Boy Behind the Glass
By: Redfox and Megane-chan [What starts with an 'R' and ends with a 'Fox'??]
"Don't tell me how to do my job and I won't tell you how to save on long distance phone calls."
Disclaimer: Nadda. Uh-uh. Nope. We ain't got it here.
Redfox: There is a difference between HAIR and HEIR when it comes to lip-reading. When saying "hair" the lips take on a more rounded look when it hits the "A", "Heir", on the other hand, is more of a "flat" look as the mouth spreads when saying the "E"... geez. Never mind. I sound too defensive. Get on with the story!!!!
The sound of beeps and mechanical lasers firing were all he needed to answer his question.
He walked into the den and sat down next to Gaz on the sofa. Dib watched as she busily tapped away on her Nintendo's controls. A poorly constructed video game man on the screen flailed his arms in an attempt to destroy flaming ears of corn in accordance to his sister's button pressing.
His glasses arched along with his eyebrows, "What's this? I don't remember this game."
Gaz's squinted eyes never left the screen as she answered, "It's called 'Corn Cobbler' DIB and your distracting me from it." Dib observed a heap of crumpled paper on the floor in front of his little sister. She might have been trying to draw something; "So if you don't shut up I'll personally rip your lungs out and feed them to my vultures."
"But... you don't own vultures."
A growl was all that was needed to shut the boy up.
A brief disdainful look was shot at his sister before Dib leaned back into the couch. His bespectacled eyes lazily took in their surroundings, although Dib knew it wasn't necessary. He knew every nook and cranny of his up-to-date lavender house.
His family had lived in that house for as long as he could remember and the only things that had changed were some of the furniture and him.
Dib chuckled as he reminisced but a small, irritated noise from Gaz warned him to keep it soft. Silently, he wondered if he would be able to do some work if he went to his room.
"Nah," He decided, "Not tonight."
His sisters left eye shot up and looked at him angrily, her head and shoulders were shacking from the powerful force she was trying to hold back, "What was THAT?"
"Nothing." Came out quickly, His only defense against one such as his sister.
The purple haired girl growled, this time more menacingly. Her brother caught the drift. She wanted him OUT. NOW.
He hopped off the couch instantly, cursing his habit of thinking out loud.
Dib made his way past the Membrane shaped lamps and a bathroom door, towards the kitchen, his footsteps barely registering on the soft, carpeted floor. He didn't know what he would do when he got there, only what would happen if he didn't; and he certainly didn't want THAT to happen. Not again at least.
The moment her arrived at the tiled room he headed for the refrigerator. The cold air hissed and seemed to spit at his face as it opened to reveal an array of different instant meals and cold drinks. His hair flapped softly in its breath but Dib hardly noticed.
His thoughts drifted back to his conversation with Zim early that evening.
"Your parental unit… father. He seems too… trying."
"Trying?" Dib mumbled to himself, "Trying too hard? Was Membrane trying too hard? But why??"
The large headed boy thought and thought but he couldn't think of anything. He went deeper into the conversation.
"He is plotting against Zim and it is obvious he does not wish the memory of my greatness in your brains."
Dib pulled a regular poop out of the fridge and closed the door. He walked over to the phone on the wall and pulled the notepad from beside it. Walking with it and a pencil in hand, he settled into a nearby chair and popped the tab off the can.
Then he began to draw.
Slowly he etched the face of a boy on it. Discontent, he tore the page off and threw it neatly into the trash.
WAS Zim just paranoid? Or did he really see something in his father's weird actions. Not a soul on Earth ever matched the Intellectual Quotient of the great Professor Membrane, so who was Zim to contradict his actions?
An alien. That's who Dib.
"Listen human! Your father is not precisely the best of his kind but he, like other of your filthy human parental units, wish for something from their 'children'."
"Dad hopes..."
"You are the only male?"
"…For what?"
"Yeah. So? That doesn't prove anything."
Or does it Dib?
"You are his successor, and from what I have gathered in my years of living on this rock, that is important. Heritage or what-not."
He shook his head and took another sip from the soda can. What was Zim getting at and why was he so disturbed by it? He and the alien have had many "conversations" before, none were as disturbing as today's but still quite disturbing nonetheless.
Dib scribbled a picture of a man. He was tall and gangly with a pair of glasses on his face. Dib left the head bald and the man with only a shirt and lines to indicate his pants.
The man in the picture looked familiar somehow… wait. Dib flipped the pencil over and erased the man's shirt down past his crotch before replacing the area with an elongated version of a shirt.
Gloves, the man needed gloves. Dib drew boots and the t-shirt became something of a coat, buttons down the left side, covering the neck and half the face. All Dib needed to add was the singular stalk of hair he had inherited, not from the man in the drawing but the actual being that looked just like it.
"What, in the name of insanity are you doing THIS time son?"
The room was dim but Dib could see that the figure that stood before him was, indeed, his father. The man had just actually entered his room to… talk to him maybe? Persuade him to science as usual?
Dib choose to bet on the latter.
"Son?" Came the inquiring tone.
Actually, he was working on a radio transmitter; one that could communicate with creature from the farthest reaches of space. He was even hoping to be able to contact Zim's race. The idea sent Zim into bouts of information leaking happiness about his race and its great leaders, The Tallests Red and Purple last time Zim checked.
Dib didn't wait for his father to call him a third time. He had waited months to get the approval for his radio, personal approval from his father, "It's a radio transmitter dad. So I can communicate with other aliens! See, I built this thing…"
Professor Membrane made disapproving noises, "Now son… remember that talk we had last time you tried to contact aliens."
"I was five dad. I don't remember."
"Yes well," The professor knelt down to look his son in the eye, "I've told you once and I'll tell you once more, you should give up this "paranormal investigator" dream of yours. Be a REAL man and do me proud by following my footsteps. I followed my dad's wishes, and he followed his dad's wishes and so on. It's in our blood son!"
"…But dad-"
"No buts. I want you to become a REAL son to me. Not that boy who chases after big foot or watches badly produced, over rated shows like 'Mysterious Mysteries.'"
But I AM your real son.
It was had been about a month or two when Membrane had chided his beliefs and his way of life. Only a month or two when Membrane spoke to him and finished his speech, leaving Dib in the semi-darkness with his nearly completed radio.
He finished it the next day but didn't have the heart to try it so he left it buried under his bed with numerous things he refused to even think about. It wasn't even given a chance for a test run.
Dib stared at the drawing he had made. The man stared back at him indifferently though drawn shimmering goggle glasses. He ripped it off and threw it across the room and into the garbage can.
The recent memory brought back to him made him think. Somehow there was something he couldn't decipher in that conversation with his father. Something about the apprehension in the man's voice and the way he chose to come in and worry for the benefit of his blood line.
"Be a REAL man and do me proud by following my footsteps. I followed my dad's wishes, and he followed his dad's wishes and so on."
There was something weird about it; his father's face. It was contorted as he spoke to him, telling him desperately to give up his useless dream and to come home, come back to science.
"I want you to become a REAL son to me"
"REAL SON?" Dib couldn't believe it. Zim had told him something he had doubted with all his heart but further analysis of his past conversations with Membrane proved what the alien had claimed earlier that day in the Alien Ward of Membrane Labratorires.
"You are his successor, and from what I have gathered in my years of living on this rock, that is important."
It was wasn't it? And Membrane was a slight male chauvinist. No matter how much he loved [did he love her?] Gaz he preferred that Dib would take over for him, he had shoved the poor girl into a world of video games and insisted, despite the obvious strength she held, that Dib follow her to the mall "for protection."
But again the voice plagued his mind, shouting doubting words at him.
Who is he DIB? Who is this Zim that he can tell you such things?
Zim?
Who is he huh? Can you answer that?
Zim's an alien.
So what? That doesn't mean ANYTHING. What he is alone describes that he can't possibly know anything, ALIEN.
But he's an alien… and a friend.
The boy shook his head in confusion. If his own people didn't understand him what change did an alien have?
…wait.
Who is he? His mind asked again. This time he had an answer for it. The thought of his own people, of their inability to understand him, had given him his answer.
"An alien..." The pale boy breathed. His eyebrows knitted together in concentration as he drank the final drops from his poop soda. He looked at the empty shell and threw it into the wastebasket easily.
Two points, he told himself sardonically, If only this puzzle were as easy. So what if Zim understood him more, could he trust Zim's twisted sense of judgment? Wasn't he the one who was locked up in a tube of green, soundless goop?
"Who's an alien DIB?" Dib yelped in surprise as his sister, looking over his shoulder and at his drawing broke the silence, "Did dad finally tell you?"
The scolding left his lips immediately, "Tell me what?"Redfox: Wait! Watch out for the cliff. You might fall without having a change to review my fic!!!
Ok... so that kinda sucked... a bit... a lot. Whatever! I finished it!!! brings out confetti REVIEW please, unless you've gotten bored of the story already in which case you can flame me!!! I'm too happy to care.