Disclaimer: I don't own Invader Zim. I don't even own this identity card I need while I'm in Korea. It's the property of the government and I have to hand it in to be allowed to board the plane home. While I would like to keep it as a souvenir, I wouldn't want it that much!
You get three guesses where I was when I came up with the idea for this one.
Registered Alien
Dib stole a peek over his shoulder to make sure Zim was still trailing him, smiled to himself, and resumed slinking just quickly enough to enable Zim to keep up. Why hadn't he thought of doing this before? This was the perfect Zim trap... it was simple, it was completely invisible, and best of all, it was working!
It all started several months ago, when Dib was trying to lose Zim on his way to the emergency ward for an X-ray. He'd been hurting enough already without Zim hounding him all the way there to gloat over breaking his "pathetic inferior human wormbaby earth arm" with the mighty Irken arm of ZIM!
Once at the hospital, Dib had made sure to grab the only single empty seat in the waiting room, not that it helped him for long. As soon as a seat right next to him emptied when its occupant was called to see the doctor, Zim leaped into it. Dib groaned. Sitting in the waiting room with a broken arm was bad enough without Zim ranting and rambling into his ear that Irken arms didn't break this easily, in fact, Irken arms didn't do this or that or... Dib thought his name would never be called.
Zim would have followed Dib into the examining room, but to Dib's relief the doctor had refused to allow him in... had even shut the door on Zim's protests that he was the human stink beast's best friend and wanted to make sure he got out of this big white smelly building alive.
Dib's arm wasn't broken, the doctor soon told him, just sprained. As the relief flooded through him, Dib hadn't even cared that Zim had sneaked the door open and was now closely watching his every move. Nobody but Dib, as usual, had even noticed, but it suddenly didn't matter. Dib had gotten a brilliant idea from the whole incident.
Of course! Dib was usually so busy trailing Zim that the alien had never had cause to chase him! Dib now saw that pretending he didn't want Zim to follow him would probably be enough to entice Zim through the gates of hell itself.
Walking home with his arm in a bandage and a bottle of painkillers in his pocket, Dib had barely heard the taunts Zim had hurled at him. So well had he seen this new approach work, he was vowing to hold it back for just the right moment.
And now, to Dib's barely restrained delight, this new approach was working like a charm. As Dib headed down the sidewalk Zim followed him closely, or as closely as he could while trying not to be seen. Zim dodged and ducked from tree to bush, from garbage can to fire hydrant, squinting at Dib and wondering where that inferior human worm baby was going this time. Well wherever that was, ZIM would find out!
As Dib finally spotted the grey government building coming into view through the trees just a couple of more blocks away, his eyes narrowed with satisfaction. Zim was almost captured! He forced himself to stroll the final couple of blocks as nonchalantly as if he was going nowhere in particular... biting back guffaws at the thought of Zim trying not to get close enough to get "caught" trailing him! Just before entering the large glass doors, Dib paused just long enough for a final glance around to make sure Zim was still following (of course he was!), then ducked inside.
Zim ran up to the building as if it was about to sprout legs and run away, then peered in carefully through the glass doors to see where the Dib was heading!
Dib took advantage of his lead to pick out the right department from the building directory, then he held down the Doors Open button until Zim came just close enough to see which elevator Dib took; the floors lighting up one after the other would do the rest.
The previous week, Ms. Bitters had ordered the class to research endless dry, boring government tomes for a report. Eagerly Dib had looked up Defense, Foreign Affairs, any department that had even a remote chance of being open to the existence of aliens. Nothing.
Finally, just as the class was ending, and right before he had to give back his reference book and open a reader at least a decade beneath his ability, he thought of approaching the problem from a different angle. Barely daring to hope, he decided to look up the actual word "alien." It was there! Seconds before Ms. Bitters reached out a clawlike hand to snatch the book back, Dib looked up the page with shaking hands... only to find the section on "Immigration."
"Oh, great," he muttered, slamming the book shut in disgust. "That'll help only if we start taking immigrants from outer space!"
But that had given him an idea, and combining it with the reverse psychology trick he already had in mind, he came up with an even better one. And the longer he thought about it, the clearer the plan became.
- - - - - - -
Dib tugged one of the numbered slips of paper out of the dispensing machine. From a wooden rack on the wall he took a pamphlet behind which to conceal his grin, and found a seat among the people scattered throughout the small waiting room. A few of them looked more or less anxious, but most were simply bored.
Dib heard his number called before Zim appeared. Controlling his impatience with great effort, Dib forced himself to keep his seat. A clerk in a white shirt with a lot of patches and gold buttons called his number a few more times before going to the next number, at which somebody immediately stepped forward from the waiting crowd.
Just when he thought Zim would never show up, the doors slid open and Dib heard heavy panting. Zim seemed to have searched every single floor on foot until reaching this one. Never mind, he was here at last.
Dib now simply stood up now and took another slip of paper, indicating to Zim what he would need to do before he could get caught. Zim, not to be outdone, stepped forward and took the next number, smirking at his genius at outwitting an inferior earth machine, no doubt.
Dib crumpled the pamphlet with the effort of holding back his back his laughter. This was proving to be even easier than he dared to hope it would be! Zim now took a seat directly behind Dib so the treacherous human wouldn't be able to spy on him, and leaned forward to fix his relentless stare at his enemy.
When the agent called his number this time, Dib still didn't move; keeping his seat was a lot more fun this time! When the agent gave up and called the next number, Zim fell over himself racing up to the wicket.
"The mighty ZIM beat the Dib stink!" he crowed. "They recognize my obvious superiority so they called the superior number of the mighty ZIM before the inferior number of an inferior human worm baby!"
See how superior and mighty you are when they haul you away in a sealed container, Dib thought smugly, fighting back hiccups and keeping a sharp watch over the top of his shaking pamphlet.
"Did you fill out the form?" was the first question. This much, at least, was common to all government agencies.
"Zim has no need of fo-oo-ooorms! I am ZI-II-IIIM!"
Dib peered over the edge of the pamphlet, chuckles now escaping him as he wondered just how far Zim would be able to bluff his way through THIS one.
The agent took a form and began to fill it out for him. Dib's smile began to fade. Well, okay, but it would still be worth watching when Zim inevitably got a question he couldn't answer.
"Date of entry into the country?" Zim grabbed the calendar on the agent's desk and pointed to a random number in the previous month. Dib was smiling just a little bit now.
The agent raised an eyebrow, but not for long. "Hm, you can still apply for a retroactive visa. You're lucky you're still under the 90 day limit."
"Zim has no need of any inferior earth visa-aa-aaa! I am ZI-II-IIIM!"
Dib began to relax once more. Surely restrictions were in place against allowing the entry of the obviously insane?
"Okay, you'll have to apply for a visa here."
Dib was now staring straight ahead, his mouth wide and rigid.
The agent offered a form to Zim. "Take this and fill it out."
"Of course. This is one of those normal take-out places after all!"
The agent sighed before clicking a pen. Every so often he got this sort of reaction. It had long ago stopped being funny, but as long as they didn't become abusive he couldn't very well say a whole lot. "Purpose of visit?"
"To be normal."
Duly noted; Dib was no longer was smiling at all.
"Duration of visit?"
"Until the takeover of the superior Irken forces!"
When this was also duly noted without so much as the bat of an eyelash, Dib began to look positively concerned.
"Citizenship? I said, 'Citizenship?'" When Zim continued to look blank, the agent tried rephrasing the question. "What country are you from?"
Zim thought and thought, as Dib slowly stood up and began to approach, his arms crossed on his chest and a grim smirk perched on his face once more. He didn't want to miss a moment of this. Zim had always proclaimed the earth as too inferior to be worth the effort of studying it, and here at last such conceit would finally catch up with him!
Finally Zim remembered a word he'd heard in geography class. "Equator," he finally announced.
"EQUATOR?" shrieked Dib, leaping into the air. "He said he's from 'EQUATOR'! He thinks the equator is a COUNTRY! Who, who ON THIS EARTH! would say that? Who...?"
"Sir," said the agent, pointing at the number display, "wait your turn please."
Dib waved his number around so frantically that nobody could possibly read it. "I took my number first! He... he rushed in ahead of me! He's out to - !"
"Sir we'll be with you in a moment," said the agent, who every day processed people who couldn't locate their own country even when offered a globe showing them their own country staring them in the face.
"Ecuador," the agent spelled the country out on the form.
Dib nearly had a stroke watching him do so.
"Now just wait a few minutes while we get your Green Card ready," said the agent. After Zim's ranting about inferior earth stinks just lying down and begging to be conquered, which the immigration agents excused as Spanish and which had to be endured with politically correct tolerance, Zim's passport and Green Card, which legitimized his presence on earth in general and in the this country in particular, was ready.
Zim waved it in the air in front of Dib's face; Zim was now a registered alien.
"Hold it, hold it!" Dib exclaimed, waving his arms to attract the attention of whoever in this mindless bureaucracy would actually pay attention to what they were doing instead of just going through the motions. "WHAT is WRONG with you PEOPLE?" he screamed, his voice cracking with frustration. "Do you just issue green cards left and right to just ANYBODY... anybody AT ALL... the whole day long... no matter what they're here to DO? Like take over and enslave the entire PLANET?"
The office grew quiet; even the ticking of keyboards died down. Finally, thought Dib, they're listening to me! It took long enough!
The clerk lifted a section of the counter and waved Dib inside. He then pointed to a chair, and giving Dib a hard look, motioned for him to sit down.
Dib was still hoping the official was going to ask about Zim's extra-terrestrial origins and began rattling off all the proof he'd collected before he had quite sat down, but somebody who seemed to be in charge of the whole office stalked up and silenced him with a wave of the hand.
"I don't know what kinds of games you boys play... at least I hope this is a game," he began, pulling up a chair. He turned it around so that the back of it was facing Dib before he straddled it, directly facing Dib. "But do you have any idea what people coming here from any other country in the world have been going through ever since September 11th? Hm?"
Dib swallowed, knowing that here was his chance, here was his chance to blab everything he knew. He just didn't know where to begin. From his constant and meticulous research he knew only too well that the fate Zim was plotting for the earth could dwarf even the horror of September 11th.
"Do you get me, son?" said the Immigration officer, not angrily, but firmly enough just the same.
Dib continued to think. How on earth could he convince this government official of the danger they were in? Apparently many warnings of the actual September 11th attack had been received, and still it had happened. Multiple warnings had been issued before Hurricane Katrina had wreaked her deadly havoc.
The government was a hard one to convince of anything that even hinted of danger, even with documented proof from its own agencies! How would they ever believe him about this? Yet Dib knew that he had to try; he would never forgive himself if this was the only opportunity he would ever receive and he blew it.
He held up his notebook, opened to the chart he'd compiled of his most convincing proofs. "If you'll just look here, sir, you'll see the Zim creature is an alien all right," the Immigration guy leaned forward eagerly, which gave Dib all the encouragement he needed, "... a space alien here to destr - "
With barely a glance, the agent snatched the notebook out of Dib's hand. "'Space alien'...! Quit wasting our time kid!" he snapped before ordering Dib out of the office with a brisk jerk of his thumb, barely remembering to return his notebook to him.
- - - - - - -
Shame and defeat burned Dib as he slunk from the building. He hoped nobody was around to see him, but even this was not to be.
Zim sprang out from behind a sign to leap around waving his green card in Dib's face.
"They KNOW! They know Zim is from out of town, like... like some... some inferior earth stink exchange student! Zim knows nothing of these aliens... and yet Zim somehow got registered as an 'alien' and it's all your fault! YOURS! They know... they KNO-OO-OOOW!"
"'They know." "They" knew NOTHING!
Instantly Dib's defeat and humiliation was forgotten. His teeth gritted together in sheer, blinding rage as he hurled himself toward Zim, all fists and fury. Zim was once again running away, and the chase was on as before.
The End