"Aw, look who woke up," smiled Gir.
Zim stood up to his full height - which still made him smaller than everyone else except Gir - and brushed himself off. The floor had been none too clean, but he wasn't about go into a germaphobic fit right now in front of all of these strangers.
"Yes, Gir, I am awake," replied Zim with a touch of annoyance. "Now who are you stink people?"
Zim smelled something that didn't agree with him - something like feet - but in truth, all other non-Irken beings gave off odious odors that offended his Irken senses. Part of him wanted to run from these beings, but he would not show them weakness.
"We're Planet Express, mon," offered the black human male, who was better known as Hermes Conrad, company business manager and former Olympic limbo champion. "When it absolutely, positively has to be there - well, one of these days."
"When what has to be there?" queried Zim. Were these beings in the business of trafficking weapons? He quickly scanned the huge landing bay he was in and could discern no trace of military technology, just a table and chairs, some computers and a workshop and the huge green ship he had encountered out in space. The Voot Runner sat below the larger vessel, the tiny Irken craft looking none the worse for wear atop the mesh net that had been used to ferry it to this place.
"Packages, mon," replied Hermes. "Anything you want to ship, we can handle it."
"Good," said Zim, folding his arms defiantly across his small chest. "Then you can ship us back to Earth!"
"You ARE on Earth," corrected Leela, arms folded across her ample chest and signature white tanktop.
"What?" stammered Zim. He thought hard for a second and hazily remembered an alien-looking landscape he thought he saw as he was taken to this place, nothing like the Earth he was used to. Still, he couldn't be sure until he got another look.
"A window!" raged Zim, pointing at the group around him. "Bring me a window!"
"Why don't you just walk over to that one over there, genius?" grumbled Bender, his right thumb pointing over towards the far wall.
Zim grumbled at the mechanical man, even shook his fist at him, but then the invader made his over way to the wall, walking slowly at first until he realized this could take forever with his small steps. He sprinted over to the window and looked out to see the sunlit landscape he thought he had seen before, nothing at all like the dark, foreboding world he had seen on his home away from home.
"What has happened?" questioned Zim, completely mystified. "Where is everything? Where is my base? Where is the skool? Where is ... Dib?"
Zim couldn't believe he had said that last part, but seeing Dib's oversized cranium and hearing his outlandish human voice would have provided him with some small sense of familiarity, if not comfort. This wasn't the world Zim had left behind a few hours ago. This place seemed soothing and antiseptic and almost ... happy.
"Well, I don't know who this Dib is, but welcome to the year 3000, buddy!" offered Fry before downing yet another can of Slurm, the top-selling soft drink of the 30th century. The process to make Slurm was a strange and albeit disgusting one, but it sure didn't stop Fry from drinking it by the gross.
Zim's eyes widened even more, and not at Fry's futuristic soda."Three ... thousand?" he finally managed to blurt out.
"Yep, 3000, shorty," mocked Bender, taking a long puff on his cigar.
Gir looked up longingly at Bender, then suddenly attached himself to the larger robot's leg.
"Are you my daddy?" queried Gir lovingly.
"What? said Bender? "No! Help! Get it off me!"
Bender began shaking his thin cylindrical leg back and forth, trying to dislodge Gir, but the smaller bot simply hung on and enjoyed the impromptu ride.
"Wheeee!"
"Gir!" snapped Zim over his shoulder, looking up and breaking briefly out of his depressed reverie. "Stop fooling around!"
Gir suddenly detached himself from Bender and snapped to attention in front of his master, eyes and chest now colored red as he shifted into duty mode.
"Yes, sir!" replied Gir, saluting, before his color cooled to cyan again and he started punching himself in the head repeatedly.
Zim stared sadly at the floor. He knew he had arrived on Earth in the early 21st century, and he racked his Irken brain to figure out how he could have been slingshotted more than 900 years into the future. Somehow the Voot Runner had been propelled forward in time, and worse yet, he could see no signs that the planet had been conquered by his own people. Hadn't the Irken armada arrived on Earth and taken it over? Hadn't he prepared the way? Had something gone wrong, or had someone else eliminated his race?
Zim would never admit it, but he missed the old Earth. He hadn't really had a chance to destroy it.
"Where are you from, Zim?" asked Leela, in an almost-motherly fashion, of the strange-looking little green being. She saw the bewilderment in his face, remembered how she felt about being a mutant outcast herself, and reached out to put a hand on his shoulder.
"I am Zim!" he hissed, turning on her and causing her to draw back.
"I am a mighty Irken invader and I ... am lost."
He dropped his shoulders and stared again at the floor.
"I am almost a century out of my time and I don't know where I belong."
"Just like me," said Fry, looking sympathetic, his hands in the pockets of his trademark red jacket. "I'm from the 20th century myself, and after taking a cold nap for a thousand years, well, I just woke up here."
"I was on Earth in the early 21st century, human," replied Zim, looking up. "The next thing I know I am here with all of - you," he added
"Poor little guy," said Leela. 'We'd like to help you."
"Just like you helped Zap Brannigan, right, Leela?" joked Bender. He could never resist needling Leela about her one-night stand with Earth's most decorated if incompetent space captain. He started to laugh until he saw the cold stare in Leela's eye, then backed off, massaging the dent in his head that she had given him earlier when he had started in on the subject.
"I swear," she stammered, turning away from Bender and rolling her eye. "You spend just one night with someone, and you never hear the end of it."
"Balderdash!" came an aged voice from behind them. "No one wants to hear about your overblown sexual endeavors, Leela. We've got to help these little fellows get back to where they belong!"
And Professor Hubert Farnsworth stumbled slowly into the room ...
TBC
