AN: …Can't think of anything to say, actually. On with the show!
OOO
"So, what is that, anyway?" Gaz asked, startling her brother into frying his fingers on a fizzling power cord. Dib hissed in surprise, falling over in the tangle of wires and scrap parts and blowing on his fingers.
"It's a replication kit," He muttered, sucking on his injured digits and indicating what looked like half a computer turned inside out super-glued on to a microwave oven and a pair of upside-down goggles. Multicolored wire spread out from the contraption like a spider's web on a severe acid trip. "See, I figured that since I'm the only one standing between the human race and total annihilation, it would be a bad thing if I died." He paused to glance hopefully at his sister, hoping for a reaction.
"Nnh." Gaz responded, shrugging. "It's your stupid war, anyway."
This was a much longer response than he had expected. Encouraged, he continued. "So I decided to make sure I could be cloned, you know, if I died. So I could keep fighting Zim. The DNA part was easy, because I just needed some blood and a way to keep it fresh, but the whole making-sure-that-what-comes-out-still-thinks-like-me...part, that was tricky. So many variables, and it turns out that it's way harder than I initially calculated to actually record the content of my brain, and to even be able to have something that it could be copied on to..." He broke off again, to gauge his sister's reaction.
Gaz managed to indicate, with amazing efficiency, that she did not, in fact, care. She did this by means of resuming whatever game she was playing.
"Anyway, it turns out my brain will probably fit on a minidisk."
This, evidently, did not come as a surprise.
"Gaz, why are you in my room? Did Dad tell you to humor me again?"
"No," She said, glancing up, "Half the power in the city went out a few minutes ago, so I figured that you were doing something stupid again."
"Are you going to hurt me now?" Dib asked, surreptitiously making sure he was completely disentangled from the hurricane of wires around them.
Gaz shrugged. "Dad's got a generator in the lab, so we're good. I just want to see if you're going to electrocute yourself."
Dib glared at her. "As a matter of fact," He said with as much dignity as he could muster, "I already have."
Gaz snickered and sat down on the edge of his bed, pulling open the bag of popcorn and roughly shoving aside several wires.
"Hey, those are important!" Dib snapped, carefully repositioning them. "I'm almost at the final recording stage!"
"What happens then?"
"Um. I put the goggles over my eyes and press the red button."
Gaz thought about this for a moment.
"You've got that blue wire in the wrong socket."
Dib looked where she was pointing.
"You need to put it in the trans-neural port, not the Isiotron 103-Q port." She elaborated, as if explaining that no, the sky was not actually plaid.
"And if I put it in the Isiotron 103-Q port I'll blow up, won't I?" Dib growled, noting with a sinking feeling in his gut that she was right.
"No, if you don't then I'm pretty sure you're going to melt your brain. That isn't as cool to watch."
Dib sighed again, but moved the wire where she indicated.
"Now can I do it, your majesty?" He snapped.
"Eh." She shrugged and scooped up a mouthful of popcorn.
Dib snorted and made one last adjustment to the receiver's active site, and lifted the goggles to his eyes.
OOO
He woke up in utter darkness. It felt like a very large, and very dead, weasel had been crammed in his mouth, and his head hurt. Upon further exploration, the weasel proved to be his tongue.
"What just happened, Gaz?" He asked. Or tried to ask. What came out was a barely-audble moan. "Whshlghash?"
"Um, ummm….Ah!" There was a rustle of paper from beside him. "Um, Gaz isn't here right now, sir." A girl's voice said nervously. "We are fairly sure that she's, um, dead."
He tried to sit up. It didn't work.
"Wh-"
"Um…No, there wasn't an explosion, sir."
"Di-"
"Your invention worked perfectly, sir."
"Buh-"
"Gaz is dead, sir, because you're in the future, sir."
"Nuh!"
Another nervous rustle of paper. "Um, yeah. More accurately, you're in the present sir, but a present that is a long way after your present, sir."
"Hnh-"
"As near as anyone can tell, sir, somewhat more than a century."
"Oh."
Dib tried to think about this, but his brain wasn't working much better than his tongue.
"Why-"
"Um, um, you've …asked these questions before, sir. That's how we know."
"I'm-"
"A clone, sir, yes."
"Oh."
There didn't seem to be much to say to that.
"Really a clone?"
"Um. Yes, sir, I'm pretty sure you are, sir."
Dib tried to sit up again, but straps around his face kept him fastened to the…table, it was a table or cot or something. Dib groped carefully with his fingers along the edges of the surface he was on until he found the clasps on the buckles around his head. He hesitated, partly out of politeness and partly because even that effort had almost exhausted him.
"Can I?"
"Um. Yeah- yes! Yes, sir, yes you can."
Dib fumbled the buckles open and pried what felt like a pair of goggles –the couldn't be the same ones he had been using, but they felt like it- off his face, and winced as light speared into his eyes. A pair of battered glasses were pressed into his hands. After a few moments of blinking he made out the hazy figure of someone, presumably the girl, beside his cot. She would have been a plain, nondescript-looking girl save for her hair, an unusual dusty greyish lavender but cropped to a fuzz, the patched, overlarge white lab coat and black gloves she wore, and battered looking earphone-microphone-headset thing over the left side of her face. She was shifting her weight nervously from foot to foot, and holding a clip-board like a shield in front of her with one hand and a steaming thermos in the other.
"Um. What now?" He asked her, feeling stupid. It wasn't every day that one woke up a clone.
She flinched guiltily and handed him the thermos. Dib took it, confused. It was thick red plastic, a web of hair-thin cracks along one side, and filled with a thick grayish brown stew that smelled vaguely like meat but mostly like mud.
"You, um, drink this, sir." The girl said, digging out a spoon from a pocket. Dib, still confused, took the spoon as well and stared at it. It was a normal metal spoon.
"What's this made out of?" he asked, scooping up a bite of the stew. It tasted vaguely like meat but mostly like mud, as he had suspected.
"The, uh, the spoon, sir?"
"The soup."
"Um, um, nutrients. Sir."
Dib took another bite. It wasn't that bad, considering. "What kind of nutrients?"
"I'm, um, not allowed to tell you, sir." The girl said, fidgeting with her clipboard. "The last one we told wouldn't eat it, and it's important for developing your nervous system."
Dib tried to smile reassuringly, popping another bite into his mouth and closing his eyes in feigned enjoyment. "Mm-mmm." He was starting to feel better already, and his headache was giving way to a ravenous hunger. "Well, as –mmf- long as it isn't rat –mff- brains," He joked, between huge bites.
The girl turned bright red. He paused in horror, the spoon still in his mouth.
"It is made of rat brains, isn't it?"
"Um, no?"
Dib sighed and kept eating; to do anything other than pour food into his screamingly empty gut as fast as he possibly could would be torture. "It's better than cafeteria food, anyway."
The girl sighed in relief.
"So, um, what happened to the one that wouldn't eat the, uh, the rat brains?"
The girl hesitated, and pressed two fingers to her earphone, listening. "Not allowed to tell you, sir." She said after a moment.
"Did he die?"
"Oh, almost all of you have died." The girl said, then clapped her hands over her mouth.
"This just gets better and better." Dib groaned, rubbing the bridge of his nose, but he felt nothing other than a faint irritation. They must have drugged the soup. He paused, sniffing the muck, then gave up and drained the rest. "Can I have the full story?"
"Um, I'm not the one that tells you that, sir, this is my first assignment on my own, um, sir, um, I'm only a seventh level-"
"Can you take me to the person that can?"
Another pause, her fingers pressed to her earphones and her lips moving slightly. Sub-vocalization?
"Yes, sir. Yes, I can."