a meditation on the cost of love, Invader Zim style
by J. Random Lurker
Chapter Three: Inevitability
DAY ONE: (Dib)
Hhnnhh...
No...I'm not proud of myself for that...waste of time... but at least now I can -think- again. How am I supposed to concentrate on saving the world with a raging hard-on sucking all the blood out of my brain? I swear, officer, it had to be done . For the good of all mankind!
Right. Uh-huh. Now zip yourself up and get back to work, freak.
Which I do, but his taunts play back at me, looping whispers just behind my thoughts. Time's slipping away, Dib...
I flip him the finger in my head and start typing again. My fingers are shaking.
- - -
3 hours 20 minutes now, and I've FINALLY found the link. There's a wire running from the front porch light that connects to an underground junction that- if it's still THERE- Zim tapped for his primary power supply. Which means, if I stick a hacking probe on it, I just might be able to wake up the Irken computer underground here. I slurp down one last cup of muddy coffee and get ready to do a little manual labor. Let's see.. one of these drawers should have the silverware... Ah, there we go. A good long stainless steel cutting knife. A crowbar would be better, of course, but this should still get the job done.
- - -
Man, this wallpaper smells funny. I put my ear over a crudely executed pink and blue fleur-de-lis on the paper next to the front door, tap the wall, shift around, tap again. According to my recollection of the blueprints the wiring should be right about... here.
It suddenly occurs to me how crazy I must look from the outside. Psycho matchstick-man all in black, nervous eyes and musky skin, stinking coffee breath, wielding a long kitchen knife, leaning back to stab at a shadow on the wall. Hello, Dib, this is your brain speaking... You're officially batshit now, you know that? Yeah, well, fat load of help YOU'VE been so far, headmeats! I can't stop now. I'm in too deep already. You know that.
Anyway, it's not like I killed anybody. Not like Zim wouldn't have murdered these people and burned down the house in a heartbeat to reclaim the space if he wanted it. That's the -difference- between him and me.
I don't want to think about this any more.
THUNK! The knife goes in smooth, making a neat two-inch gash through the center of the printed flower. I pretend it's Zim's torso, and start ripping the wall apart.
- - -
Back in the kitchen, I raid for food, inhaling a sandwich while my laptop works black magic in the front room. Ping... ping... ping... wake up you piece of crap computer!...ping... ping... The waiting is driving me crazy! A bitch of a caffeine headache is starting to shove its thumbs up the backs of my retinas; I'm running on fumes and willpower as it is, and the longer this takes, the more second thoughts I'm having. I don't WANT to be having second thoughts, but they just scream at me anyway: What do I do if I CAN'T wake it up? Should I have taken the ship up instead, like I first thought? Is Zim expecting to keep me tied up with this so he can put his real plan in motion elsewhere?
God, I HATE this part, the part where he makes me double and triple and quadruple-guess myself until I can't tell up from down! I HATE it! I can JUST pick up some faint snuffling noises from the bedroom where I dumped the houseowners. Grunting. Bedsprings creaking unevenly. Shit. That means they're awake again, and probably trying to get loose. Come ON, you stupid machine! TALK TO ME!
- - -
Four hours, 30 minutes, and I'm sweating blood. I fused the door locks, knobs and plates together to buy myself a little more time, but I can hear shouting now, the big guy's gotten loose somehow; he's pounding on the door and cursing, and that metal isn't going to hold for too much longer. I realize I don't remember if there was a window in the bedroom or not. Or a phone. The gun's back in my hand while I pace a circuit between the curtained windows and the bedroom door. My brain is gleefully spitting out endless scenarios of police smashing the door down, the big guy grabbing me and snapping my neck like a twig. Every time a car goes by outside I feel my stomach flipping over, and I can barely stop the shaking now. I hear phantom alarms going off. Fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK. I'm running a mantra in my head, just keep telling myself my laptop is about to talk to me. I make myself believe, while I pace and smell up the front room with my nervousness. It's going to work. It's going to WORK...
And just when I'm ready to drop it and bolt...
.... urhhhhgh... What do YOU want?
YES!
I RUN to the laptop, watching a window with a spinning one-eyed Irken logo snap open. The bedroom door down the hall makes a distinct CRACK, the noise of wood snapping. For a second I can't get my voice out because I can't FUCKING THINK. "Let me IN! Let me in NOW!"
Whhyyyyyy?
I don't have TIME for this! "Because if you don't let me in, I'm gonna get KILLED! Just DO it! Zim said...The FILE!"
That file Zim sent me! The 'door key'! I forgot! Open folder, drag icon, drop file, copying...
SNAP again in the background. More shouting, louder now. Hurry, DAMMIT, HURRY! It only takes a second to complete, but it feels like a hundred years. When it's done, I swear the computer -chuckles-. No time to worry about that but NOW, an hour late, my paranoid side kicks in: What was -in- that file? Why didn't I LOOK? Why didn't I pick it apart...? Because I was too busy jerking off to... I am royally screwed, aren't I?
And in my head Zim laughs as he answers me: You have no IDEA, human!
The floor begins to shake. Earthquake level shaking, thunder underfoot, hateful rumblings. The blue couch against one wall tilts up, a debris cloud spitting out underneath it, concrete shrapnel and grey dust choking up the air before the thing is thrown seven feet in the air, just FLIPPED OVER shoved aside by a huge clear pink tube from below.
"What the FUCK!?" Oh GOD, I turn and see him stumbling out through the splinters of the broken bedroom door, a mad bull human trying to keep his feet on a wave of rippling concrete. I stare at him; he stares at me, at the ripped open wall, the laptop, the gun, the open tube, the flipped couch. Some part of my brain screams MOVE MOVE MOVE and I grab the laptop wrench it loose leaving sparking wires behind and I run and DIVE, throw myself headfirst into the tube, skidding hard on the cold alien plastic under me and the pressure changes, suction grabbing me by the throat don't know where I'm going don't CARE as long as it's not HERE...!
I hear myself screaming as I fall.
- - -
...I can't see anything, and my neck hurts. The tube spat me out somewhere and I fell pretty hard; kinda got the wind knocked out of me. I just lay here for a second, getting my breath back. I'm not SAFE, I know, but it's a different kind of danger now.
I can feel that I'm in a large space, a large cold open space, on a ... ribbed metal floor. Grunting, I roll over onto my stomach and crawl around, fumbling around in the dark for a few seconds until my hands find the familiar squareness of my laptop. PLEASE tell me you're still working... I punch a key that brings up the screen, casting a small pale blue light into the shadows. It doesn't really let me see anything well outside of a couple of feet, but at least I'm not completely in the dark now.
Where am I? Nothing I -can- see looks familiar... My ears pop, adapting to the new pressure levels as I stand and it hurts hard for a second. Gahh... I must be down pretty damn deep. "Computer?"
It replies with a distinctly smug sounding, Area secured. Suddenly lights snap on overhead, one after the other in a long row that seems to stretch out for a mile, not blazingly bright, but enough to make my eyes water anyway. I've never been here before! It's a HUGE space in dark red and purple, some kind of experiment hall.
Spotlights fall on the tubes; they're the first things I can see when my eyes focus. They line the walls to either side, stretching the length of the room, filled with bubbling purple goop. I can't help but stare, memories flooding back of the times I was trapped in one of those things, breathing fluid and banging on the walls, trying to scream at Zim through the glass... at his mercy.
I start breathing harder.
That's when I realize that some of the tubes aren't EMPTY... that there are... oh god. There are THINGS in some of these... dead things. Dead PEOPLE...
And then I see THEM. The two people from the house upstairs. They look... BURNED. There's no fluid in their tubes, the glass is clear...
Oh GOD. I drop the laptop and start to run toward them, but a metal arm whips down from the ceiling and grabs my wrist; like it KNEW what I was thinking, what I wanted to DO... They turn toward me inside the glass, they can SEE me...! I start screaming, demanding that they be let GO, but all that gets me is another arm around the waist, pulling my feet off the ground and squeezing until I have to stop fighting or stop breathing. And I KNOW, I KNOW what's going to happen, and I can't do a DAMN THING TO STOP IT...
"You can't do this. You CAN'T...!" My voice breaks, and I hang there and there's nothing I can do.
Except watch. As sick as it is, as horrible as it is, I can't STOP watching, my breath frozen inside my chest.
They don't look at each other, they look at me. Like it's my fault. Like I did this. They bang on the glass, shouting words I can't hear, until they weaken and finally slide down into the floor, unconscious. I feel my own throat constricting.
They suffocate in those fucking tubes.
And then they die. I can -feel- it when it happens. I just watched two people DIE and and I can't stop crying so sorry oh Jesus God, they're dead they're dead they DIED holy FUCK I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry
- - -
A million years have passed since they died. I feel so cold inside. Voice comes out chattering. "...p... put me down."
I cross the floor and make it a few pointless steps before I fall, tripping over my own ankles, crash. I lay there numb, the floor freezing me, my body icing slowly into stillness.
I close my eyes, ready to let the cold in. I WANT it, I DESERVE it... I wasn't going to kill them... I just wanted to get into the base... why did they have to BE there? Why did this have to happen? Why didn't they JUST RUN AWAY!?
Get up, Dib.
It stings like a bucket of hot water to the face- a sudden ferocious anger boiling up inside.
Two people died, yeah. And you want to make it three? You want their deaths to be for nothing? You want to see a few billion more humans die just like that? If you do, fine. Lay there feeling sorry for yourself like a loser. Let Zim win. Or you can get UP and do what you came here to do in the first place. What those people DIED to make possible.
GET UP. Don't let Zim win.
GET UP. DON'T let Zim win!
GET UP. DON'T let Zim WIN!
Somehow... I get up again. Even though now ... I understand. I'm not in control here. Not even a little. It's going to do what it wants... maybe this is all something Zim is controlling from afar. Maybe even my resistance is part of the plan.
I don't know. I don't care.
I'll do what I came here to do. I can't do anything else.
- - -
With grim dread I approach the huge computer terminal at the end of the hall. The screen is bigger than I am, a black hole flanked by three smaller screens to either side; seven baleful black squares, fronted by a wide control console. My barest touch over one of the keys brings the whole system to life; bright green Irken code begins to scroll down each side- monitor, and the central giant warms up with a waking sound that hums loud enough my teeth can feel it, a sound of pure POWER.
"Computer," I say quietly, around the heart hammering pain in my chest. If this is all a script, then I -know- what's coming next, just like I KNEW what was going to happen to those people, because I know Zim, and I know what would bring him back here after so long... I swallow hard before I speak. I almost...don't want to see it. But I have to see it... "Patch into Zim's remote planetary monitors and show me ..." Deep breath. "Show me what's coming."
Please GOD show me I'm wrong. Show me I'm wrong.... But I already know.
Even still, I'm not prepared for how terrified I am when I see it.
Every screen, each one labeled with a planet's name in Irken and English, shows the same thing.
All of the outer planets, the great gas giants, are on FIRE.
And every screen is full of ships. Irken ships.
The Armada is coming.
- - -
(A/N: Whew! Long, intense chapter this was...)
jrandomlurker-at-yahoo-dot-com.