AUTHOR'S NOTES: I apologize for how disgustingly long it's been since I updated this. I will admit, for a time there I was convinced I was never coming back - I've just been feeling so fucking drained all the time. I hate having seasonal depression; it makes me entirely undependable and unproductive for at least half the year.

WorldsColliding, I want to thank you for your feedback - reading the previous four chapters I have to admit they are either full of Narm, odd plot discrepancies, or nonexistent description of surroundings. On your concerns of confusion between Zim's thought process and the narration itself - this is actually intentional, though perhaps badly executed. I was trying to show the confused, disheveled state Zim was in - and since the story is told from Zim's point of view, I thought it would be a good idea to include his hallucinations into the narrative as if they were actually happening.

(Also, I don't hate your story. :) Towards the end of that review I was getting angry with myself. I was actually going to do a second review for your story that night, which would give a positive upspin on the first - Fate seemed to have different ideas, however, and returned me an error when I submitted. It was three at night, I was exhausted and feeling less than kind towards everything, and grabbed my blanket and went to bed without a second thought. I apologize for how harsh I was in trying to get my point across.

223: A Photo Album

Date: 2/15/09, 5:02:02

- File plhc Retrieved

The New York Times - "All the News That's Fit to Print!"

FRANCE - The streets of St Genis-Pouilly were alight today with French protesters in an active battle against the opening of the Large Hadron Collider.

"We must be heard," asserts Avenall Fortin, aged 47. "We speak in interest of everyone."

-FILE MISSING-

CAPTION: Protesters, pictured outside of one of the opening facilities of the Large Hadron Collider. The sign reads "Humanity Comes First".

The protesters gathered in the early hours of the morning, groups of thirty or more congregating outside each of the six above-ground sites of the LHC.

The Large Hadron Collider, the largest particle collider to date as the name suggests, runs underground in a circular circuit beneath Switzerland and France. It will fire colliding beams of elementary particles together, ramming into each other near the speed of light, simulating the birth of a universe.

"It will revolutionize science as we know it," says Sergio Bertolucci. "This is the answer we have all been waiting for."

The protesters, however, disagree.

"Look at the risks," says Fortin. "They cannot just decide for all of humanity with risks like that."

And the risks, according to the protesters, are high; black holes, immense radioactive fallout, and unstable matter called strangelets, among other things.

The scientists, however, disagree. "You can't just claim the world's going to be eaten by a black hole and not get called out for it," says Valerie Blaise. "The black holes, if any at all, would be microscopic and evaporate due to Hawking radiation - the radiation idea is just silly."

The Large Hadron Collider is scheduled to fire on November 9th of this year. You can read more about it and decide for yourself a

- DELETE ATTACHMENT

- Are you sure you want to do this?

"Hello, this is the house of Caroline Staurdevant. If you've gotten this message it means I'm not home right now - leave a message at the beep. Beep!"

The sound of tinny laughing bounced around the room, before a electric, piercing beep.

"Carrie, you're out right now but I thought I'd-"

"Hey man, what the fuck?" She shoved Zim away, wiping her hands on her clothing, only to have him leap on her back again - clinging there like some large Technicolor tick. One PAK-leg over her eyes, one over her mouth, the other two holding for dear life.

"The device might be tapped!" he hissed.

"-nyways, I just wanted to say hi. Call back sometime, alright? Bye!"

She clawed at Zim's legs, and gagging, he let her go, landing with uncharacteristic grace on a nearby coffee table. She growled under her breath, a savage, raw sound (even for a human!) and smoothed down her wrinkleless clothes in a manner that seemed more habitual than necessary.

"I would appreciate it," she said, "If you wouldn't go batfuck insane every time the phone rang. People call me, so you better damn well get used to it. Why do you care so much, anyways?"

He spat. "Like Zim would care about petty humans."

She growled under her breath, and, in one smooth movement, yanked the phone wire from the wall while walking away. If there was any human emotion that stank more than fear, it would have to be jealousy.

It wasn't his fault is was true - why would he care about humans? They were just so...touchy about the truth. Another sign of the Irken superiority; they were actually stable. Not even ten minutes ago the human had joyously been showing him photographs and going into pain-staking detail on how to develop one - a large amount of the images had been of her laughing with other humans. Just when he thought humans couldn't get any more vain, they had to go and prove him wrong.

Not only that, but she had placed the pictures everywhere, a thousand diseased-looking human eyes staring down from the walls. It was claustrophobic as it was - did the human really feel a need to make it seem like there were even more people in the home? The house almost seemed to be built as an afterthought, with small rooms, smaller windows, and large amounts of clutter the human had intentionally scattered across each room. (At first the clutter appeared to be potted plants, but upon closer inspection the leaves and flowers were made out of cloth.)

It wasn't his fault humans were so...needy. Calling for each other at every hour, needing self-validation by placing pictures of themselves in their own houses, and crying over their primitive technology, ("Why would you do that?" Caroline had screamed, "All of my records were on there!". This was, of course, after he had taken apartthe "fucking motherboard!" of her computer.) She had a change of heart towards Zim, it seemed, every sixteen minutes. They were unpredictable, and could be set off by everything - a show of curiosity, a misplaced word, a concern for his own safety (as displayed not even five minutes ago). But, he told himself, Zim shall not have to see her for much longer.

"Right, Zim?" the same voice broke him out of his thoughts - she spat out the name like it tasted wrong. "I'm sorry. It's just been a long two days, and..."

One of Zim's antennae flattened, the other staying upright. What? She had changed her emotions again? They hadn't even hit the sixteen minute mark yet! He didn't remember humans being this way on the old Earth - was she just an incredibly defective one?

"...I can show you some maps, if you want...before we go anywhere specific."

Go somewhere? In the daylight? Surrounded by even more humans? She couldn't-!

"No!" he screamed. "You can't make me!"

Her hands flew to her ears and then back to their original position. They seemed to be held more taut - the one hand seemed to be clawing at the forehead.

"Okay," she breathed, "okay. Just stay here. I had to go to the store anyways...the atlases-"

"What are those?"

"Atlase-"

"What are they?"

"They're...they're books of maps, Zim. Books of maps. Many, many maps."

He coughed into his hand. "Humans still keep books? That's-"

"I'll be leaving now, Zim."

The books, as they had turned out, had been difficult to find. The human seemed to keep them on shelves taller than she was, the upper levels of these shelves bowing with the weight of them. The shelves were always against walls - they must have not been very important for the human for her to build them so far out of the way, in any case.

The "atlases", as she had called them, were on the bottom-most shelf. There were dozens of them - atlases for Africa, atlases for Europe, atlases for the seas, atlases for the night sky. None of them seemed to be used, despite frail and yellowing pages.

The atlas of North America, however, was thinner than the others - in some places, the page numbers skipped, the primitive glue holding the binding together showing between the papers. The cover was ripped, and the inside cover had odd handwritten scrawling. The pages were folded in on each other and difficult to untangle.

The territory maps of "Canada" had stupid little notes written over it rendering it useless. They had nothing pertaining to the actual land - instead, they were "mommy's an angel" with a circle around a small town, or "i wana live here" with a line drawn completely off the page. The following pages also had notes, though written in slightly more elegant script - "Our old house", by a dot in the southern margin, with a long yellow line connecting it to a dot on the map - this one, labeled "uncle's piggies". "Uncle's piggies", as far as Zim could tell, was in the territory of Canada, right by several large acid seas.

He was confused. The landmass of this false Earth was identical to the old one - there was an extremely large sea that went all around the planet, seven continents, and the humans. How was that even possible? It wasn't! Did the humans know he was coming here?

He snapped the book closed in disgust. The atlases were useless, just plants they had placed here to confuse him. The human was not to be trusted. This was probably part of that little organization's territory, some twisted little place to give someone the illusion of freedom.

He spat on the ground, the carpet giving off a faint burning smell. Well, two could play at that game.