Now, technically, I'm a genius-- Gaz says idiot-savant, but that's neither here nor there. The point is, I'm patient. Things come to me automatically in patterns, in logical positions, etcetera, etcetera, I can solve for x from a kilometer away with my glasses hanging from a maple, etcetera. I'm intelligent. But I've never really 'gotten' music. Don't get me wrong, I've heard it and, if encouraged, I can play it; I'm not a brilliant keyboardist, but if there's ever a sudden desperate need for a tapped-out accompaniment to Auld Lang Syne, I'm your man. It just doesn't mean anything to me.

You hear people talk about music controlling their life or running through their minds constantly and everybody's first questions are "What's your name? What year are you in? What's your favorite band?" and eventually it starts to get to you. You feel like there's some piece of you missing you never knew was supposed to be there, some fundamental flaw in your DNA like trisomy or deletion, only not quite as fatal. Or maybe just as. I wouldn't know.

Zim doesn't understand music, either.

-

"Good morning, little burdens to the state. Today I have some horrible news."

The class is thrust into a black kind of silence, confused and disheartened and suffocating all at once but not a single student interrupts as Ms. Bitters talks on, reading from a sickly-looking memo on her desk.

"With the newly elected governor came a surge in scholastic funding, but instead of buying new textbooks or desks, the school board has decided to spend the money on a—" and now her voice turns snarling and nasty—"on a funducational three-day field trip to Presidentland.

"Unfortunately, due to limited funding, only twenty children from our school will go. If you're not failing this despicably easy year, you're automatically entered in a drawing to determine which of you—" she stops and stares down at the memo in distaste.

"Which of you—" A horrible pause.

"Whichofyouwillbefunducatedinthenameoftheschoolboard," she says quickly, but not quickly enough. As soon as the words rip out her mouth, trumpets blare a victory song. Grimy-looking confetti is shot over our heads and starts singeing hair; I hastily move my trapper from protecting my liver to protecting my brain. A disco ball drops from the ceiling and flashy blacklights start to go. Two raver cheerleaders with pompoms and neon skirts suddenly start existing and dancing. I have a very strong feeling that I should get the hell out of here.

Zim eyes me strangely on my way to the door, but makes no attempt to join me. I hadn't really been expecting him to, he had seemed too much into our teacher's torment when I was thinking out my plan even to consider it. ('Thinking out my plan' might not be the best phrase there. My head had gotten as far as DOOR before I started following through.) The doorknob, normally a repulsive shade of brown, now looks like a sixties-era pair of acid-wash jeans and, I note with particular disgust, feels like one, too; somehow, somewhere, the Beatles' Revolution starts to play and I turn the knob quickly before the crazy can spread to me. I run out the door and down the hall and out, out, and out.

-

Boy-thing left, yes he did. Wasn't very subtle about it, either. Looked like one of those great blue Bugbladder beasts with their arms and their aerosol cans and the spindly little eyestalks on the top of their heads that make the buzzy noises and lift them off into the air when they whirl them around so exceedingly fast but they fall over when they walk because their feet are so tiny and their heads are so large. Lumbering. Yes, he lumbered to the door like one of those great blue Bugbladder beasts from that galaxy north of here, the fractal one with lots of little planets with tiny Bugbladder beasts for the ones from bigger planets to squish. My planet's bigger than his is!!

"HAH! I will squish—" Oh he left. I've got to tell him that I'll squish him like one of those great blue Bugbladder beasts squishing a tiny and perhaps not-quite-as-blue Bugbladder beast from an infinitely smaller planet in their insane Mandelbrot universe full of twists and turns and vaguely amusing aerosol chatter! Where'd he go? Out the door, out the door, out the door with a little window on it, that's where he went. I'm a genius, he should admit that. He'll admit it after I squish his insipid face, I'm sure. I will break his eyeshields, too, and then who will be the superior one? Who will come out victorious as always? More victorious than him, that's for sure, and those hideous Bugbladder beasts as well! I would love to stay and see the Bitters woman's downfall, but first I must tell Dib I will squish him

I use the colorful dancing girls' heads to strategically pounce my way across the room like a rocket ship winning a tiny game of space checkers. What a wonderful simile. My marvelously intelligent plan has me out the door in seconds, of course, to the tune of deafening brass thingies and with not a single human boy or girl being any the wiser.

He's lying on the front lawn trying vaguely to grab pieces of sky with his little fists. Earthens as a whole seem to partake in the most unusual of leisure time activities, but this one especially seems uselessly abnormal. What could possibly be the point of this? I'm standing on his chest to tell him how incompetent he is before I get cold, very very cold. In the window to my right, the Gaz creature's horrible visage is lurking, waiting, watching; her squishy eyes glowing in blue light from her video game. She can see me, I'm sure, and has already predicted the horrible ways I am going to stamp this boy's head in and break his face windows; I've got to prove her wrong.

The Dib-thing, of course, is oblivious to our near-future doom, and is still waving his arms about like a crazed mustachioed thing—I snatch one of them and shake him warmly by the grabby.

"You see? You see?! La la la la la!! LA LA!! Hear how carefree I am! Hear my whistle float along the breeze! LA LA LA LA LA LALAOOF."

There is a horrible blunt force to my completely human organs, not catching me off guard, of course, as I allowed it to happen, but it still stops me from completing my self-preservation ritual and preventing the full of Gaz's piggy-laden wrath to screech down upon me. Dib grins lazily up at me. This cannot be good.

"Dib!" I leap to my feet. "Just what do you think you're doing? Are you trying to kill us both? Are you trying to squish us like a great blue Bugbladder beast smashing a smaller fractalNO!! I WAS SAVING UP THAT SIMILE FOR SOMETHING AMAZING!! You would have seen, you would have seen, you would have WITNESSED—"

Something small, spinning, and plastic hits me on the back of my head and knocks me down once more. There is some kind of theme here. Aha, but I jump up just in time to see Gaz's boomerang game system fly right back to here hands and once again I am the victor.

"You..two…" Her voice reaches us as if she weren't a few dozen yards away and a jet of some kind wasn't flying overhead. It is my every intention to steal that technology from her and use it to my advantage. She clenches her fist and I immediately sit back down.

Dib's arms are now crossed behind his head, his foot tapping to a melody I'm sure he can't actually hear.

"Zim," he says slowly, "are you an idiot?"