Author's Note: Well here it is, chapter two, still a little short, but a little early. For those of you expecting more angst, remember that survival takes precedence over anguish... allow the situation to fester, so to speak. Also this isn't ONLY going to be about survival and going mad... I have plans for poor little Dib... hehe. By the way, the song below is by my favorite band in existence, and the song in particular is a good one for Dib, period.
"Growing up it all seems so one-sided. Opinions all provided, the future pre-decided. Detached and subdivided, in the mass production zone. Nowhere is the dreamer, or the misfit so alone. Subdivisions: In the highschool halls, in the shopping malls, conform or be cast out. Subdivisions: In the basement bars, in the backs of cars, be cool or be cast out. Any escape might help disprove the unattractive truth, that the suburbs have no chance to soothe the restless dreams of youth." -Rush, Subdivisions
Let me tell you about a planet called Dirt.
First off, the word dirt can mean alot of things. Dirt is a life giver, the primordial clay from which all green things (with the possible exception of the Irkens) spring. The good book says that mankind came from dirt, well, ashes and dust, and we all return to it when our trip through this suckfest is completed.
At least, we used to. Now I suppose about 99.99999999999% of the human race is crystalized vapor surrounding a cold, dead world, but that's purely semantics.
Another meaning of the word dirt is to describe something in a state of uncleanliness. The Irkens have a very direct, almost ridiculously blunt method of naming things. I attribute this to a complete lack of romance in the Irken soul. They have a planet called FoodCourtia, for god's sake. In any case, calling the planet Dirt is somewhat misleading. Given the opportunity, I would have named it Gehenna, after the trash pits to be found behind the ancient cities of Israel, but then, I've always been a bit melodramatic, and since the Irkens don't HAVE an Israel (come to think about it, neither do we... I... whatever), Dirt is really as good a name as any.
Planet Dirt is the very soul and definition of filth.
Imagine, if you will, a planet where an empire spanning countless worlds has been dumping its junk, its inevitable waste, for centuries. Towering mountains of trash, some of it predating the birth of the United States, extend across a cluttered, unstable, filth covered landscape. Every imaginable unpleasant smell mixed together into one stomach wrenching effluvial mess... Dirt is a planet that your nose never gets used to, though if you live there long enough, it will eventually kill said organ.
The planet I now call home.
Its amazing that I survived, really. The tube I was packed into was never really intended for a human subject, and as Zim will tell you, we humans are impossibly fragile when compared to most species. Helpless, I descended like a meteor towards the planet's surface, the shriek of tortured winds just barely noticable through the viscous crap they had me packed in. I could feel the heat of reentry (or perhaps just entry, since I'd never been there before) through the fluid and the damnable stuff contracted, going from simply a thick liquid to a messy sort of gel. It became quite impossible to breathe actually, and as I choked in that crap I almost missed the impact of planetfall.
Almost.
A jarring shock that sent my brain rattling around in my skull and quite possibly compacted my spine by two full inches caught my full attention. I fought back the veil of blackness, forced myself to calm down, and surveyed my situation. The fluid in front of my face was clouded, obscuring my vision, but I was able to make out a fine network of cracks in the thick glass in front of me. Moving through that crap was like trying to pull my limbs through taffy, but I managed to brace myself against the back of the tube and put my boots against the glass.
Clenching my teeth, I strained with all my (admittedly feeble) might, black circles appearing in my vision. Dib... need.... air...
With a sickening crack the glass gave way, causing me to slid out of the tube like a piece of spam, complete with preservative jelly.
For a split second everything was blurry, out of focus... I spent a couple of minutes coughing the bits of leftover gel out of my lungs, gasping for breath.
The smell hit me and I gagged. If I had anything in my stomach at that point, I lost it on the spot.
Try to imagine every possible organic and nonorganic material left to rot and fester under an impossibly bright and unforgiving sun, mixed with the cloying smell of burnt plastic and foil, scorched metal and oil, and you can imagine that my next few moments were spent very unhappily.
Exhausted, my stomach still convulsing, I lie on my back and stared at the rust colored sky. It was still blurred, and I stared at an indistinct spot for several seconds, blinking before I realized the blurriness was due to my glasses being covered with gunk.
After several aborted attempts to wipe the crap off of my glasses, I finally succeeded at cleaning them and took weary stock of my surroundings.
I was sitting on a field of empty snack foil bags. Alien junk food wrappers extended as far as the eye could see.
It's funny really. Had I hit anything harder, I probably would have died in the impact. However, the Irken race is notoriously reliant on junk food, and those bags never really do biodegrade.
Heh... and they say that stuff will kill you.
Now as a paranormal investigator and "hero" I'd played certain scenarios in my head before. I'd read John Carter of Mars, Conan the Barbarian, Tarzan... I knew what you had to do in a situation like this. Trapped on an alien world, millions of miles from home, you seek out means of survival, you explore. I'd even played in my head what I'd do if faced with such a desperate state.
The reality is, frankly, kind of pathetic. When faced with a life or death situation, where every moment could potentially be grains of sand of the old life clock, you know what I did?
I think you can guess what I did.
I cried.
I cried for Gaz. I cried for Dad. I cried for crying's sake.
I cried for me.
Hero? Savior?
Fuck. I was just a 14 year old kid very far from home.
Blame didn't really enter into it at this point. I mean, it was all so overwhelming. I suppose I was still in shock... that I hadn't really thought things through.
One thing I would have plenty of was time, though.
Guilt would come soon enough.
***
Fear is a powerful motivating force. If it weren't for fear, our species would probably still be a bunch of apes with exceptionally bad hygene sitting around in the jungle. Fear creates necessity, and as we all know, necessity is the mother of invention.
Of course, fear DIDN'T save us from utter anihilation at the hands of an uncaring universe, so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about.
One thing I do know is, fear saved my ass many times in the next few weeks.
Right from the start I knew I was in deep shit. The human body can survive for weeks without food, so while it WAS a necessity, it was not my main priority. No, what scared me, right down to my core, was three days.
Three days.
That's about how long the human body can survive without water.
Looking out over that wasteland of abandoned junk, fear settled in for a nice permanent stay in my gut, like a parasite.
First things first. It was pointless to stay where I was at. The capsule I had come in had no manuevering jets, no vital supplies, nothing of value really. Like most of the trash on this world, it had served its purpose, and was now simply starting the inevitable process of decay.
I thrust away a sudden attack of irony at the thought.
Wading through the sea of left over snack bags, I stopped only to pick up the few bags which were somewhat full or unopened. Staring into the contents of one bag (none too appetizingly dubbed, Cheesy Weezle-Teat-o's) dubiously, I bit my lip. This might be a source of food, save for several unpleasant factors. One, the Urken race had a vastly different chemical make-up to humans, if the effects of lunchmeat and H20 on Zim's personage were any indication. I might be able to live off this stuff, I might not. There was no way to analyze it. More then likely it would simply be incompatible with my system, meaning I could eat as much of it as I liked, but would gain no real nutritional value from it, perhaps some gastromical problems or diaherra. Worst case scenario had me breaking my own back with convulsions and spitting out my guts before I expired.
Not a pleasant thought, that.
Additionally, snack food is notoriously unhealthy, usually extremely high in sodium, which makes you thirsty.
Looking around the dry, cracked, weathered state of my surroundings, thirsty was a really bad idea.
No, water was my first priority.
Climbing over the rusted scraps of some gargantuan piece of alien machinery, I slide down a dusty sheet of some sort of industrial plating and hopped a short gap between plates. My footsteps echoed quietly, a strange counterpoint to the slight moan of wind as it whistled through the gaping holes in the wreckage.
Water. Have to find water.
The problem was, I had no idea where to even BEGIN searching for water.
Walking for hours, I peeked into every nook and cranny I could find, but not a hint of moisture presented itself, save the perspiration which I wiped from my forehead. It was hot, and Dib was cooking. Stopping to rest for a moment, deeply frustrated, I petulantly kicked a piece of trash off the wreckage I was standing on and watched it bounce down the side of the wreck in a slow gravity induced ballet. I sat down and sighed, staring between my legs at the rust covered armor plate.
Come on Dib, THINK! Dib Membrane, son of Doctor Membrane, the greatest scientific genius Earth had ever known (or for that matter, ever WOULD know now... crap... come on Dib, stop with the nihilistic comments... sooner or later those are gonna add up, and the sum equals... don't wanna think about it..) shouldn't be having problems finding one of the most common substances in the universe! You're an investigator... investigate goddamnit! There has to be some scientific method you can use to find something as simple as water...
Wait a minute...
I stared down at the metal I was seated on.
Rusty?
Rust implies corrosion, corrosion requires an anode, a cathode, and an electrolyte.
And the most common electrolyte is...
Moisture... water...
I stood up excitedly and scanned around the wreck, taking note of the highest concentrations of rust. The northwest side of the wreck (which I now recognized as the burned out shell of one of those Irken dreadnoughts) was seriously corroded, and deep lines and cracks had formed down the side, leaving dull, maroon colored streaks in the trash around the base of the wreck.
So... water comes from here, and spills down this side, causing corrosion, which means...
I snapped my fingers.
Rain.
I shielded my eyes and looked skyward, hopefully. I could see clouds through the thick haze of pollution, dirty orangish clouds, sure, but clouds nonetheless.
Hmm... rain might explain why the Irken's had turned this pain of a planet into a trash can.
heh... ryhmed.
I shook off my amusement and proceeded to explore, though several worries remained. I mean, considering the source, this water wasn't exactly going to be clean when it got to me, since it had to fall through almost tangible layers of filth. I was going to need some way of filtering or decontaminating it, which meant I'd need containers. it being hot, I took off my trenchcoat, (strange that I didn't think of that before... guess I was just so damned used to it and all) and looked it over critically. For now, what I needed was something I could use to carry stuff, and this was the only thing I had that'd do. I buttoned it up completely and folded the collars inward, forming as small a hole at the botton as I could. I then took some dirty nylon rags, probably bits and pieces of Irken garments (hopefully not UNDERgarments) and used them to pad the bottom. After that, I threw the six bags of snacks I'd found in the junkfood sea into my makeshift bag. Jiggling it around to test it, I fiddled with it a bit until none of the bags fell out, then tied the sleeves together and wore it like a satchel.
There. Ugly, but it'd do. Let that be a lesson to you kids, never get stranded on an alien world with out a trenchcoat. It may save your lives.
I... wonder who I'm talking to?
I shuddered.
Picking up a long metal pipe with a flared end, I picked my way down the battered Dreadnought and circled it. It rested at a slight angle, half supported by some unidentifable piece of crap, and a partially filled in furrow dug behind it told me that it had, intentionally or not, probably crash-landed here. Since it looked relatively undamaged save for the inevitable weather damage it had sustained and the burn marks, I thought it might be reasonable to assume that it might have some useful items still inside. The problem was, getting the lid OFF the cookie jar.
I backed several yards away from it and frowned, staring at it.
It took me several moments to find it, but after passing it over several times, I spotted something interesting halfway up the side of the behemoth.
It appeared to be some sort of access hatch, at least from my current vantage point, so I climbed up the steep angle of the wreck and carefully walked around the object, observing it from several different angles before concluding that I had, in fact, found a hatch of some sort.
It'd be just my luck to have stumbled across a live gun port or a trash ejection chute, or something similarly unfortunate.
It was almost seamlessly locked together, and I somehow doubted that without power it could be persuaded to open. Still, it was just possible that its designers had left a way to open it manually, in case of emergencies. There appeared to be a panel covering just below the hatch. Jamming my pipe at one of the seams, I worked until light had begun to fade, finally managing to pry some of the aged metal up and jam the flared end of the pipe under the cover, levering it free.
Then I ran into a problem.
On a human ship, the manual door operating... thingy would probably be a crank or valve of some sort. The object I was looking at was a circular hole with no apparent grips or notches on the inside, at least as far as I could probe with my fingers. I frowned at it in puzzlement until it occurred to me that Irkens all had some sort of backpack like thing attached to their backs, it was reasonable to assume the spidery legs that came out of Zim's were standard issue, which meant they were probably needed to manipulate this thing.
Dropping back down, I searched for a similarly shaped object, locating a sturdy looking piece of... something, I returned to the hatch and jammed it in.
Nothing happened.
I spun it in the hole, clockwise and counterclockwise, for several full rotations.
Nothing.
I frowned.
I pushed it in as far as it would go and stomped on it. While nothing opened up, something made a clicking noise. Attempting to spin it this time, I noted that it would not spin counterclockwise, but with some difficulty I was able to torturously move it clockwise.
I think we have a winner.
The next hour or so was spent twisting my makeshift key. The hatch was stubborn at first, but once the seal cracked (releasing a smell not unlike a locker room... full of dead people) The door slowly creaked it's way open a bit more with each twist.
Night fell. It was pitch black. No moon. No stars, just darkness.
It got cold. The wind kicked up.
I shivered.
By touch I was able to determine the hatch was open wide enough for me to enter. I carefully felt around the opening, and was able to determine that the slope inside wasn't too steep, nor too slick. I slipped inside, pulling my key out as I did so. The door stayed open (a stupid design flaw for a ship meant to travel through space, but then, it made my life easier, so I wasn't complaining). Feeling around the floor, unable to see, I was able to determine I was in a small room with another hatch on the far wall... this was probably an airlock of some sort. Since I wasn't able to see, and since my exhaustion was catching up with me, I found the corner with the least wind and curled into it.
It almost seemed like if I could curl myself into as tight a ball as I could, I might not have to wake up in such a fucked up place.
That was my first day on Dirt.
They just got worse from there.
***
"Growing up it all seems so one-sided. Opinions all provided, the future pre-decided. Detached and subdivided, in the mass production zone. Nowhere is the dreamer, or the misfit so alone. Subdivisions: In the highschool halls, in the shopping malls, conform or be cast out. Subdivisions: In the basement bars, in the backs of cars, be cool or be cast out. Any escape might help disprove the unattractive truth, that the suburbs have no chance to soothe the restless dreams of youth." -Rush, Subdivisions
Let me tell you about a planet called Dirt.
First off, the word dirt can mean alot of things. Dirt is a life giver, the primordial clay from which all green things (with the possible exception of the Irkens) spring. The good book says that mankind came from dirt, well, ashes and dust, and we all return to it when our trip through this suckfest is completed.
At least, we used to. Now I suppose about 99.99999999999% of the human race is crystalized vapor surrounding a cold, dead world, but that's purely semantics.
Another meaning of the word dirt is to describe something in a state of uncleanliness. The Irkens have a very direct, almost ridiculously blunt method of naming things. I attribute this to a complete lack of romance in the Irken soul. They have a planet called FoodCourtia, for god's sake. In any case, calling the planet Dirt is somewhat misleading. Given the opportunity, I would have named it Gehenna, after the trash pits to be found behind the ancient cities of Israel, but then, I've always been a bit melodramatic, and since the Irkens don't HAVE an Israel (come to think about it, neither do we... I... whatever), Dirt is really as good a name as any.
Planet Dirt is the very soul and definition of filth.
Imagine, if you will, a planet where an empire spanning countless worlds has been dumping its junk, its inevitable waste, for centuries. Towering mountains of trash, some of it predating the birth of the United States, extend across a cluttered, unstable, filth covered landscape. Every imaginable unpleasant smell mixed together into one stomach wrenching effluvial mess... Dirt is a planet that your nose never gets used to, though if you live there long enough, it will eventually kill said organ.
The planet I now call home.
Its amazing that I survived, really. The tube I was packed into was never really intended for a human subject, and as Zim will tell you, we humans are impossibly fragile when compared to most species. Helpless, I descended like a meteor towards the planet's surface, the shriek of tortured winds just barely noticable through the viscous crap they had me packed in. I could feel the heat of reentry (or perhaps just entry, since I'd never been there before) through the fluid and the damnable stuff contracted, going from simply a thick liquid to a messy sort of gel. It became quite impossible to breathe actually, and as I choked in that crap I almost missed the impact of planetfall.
Almost.
A jarring shock that sent my brain rattling around in my skull and quite possibly compacted my spine by two full inches caught my full attention. I fought back the veil of blackness, forced myself to calm down, and surveyed my situation. The fluid in front of my face was clouded, obscuring my vision, but I was able to make out a fine network of cracks in the thick glass in front of me. Moving through that crap was like trying to pull my limbs through taffy, but I managed to brace myself against the back of the tube and put my boots against the glass.
Clenching my teeth, I strained with all my (admittedly feeble) might, black circles appearing in my vision. Dib... need.... air...
With a sickening crack the glass gave way, causing me to slid out of the tube like a piece of spam, complete with preservative jelly.
For a split second everything was blurry, out of focus... I spent a couple of minutes coughing the bits of leftover gel out of my lungs, gasping for breath.
The smell hit me and I gagged. If I had anything in my stomach at that point, I lost it on the spot.
Try to imagine every possible organic and nonorganic material left to rot and fester under an impossibly bright and unforgiving sun, mixed with the cloying smell of burnt plastic and foil, scorched metal and oil, and you can imagine that my next few moments were spent very unhappily.
Exhausted, my stomach still convulsing, I lie on my back and stared at the rust colored sky. It was still blurred, and I stared at an indistinct spot for several seconds, blinking before I realized the blurriness was due to my glasses being covered with gunk.
After several aborted attempts to wipe the crap off of my glasses, I finally succeeded at cleaning them and took weary stock of my surroundings.
I was sitting on a field of empty snack foil bags. Alien junk food wrappers extended as far as the eye could see.
It's funny really. Had I hit anything harder, I probably would have died in the impact. However, the Irken race is notoriously reliant on junk food, and those bags never really do biodegrade.
Heh... and they say that stuff will kill you.
Now as a paranormal investigator and "hero" I'd played certain scenarios in my head before. I'd read John Carter of Mars, Conan the Barbarian, Tarzan... I knew what you had to do in a situation like this. Trapped on an alien world, millions of miles from home, you seek out means of survival, you explore. I'd even played in my head what I'd do if faced with such a desperate state.
The reality is, frankly, kind of pathetic. When faced with a life or death situation, where every moment could potentially be grains of sand of the old life clock, you know what I did?
I think you can guess what I did.
I cried.
I cried for Gaz. I cried for Dad. I cried for crying's sake.
I cried for me.
Hero? Savior?
Fuck. I was just a 14 year old kid very far from home.
Blame didn't really enter into it at this point. I mean, it was all so overwhelming. I suppose I was still in shock... that I hadn't really thought things through.
One thing I would have plenty of was time, though.
Guilt would come soon enough.
***
Fear is a powerful motivating force. If it weren't for fear, our species would probably still be a bunch of apes with exceptionally bad hygene sitting around in the jungle. Fear creates necessity, and as we all know, necessity is the mother of invention.
Of course, fear DIDN'T save us from utter anihilation at the hands of an uncaring universe, so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about.
One thing I do know is, fear saved my ass many times in the next few weeks.
Right from the start I knew I was in deep shit. The human body can survive for weeks without food, so while it WAS a necessity, it was not my main priority. No, what scared me, right down to my core, was three days.
Three days.
That's about how long the human body can survive without water.
Looking out over that wasteland of abandoned junk, fear settled in for a nice permanent stay in my gut, like a parasite.
First things first. It was pointless to stay where I was at. The capsule I had come in had no manuevering jets, no vital supplies, nothing of value really. Like most of the trash on this world, it had served its purpose, and was now simply starting the inevitable process of decay.
I thrust away a sudden attack of irony at the thought.
Wading through the sea of left over snack bags, I stopped only to pick up the few bags which were somewhat full or unopened. Staring into the contents of one bag (none too appetizingly dubbed, Cheesy Weezle-Teat-o's) dubiously, I bit my lip. This might be a source of food, save for several unpleasant factors. One, the Urken race had a vastly different chemical make-up to humans, if the effects of lunchmeat and H20 on Zim's personage were any indication. I might be able to live off this stuff, I might not. There was no way to analyze it. More then likely it would simply be incompatible with my system, meaning I could eat as much of it as I liked, but would gain no real nutritional value from it, perhaps some gastromical problems or diaherra. Worst case scenario had me breaking my own back with convulsions and spitting out my guts before I expired.
Not a pleasant thought, that.
Additionally, snack food is notoriously unhealthy, usually extremely high in sodium, which makes you thirsty.
Looking around the dry, cracked, weathered state of my surroundings, thirsty was a really bad idea.
No, water was my first priority.
Climbing over the rusted scraps of some gargantuan piece of alien machinery, I slide down a dusty sheet of some sort of industrial plating and hopped a short gap between plates. My footsteps echoed quietly, a strange counterpoint to the slight moan of wind as it whistled through the gaping holes in the wreckage.
Water. Have to find water.
The problem was, I had no idea where to even BEGIN searching for water.
Walking for hours, I peeked into every nook and cranny I could find, but not a hint of moisture presented itself, save the perspiration which I wiped from my forehead. It was hot, and Dib was cooking. Stopping to rest for a moment, deeply frustrated, I petulantly kicked a piece of trash off the wreckage I was standing on and watched it bounce down the side of the wreck in a slow gravity induced ballet. I sat down and sighed, staring between my legs at the rust covered armor plate.
Come on Dib, THINK! Dib Membrane, son of Doctor Membrane, the greatest scientific genius Earth had ever known (or for that matter, ever WOULD know now... crap... come on Dib, stop with the nihilistic comments... sooner or later those are gonna add up, and the sum equals... don't wanna think about it..) shouldn't be having problems finding one of the most common substances in the universe! You're an investigator... investigate goddamnit! There has to be some scientific method you can use to find something as simple as water...
Wait a minute...
I stared down at the metal I was seated on.
Rusty?
Rust implies corrosion, corrosion requires an anode, a cathode, and an electrolyte.
And the most common electrolyte is...
Moisture... water...
I stood up excitedly and scanned around the wreck, taking note of the highest concentrations of rust. The northwest side of the wreck (which I now recognized as the burned out shell of one of those Irken dreadnoughts) was seriously corroded, and deep lines and cracks had formed down the side, leaving dull, maroon colored streaks in the trash around the base of the wreck.
So... water comes from here, and spills down this side, causing corrosion, which means...
I snapped my fingers.
Rain.
I shielded my eyes and looked skyward, hopefully. I could see clouds through the thick haze of pollution, dirty orangish clouds, sure, but clouds nonetheless.
Hmm... rain might explain why the Irken's had turned this pain of a planet into a trash can.
heh... ryhmed.
I shook off my amusement and proceeded to explore, though several worries remained. I mean, considering the source, this water wasn't exactly going to be clean when it got to me, since it had to fall through almost tangible layers of filth. I was going to need some way of filtering or decontaminating it, which meant I'd need containers. it being hot, I took off my trenchcoat, (strange that I didn't think of that before... guess I was just so damned used to it and all) and looked it over critically. For now, what I needed was something I could use to carry stuff, and this was the only thing I had that'd do. I buttoned it up completely and folded the collars inward, forming as small a hole at the botton as I could. I then took some dirty nylon rags, probably bits and pieces of Irken garments (hopefully not UNDERgarments) and used them to pad the bottom. After that, I threw the six bags of snacks I'd found in the junkfood sea into my makeshift bag. Jiggling it around to test it, I fiddled with it a bit until none of the bags fell out, then tied the sleeves together and wore it like a satchel.
There. Ugly, but it'd do. Let that be a lesson to you kids, never get stranded on an alien world with out a trenchcoat. It may save your lives.
I... wonder who I'm talking to?
I shuddered.
Picking up a long metal pipe with a flared end, I picked my way down the battered Dreadnought and circled it. It rested at a slight angle, half supported by some unidentifable piece of crap, and a partially filled in furrow dug behind it told me that it had, intentionally or not, probably crash-landed here. Since it looked relatively undamaged save for the inevitable weather damage it had sustained and the burn marks, I thought it might be reasonable to assume that it might have some useful items still inside. The problem was, getting the lid OFF the cookie jar.
I backed several yards away from it and frowned, staring at it.
It took me several moments to find it, but after passing it over several times, I spotted something interesting halfway up the side of the behemoth.
It appeared to be some sort of access hatch, at least from my current vantage point, so I climbed up the steep angle of the wreck and carefully walked around the object, observing it from several different angles before concluding that I had, in fact, found a hatch of some sort.
It'd be just my luck to have stumbled across a live gun port or a trash ejection chute, or something similarly unfortunate.
It was almost seamlessly locked together, and I somehow doubted that without power it could be persuaded to open. Still, it was just possible that its designers had left a way to open it manually, in case of emergencies. There appeared to be a panel covering just below the hatch. Jamming my pipe at one of the seams, I worked until light had begun to fade, finally managing to pry some of the aged metal up and jam the flared end of the pipe under the cover, levering it free.
Then I ran into a problem.
On a human ship, the manual door operating... thingy would probably be a crank or valve of some sort. The object I was looking at was a circular hole with no apparent grips or notches on the inside, at least as far as I could probe with my fingers. I frowned at it in puzzlement until it occurred to me that Irkens all had some sort of backpack like thing attached to their backs, it was reasonable to assume the spidery legs that came out of Zim's were standard issue, which meant they were probably needed to manipulate this thing.
Dropping back down, I searched for a similarly shaped object, locating a sturdy looking piece of... something, I returned to the hatch and jammed it in.
Nothing happened.
I spun it in the hole, clockwise and counterclockwise, for several full rotations.
Nothing.
I frowned.
I pushed it in as far as it would go and stomped on it. While nothing opened up, something made a clicking noise. Attempting to spin it this time, I noted that it would not spin counterclockwise, but with some difficulty I was able to torturously move it clockwise.
I think we have a winner.
The next hour or so was spent twisting my makeshift key. The hatch was stubborn at first, but once the seal cracked (releasing a smell not unlike a locker room... full of dead people) The door slowly creaked it's way open a bit more with each twist.
Night fell. It was pitch black. No moon. No stars, just darkness.
It got cold. The wind kicked up.
I shivered.
By touch I was able to determine the hatch was open wide enough for me to enter. I carefully felt around the opening, and was able to determine that the slope inside wasn't too steep, nor too slick. I slipped inside, pulling my key out as I did so. The door stayed open (a stupid design flaw for a ship meant to travel through space, but then, it made my life easier, so I wasn't complaining). Feeling around the floor, unable to see, I was able to determine I was in a small room with another hatch on the far wall... this was probably an airlock of some sort. Since I wasn't able to see, and since my exhaustion was catching up with me, I found the corner with the least wind and curled into it.
It almost seemed like if I could curl myself into as tight a ball as I could, I might not have to wake up in such a fucked up place.
That was my first day on Dirt.
They just got worse from there.
***