A/N: Wow, I can't think of anything to say this chapter. Hmm. Well, I like the Control Brains. (Even if they're not technically active characters right now.) And... yeah, that's all I can think of.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy! And please remember to review! I like reviews.

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In Short Supply

Irken Machine

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The Control Brains' records of three smeets brought to life within the past era, or the past 10 Irken years: A NOTE FROM THE BRAINS: Several Irkens have expressed the fear that with our new policy of projecting the heights of smeets, we might skew our judgments of what jobs they are suitable for and may under- or over-value the smeet's future skills. It is a well-known fact that taller Irkens are more able to handle higher duties than shorter Irkens are. Nevertheless, we do not pass judgment upon a smeet at birth. Rather, we analyze their personalities to assign a job before we look at their genetic code, hence alleviating all fears of bias. However, we have added secondary suggestions, in which we incorporate any new information the genetic analysis reveals, so that we may have a more complete estimation of what a smeet shall be like as an adult, taking both personality and height into account.

The first of these three records we are allowing you to see was made four years ago, in description of Exile Bob, formerly Table-Headed Service Drone Bob.

name: BOB career: HISTORICAL/Anthropologist

primary suggestions: You will have a tendency to question traditions, which in many disciplines could lead to unruliness, despite your overall compliant character. However, as an anthropologist, this tendency will lend itself well to researching such traditions. Your inquisitiveness and natural rejection of Irken cultural conventions shall allow you to analyze the historical context in which these conventions arose. If your rebellious tendencies overpower your compliant aspects, you could easily narrow your focus and become an Alien Anthropologist, which would allow you to escape the Irken Empire by traveling to recently conquered worlds and studying the indigenous life, assuming they are to be assimilated into the empire.

projected height: 4 UNITS

secondary suggestions: While your future height is quite disappointing, we still expect you to contribute to the empire. A historical training wouldn't be completely wasted on you, as Informational Drones can give directions to foreigners or tourists who may appreciate any trivia about the indigenous life that you will be able to provide. We regretfully suggest you do not train to be an Anthropologist, as your height would never allow you to be one, and instead find a Drone job as soon as possible. We encourage you to educate yourself during your time in recharge chambers, and to focus on the compliant aspects of your personality.

The second record was made eight years ago, in description of Janitor Tak, formerly Invader Trainee Tak.

name: TAK career: MILITARY/Soldier/Invader

primary suggestions: You are uniquely qualified in many ways to be an Invader. Your planning skills are quite advanced, as are your observational and analytical abilities. You possess the mind of a Diplomat; you will easily be able to look at utterly foreign cultures and quickly understand the nuances of their hierarchy and general cultural personality, a skill highly valued when attempting to dupe such cultures into doing whatever the empire wants. However, we believe your skills would be much better spent as an Invader. In particular, your mind indicates that you shall grow up to have the confidence, glibness, and superb imagination required of an expert liar. You shall make a fantastic Invader.

projected height: 109 UNITS

secondary suggestions: We do not expect much of you.

The third record was made within the past year, in description of Fataz...

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An Irken smeet takes approximately five days to molt into an adult. Fataz's egg had hatched ten days ago. He'd spent the past five days in a tube in the SLP chamber, looking out at the distorted world with the blissful bafflement of someone who's never interacted with another living being in his life. His young brain was trapped in the slow stupor all modern Irkens endure when they first awaken in the birthing facilities before they receive their Paks. He recognized movement in the outside world, occasional hulking forms that wandered around in the shadows; his only companion was a small silvery person with a body shaped approximately like Fataz's, who would often come up to the tube and knock on the glass and mumble words that Fataz didn't have the linguistic capacity to understand. Still, he was happy.

Then his life took a drastic, horrible change, and he was thrust into the harsh outside. But he was still happy.

Without warning, the liquid supporting Fataz drained out of the tube, and he discovered that air was a lot thinner than he'd previously experienced, and that gravity did, in fact, exist. The world was also much less blue without the liquid of the tube. It would take a while to get used to this, although it was quite exciting. He wondered if the liquid would ever come back.

Before he'd completely adjusted, something even more exciting happened. The glass tube that made his world lifted up—he'd had no idea it could do that!—and above him stood a new companion. A deep instinct that not even thousands of generations of cloning could erase told him that he was far more closely related to this new companion than he was to the silver one that he'd seen through his tube, even though the new one was much bigger than him. This was one of his species.

The big one leaned over, scooped Fataz up (movement! How thrilling!), turned him over (look! A floor!), and said something he didn't understand at all (how amazing! Words!). Then he felt a sharp pain in his back, the first pain of his life, which surprised him too much to hurt; then something settled inside him, in the bony tunnel that cradled the nerves running down from his brain to the rest of his body, the spine that the rest of his internal exoskeleton curled out from; then, suddenly, he knew stuff. Oh, such stuff he knew. Like words. Oh, such words he knew.

The big one—Irken, his new vocabulary informed him—turned him around and looked in his face. "I guess I've got to do the introductory thing," he muttered, then cleared his throat, and said, "Welcome to life, little smeet-thing. Little Irken smeet-thing. Not... some other kind of... smeet-thing. Uh... I guess you don't have to report for duty or anything so... hi." The Irken lowered Fataz, disgusted. "I'm not doing that again. That was stupid."

"No, no, I liked it," a deep, disembodied voice said. "It was good for a first try, Almighty Tallest."

Fataz, meanwhile, was going through the euphoria of having something alive speak to him! Oh, what wonder of wonders! In his ecstasy, he slid out of the big Irken's hands and wrapped himself around the Irken's middle, clinging to him with utter jubilation at knowing that now, and forever, he was not alone in the universe. "I love you, really big annoyed Irken person!"

"Yeah, yeah, get off." The big Irken pried Fataz off his middle. "And I'm Purple. Tallest Purple to you."

A name! A title to call this new person! Grinning, Fataz said, "Okie-dokie, Mister Tallest Purple!"

Purple started carrying Fataz somewhere. Oh goody, an adventure! "What's your name, smeet?"

His Pak supplied the answer. "Fataz!"

"Good. You've got your name encoded. And you can talk. Does he have his life-support programs, computer?"

The disembodied voice spoke again. "He does. However, his personality is unprogrammed and he's missing a great majority of the files on Irken knowledge that he should have. He can develop a personality on his own but he'll need to connect to the Control Brains to get the files."

"I thought these Paks already had the whole of Irken knowledge?"

"Yeah, but I think you deleted some of it when you encoded Fataz's name. You're not very good with computers, Almighty Tallest. No offense, but if I had to choose between a computer virus and letting you update my firewalls, I'd risk the virus."

"Great," Purple muttered. He looked down at Fataz's face again as he carried him into a small chamber, which Fataz's Pak informed him was a lift. After a moment of critical study, Purple said, distastefully, "You've got Zim's eyes."

As this seemed to be a bad thing—although Fataz's Pak informed him that Zim had been the name of several prestigious historical Irkens—he said, quite apologetically, "I'm sorry, Mister Tallest Purple."

Purple sighed. "It's not your fault," he said. "It's Zim's."

The lift let them out on a new floor, to Fataz's great delight. It was like a whole new universe! Purple carried Fataz through the halls as he peered excitedly at all the lights and computer screens and... and... wow! That was a ceiling!

"So I'll have to take him back to Irk and bring him to the Primary Birthing Facility to get that stuff programmed, won't I?" Purple asked.

"No," the disembodied voice said. "You can do it here. I can establish a link to the Control Brains and you can plug the smeet into the recharge chamber."

"That'll work?"

"It should. I can contact the Control Brains and ask them for the same information they give to Paks in the birthing facilities."

"All right..."

Fataz was taken to the first recharge chamber he'd ever seen. He was set down on the chair, and his Pak was plugged in. This was so cool! He'd never done this before! What was recharging like? Was it fun? Was it—

A static sound hummed through him, interrupting his thoughts, filling his Pak and disrupting the weak electrical charges in his mind. This new sound, composed of endless data, spoke to him with the voice of the memory of four trillion ancestors: "Welcome to the Irken Empire. Welcome to the Irken machine. You are the body. We are the brains."

Speechless, mindless, Fataz sat silent as the Irken machine's brains sifted through his soul and told him who he was.

When they were done, Fataz deftly detached his Pak from the chair in the recharge chamber, leaped out, and saluted his Tallest. "Archivist Trainee Fataz reporting for duty, sir." He glanced around, fully comprehending his surroundings and furthermore understanding that they were not what they should be. "Hey, where is this, anyway? This doesn't look like the birthing facility. Where am I?"

"What, you think I'd work at a birthing facility?" the computer said, offended. "As if I would ever hang out with those prissy birthing computers."

"You weren't made in a birthing facility, Fataz," Tallest Purple said. "This is Exile Zim's base, on planet Earth."

"Oh." Fataz vaguely recalled that he'd heard the name Zim before, some time in the fuzzy past. Perhaps he'd heard his Tallest say the name. Had that only been a few moments earlier? It felt so long ago. Already, his memories of the time before the Control Brains had reached inside him felt as if they were three million years away.

He recognized the name Exile Zim, though, and the name Earth. Exile Zim was the most hated criminal in the empire, an enemy to all Irkens. Earth was the rubbish speck of a planet he was exiled to, a planet of unknown location. Fataz wondered why he'd been made here and why his Tallest was here as well, then decided to just trust Tallest Purple's judgment.

Purple circled around Fataz, studying him as he'd studied him earlier. "Archivist Trainee, you say?" He grimaced. "Could be worse. Hey, computer."

"Yeah?"

"Display his basic birthing record. I wanna see his projected height. It'll have that, won't it?"

"Yeah." A metal tentacle snaked out of the wall and plugged into Fataz's Pak. On a nearby computer screen, Fataz saw his soul displayed in stark green and black light:

name: FATAZ career: HISTORICAL/Archivist

primary suggestions: You will have an organized, methodical manner of thinking. If the duties of Economists had not already been supplanted by ourselves, the Control Brains, you could easily do that. Nevertheless, your logical thought processes are suitable for taking historical data, drawing conclusions as to the cause of events based on prior conditions, and then organizing these conclusions in a coherent manner for the research of other Irkens.

"You didn't get any of that logical stuff from Zim," Purple said. "You must have got it from me."

"But you're not organized either, Almighty Tallest," the computer said.

"Shut up. I'm not paying you to talk back."

"Why does everyone think they're paying me when they aren't?!"

Although you are not especially qualified to be a Soldier, if you do not wish to be an Archivist, your logical skills could assist you greatly in tactical analysis. Therefore, it may be worth your time to struggle through basic Soldier training and then attempt to be promoted to War Tactician.

"Hey, that's a lot better than Archivist!" Purple said. "Fataz, you're transferring to Soldier training. Tallest's orders."

Fataz looked at Purple in shock. Why couldn't he be an Archivist? It sounded interesting. "But the Control Brains said I'm not qualified to be a Soldier!"

Purple shrugged. "They told me the same thing. I survived."

Fataz's antennae drooped dejectedly. "Yes, sir."

projected height: 102 UNITS

Purple cheered. "Look at that! Almost perfectly average, and on the first try! So Zim can do some things right. Hey computer!"

"What?"

"Let's go celebrate! Pudding and Doritos for everyone!"

"But I can't eat."

"Aww, don't be such a whiner!"

And Tallest Purple was gone, leaving Fataz behind, his Pak still wired into the base as the last line of his record was displayed:

secondary suggestions: We do not expect much of you.

Fataz pulled the metal tentacle out of his Pak, detaching himself from the computer, and looked around, wondering what to do.

A small, silvery person—no, that was the companion from before his programming—no, that was a SIR, wasn't it—came down the hall, humming a song that no smeet as young as Fataz should hear. "Hey!" the SIR said. "You was the little blobby boy!"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Fataz said.

"Mmhmm." The SIR nodded its head sagely. "I'mma king of the mini-tires. You wanna see a cow-human?"

Fataz still had no idea what the robot was talking about. But he didn't have anything better to do, and a cow-human sounded interesting. "Okay."

And so, Fataz spent the majority of the day in the shadowy parts of Exile Zim's SLP chamber, hanging out with the tribe of wild cow-humans who had made the SIR Unit named Gir their king. He got to listen to the myths and fables they'd created about the things they saw in the world around them—mostly metal, chicken, and small green people like Fataz.

He forever after considered it 150 degrees well spent.

xxx

Extending Zim's exoskeleton from -12 units to 40 units proved to be much more challenging than Tak had thought.

It wasn't that she hadn't stretched Irkens out fifty-two units before. The greatest extension she'd ever done was seventy-six units, on an Irken 143 units tall who had wanted to become Tallest. She had dutifully made him 219 units tall, waited until she got her payment, and then contacted the Control Brains to anonymously give them the information of the Irken who'd received the illegal extension. He was arrested within eight degrees by a swarm of thirty Police Soldiers. Tak had no qualms about the evils she was committing in this line of work, but she would never commit treason.

The problem was, extending the exoskeleton of an Irken who was already fairly tall was easy, because there was plenty of bone to work with. But to raise Zim's height 50 units, his height was nearly doubling; that was much trickier than raising the height of an Irken already 150 units tall, where another 50 wasn't that dramatic a change.

To do an extension, Tak had to slice through the exoskeleton at an angle, all the way around it, slide it slightly apart—careful with the spine, can't cut through the nerves—and apply a medical glue to hold it together until the Pak could force the body to speed-heal the fissure. She had to repeat the process all along the exoskeleton, with a dozen fissures, making it just slightly longer each time. Then she did the same along the leg and arm bones; unlike the torso, Irken arms and legs didn't have an exoskeletal structure, simply bones. No organs to protect.

To stretch Zim out to forty units, Tak would have to do about twice as many cuts as usual. That meant she'd take about twice as long as usual to finish, and when Zim woke up, he'd have twice the pain until his bones healed.

Tak considered it time well spent.

Smirking to herself, Tak cheerfully cut Zim into pieces, and took her sweet time putting him back together.

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When Zim woke up, his Pak informed him that he'd been unconscious for the past thirty-four degrees, quite a bit longer than the fifteen to twenty degree procedure Tak had promised. His first, brief thought was that he should be tall now. Well, okay, not tall, but taller—and then he was distracted by a searing pain, everywhere from his neck down.

He gritted his teeth. Okay, status check: Zim was alive, which was quite fortunate, considering that Tak, of all Irkens, had been given complete power over him for the past thirty-four degrees. He checked for paralysis; he twitched his feet, and was answered with a monstrous pain, as fiery and all encompassing as hydroxylic acid. All right, his feet clearly weren't paralyzed. He decided to just trust that the rest of his body below the neck was movable. What about antennae? He wiggled the left and felt it brush the cold table beneath his back. Good. He wiggled the right and didn't feel anything. Typical. Honestly, why did he bother with the right one anymore?

Now for specifics: pain. A lot of pain. That about summed it up. At least his head was fine. He slowly opened his eyes, turned his head slightly, looking around himself. "Hello?" he croaked.

Tak was still there. She was sitting on a stool beside the operation table, legs crossed, fingers laced and hands resting on her knee. Zim did not like that smile on her face. "Hello, Zim," she said, in that bright tone that she had a habit of using whether or not her facial expression matched it. For once, it did. "How are you feeling?"

He growled. "Feh. Zim feels fantastic!"

"Good, good, I'm so glad to hear!" Tak's smile widened, a slightly manic gleam entered her eyes, and her voice raised a half-octave in cheer. "It's just great that you're finally awake. You see, I'll need to do some tests now, to see if all your nerve endings still work. Computer? Secure him!"

"Fine."

Zim felt several metal bands slam down across him, holding him in place. He grunted in pain. Whose side was his computer on?

Tak pulled a metal probe from her Pak and wielded it like a blade. Her expression bore an alarming resemblance to that human Zim had seen on the news last night, the one which had the subtitle that said, "Unknown Mass Murderer: Still At Large." With a giggle, Tak said, "Let me know if you can feel this!"

She jabbed the probe somewhere in Zim's abdomen. He screeched in pain, struggling against his bonds, which only made it hurt more.

Tak shrieked with laughter. "G-good! No nerve damage there," she said, trying to hold back her giggles. "Let's test your upper torso, hmm?"

Another jab in the very center of his chest, and a second in his side. He screamed again, but forced himself to bite his lip. He had too much pride to let Tak see his pain.

Tak giggled. "Ohhh, is little Zim annoyed at me?" She poked him, this time with just her finger, over his stomach. He whimpered; she giggled again. "I didn't think such a hardened Invader would be pained so easily."

Crack. That almost hurt more than all Tak's stabs combined. "Go jump in a lake!" Zim snarled. (Dib had used the phrase on him last school year and had not been able to understand why it offended Zim so much; of course, the ignorant pig knew nothing about Irken taboo.)

Tak flinched, jerking back and narrowing her eyes, antennae flattened against her head. "Jump in one yourself," she hissed. "Show your superior some respect, tiny thing. Just remember which of us gave the other an exoskeletal extension, and which of us has willingly become the object of some freaky fetish."

Zim stared at Tak, baffled. Okay, Tak had been the one to give Zim an extension, that was obvious; but as far as Zim knew he wasn't the object of any fetishes, freaky or otherwise, so maybe that one was Tak, too? "Deh... both of those are you, right?" Although now that he thought about it, he understood perfectly how someone could find him so amazingly attractive that their obsession for him bordered on fetishism...

"Whaat?!" Tak curled her lip in revulsion. (Okay, so maybe Zim had been wrong about her being part of a fetish.) "Ew! Don't be so stupid!" She jabbed her probe in Zim's left eye.

"OW! HEY!" Zim twisted his head to the side, eyes shut to avoid another stab, and knocked Tak off her stool with two Pak-legs. "Computer, let me up!"

"Fine." The metal bands snapped back, and Zim lifted himself into the air, four Pak-legs' points sitting on the corners of the operation table.

Clutching her side with one hand, Tak scrambled with her other hand and two Pak-legs to pull herself away from Zim and get to her knees. "Zim, you moron, get back down! You'll break your bones again!"

"Shut up! How dare you attack Zim when he's restrained!" His hands were half-curled and shaking, the nerves in his forearms too white-hot for him form actual fists. "Filthy, treacherous bug! The Tallest will surely punish you for—"

"The Tallest don't care, Zim! Not even Tallest Purple really gives a shot about you. We both know that, don't we?" Tak sorely pushed herself to her feet, legs trembling slightly, but she never took her eyes off of Zim.

Zim felt another sharp jab, not through his damaged exoskeleton, but through his ego—Crack. Furious, he bent forward on his Pak legs, looming over Tak. "Zim demands silence! You have no idea what you're talking ab—ergh!"

An unexpected jolt of pain shot up Zim's legs. He'd hit his feet on the operation table. But, how? He was too high above the table for his feet to possibly...

Zim looked down at himself for the first time. For a moment, all he could do was stare at the body below him, wondering where he was. Then his ego kicked back in, its defenses fully repaired and shining brilliantly, to inform him that THAT was him, that amazing, long, tall, slightly scarred body. He was really that tall. Zim was no longer the smallest Irken in existence.

Wordlessly, despite the pain in his bones, Zim lifted one arm, stared at the hand, and then stretched it out just to see how far away it could go. As he gazed at the fingers, too distant to be part of his hand, Zim was acutely aware of why Irkens had chosen their leaders as they had for so long, of why he had been treated as an inferior. He now saw the truth, that he honestly had been inferior, had been lesser, had been of utterly insignificant worth.

But no more. Never again. Zim was now worthy of every honor the Irken Empire could bestow, was now deserving of their praise and admiration as he had never been before. He could tower above the masses, long, lithe, his reach spreading across worlds, his every step carrying him through the Firmament, from planet to planet between the voids. Slowly, a chuckle built up in his aching chest, into a raw cackle, and soon into thunderous, triumphant laughter. "I AM ZIM!"

"Unfortunately," Tak muttered.

Zim heard the door to the med bay open. He turned to see Tallest Purple come in. "Tak, the computer said you're finished with the surgery. Was it successf..." Purple trailed off, eyes wide, looking Zim up and down. "Whoa."

Zim could have started hopping with pure excitement, if he were not in so much pain. "My Tallest! Look at Zim! Aren't I amazing?!"

"What are you talking about? You're only... ah... yeah, about forty units tall." That's what Purple said, but he still couldn't stop looking at Zim, obviously shocked at the change. "Er, good work, Tak."

In Zim's peripheral vision, he saw Tak bow, hand still on her side where Zim had attacked her. "I thank you, my Tallest. Zim provided several... interesting challenges." Her voice was tense.

Purple laughed shortly. "Yeah. I can imagine."

Zim didn't mind what they were saying about him. He didn't mind that Tak was half-insulting him, or that Purple was half-agreeing. After all, Purple was still staring at him, and it wasn't in aversion, annoyance, or aggravation.

For the briefest moment, for the first time ever, Zim was sure his Tallest's eyes had been glowing with admiration.

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