When I woke up from apparently not, in fact, being dead, Zim was staring down at me with an unidentifiable look. I climbed up off the floor, adrenalin slowly seeping out of my veins.
"I have to do that again!" I said.
"Do you know how many of those monsters you killed?"
"Six?"
"Three."
"Oh."
"Do you know how many the average Invader kills in one of these simulations?"
"No?"
"Eight."
"Oh."
"Then again, the Invaders, when they take this test, have had ten years of extensive field training."
"Cool."
"You did pretty good, kid."
"Um… thanks. What time is it?"
"Almost dawn. Why?"
"So I was in there for… Wow, it took me an hour to do that?"
"Well, it takes some time for the program to load."
"Oh."
I put my hands in my pockets, looking around at the silver simulator room. Zim had said there were over six hundred simulations that this machine could access immediately, and a few, ahem, extra ones that could be bought online.
"Mom ought to be showing up soon."
"Yeah."
"I hope she isn't mad at me."
"She probably is, but from what I know of your mother, that's not too unusual, is it?"
"No, not really."
As though some magicky doom thingie was at work, at that moment, Mom entered through the pneumatic doors to the simulator.
"How did you get down here?" Zim asked incredulously.
"Staff entrance," Mom said.
"There's a staff entrance?"
"No."
"Well, okay then…"
My mom stared at me. Then back at Zim. Then at me. She looked amazed, which was scary because she has never been amazed once in her life, so far as I know.
"You didn't give him one of those things, did you?"
"What things…?" Zim asked patheticly.
"Those PAKs!"
"Yeah, so?" I asked, not seeing what the problem was.
"You're teaching him to kill, Zim."
"Well… I…"
"I wanted to, don't blame him," I interjected.
"You be quiet. You weren't in your room this morning, mister."
"Yeah, I know."
"There's not anything we can do about it now, come on. We have more pressing problems."
"I'm not going to forget about this."
"You've never forgotten anything, Mom. You can hold a grudge for years."
"Come on," she said, stalking back out of the room. We followed, looking at the floor and occaisionaly each other.
"Where's the making stuff room?" Mom asked.
"The what now?" I said.
"It's down in the lowest lower levels, but we can't make a ship there."
"Why not?"
"Well, there's the small problem of getting it to the surface."
"Oh."
"We'll have to make the individual parts and actually assemble it in the house."
"Alright then. That shouldn't be too hard."
"Where's Dib?"
Zim suddenly asked.
"Probably out taking pictures of something stupid."
"I hope he hurries up."
One at a time, we went through the elevator into the lowerest levels. It was a little pink room that gave me the screaming horrors.
"I hate it here."
"That's okay, because I don't really care."
Ah. Well then. So long as we know where we stand…
It suddenly redawned on me with full magnitude that this green man standing right in front of me was my dad. It was freaky, I can tell you. You can't even imagine how freaky it is to be missing a father for thirteen years, and all of a sudden there's somebody in that empty space. The only problem is, the space in my heart was a square. This guy's a rhombus, or something equally complicated. Just because this isn't interesting enough, he's telling me that my planet, the only one I knew existed this time yesterday, wasn't going to exist much longer. I had to leave everything I know, with a whole new set of things to know.
I suddenly realized that Mom was poking my head.
"He does this sometimes, just poke him until he rejoins reality," she was saying.
"Okay okay okay! Stop poking me!"
"Well, here's what we're going to need," Zim said, laying out a roll of green blueprints. It's just a matter of getting the pieces together right. We have to make the pieces here, and bolt tehm together upstairs."
He looked to Gaz, then me.
"Either of you know anything about mechanics?"
"I took wood shop," I offered.
"Do you know how a molecular accelerator works?"
"Um… Hell no. I can barely get nails in straight."
"In that case the answer to that question would have been no."
"I did the repairs on Tak's ship, so I know the basics of how a spittle runner works."
"Good enough. You can help me down here. Kid, you're on shuttle duty."
"What's that?"
"I give you something, you take it upstairs. When you see Dib, tell him to get his butt down here, too."
"Yes Sir!" I gave a mock salute.
"You put your palm out, thumb down."
"This is how we do it on Earth."
"Every bit of Earth culture is going to be gone in three days. How anything at all is done on Earth will no longer matter."
There was a really impressive bolt of lightning, and something appeared in the canter of the room.
"Oh, yeah. First thing." Zim picked up the sparking purple thing. It looked like a really shiny piece of construction paper. "This is the mother board. Be insanely careful with it. This has the artificial intelligence module in it. This is the first ever perfectly designed personality for a computer. Whatever this guy turns out to be, we have to put up with him for a long, long time."
I took it gingerly, and walked back to the elevator. When I got to the house level, I found Dib, looking confused.
"Where's everybody?"
"Down in the lower levels. They want you to come help them make a spaceship."
"Oh. Wanna donut?"
"Ooh, donut."
"My God. He gave you one of those things?"
"Yeah. We've been over this."
"Do you know what it is? What it really is?"
"Yeah. It's like superman in a can."
"No. It's a brain. That's what he keeps his mind in. His leaders send him messages through it. It's like propaganda that goes straight into your mind."
He looked strangely at me.
"If you get weird voices in your head, you have to take it off. You can't let it tell you how to think, Tiz."
I won't! Don't be stupid."
I put the motherboard down on the kitchen table, grabbed a donut, and went back down the elevator. Dib followed. By the time I had reached the making stuff room, there was something else there, waiting for me to take upstairs. I left Dib there to do science stuff, and carried the second thing upstairs.
The third time I went down Dib passed me carrying something else. Apparently he wasn't as good as Mom or Zim.
So the day went on, back and forth, back and forth, up and down. It was tremendously exciting. Alien machinery is a thing of brilliance, I tell you. It even looks pretty. The pieces gradually got bigger, and the bigger they were, the cooler they looked.
When I finally went down, at about nine thirty at night, and found no more pieces to be carried, I was almost disappointed. The sad was killed by how tired I was though.
"I want to go to bed," Dib said, voicing everyone's thoughts. "I don't even want to eat I'm so tired."
"Feeble human," Zim muttered under his breath.
"I'll meet you as soon as possible tomorrow, alright? There's still a lot of things to do."
"Get some sleep, Zim," I groaned, dragging myself toward the door. "We can't do this without you if you drop dead of exhaustion."
"Irkens don't sleep," he said quietly. If he said anything else, I didn't hear it, I was out the door, heading home.
I don't remember getting home, and I don't remember falling asleep. But I know I did, because I had nightmares. Awful nightmares about a new half of me. I split in two, the other half going away. It kept saying that it was different, that I never paid attention to it.
I slept through the longest nightmare on my life.

This chapter is dedicated to Invada Zim Luva, who told me an interesting story about their fanchar, who was going to be called Tiz. Then they very politely said that if I didn't want them to use the name they wouldn't.
Well, I have a story for you. As it turns out, this other guy named Jhonen came up with the idea for 'Zim' and 'Dib' first, and I used his names, so I guess it's ok if you use mine.
(Giggles insanely and explodes, sending shrapnel everywhere)
Thanks for the reviews everybody!