Chapter 11
Dib stared in awe at the donut shaped object before him. The time displacement device seemed to surge with otherworldly, extra-dimensional power, like a donut filled with the seething energies of time itself. Zim yawned.
"Can we just do this thing Earthling?" asked Zim. "I've got other stuff to do today, y'know?"
Dib looked at his conjoined hip-mate. "What could you possibly have to do today that would be more important than getting us out of this?" cried Dib.
"I've got to catalog all of this cool scientific stuff," said Zim, "and send it to the proper government officials. Then I have to dissect myself!"
Normally, Dib would have leapt for joy that Zim had become so complacent, but something stopped him, and not just the fact that Zim was too heavy to hoist into the air. There was something intensely…distasteful about the thought of an Irken Invader subjected to such menial scientific scrutiny. Surely Zim was destined for something greater, something more…destructive…
From somewhere deep inside Dib, something foreign, alien, yet all-too familiar welled up. His lips twisted into a smile, his eye twitched, and he laughed, a snarling, mocking, hideously evil laugh; Zim's laugh.
Zim cocked an eye at his companion. "You're weird Dib." He said simply.
"Bwahahahahaha-ahem, cough… Um, right, where were we?" spluttered Dib, his face still red with alien mirth.
"Computer!" yelled Zim, eliciting an electronic cough from same. "Activate the time-displacement device!"
"Yes, master. To what time do you wish to travel?"
"Since when do you call me master?" asked Zim quietly, but no one heard.
"Hmmm," said Dib, "Good question… If I use the time machine to send us back to just before the accident, we might not be able to stop it from happening in time. On the other hand, if we go back too far, and say…stop me from ever going to the house, we might just alter history too much, and change the course of EXISTENCE AS WE KNOW IT™!!!"
To an outside observer, it would have looked as if both Dib and Zim were lost in deep thought, pondering the question carefully. And indeed they were. To an inside observer, they would have looked really, really gross.
"I know!" shouted Zim triumphantly. "We could go back in time to before I even came here, thus ending my plans for world conquest once and for all!"
"…leaving the world ripe for conquest by ME!" squealed Dib, his eyes blazing with Napoleonic fervor. (quick histo-fact: Napoleon was an alien, bent on ruling us all!)
"Computer, set the time-displacement device for before Zim's arrival on earth." commanded Dib. The computer, not used to taking orders from a human, and even less used to taking sane orders, period, had a microsecond's hesitation. Then it electronically shrugged, kicked off its electronic shoes, put its electronic feet up, and thought of the long vacation non-existence would bring it.
"Whatever," intoned the computer.
The time-displacement device rattled to life, electricity arcing within the portal, forming a whirlpool of light and energy, crackling and burning with incandescent fury. It spewed out some snacks, which had been snagged in an alternate dimension during the Tallests' binges.
Dib and Zim looked at each other, then down at their hideously twisted, nature mocking body, and stepped into the portal. The last thing Dib heard as entered bright oblivion was a tinny, high-pitched voice saying: "What's this button do?!?!"