I actually wrote this entire chapter within an hour... which may be why I friggin love it so much. The idea just kinda came to me. And to think, I was freaking out about what the lightning bolt would do to Zim. It's pretty crazy I know, but when you're THE KING, this stuff is natural baby.
Ooooh yeeeeah. Read on ma peeps!
Zim couldn't seem to right himself, it was like he was trapped in a free fall through space but nothing he could do could stop it. Everything was black, he could see nothing but he could feel wind rushing past his face.
No wait, there was something, small tiny green lines flitting past him. Lines of code, he must be trapped within his PAK.
Somewhere in the background, somewhere far away, he could hear the echoes of voices. A girl, shouting? Screaming more like it. His name, over and over... then a roar, like a lion-beast, then silence.
Sweet, horrible silence.
Was he dead? No, if he was dead he would know it, he wouldn't be able to fall through his PAK matrix asking himself dumb questions and hearing voices. What was the last thing he remembered? Something about pain, lots of pain and his mind going into meltdown as his PAK screamed something about a massive overload.
Maybe he had system restored, maybe that's why he didn't know where he was. It would explain the lines of code now whizzing past him like rain.
He felt at peace though. Maybe this was what sleeping was like, yeah, that had to be it. He was sleeping for some reason. Humans seemed to do this a lot and he guessed lately he had gotten a little too human for his own good. He had after all made himself taller and he wanted to work on a more permanent solution to that rain problem.
He needed to change his attitude, get back to what he knew. He was an irken, an invader, his job was to conquer planets and present them to his Tallest. His Tallest who had taken away his invadership...
Well, what could he do if he couldn't invade things? Maybe he could try something else, something he liked doing. Like inventing things to blow other things up.
He remember something he liked doing, something to do with fighting but... not random people. A certain person, a special person, someone who made him feel welcomed here, on this horrible little planet. Someone who kept him interested in something other than destruction, someone who's opinion he actually cared for.
Someone who had met him with something other than outright hatred.
He felt so happy thinking about them, even though the name, the face, it wouldn't come to him. He really hoped that his PAK wasn't resetting itself, that would be horrible, it meant he'd forget everything he'd learned other than his basic personality and training.
He'd be just like he was when he first arrived.
Simple, clean, without all the horrible infections from the many people in this horrible world. Especially that stupid kid with the big head, oh how he hated him... well, he would have to re-learn to hate him after all. It shouldn't be too hard, everything he knew about him was based on anger and Zim was very good at anger.
There was something else... someone else though. Someone with... purple hair? He saw a small line of code suddenly fizzle away before him. No, it wasn't purple hair. Who had purple hair?
He began seeing other lines vanish around him. So this was a system restore, his PAK was deleting every bit of needless information to reboot itself from the original personality files.
Well that was nice to know, he supposed.
He'd never had a system restore before... he would have to relearn a lot of earth things. Another line fizzled. What was this planet called again?
Then suddenly something odd happened. The lines slowed down, his falling slowed down. Something was stopping his PAK and a voice was calling out to him again.
That girl's voice, echoing in his mind. Telling him to hold on, to fight back. Fight back what? He wasn't fighting anything, he was just falling peacefully through the matrix.
But her voice... it hit something. Not something in his head, something inside him, something in his heart, in his spoonch, in every part of his being. He felt a warm creep through him, fighting against the oh so pleasant numbness.
Suddenly he wanted to hold on. Suddenly being reset was a really, really horrible thing. There was something he didn't want to miss, something he had to remember. Something so desperate and important to him that nothing in the world should be taking it from him.
He saw a line of code beginning to fizzle out and he reached out a hand to grab it. He caught it, and a flash hit him like the light of a camera. A memory, about two years ago, a young boy and himself having a water balloon fight.
THAT GIRL! He saw her! The one with the purple hair and the dark clothes!
The thing inside him leapt up. He had to get more images! More memories! He had to save himself!
The girl's voice echoed through the void, shouting for him, cheering him on. Fight back!
He grabbed more and more, fizzling or not, each line of code was a memory storied inside his PAK, each one was a camera shot of an event that he knew he couldn't, that he shouldn't, ever forget.
There were things more important than his mission, than the Tallest, it was these memories, it was that girl.
The time he was turned into baloney, the time he got lost in the city, the time he fought the purple haired girl, the time he fought back the army of mutant bees, the time he went shopping with her. They all came flashing back to him.
But something was wrong, the lines of code were speeding up, vanishing faster. Faster than he could grab them. The process was accelerating, detecting his resistance. His PAK must be assuming that there was a virus in the system and was trying to delete as much as possible to save his original programming.
No, he wasn't a virus! This joy, this heat, this desire to be HIM was not a virus! He was ZIM! He was crazy and manic and he loved fighting and eating waffles and blowing things up and insulting the big headed kid and spending time with HER!
He had to find her name, he knew if he could, he would be able to break out of this system restore, he just knew it. Though he had nothing to base that theory on but it didn't matter, it was a thought to keep himself, his personality, from drifting silently away.
The shouting around him became more frantic, more panicked, it was fading in and out now, getting less and less each time. He was falling faster. What was the name of the street he lived on? The name of the skool he attended? The city he travelled through?
Her name, he had to find her name.
He saw a tiny flutter of a code and he grabbed it. DIB. Dib was the boys name! That annoying brat who hated him! But it wasn't HER name.
Zim could see thousands of lines, thousands of snapshots from a hundred years lifetime vanishing, fizzling away. He grabbed as many as he could, but they were all useless. Memories of himself bowing to the Tallest he knew were unimportant, worshipping the ground they walked on, listening to their every word.
They weren't what he wanted, what he needed.
Then he saw it, for a single moment. A line of code that fluttered just for a second through the many others.
He knew it was the one. Her name, her precious name.
Zim could feel the fall increasing, reaching it's apex. The wind was hitting him so hard he had to squint his eyes, the fizzles of deleted code almost obscuring his view. He could feel his body starting to seep with pain, why he didn't know, but it was aching all over.
His head ached terribly, like someone stabbing a knife through his temples over and over. The pain was almost splitting his head apart, causing his eyes and teeth to hurt just from being in the same space as his skull.
The screaming of the girl was fading but it was still there, still pushing him on. His head could have exploded but his heart beat so strongly it felt it would pierce his chest. It filled his body with warmth, with light, with a bright and burning fire that pushed him to do things he knew he couldn't do alone.
He had to get to that code, that line of code which seemed to be fraying slightly at the edges. No, no! NO!
His fingers reached out, claws just an eye's blink from the neon green code.
Everything went white.
Everything went numb.
"Zim? Zim?"
Wanna know something weird? This was one of the shortest chapters. Oh yeah, it was long enough on page, but the word-count is actually UNDER the 1500 point limit! SHOCKING! But it works so well just as it is.
Anyways, the biggest obvious reference is THE MATRIX.
I don't think there are other references here, maybe there are though, tell me if you think there are any there!
I hope you enjoyed this strange, slightly trippy chapter! Tell me if you hated it! TELL ME! And thanks for reading!