where's Tallest Red? He was just there."
Red's eyes narrowed. "I'M Red. HE'S Purple. My name's Red and I have red eyes. HIS name is Purple and he has Purple eyes. It's... that... simple."
"Oh, right, sorry my Tallest. If I may ask, where's Tallest Purple?"
"Banging his head against something." Red glanced to the other side of the lounge. "Looks like the Plexiglas window. Hey, wait, don't DO that! You'll BREAK it!"
"Fine!" Purple huffed, floating up beside Red. "Hey, Zim, how's that time warp project going?"
Zim's brow furrowed. "What time warp project?"
"You know, the repeated day? After the rain?"
Zim looked increasingly perplexed. "I don't know about any repeated days..."
"Aw, c'mon! It was only a few days ago."
Zim blinked. "I have no idea what you're talking about." Suddenly his attitude shifted. "YOU'RE CRAZY! You're all talking... CRAZY talk! Yep. I know NOTHIIIIIIIIIIIIING about a repeating day. OKAY?!"
Purple's eyes narrowed. "Don't talk to me like that. I 0wnz0rz j00r b0x0rz."
Red glanced at Purple. "'I ownzorz joor boxors'??"
"It's 1337!" Purple defended.
Red looked again at Zim, who was only half on the screen. He was arguing with someone off-camera. There was something weird about this... Zim's sudden mood shift...
"Hey, Zim, who're you talking to?" Red asked.
"Eh? I'M NOT CRAZY! SHE'S THERE!!"
Red arched a non-existent eyebrow. "I... didn't say you were. Whoever you're talking to is off-screen. Who is she?"
"Oh," Zim said. "It's Mur. Hey wait... she's not off-screen!"
"Yes she is," Purple said.
"Oh really?" Zim said. He glanced to his side a second, then did that mood- swing. "YOU LIIIIIIIIE!"
"Okay, fine Zim," Red said soothingly. "We'll just call you back later."
"Right," Zim said. He sat there a few seconds. "Does that mean I hang up?"
"Yes," Red and Purple said simultaneously.
"Okay." Mood-swing. "I will call back AS SOON as I make more progress, SIRS!" He hung up.
"Jeez," Purple said, rolling his optikos at the ceiling. "Has Zim always been that stupid?"
"I don't think he has..." Red said thoughtfully. He turned off the game.
"What was THAT for?!" Purple whined.
"Shut yer hole," Red commanded, logging on to the files of every Irken in existence. "Lessee... M through Z... Maalox? No... scroll down... Vexorz is still too high... Zillah closer, Ziltax, Zimrekay? Who's Zimrekay? Erm... goes to Zinry after that... Who's Zimrekay?
Red clicked on the link, and a picture of Zim popped up. "Zim's whole name is Zimrekay?"
"No kiddin'?" Purple said, sitting behind Red.
Red scrolled down. "Ah! Annual Manditory Invader IQ Tests!"
"What's that?" Purple asked.
"Every year, every Invader or Invader-in-training has to take an IQ test to make sure they meet minimum requirements. I want to see Zim's," Red explained. He clicked on the link, and his jaw dropped.
"What? What is it?" Purple asked.
"Three hundred years ago, Zim's IQ was two hundred fifty-eight..." Red whispered, awed. This was Zim??
"I dunno," Purple said dubiously, but he was obviously stunned. "I heard he cheats on all his tests."
"The IQ tests take info directly from your ID pak. You can't cheat on it."
Red scrolled down slowly. 258, 258, 259, 259, 259, 259, 258, 259, 259, 259, 259, 259, 260... On and on, gradually going up until...
"Zim's score dropped to 210 two hundred years ago!" Red exclaimed. He read on. After that, every few years Zim's IQ dropped another few points, irregularly. It wasn't even possible. He was down to 105 when....
"Where's the rest of the list? This stops a long time ago!" Purple griped.
"After that it has a long list of... excuses," Red said. "Every year since then he's come up with a way to get out of the tests." That was fifty years ago. Fifty years ago, Zim's IQ had been 105 and it was dropping rapidly.
Red turned around slightly so he could see Purple. "Did you either hear or see this Mur?"
"No..." Purple said. "I didn't. She was off-screen, right?"
"But Zim was arguing with her. And he said she was on-screen."
"Hmm," Purple replied. "What's the name of his crazy robot thing? Maybe that's Mur?"
"I don't think its name is Mur. And if it was that robot, we would have heard it. It's noisy. All I heard was Zim."
Red closed Zim's file. He had a hunch. All he needed was that disk, the recording of the meeting...
Red ejected the disk, and called another branch of the Massive. In a few seconds, a face popped up.
"May I be of service, my Tallest?" the saluting Irken said, wearing the crisp uniform of the Irken Doctors and Nurses.
"Yes, I'd like you to run a test on the Irken taped in this disk. Invader... Zimrekay." Behind Red, Purple choked down a laugh. "I want you to see if his optikos bi are vibrating."
The Doctor's antenna perked up. "You... are familiar with the way to identify sudden Quifosenkis, Tallest Purple?"
"Tallest Red has red eyes, Tallest Purple has purple eyes," Red droned. He was used to this by now. "And yes, I am. I think this guy might have it."
"Of course, we'll check, my Tallest. But there's a very slight chance... is this Irken male?"
"Yes."
"Does he have red or green eyes?"
"Red eyes."
"Is he less than five hundred years old?"
Red faltered. He turned to Purple. "How old is Zim?"
"Oh, I dunno..." Purple said. "'Bout three hundred? Three-fifty max."
Red turned back to the Doctor. "Yes. He is."
"Have his optikos ever reached maximum heat or cold?"
Again, Red turned to Purple. "Has he?"
"Didn't he tell us about Earth's sun being booby-trapped?" Purple asked. "He said something about the flesh burning off his eyes."
"Oh yeah." Red giggled. "Stupid, that happens on Irk, too! Yeah, I'd say he's reached maximum heat."
"All right. Send us the disk, and we'll get right on it."
"Fine." Red teleported the disk to the Doctor.
"Thank you, my Tallest. We'll have the results in an hour."
Zim had just made it to Mrs. Bitter's class and sat down in his desk. He yawned. He didn't know why, but he was exhausted. He'd stayed up all night... was that it?
"Hey," Mur said, floating down beside Zim. "Whatcha doin'?"
"Sitting," Zim replied crankily. He really was tired. "Say, Mur, I forgot. Do Irkens sleep?"
Mur looked at Zim, eyebrows raised. "Well, duh!"
"They do?"
"Yeah!" Mur rolled here eyes. "Don't you remember the time you called the Tallest and they were asleep?"
"Lemme think..." Zim said.
Quifosenkis quickly got to work. Mur was the most real thing to Zim. She never spoke lies. Her reality was the correct one, Quifosenkis made sure of that. It fabricated a scene for Zim's memories.
"Yeah, I do," Zim said.
Quifosenkis looked around Zim's ID pak, and quickly flew back to Zim's brain. They were getting sluggish from all the stuff Quifosenkis put them through. They needed to be off for Quifosenkis to get any good work done.
Quifosenkis separated some neurons in Zim's brain from each other, flew back to his ID pak, and flipped the sleep switch in the start-up disk.
"You know, you look really tired," Mur commented. "And school isn't really that important to an Invader like you."
"I guess you're right..." Zim yawned, and fell fast asleep.
There was a knock on the lounge's door. Red and Purple were still hanging out there. The Massive was, currently, on autopilot.
"Who dare enter the lair of PURPLE?!" the aforementioned Tallest screamed at the door.
"... Doctor Scratchandsniff?"
"Ignore Purple. He got good at one game and went crazy." Red opened the door, letting the Doctor in.
"Thank you, my Tallest," Scratchandsniff said, stepping in. "We have the results on Invader Zimrekay. Would you like the synopsis or the complex stuff?"
"Complex stuff," Red decided, hoping he'd learned enough from Nakay to understand it.
"All right." Scratchandsniff popped the disk into the nearby terminal, and clicked play. "Okay, this is how it normally looks." He slowed the disk down to shot-by-shot slo-mo. "You can't really tell here..." he fast forwarded to where Zim had started arguing with Mur. "But here you can really see the optikos bi vibrate." Sure enough, when the Doc slowed the disk down again, the bi were vibrating. And they weren't just going up and down like Red though they would. They were kind of swimming around in crazy patterns, not very much at all, but enough to unnerve you.
Red shivered. "Zim really has Quifosenkis? Whoa. So that's why he's so weird."
"Isn't that the thing Kayna had?" Purple asked. Red glared at him, baring his teeth. He didn't want to hear about it. He might start feeling sorry for Zim, and try to save him, and... he didn't really care about Zim, and he didn't want to.
"He's obviously talking so someone, but no one's there," the Doctor continued. "See the direction Zim's shadow is falling? If there was someone where Zim is looking, its shadow would fall on part of Zim's face. But it isn't. And right before he has those mood swings, he antenna perk up a little and he glances in that direction. Someone over there, who isn't really there, is telling him how to act and he's obeying them."
"That's ironic, if you think about it," Purple said. "Zim has dedicated his life to getting others to bow down to him and tend to his every desire, but in reality the only one he can control is himself and he doesn't even know he's doing it."
Red blinked. "I didn't know you were poetic."
"That ain't poetry, that be the facts, fo' shizzle!" Purple said, doing a weird sign with his hands.
"More 1337?" Red asked.
"You're kidding, right?"
Red shook his head. "So, what do we do about Zim?"
"Erm, if I may..." The Doctor started.
"Nothing!" Purple said. "Duh!"
"There's something you should know..."
"Right," Red said, grinning. "How stupid of me. Why would I want to waste MY time helping the likes of Zim? Please!"
"My Tallest?"
"Why would I care about Zim anyway? I have no connection to him at all!" Red declared. "Besides the fact he keeps calling us, that is."
"Yeah," Purple said. "And when he dies, the missing calls will be a welcome relief." The co-rulers high-fived.
"Tallest Red?" Scratchandsniff said.
Red spun to face him, grinning enthusiastically. "You remembered my name!"
"Yes, well," Scratchandsniff said dismissively. "Before you make a final judgment on what to do with Zim, you may want to see this first.
The Doctor rewound the tape a little. He hit play, and Zim started talking on screen. "What time warp proj–" He paused the tape. The light was shining on Zim's eyes, so the lights in Zim's base brilliantly illuminated his post oculus.
"Wow," Red breathed. Zim's eyes were criss-crossed a thousand times over with glowing pinkish-gold wires. Red had only seen an Irken's eyes like this once, in a picture by a famous photographer. It was nigh on impossible for the light to catch an Irken's eyes so they glowed like that.
"Now, we got this rare little footage of Zim's eyes, and did a scan of the prints and compared it to all the ones we had in our database," Doctor Scratchandsniff said, "and we found a near match."
Scratchandsniff opened the medical files through Red's computer, pulled up an ink prink of two eyes, and super-imposed it over Zim's. They were almost a perfect match. "As you can see, the owner of these prints is one of Zim's parents. It's too close a match to be anything else. And when we checked for the owner of the prints and saw he had red eyes..."
Red's stomach dropped. "Oh, no. You're joking. You've got to be." The Doctor slowly shook his head.
Almighty Tallest Red, one of the two tallest Irkens in existence, lord over the Irken Empire, and deemed as one of the best Tallests of all time, was the father of Invader Zimrekay, shortest Irken in the history of the species, laughing stock of the entire Empire, and the most insane, self- centered, moronic Invader to ever graduate from Devastus. And, thanks to his promise to Kayna to protect their children, he had to help Zim.
The tabloids would be aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall over this.
Heh. Who say that one coming? that's a cue for you all to raise your hands. And did anyone notice anything interesting about Zim's full name? ZimRE-(D)-KAY-(NA). Yes, I did that on purpose.
So, hope you like. Henceforth, we shall be treading unexplored territory in Quifosenkis. Even I'm not 100% sure what's gonna happen now. I do know this much: Red's not just going to let Zim die, and Zim's sister will become VERY important VERY soon. Expect more Zim, Gir, Mur, and maybe Dib in the next chapter.