Chapter 9
Zim stared at Dib. Dib stared at Zim. Gir stared at his feet. Gir's feet stared at Zim and Dib. It was a vicious cycle. Dib opened his mouth to speak, hesitated, and closed it. Zim opened his mouth to yell, but thought better of it. He yelled anyway, though.
"Surely there must be some way out of this horrible conundrum!" shrieked Zim, raging and setting a new record for the number of italics used at one time. "And why on earth would I use the word Conundrum? Gasp! Or the phrase; 'why on earth'? I must be losing more of my mind to you earth-stink!"
Dib fought a raging battle against himself. If only Zim knew how he longed for him, yearned for him, needed him…to BE QUIET!
"Listen Zim, I don't like you, and you don't like me…" hissed Dib, propping himself up on one elbow, pointing at Zim with the other.
"Ha! Your dislike of me is a mere fraction of the loathing that courses through my veins!"
"Are you honestly competing with me over how much you hate me?"
"Bah! You're pitiful ape-brain could never contain my dark, burning hate. Your very large head would explode from the throbbing pressure of my distaste!"
"Um…Ok…Look, I think we can figure a way out of this. We just need to work together for a little while. Then we can go back to…wait…go back..." A tiny blue pen-light of hope flickered in Dib's eyes. He looked at Zim, the hint of a smile coming to his lips. Zim was still on a tirade.
"- brains would then boil from the sheer heat of my revulsion, all over the floor. Try cleaning that up with your primitive Earth cleansers, ha!"
"Go back. That's it. Zim!" Dib cried, squirming awkwardly in excitement.
"Huh? What? I'm fuming here."
"Where's your time machine. The one you used to send rubber piggies into the past, to kill me, remember?"
"No." said Zim.
"Of course you do. I was a big robo-boy, I smashed your house, vowed revenge."
Zim stared at him blankly.
"Zim, I need to know where that thing is. It may be our only hope."
"I don't know what your talking about. You're insane. Isn't he Gir?"
"Yes." Said Gir solemnly. "Yes he is."
"But. But, I was sure that you had a time-machine. I saw it..."
"Besides," said Gir, "you wouldn't remember the time-machine because we sent a message back and undid it so it never happened but if it didn't happen then you couldn't ask about it but you did and I'm telling you about it but you never saw it so how did you know and I want toquitos!" Shouted Gir. And it was a good thing, too, for had he continued, his brain would have imploded, creating a tiny black hole that would sink to the center of the earth, devouring all matter and collapsing the solar system to a ball the size of Dib's head.
"Ah ha! So there is a time machine!"
"Nonsense!" yelled Zim "Unless you mean the temporal displacement device." Zim pointed lazily over his shoulder to an unoccupied corner of the room. "I sent that back to the Tallest. They wanted it so they could eat the same snacks over again."
"That doesn't make any…well, we need it. It's our only way out of this!" said Dib, motioning down at their fused crotches. "If we had it, we could go back in time and stop ourselves from ever being fused together!"
"Hmmm…" mused Zim, rubbing the place where his chin would be. "You make sense dirt-child. No doubt my incredible psyche asserting itself. Very well, we shall appeal to The Tallest for my equipment. And then we shall go…back to the past!"
"You mean yesterday?" Dib would have said, had Gir not jumped on his head and screamed like a monkey, screaming "I'm screaming like a monkey! Try and stop me!"
Light years away, The Tallest shuddered involuntarily.