Chapter Three: Anger and Allies

Now that you know how I began my existence, you can more easily comprehend why I terminated my own life. However, to fully understand the reasons behind my action, I must show you the development of my depression.

~(*)~

After the Great Assigning, it was time for Zim to begin his "mission." He and I had to fly in his old Voot Cruiser to Earth without any directions. In fact, I am almost sure our flight was as long as it was—six months, to be exact—simply because he had no idea where he was going. Anyways, during this ridiculously long flight, I had to find a way to entertain myself. That turned out to be the easiest part of the flight. Within the first minute of our journey, I had found the source of my amusement: singing "The Doom Song," a song that I had made up on the spot. At first, I had done it to keep my mind off of my sadness; but when I noticed that it infuriated Zim, I decided to keep singing it for as long as I possibly could. Since I was a robot, I did not have to worry about breathing, nor did I need to stop singing for things like food and water; so, I managed to keep the song going for the entire length of the trip, with my desire to annoy Zim propelling me. By the end of our journey, Zim was ready to strangle me. Indeed, he almost did; but right when he started to reach out for my neck, Earth materialized in front of our window shield.

It was on this journey that I realized how amusing it was to anger Zim. Considering that we had only just met, I had not yet harbored a grudge against him. Nonetheless, enraging him took my mind off of the looming feeling of sadness within myself. It was getting stronger every day, and I was starting to fear that it would push me towards death, which at this time I still feared. I was determined that I could fix myself, and that death would only come when I felt I had served my purpose in life—whatever that was. Still, I knew one thing for sure: my purpose was not to destroy Earth. Anyone could do that, but I was unique; therefore, I had to be destined for greater things. However, I would have time to figure out my destiny later. For now, to help me stay alive, I decided I would continue doing little things to anger Zim.

However, soon after we landed on Earth and set up our base, I realized that Zim was a horrible person. He was arrogant, narcissistic, and just plain obnoxious. He treated me disrespectfully; to be honest, he treated me like dirt. He constantly yelled at me, scolded me, demanded things of me. I understand that I was his minion, that I was expected to help him and assist him; but he had no reason to treat me the way he did. Even though I did annoy him, that did not give him the right to treat me like shit. Besides, we still barely knew each other. Perhaps I was a sweet, nice, obedient robot, and he just had not given me the chance to express my true demeanor—although none of those things were true. Still, who was he the wiser? Nonetheless, I could not fathom how I was going to continue living with this being.

This agony did not last long—well, it did, but I found a way to make it better. I soon realized that Zim hated almost anything peppy or cheerful or fun. He also hated—with a passion—children. I first noticed both of these when I met Keef, Zim's so-called "bestest friend." While Keef's days were numbered, he revealed to me those aforementioned truths, and he taught me an important lesson: I could not simply annoy Zim. I must have something backing up my actions, otherwise he would grow bored and just kill me. The best thing for making sense of my actions seemed to be my personality.

I had already been in the process of finding a way to bury my depression deep within myself, as it had only progressed since we had arrived on Earth. Also, I already knew that I loved to piss Zim off. However, when I realized that children had the same effect on him, I realized that if I adopted a childlike personality, I could accomplish all my goals in one fell swoop. To convince him that my personality was genuine and not just another joke to annoy him with, I would have to do and say insane things, so that he thought my insanity was the reason behind my personality. Also, if he thought I was insane, then he assume I had no control over myself; thus, I would be excused from punishment and some blame for my actions. It was an ingenious plan, and it never once failed me.

However, after a short time, I got tired of just annoying Zim. I had done a lot of little things around the base to anger him, but never had I actually tried to foil one of his plans. However, before I transitioned into foiling, I thought about what I was doing. Zim—no matter how awful a person he was, and no matter how much I hated him—was still my master. If I purposely messed up one of his attempts to conquer Earth, he would destroy me. He might even have me self-destruct, just so he could watch my death for his cruel amusement. Not to mention, I would also be committing treason against the most powerful empire in the universe. If I had been making this decision later in my life, these factors would have not had any weight in my choice. As my waves of depression surged over me more and more throughout my life, I stopped caring whether or not I was alive. However, as I said earlier, death was something I was not searching for at this time. Therefore, I could not directly foil Zim's plots; but I could help others do so.

The first day we landed on Earth, someone discovered that we were aliens. A human boy named Dib whom Zim met at Skool had instantly suspected Zim as such. In fact, he tried to capture Zim the first time he met him. When I decided I could not directly foil Zim's plots, the memories of that first day flashed through my mind. Dib was the only human who saw through Zim's disguise—a fact which still amazes me to this day, considering how awful that disguise was. He was the only one who recognized Zim as an actual threat. He was the only one who stood in Zim's way of achieving world domination.

However, I did not admire Dib because he was more perceptive than other humans; I admired Dib because I understood him. He may be a human, and I a robot, but I can still understand him. He was the victim, not the victor. He was the tortured, not the torturer. He did not have enemies—well, except for Zim, but that was different. He was everyone else's enemy. Zim was the only one who treated him like a threat, instead of someone to be threatened. Dib led a hard life, with no friends, no family, no one who cared about him. Just like me.

So, just like that, I started a secret alliance with Dib. He never actually knew about it, as I never told him that I wanted to be allies with him. Nonetheless, I still considered it an alliance, since we both shared one goal. We both wanted to foil all of Zim's plots, because neither one of us wanted Earth to be conquered. Not to mention, we both harbored a deep hatred of Zim, which was enough of a similarity to bond us.

Now that we were allies, I decided that I would just help Dib with his own foiling of Zim's schemes. Most of the time, I did very simple tasks, such as helping him infiltrate Zim's base. However, there were times when Dib was not around, and I had to do things on my own. I usually resorted to infuriating Zim as I had in our earliest days on Earth, rather than blatantly ruining his plans. Once, Dib even abandoned our alliance while he tried to study "real science." I tried to convince him to continue hunting Zim, which he eventually did; whether or not my pleas affected that decision, I will never know, but I like to believe they did.

Nonetheless, it is not like Zim really needed anyone to ruin his plans. Dib may have been the only human to threaten his schemes, but one other being also managed to be a threat to them as well: Zim himself. While I will admit that Zim was intelligent and dreamed up some good evil schemes, his personality usually led to his own demise. He was too arrogant, which often caused him to also be ignorant. These both led to him often times ruining his own plans. And I suppose that that was a better punishment for Zim than either Dib or I could have come up with.