Dib slept.

And as he slept, he dreamed a strange dream. He awoke on a ship somewhere―another Irken ship―hovering in the dead of space. And he looked down at his hands, and they were Irken; and he looked out upon the universe through Irken eyes.

He adjusted his glasses. (Did Irkens wear glasses? In his dream, this did not matter).

He plucked a journal from a massive pile of papers, flipped through the inky pages of his notes, and found, at last, a blank page onto which he could write. He could feel the excitement humming in his brain and he drew out a charcoal pencil and began to dictate the readings from his screen. After recording what he could, he couldn't help but begin to sketch the planet's contours, its beautiful rings of light, its murky clouds.

He wrote the date, then began his journal thusly: I have arrived at Sloo. It is, in a word, breathtaking. From space, I can identify biomes of diverse kinds: deserts, jungle, savannah, tundra. Surely, it must be hospitable to advanced life. The discoveries I make will be indispensable!

Finally, in a voice not his own, but smaller and strange, he said, "OmniOrg. Scan the surface for sentient life. We should―"

THUMP. RATTLE.

Dib jumped back into consciousness, heart in his throat. A wave of pain snarled his neck muscles, caused, he realized, by the sharp angle of steel he'd been sleeping on. The frail journal, open and resting on his chest, slid onto the floor as he rolled onto his side.

THUMP.

The sound that initially awakened him shook the ship once more; it drummed against the carapace, like fistfuls of sand against sheet metal. Whatever Zim was navigating through, it was skirting underneath and creating a racket.

Dib sighed, stood to his feet, and rubbed his aching back. The cabin had not been designed with sleep in mind; the only way he'd managed to find a spot was by fitting his body into an uncomfortable, contorted position across cables, panels, and components. As he came to steady himself against the back of Zim's pilot seat, he realized that there was another biological function that was not likely to be accommodated. He swallowed a huff of discomfort. Shouldn't have drank all that soda right at lift-off.

"Hey… Morning… Or whatever this is."

Zim didn't respond to his pleasantries beyond a grunt.

Through the glass, Dib could see and assess their progress: as he suspected, the ship glided over the dusty ring of a purple gas giant, and the granules and chips of ice skimmed the ship's hull harmlessly. This leg of the trip, Zim had warned him, would take longer than the first. Jumps could send an Irken shuttle from point A to point B in a flash, but one jump depletes a fuel cell, which meant they had spent that shortcut already. Until Zim could find a planet with refueling facilities, they would be traveling at a more sensible speed.

"How's it going up here?"

The Irken shot him a hostile glance.

"Are we almost there?"

Zim changed the subject so that he could kick the console and gripe, "I don't know how you convinced me to follow you down this ridiculous path. Sloo's a useless wasteland!"

"Have you been there before?"

"Of course not."

"Then how do you know it's useless?"

Zim, stunned, slacked his jaw. His sputtering erupted more furiously than before. "S-SILENCE! FOOL! The Irken Empire has a LIST of worthwhile planets ripe for conquering! And Sloo is CERTAINLY not on it! That MAKES it useless!"

"I thought the Armada just moved in a straight line," Dib said, motioning its path in his hands.

With a twitching brow, Zim jerked forward, away from him. "Don't…! Pester me while I'm piloting."

Dib sighed deeply. The alien might have made some strides toward independent thought, but the urge to defend his society ran strong. The boy almost complied and withdrew, but a sudden discomfort reminded him of his predicament. There was no way getting around it now. He squirmed. "So, Zim, what's the, uh, bathroom situation in here?"

Zim acknowledged without turning around, "Your odor has indeed grown exponentially worse since we left, but bathing now would be inconvenient."

"What? No! Not a― I need to―" Dib decided to cease being coy. "I need a toilet."

Zim threw his head back with a powerful, screechy guffaw ringing with derision and surprise. "Ahh, yes! I've forgotten all about your species' obsolete organ functions." The alien cast a smarmy look over his shoulder. "Irken ships have no such things."

Dib glanced frantically about the interior cabin. "What do you do, then? When you have to―you know?"

"The Irken form is a model of efficient energy-management," Zim bragged. "The PAK ensures it accepts only precise nutrition, uses every calorie, recycles fats and fluids, and compresses waste. I merely clear the byproduct filter once every few weeks."

"Oh." Dib thought about this for only a second. He had wanted to know more about Irken biology, but this wasn't exactly the first lesson he wanted. "Gross."

"What's truly revolting is the amount of toxic sludge you humans expels on a daily basis."

"Well, I really gotta go."

"Ah―tch―URGH!" Zim waved him away, twitchy with impatience. "Just… reabsorb!"

"That's NOT how it works!"

"Surely you can find some manner of tube to expel it outside. Now, leave me be! I'm trying to focus."

"No way! I am not doing that. C'mon, Zim, can't we land somewhere? Just for a break? What about that planet there?"

"The one clearly made of toxic clouds?"

Dib adjusted his pointing a few inches to the right. "Er… That one?"

"That's a comet."

"PLEASE," Dib groaned. "I'm DYING."

Though Zim would have readily continued this argument with a string of foul epithets, his attention continued to be pulled toward the blinking console at the helm. At last, he noticed a blinking light of interest. He sat up and hummed a querying sound. "That's strange," the alien remarked. He leaned in for the console screen. "There's a repair-request signal coming from somewhere."

"Wh-what?"

"It's weak…" Zim's voice strained. "And it's Irken."

Dib hopped to and fro. "Well GREAT let's LAND and INVESTIGATE."

"Control your bladder, monkey! False distress signals are a classic trap! Now― what is this place? This quadrant is hardly mapped at all―"

He clawed open a display screen, found the signal's coordinates pointing to some planetary body.

The console only read: ▓▒▓▒▓.

Zim screwed up his eyes, rubbed the screen, cursed. "What is WRONG with this thing?" He gave the console a smack with his fist, which caused a flare of pixels to sizzle over the screen. The text remained indecipherable. "Stupid, broken piece of―! Display PROPERLY!"

But Dib, looking at the same screen, said, "What are you talking about? It says ▓▒▓▒▓."

Zim blinked at him, stupefied. "What?"

"▓▒▓▒▓…?" Dib's voice crackled and fizzed, but he overcame his fear of Zim's wrath to insistently point. "Right there. See? ▓-▒-▓-▒-▓. Can't you read?"

"Are you mocking me?"

"ZIM, I'M TELLING YOU, IT SAYS ▓▒▓▜▒▓▓▒░▟▚▓▒▓▓▞▛▒▓▒▓▟▓▒░▋▓▙▒▓."

...Jungle.

Insects whirring, the clap of condensation on thick foliage, birds warbling their mating cries, branches so thick that the ground lay in perpetual night, asleep, cool, writhing.

...

Was it the memory of a jungle? The way sunlight rippled through leaves seemed, for a moment, like the blip of faulty software. Noise jammed. Colors swam with pixels and bits.

A voice he didn't recognize: now, come on, then, we have to set up―

Zim squealed and seized, his leg thrusting upward and clanging a shin against a metal pipe. The biting cold of steel touched his cheek. As his eyes peeled open and popped socket-wise into place, a strange creature came into view, with black, hair-like legs, glassy eyes, a peculiar torso of black fabric.

Then he realized it was Dib, upside-down.

Everything hurt, and as he came to, he heard the soft protests of his control console alerting him to trouble. The alien's eyes wandered the room, then fell upon the windshield. Shocking, vibrant green plants cluttered its view.

"Huh?"

He heard a ribbit and saw that an amphibian's hindquarters rested on the exterior of the glass.

Then, Dib spoke. "Well, you're finally up," he announced.

Zim's throat clenched, raw with thirst and strain. "'Finally'? WHAT HAPPENED?"

"We crash landed. You don't remember?"

"What? How? Why!?"

"Why?" Pale and exasperated now that the threat of fiery death had passed, Dib yelped, "Because you passed out!"

"Well―! WELL! I'M SO SORRY THAT MY MALFUNCTIONING BODY IS INCONVENIENT FOR YOU!"

Perhaps the boy recognized the folly of his complaining; he stepped over the grid and sighed wearily, his plodding steps bringing him to Zim's collapsed body. Standing over him, he offered a hand in a casual, unfriendly gesture of assistance. "Was it your PAK again?"

Zim, legs crumpled, eyed the hand and panicked. He slapped the hand away and proceeded to groan and twist about in an effort to pull himself together. Between puffs of exertion, he bemoaned, "Yes, and you were supposed to have fixed it! I should have never―!" Finally, his introspection caught up with him. "Hey," Zim murmured, lifting his aching head and steadying into an upright position, "why aren't we dead?"

"Your robot took over."

"What?" Zim gawked. "GIR did something COMPETENT for once?"

"Sort of? We didn't die, so…? That counts for something."

"GIR! Report on our location!"

Zim's cry into the din resulted in no response―no chipper, squeaky shout of compliance, no goofy non-sequitur.

Zim swiveled his head about the cabin, but found them alone. "...GIR?"

"He went outside. To 'look for a pony ride,' he said."

"Surely he meant to say 'check the atmosphere.' We'll have to wait until it's completed before―"

"No, no," Dib said, waving his hands feebly, "it's fine. I already.. Uh… Stepped out to do my business."

In disbelief, Zim untangled himself and lunged to his feet; stress wore at his screeching throat. "FOOL! There could have been any number of undetectable toxins in the air! You… you… might have…!"

Dib arched an eyebrow at him.

"M-might have put ME in danger!"

"There are plants and animals out there," Dib said, ignoring Zim's yammering. "Besides, I checked. This Von'nen guy took notes on this place." Dib pulled the flimsy binder into view, propped open a page with diagrammed text, and pointed to a sketch of a celestial system. "' Reklo. A nearby habitable moon. Useful as a way-station, due to its mild climate and proximity to multiple major planets. The native river eels are especially delicious raw' …?" Dib looked up, mildly disgusted. "He's definitely been here."

"Reklo?"

"Yeah, you said a signal was coming from here? So I told the robot to land us, and here we are."

Strange. Now that Zim thought on it, as he focused on the last images he could recall, it seemed obvious to him. Reklo. That was the name of the location that appeared on his console―clear as day. And he could remember the human boy, too, insistently telling him, Reklo, right here, see? I'm telling you it says REKLO.

"Huh. Why does it sound…?"

Zim had a thought on the tip of his slithering tongue, but a sudden thrust of force into the ship knocked it out of him.

When the two scrambled out of the ship and staggered out onto the jungle undergrowth, they found GIR, successful in its quest for a mount: he straddled a rhinoceros-sized beast with blinking clusters of eyes and white, shaggy fur, its cry and pawing shaking the ground, its tusks ramming the underside of the Voot until the ship rolled onto its back.

"Master! Do you want a pony ride too?"

The beast returned to its leaf-munching herd, Zim commanded GIR to return to Voot to an upright position, and they assessed their surroundings.

The plant life, must like an Earthen jungle, clumped so thickly overhead that it choked out the sunlight that yet trickled through in gold speckles along the mossy ground. Vines snaked up tree trunks and dangled like hungry tentacles; flat and fern-like leaves shuddered with the scurrying of tiny animals beneath them; the drone of insects and sky-bound life hummed through the thick entanglement of branches. Dib squinted upward. He could barely make out a patch of sky, colored a rosy pink.

Far away, deep in the jungle, they could hear the occasional, thunderous crack of something large traversing the forest. They hoped it was more of those rhino-beasts.

Zim meant to pull out his wrist module and start tracking the distress call, but he found himself continually distracted. Just when he thought he could refocus, another sound would set him on edge, another image would stir a peculiar sense of… Knowing.

He tapped his claws on the module, eyes darting about, and wandered a few steps too far into a ditch. His feet hit the chilly, hushed flow of a creek. He frowned into it, then thought aloud. "I have a perfectly accurate record of every place I've ever been to. So I know I've never been here." He watched a thread of water wind about smooth purple stones, then ignite with rippling light. A slim silver eel dashed through the current. Zim furrowed his brow and managed to convey concern. "Then why…?"

A flare of light again, this time sharper, painful, pixelated. He yelped and forcefully blinked the static from his eyes.

"Zim?"

Footsteps approached from behind and rested at the top of the ditch.

"We'd better look for this distress-signal-thing," Dib called out. "Where'd you say it was?"

Zim grunted and trudged up the hill, shaking the water from his boots. He didn't understand all this, and what he didn't understand, he disliked. Better to turn his attention on something he could figure out on his own.

A short hike from their landing spot, five minutes at most through the thick underbrush, they tracked the signal to a broad clearing in the middle of the forest. The patch of dirt and grass spread out before them, blanketed in the shadows of trees and milky-pink light of the moon's orbiting star. Weeds with pungent white flowers led them down into a gentle slope that formed the clearing into the shape of a shallow bowl, and around its rims, clustered amid vines and brush, a close inspection revealed strange, metallic rods sticking out the earth. They towered overhead, bent into the leaves of the trees, and were curved inward and aligned side-by-side, consecutively, like the ribcage of some great creature.

"Yes, there was a ship here, all right," Zim deduced. He angled his wrist module about, trying to triangulate the exact coordinates of the blinking signal. "Must have crash-landed ages ago."

"Who were they?"

The alien paused over a particular patch of yellow grass, fiddled with a few buttons, and nodded. "If we're lucky, we can uncover their records and find out. The signal's strongest here; ready for some digging?"

"For some… huh?"

From… somewhere, a shovel materialized and was flung onto the ground at Dib's feet. The boy stepped back in surprise and eyed it skeptically.

"Well?! Don't just stand there, pig-monkey! You evolved arms for a reason, didn't you!?"

Dib hadn't realized how muggy and sweltering the air was until now. He blinked sweat from his eyes, and smelled the dank odor of upturned soil where he stood. Muck from the digging covered him up to his knees and he panted as he launched another searing, exhausted plunge of the shovel's blade into the ground. Mosquitoes―or something like them―flocked to his neck to take eager bites from his sopping, unprotected flesh, so with every other scoop of dirt, he had to pause and swat them away. He could swear he could hear them snickering.

The boy gained the sense to look around himself and see that he was now deep in the ground, having tunneled a solid six feet down. He wincingly glanced up into the burning sky, far up and beyond the dark pit he'd dug himself into.

"Hey, Zim? Don't you think it's time for us to switch?"

Zim, who had since settled into a beach chair and suckled on an ice-cold soda, hollered back down into the pit, "Why? You're doing such a great job!"

"I've been digging for… Hours maybe? And I'm getting kinda dizzy―"

"That's the dehydration. Hose him down, GIR."

"No, DON'T―"

A funnel of ice-cold water sprayed him in the face, choking him and knocking his glasses into the puddle of mud pooling at his feet. He coughed and sputtered and hollered, all while the robot giggled at his misfortune.

The hosing ceased, and he fumbled for his glasses. That's when he felt his foot hit something hard. He shook the globs of mud from his frames, pulled them onto his head, and could see, through the haze of muck, an object's edge glinting in the brown puddle. He mistook it for the shovel's head at first, but then he reached into the filth and gave it a preliminary tug.

The human cried out in discovery. "H-hey! I think I found something!"

With Zim peering down over his efforts, the boy heaved and yanked at the metallic rim. It was wedged deep into the earth, and for all Dib knew, it could be attached or even welded to a much larger construct that would be impossible to dislodge with human force. But a few more pulls made the stubborn rim wobble a little, giving promise to freedom. He reached for the further edge of the rim with each pull, as if working a coin out of a rusted slot, and felt the power of the mud's suction make a mockery of his struggle, but at last, with a slimy slurp and pop, it came free and slid out before his feet.

It was a little larger than a manhole cover, but much lighter in weight. In fact, despite being a noodle-armed child, Dib could, without too much trouble, hoist it onto its rim and roll it over the dirt to get a better look at it. The surface was caked in clay and rust, so whatever design had been etched into it was now indecipherable. It appeared lumpy, sturdy, and alien-made.

"What is it?" Zim demanded from above.

"Isn't it Irken tech? You tell me."

"Well, quickly! Bring it up here!"

Panting and wriggling against the wall of slick mud, Dib made a few failed attempts until at last, he hoisted the disc free and onto the solid ground at Zim's feet. The metal thumped on the grassy clearing and the alien bleated in excitement.

"Yes, yes, YES~! This is EXACTLY what we need!" Zim lifted it, gave it a quick examination, and clapped a claw onto a tiny, blinking light soldered into the disc's surface. "This AI plate was transmitting that distress signal. Whoever was sending it out is long doomed, but the plate should still function."

Dib rested his elbows on the pit's edge, too exhausted to make the final heave to escape the hole he had dug. He looked quizzically over at the artifact. "There's… a computer on it? There's no way it still runs."

"Never underestimate Irken technical ingenuity! GIR! Come here!"

The robot, disappointed that its water-play had to be interrupted, trotted over.

"You're backwards compatible aren't you?"

"I can sing the alphabet backwards."

"…I choose to take that as a yes." Zim wrenched its metallic skull-cap open. "Move your brain over; we're plugging this in."

GIR happily plopped down onto the grass and allowed Zim to rummage through. The alien muttered to himself and fished cables around.

"Having some intelligence in you will be a nice change of pace," he continued. "Anyway, once I get this running, we should be able to access any memory files leftover from the ship's AI…"

Zim clipped one, two, three black wires together. Weak sparks flew as the robot's brain became ensnared with the ancient device.

Dib, watching, furrowed his brow. "Are you sure this'll work?"

Then, to prove Dib's skepticism wrong, GIR's body shuddered―thrashed―and sprang up onto its feet like a startled animal.

Something about the robot's movement made the two of them leap and retreat. Zim squeaked in an undignified way and scrambled up a tree stump, where he feigned bravery by gripping the blaster at his side; Dib ducked behind another tree and peered cautiously over his shoulder.

There, in the quiet of the jungle clearing, GIR's body stood in pause. Its eyes lacked the blue gaze-the lights had fizzled out and were left eerily blank. After a few moments, the robot body turned about in a blind whirl, its eyes dark, and a crackling voice emerged from its mouth. It was not the voice either of them expected; it wasn't the squeaky falsetto or lisping trill, but a nasal, dry, deep baritone, like a plump, well-aged man in his fifties, which clashed with the diminutive form of the SIR unit and made its disorientation almost comical.

"Wha―? What's happened? Oh, o-oh! I feel peculiar."

The two of them steeled their nerves.

"O-o-oh. Oh my." The robot slumped onto its knees, and after a few moments, it pawed its tiny metallic hands on the sod. "What… where…?"

"What's it doing?" Dib hissed.

His voice caused the robot to jerk upward and fizzle in alarm. It groped blindly about. "H-hello? Who's there? My camera system is down, I―can't see a thing. Hello?" It stepped too far from the plate and jerked itself on the leash of cables; surprised, it turned around and tugged on the cords sticking out from its cranium. "What on…?"

"Zim, maybe you should talk to it?"

"Erm.. Yes... AHEM. Computer! You will identify yourself now!"

"Who am I talking to?" The robot anxiously pried at its non functioning eye sockets. "I-I'm sorry, I don't recognize your voice at all."

"I am an Irken; it matters not who I am! Now! Identify yourself!"

"A... what? I...! I think you ought to identify yourself," the robot countered hotly. The more its anger grew, the more pretentious and puffy it sounded. "Having woken me up in such a horrid state―and, ugh, what kind of useless tin can have you put me in?"

"Computer! You will quit WHINING and DO AS YOU'RE COMMANDED! I demand that you identify yourself!"

"WELL I THINK YOU ARE VERY RUDE AND I DEMAND AN EXPLANATION!"

Dib poked his head out and saw the two stubborn beings screeching at each other. He decided nothing would get done if he didn't intervene, so he moved out into the clearing and began to approach the combative robot.

"Alright! Listen! We just... have some questions! We're not here to argue."

Snootily, the robot thumped back into a seated position and trained its visionless gaze on Dib, monitoring his voice. "I will GLADLY help you the moment I know to whom I am speaking!"

"I'm Dib."

Zim hissed furiously at him. "Don't TELL IT anything!"

But Dib read Zim's paranoia as ridiculous and ignored him. He took several nervous steps forward, and leaned closer to explain, in an assuaging voice, "I'm a human. From Earth."

"Hu-man…? Earth…?"

"And that guy over there-the screaming one-that's Zim," Dib continued. "He's an Irken, from Irk."

"Ir… Ken…"

"But, aren't you Irken? Like, a computer from an Irken ship?"

The robot opened its maw and, rather than words, released a tremendous, painful whirr, like a glitch had lodged in its throat and wouldn't dislodge. The horrifying squeal of corrupted data ceased after a few moments, though, and GIR's body shuddered once again. The program announced: "My name is PU_Delta_Admin_Src-1.3.2b." It heard the unimpressed silence from the two of them. "Oh, but… I just know I had a nickname, too, but… I'm sorry, I can't seem to remember. Dib and Zim. How did you find me?"

"You were sending out a distress signal."

"Oh?" The robot wriggled about thoughtfully. "Strange… No, I can't tell what it was for. Ah, well. I'll assist you if I can, regardless. That is one of my functions... I think. Now, I don't mean to trouble the two of you, kind sirs, but it seems this body's visual cortex is not properly connected. Is there any way to fix that? So that I might see you?"

At least it was speaking politely now; Dib looked past his shoulder and motioned for Zim's help.

"What? Oh. Hnngh. Fine." Zim plodded unhappily across the mossy ground and seized the rattling can of GIR's skull. He gave the interior cables an indelicate yank and released the robot to collapse onto the ground.

Its eyes flickered and dimmed as its found its footing, then brightened with a piercing violet hue. The robot jerked and glanced about the area, past their bodies, and looked more puzzled than relieved. "Oh, oh… Well… Erm, now you're a fuzzy mess of pixels, I'm afraid. My optical codec doesn't seem compatible with this… this contraption." It squinted about. "Say, this will be much easier if you plug me back into my own system. Do you see the console in front of you?"

"Uh…" Dib gave Zim a confirming look. "No."

The voice scoffed, like it thought he was joking around. "Oh, come now; I'm the blind one, not you! It's a large table, against the northernmost wall, that way. It has a whole series of buttons and blinking lights and all that."

Dib and Zim, glanced over their shoulders to search for any sign of a broken down console. Instead, they saw only dirt, rust, and grass, open to the elements on every side. The thick jungle around them buzzed with insect life; the metal ribs of whatever structure used to stand there spread out in a barren, silent row.

"There's nothing here," Zim answered forcefully, and a little bit rudely, all things considered.

"Yeah, um…" Dib cut in with more diplomacy. "I hate to break it to you, but whatever was here? It's long gone."

"Hmm? What?" The voice quieted, then erupted with even more insistence. "No, no, that's not right. Look around. I must have been dislocated from the ship somehow. There's a shipwreck nearby; it has all my equipment. Can you boys get me there?"

"This is a shipwreck," Zim said. "It's in ruins, and we dug your useless circuit board out from under it!"

Zim's explanation only seemed to agitate the voice further, like it didn't appreciate being contradicted. It huffed and blustered, its stuffy accent only seeming to swell. "Well, well―no, this is ridiculous. I, I must have been out for a few days, so I must have slid a little ways off―"

A beep sounded, and a red light flashed over the rusted artifact plate. Dib and the artificial intelligence jumped in surprise, but Zim coolly pulled up his wrist module, closed the scanning laser screen, and read the output data. "Five thousand years."

The robot screwed its purple eyes intently. "Hmm?"

"I just carbon dated you. That's how long you've been buried."

"Wh-what? You said― five thousand ―! That's just not―"

"Why was this Irken vessel deployed to this sector? What happened to the crew?"

"I… don't…"

"What was the name of the captain? What was their mission?" Zim endured the robot's silence only a second more, and demanded in increasing aggravation, "Do you know ANYTHING of ANY USE AT ALL?!"

The robot turned its head back and forth, rocked its shoulders, then looked weakly up at the two of them, pathetically murmuring, "If… If we could only find… my console, then surely…"

"Great! His memory circuits are fried." Zim harrumphed and sneered. "This trip was useless. Guess it's back in the hole."

"Wh-what?"

Dib, surprised by the cruel turn, lifted his hands. "Woah, Zim, don't you think we should-"

"WHAT ARE YOU SNIVELLING ABOUT, BOY! If a computer doesn't work, it's JUNK!"

"Hey! Come on! We just dug up an ancient alien intelligence and you want to chuck it?"

"It isn't alien to me," Zim countered.

"It's still old! And mysterious! And kinda cool!"

"Only a savage, primate brain such as yours could look upon a rusty piece of shrapnel like that and declare it 'cool.'"

"Let's keep it!"

"NO! We're dumping it!"

"Erm…"

The two of them squawked a few more disagreements and threats, foreheads pinned in ram-butting form.

"Ex… Excuse me? I don't mean to interrupt your debate over my unspeakable demise, but…" The robot squeezed between the squabblers. "What were you hoping to find, exactly? If my repair request signal has been circulating unanswered for… five thousand years, then you must be out of your way."

"We're on a mission," Dib answered, giving far more weight to their quest than it merited so far. "To find out… Stuff."

"Important stuff," Zim echoed.

"Mostly about Irken history? Which I guess you can't remember?"

After a moment of humming electricity, the robot tentatively admitted, "It sounds familiar... And unpleasant… Where does your mission take you? I might have some uncorrupted field guides tucked away in my circuitry."

Dib didn't have high hopes, but he also didn't wish to give up such a precious chance at handling a mysterious, talking artifact. "We were heading to Sloo."

It was like a thunderstorm burst from the belly of the rust-caked disc: a rumble, a whip-crack, blinding light, and surge of violent energy traveling in a snarling bolt. The purple lightning threaded through the cables and, upon meeting GIR's cranium, erupted into a tiny but powerful repulsion force, knocking both alien and human onto their backs.

The sound and force startled them as much as it knocked the wind out of them, so it took several seconds of writhing in the patchy dirt before either of them found the strength to moan and sit up. Dib did so first, cradling his aching head with a hand and struggling to peer through his crooked eyeglasses.

"Ugh… Ow. What was that?"

When he fixed his glasses, he found GIR, still purple-eyed and buzzing with the deep voice of the intelligence, staggering in shock. Steam poured from its agape mouth.

"Sloo!" it cried. Its voice grew despondent and terrified. "I remember Sloo! Oh, oh, the HORROR! SOMETHING HORRIBLE IS THERE! But, OOOH, sirs, you must take me there at once!"

Zim hopped back up onto his feet and poked a claw rudely into the robot's forehead. "So NOW you remember something? How very convenient."

"This is no ploy! Hearing that name just now fired off my neuron-cells! My template is functional!"

"I don't really know what you're talking about," Dib said, "but what's on Sloo that's so terrible? Is it still there?"

"After five thousand years? Impossible!" It paused. "Mostly improbable." Pause again. "Most likely not… Maybe… If we're lucky… Uhh… LOOK HERE! I don't exactly know what 'it' was! But my organic original sure left there in a hurry! He must have crash-landed on this moon in a desperate escape…"

"Organic… original…?"

"Yes, yes, I do remember! My original had a research base there, so surely, there will be more equipment… Perhaps enough data files to trigger a cascade, so that I can self-repair…!"

"You're a personality upload," Zim declared. "Why didn't you mention this before?!"

"I didn't? Must have slipped my mind."

"Wait." The gears were turning wildly in Dib's head; he felt his vision spinning from all the excitement. His chest swelled with surprise and anticipation―it couldn't be, it couldn't be. "You came from Sloo―and you landed here."

"Hmm, yes, that seems to be the size of it."

Before the tiny, possessed body of a robot that normally tormented him, Dib dropped to his knees and flung the heft of his mysterious book out onto the ground. He gripped it only to shove it into the eyesight of the upload. "Th-this!" His voice came out strangled with exertion. "Did you WRITE this!?"

For a long, pregnant pause, the robot's eyes lingered on the cover of the book.

Dib thought his heart might leap out of his ribcage; he sucked in a breath.

"...Er… I can't see anything, you know. But my original did author many books. He was a prolific writer in the field of artificial intelligence, bioprogramming, and augmented cybernetics."

The boy dropped the book and blurted, "Oh my god. You are him! You're him! You're this Von'nen guy!"

"Von'nen?" The name whirred in its circuitry. The intelligence coughed. "Well, sort of. I'm a respectable copy, anyway."

"THAT'S INSANE! I have so many questions! I've been reading this book and I'm investigating stuff and DID YOU INVENT PAK'S, what were you researching―!?"

Just as Dib started to get into its personal space, the robot, sensing his encroachment, backed away nervously. "I'm glad that we've found grounds for cooperation, and that you're… erm… enthusiastic. But let's focus on fixing me first, yes? I'm sure I'll be better suited for interrogation once I'm repaired."

"I'm sorry," Zim blurted, inserting himself into the fray and pointing rudely, "you don't find this fishy? He doesn't even SOUND Irken!"

Dib, fairly, asked, "What do Irkens sound like?"

"I―it just doesn't sound right! Computer, say something in Irken!"

The robot screwed its purple eyes tight and mulled, "Is that a language?"

"SEE?"

"He's broken, Zim. Once we fix him, I'm sure he can speak whatever horrible alien-speak you want." Dib moved to the entangled, strobing disc and rolled it up onto its side. Moving it to the ship would take some delicate, complicated maneuvering, so he tucked it best he could under his arm and avoided tangling himself in the attached cables. A thought occurred to him, and it bothered him enough to voice aloud, "Actually… What language are you speaking now? How can I understand you? Why have I been able to talk to every alien I've met so far? That doesn't make sense."

"Foolish Dib! All aliens speak English! I definitely didn't stick an auto-translator into the back of your skull when you weren't looking!"

"What?"

"What?"

Just as Dib started a worried groping about his head, Zim cleared his throat.

"FINE, WHATEVER!" Zim stalked over to the possessed form of his SIR unit, and in a rare display of cooperation, began to carry it in tandem with Dib. "I've got my eye on you, computer. I've known enough AI's to know not to trust them so easily. We'll go to Sloo. But I'm not running a taxi service for defunct personality uploads! You can expect it to be your last stop!"

As Reklo disappeared behind them on their last leap for Sloo, Zim burned in silence.

Though he was initially distracted by the upsetting consequence of his relenting―that this suspicious character, still stuffed in GIR's brain, settled in the back-seat as another passenger―he paused to question why watching the moon made in his rear-view felt so much like an… echo of something. He suppressed this nonsensical emotion at once, but then came more contradictions while he flew the Voot toward their next destination.

Two, bizarre feelings knotted into one:

First, he felt a peculiar longing for the company of his SIR unit. He usually felt relief at being spared the robot's antics, even for a little while, but this… usurper had come, possessing GIR's form, shoving him aside… Yes, Zim had done the transfer himself, and now he was beginning to regret it. He should have left that disc to rot. He should have left it alone.

Second, he felt a nagging sensation, one he did not fully understand, that surged everytime he glanced over his shoulder and noticed the boy and the intelligence chattering in secret, sharing, gossiping, explaining. It irritated him.

Dib was supposed to be Zim's ally. That was the word the human boy used― "ally"-wasn't it? When they agreed to this madness at the start?

And now this intelligence appears and… interrupts. A wedge.

Zim had no solid evidence, but the more he let his thoughts ruminate on it, the more certain he became. That thing was trouble.