(A/N: I tried to not curse...I really did...trigger warnings in this chapter: suicide attempts and overdosing. I'd also like to formally apologize for not touching this for so long...I needed to focus on less stories so I could write better. Juggling eight unfinished stories was just too much for me so i narrowed it down to three. I'm having writer's block with those three so I decided to finish this chapter that's been sitting on my iPod for six-plus months. You can tell where I picked up again, can't you? Ah well...)
Disclaimer: I don't own Invader Zim. Neither does Jhonen, but that's a moot point. What I do own are the PAPPS, En/'Real Zim', Dib's depression, Gaz's autism, and the Irken language used within. Enjoy!
Chapter Six: Disorder, In Order
[[DIB bekaruff'ttli'etsusetsu ZIM_ DIB arud'aruprethsetsu qiumaitsacethkedlieryas- etsuv'trelyas tsakitsam'etsu DIB lierookkeesetsu ZIM se'eettssuu DIB danitsaganumase'tsak- i'tsalk it'setsu okenakelieryas relitsagantsalk* ZIM wel'okeumadan wel'okerreellitsadan itsaf't i'tsalk n'oketsalk-]](1)
Dib knew that Zim was brilliant—he was, after all, an alien from an advanced species—but he had never put much thought into how brilliant he really was until a few hours ago.
Skool had finished with no more of those odd IM-style interruptions and Dib had compiled a rather lengthy list on humans—data that he had memorised as simple facts; nothing harmful, just average height, weight, gender distribution, what he could remember of genetics, et cetera. When Skool let out, Zim did something usually atrocious and Dib flew off after him in pursuit. A mere façade for the lesser masses.
When he arrived at Zim's base, the gnomes did not watch him like usual, instead letting him pass by their proximity without pause. He opened the door only to be greeted by GIR, sucking on a large, red-and-green swirled lolly, and let in with a sticky smile.
Normal, right?
Zim was there, all grin and ego, waiting for Dib to hand him the list. When the human-turned-Irken passed the unassuming piece of paper from his pale, holographic hands to his—God he hated even thinking the word—master's black, gloved ones, Zim seemed to finally focus on what Dib looked like.
"Take that disgusting thing off right now," he snapped as he began to read the list, not even bothering to thank Dib for the information. (Why would he though? Ungrateful little jerk.)
"What?" Dib glared down at his hands, stomach (squeedilyspooch) churning with the seemingly-never-ending, swirling miasma of depression and fury. Understanding—resenting (I hate you)—his order, he deactivated his disguise and returned to looking like an Irken.
(God, I hate this.)
"Better," Zim mused as he perused the paper for its secrets, "I demand you stay that way when you're in my presence." Sullen silence was Dib's only reply as Zim mused over the note for a bit longer, then thrust it back into his Dib's hands with a dissatisfied grunt. "It's not detailed enough. Rewrite it."
"Pardon?!" Dib was incredulous, how—what—why was he telling him to rewrite the notes?
"Re. Write. It." Zim over-enunciated each syllable to stress that he was not messing around.
"Why should I?" Dib retorted, completely missing Zim's momentary grin at the three-syllable answer he just gave.
"Because," was Zim's response, "they are not detailed enough." Cheeky little bug.
"What do you mean by "not detailed enough"?" Dib probed, realising that his simplistic questions were eliciting simplistic answers.
Zim's grin grew wider, dampening only as he realised Dib's syllable-count was divisible by two. "A human smeet could've written these," he elaborated. "Zim needs cold, hard facts, not these pathetic little tidbits you've given me. Go and do research, "son of the world's leading scientist" and give me knowledge, not information." He turned to leave in a huff.
"What kind of knowledge...," when Zim didn't turn around, Dib reluctantly added, "master?"
Without turning back, Zim answered Dib with a precise wave of his hand, "Genetics, anatomy, strengths, weaknesses, tactics, instinct, evolution, development, and such. Bring me something I can use, Dib-filth."
"And food?" Dib prompted.
"In the food-storage-container and cabinets; there should be enough for you to take some to your human domicile and consume there, so you aren't bothering me all the time." Zim stepped on a fake-tile and raised a chute to the lower levels.
"How often do I have to eat?"
"Check your PAK manual."
Wow, that's helpful. "And how do I do that?!"
"Figure it out, Dib-thing." With that, the pretentious alien retreated to the safe-house of his laboratory to ponder the machinations of mankind using only the meagre information handed to him by his former enemy. Dib, on the other hand, resigned himself to sulking like a small child.
He pulled food willy-nilly from the fridge and cabinets and composed a slapdash meal of several sweet things along with something that looked like a paste made out of colourful insects. Overall, the taste was not unpleasant, in fact it was rather bland despite what he assumed to be about a kilo of sugar in the whole thing. Irken food sure was odd.
He lazily sat back in a kitchen chair and pulled open the command prompt with some difficulty. When it finally popped up on his implant-screen, he hurriedly entered some commands.
«QUERY: EXECUTE HELP»
The response was far quicker than instantaneous; almost within a nanosecond he had an answer to his query.
«COMPAKT EXECUTION COMMAND: SEARCH_QUERY»
Oh. He felt very foolish. That was simple enough.
«SEARCH_STORAGE»
«#####SEARCHING######»
«ERROR: OVERLOAD\KEYWORD_STORAGE_TOO BROAD A SPECTRUM»
«QUERY: STORAGE OF WHAT WHERE»
He was impressed now. That the PAK system had the AI to recognise that a search was too broad was ingenious. If only humans had the technology.
«SEARCH_STORAGE OF FOOD IN PAK»
«#####SEARCHING#####»
«COMPAKT FILES FOUND CONTAINING KEYWORDS: 3»
«EXECUTE COMPAKT FILES FOUND»
«QUERY: SIMULTANEOUSLY»
«AFFIRMATIVE»
«FACT: A SIMPLE YES OR NO WILL SUFFICE»
Cheeky AI, he decided, I can do without.
«#####EXECUTING#####»
Three documents dotted his implant-screen, covering his peripheral with a jumble of Irken letters and numbers. Before he even had a chance to execute a translation command, the letters seemed to resolve into intelligible sentences and paragraphs. He momentarily mourned the loss of his innocence, of one of his last ties to humanity. Now he was more Irken; now he could read the Irken language.
One of the three documents he dismissed because it wasn't relevant to his needs; it was on the lack of rotting in Irken food when it came to dark spaces. The second one he dismissed because it was on types of self-preserving food made by Irken subsidiaries. The final document was exactly what he was looking for.
The steps were simple, ridiculously simple, even. Step one: depress PAK lower shutter and release.
He reached his arms around his PAK and managed to push in the lower blue—what he assumed to be, since it had yielded to his touch—shutter. It popped open with a satisfying click.
Step two: place foodstuffs into lower storage-unit. The cold-fusion coils keep the area cold enough for even the freshest of Plookesian soups.
Simple enough. He shifted his shoulders and began packing the perishables one-by-one. When he felt he had enough to last him a week, he stopped raiding Zim's pantry and bid a grateful farewell to the ugly home-base...whatever.
As he was leaving, just as he had activated his disguise, GIR stopped him at the door. He had a huge grin pasted on his face, HIYA!
"Hey, GIR," Dib droned in response. He was not in the mood to deal with him right now.
UM...SO MASTA SEZ NOT T'TELL U BUT, the little robot shuffled at the ground, then looked intently at Dib. HE RLLY LIEKS THE MUZIK U GAVE HIM AN HE WANTS MORE. I LEIK IT 2, he added, in hope that it would increase Dib's willingness to comply.
Instead it shocked Dib to his core, "What music?"
THE MUZIC ON UR LAPPY-TOP!
"Why does Zim have my laptop?!" PAK-approved fury bubbled just beneath the surface of Dib's rough Irken skin.
I GOTED IT 4HIM. HE LOOKED SADS SO I GAVE HIM IT KUZ U LEFT IT WHERE I CUD GET IT. GIR looked sad, but the rage Dib felt—multiplied by the PAK's emotional filter—didn't subside. Instead, it grew until it was a black shadow, blocking the light from his mind.
Dib lunged at the robot and grabbed him by the throat, hoisting him into the air. The molecules around him vibrated with energy as he glared down the small SIR, "You will tell your master that he will return my computer at once. There are important things on there, files no one should have access to, and I demand he give them back. Understand?" GIR whimpered and nodded, and was released to scamper into the bowels of the base.
As his rage ebbed away—never disappearing, it seems—he took a shaky breath and stepped out into the world, ready to face his sister. After the abuse he suffered today, handling her disorder would be a cakewalk.
Zim watched Dib's form recede into the horizon through the eyes of his gnomes. The once-human's reaction to GIR's planned prodding had elicited an unusual response.
He reacted with unadulterated fury, Zim pondered. Why so? What has changed?
Perhaps, that niggling voice in his PAK offered, it's you who have changed; not Dib.
That voice had become more frequent since his black-out, the odd echo of a different Irken. He had simply dismissed it as his Logic Core(2) finally working right, yet something still felt off. Was it that the voice was hyper-aggressive or that it spoke in twos and fives?
Pish, Zim countered, Zim never changes. Zim is perfect the way he is. To suggest otherwise is heresy to the mighty Zim.
If you insist, the Control Brain conceded. It sounded weary and irritated; an unusual emotional spectrum for the mighty rule-makers of the Irken race.
Zim dismissed the odd premonition of something being not-right-at-all and sat back in his control chair with smug satisfaction. Another day in his mighty experiment a complete success! As he relaxed, he remembered why he had goaded the Dib in the first place: his computer; namely the files on his computer. The encrypted ones seemed particularly interesting. Why would the Dib-thing hide anything from everyone? It is interesting...
He pulled open the folders he had the files in and began looking at the names. Z913_D365vd_subj. What sort of filing system did he even have?! It makes no sense at all!
The whole folder was full of files like that. They all started with "Z913_D" and pandered off into (seemingly) random numbered and letters. The "_subj" seemed to indicate topic and, in its place was a variety of pidgin words like "_spec", "_tech", and sometimes "_goal". "vd" was always an .avi file, while "ev" was a .jpg and "ad" was an .mp3 file. In fact, the more Zim stared at the files his PAK was decrypting, the more he realized that there was a very specific way the Dib had labeled everything.
It went: Z913_D(number)(file denotation)_(topic).(file type)
"Ha ha ha!" Zim cackled, seeing the files open up to his demands one-by-one. "Once again Zim has outsmarted your pathetic hyu-man weak technology!"
Now, he thought as he opened file Z913_D3vd_subj, prepare to face the wrath of Zim! The video flickered into being on his Optic Screen and Zim sat back in his chair, excited.
The camera Dib was using was out-of-focus and fuzzy, flickering in and out until the peach-and-black blur resolved into Dib's face. He sat down in the chair behind him and peaked his fingers, clearing his throat. "So," he began, "day three of the alien invasion of Earth. The subject, one Zim—origins unknown—has successfully infiltrated our society without anyone noticing. But I noticed...I NOTICED!"
The camera tried to refocus as Dib had thrown himself off the chair and onto the floor. When he sat back down, he grinned at it and coughed. "So...from what I have observed, the alien is green, bipedal, speaks English well enough, and has no concepts of "good disguises". Seriously," he deadpanned, "I've seen better Halloween costumes from four year olds. Anyone with half a brain could have figured out he wasn't human."
In the distance Gaz could be heard yelling, "You have half a brain!" Dib just kneaded his temples wearily. He was too young to be suffering from this kind of stress...
"I have yet to ascertain his weaknesses, species name, planet of origin, or world domination plot, but I'm sure it's something heinous. I look forward to updating this video diary with a dissection—or vivisection—sooner or later. Dib, savior of mankind out!" And with a jaunty salute and some terrible camerawork, the video feed cut and the file ended.
It seems as though the number after "D" is how many days Zim has been here on Earth..., Zim reasoned. So Zim will find something more recent!
He chose Z913_D1103ad_goal.
The sound clip started playing almost immediately, filling his head with the somehow loud background noise of children playing. Dib's puberty-laden voice soon came in after, cracking every so often, much to Zim's amusement. "So," he took a deep breath, "It's pretty early in the third year of Zim's time on Earth and I think I have a new attack plan. This one involves mainly spoons."
There was a large pause followed by the sound of something heavy hitting the ground and bushes rustling. "Fuck it, who am I kidding?! I know I can't do it, he knows I can't do it, hell, even my sister knows I can't do it and she's got—well...I'm not any better off than her..." Scratching noises. "These are really itchy...I should try and do a better job disinfecting these next time." Sigh. "Whatever. There's really no point to this anyway. We all know I'll fail and he'll take over. No reason to try. Why do I even bother?" Silence over a minute period, broken only by the background noise. "Fuck it. I'm going home."
The sound file ended, leaving Zim in silence. What was that? Dib sounded...sad. And angry. And tired all at the same time. It is unusual...perhaps that's what the anomaly in his behavior stemmed from. That angry-sad-tired feeling of his.
You could easily fix that, the Control Brian commented.
True enough, but the Dib-slave's faults are not Zim's major concerns at the moment. The mission is.
He rifled through a few more files, some pictures, some video diaries, and some sound bites. He eventually came across three files labeled differently than the others.
D95_A1_P, D95_A2_G, and D95_A3_C
All video files, all more heavily encrypted than the other files, and all about five minutes long. Zim opened A1 and played it.
Dib had tears running down his face. He couldn't have been any older than thirteen, which dated this during the second or third year of Zim's time on Earth. In his hands was a bottle of prescription medication, the lid off and some pills already in his other hand. He started talking, shakily.
"I've decided it isn't worth it anymore. Living, that is. No one gives a flying fuck about me, no one believes me, and no one loves me. Therefore I'm done. Just...done..." He threw the pills in his mouth and refilled his hand.
Doesn't the Dib know that taking all of those pills will kill him?
That's the point.
Dib downed the entire bottle and sat back, visibly shaking. "I figure that pills are the best way to go. They're easy enough to find around here, with Dad being a scientist and all that. He's always got some experimental something-or-other medicine lying around so, I figured I'd just take a whole bottle-full. This one is labeled "Experimental Anti-Psychotic" so, if my knowledge about medicine is anything to go by, it should kill me. Anti-psychotics are highly addictive and highly toxic. I'll give it a few hours..." He seemed nonchalant about it, but Zim could track tears running down his cheeks, the way his hands clenched and unclenched, the tremors running through him, and the way his facial muscles twitched. It was all signs that he didn't really want to do this, but he was anyways. Why?
The video faded out and back in to a very ill-looking, but alive Dib. The time stamp read it as five hours later. He wiped drool off of his lips and sighed. "Turns out," he said, voice raspy, "that the pills I took were experimental in the fact that they were intended to prevent overdosing by inducing vomiting once the body recognized a certain amount of the chemical in the person's bloodstream. I spent the last thirty minutes puking on and off. Chalk one up for Dad, huh..." He sounded weary, but somehow relieved. "So I'll live another day. Skool's in three hours so I better get some rest. Maybe next time I'll be smarter and actually finish what I started." The camera turned off, leaving those dark words lingering in Zim's PAK.
And yet, there was a part of him that was angry that Dib didn't actually die, and the oppressive worry that came with that knowledge was so foreign that Zim felt his body literally heave to try and get rid of it.
If that was what those other two videos were about, then Zim wasn't sure of he wanted to watch the rest. Not now, anyway.
"Computer," he called out as he dismissed the files from his implant-screen. "Bring up any disorder or disease with these symptoms: cycling between angry, sad, and tired; attempts to end one's own life; giving up on one's goals; and emotional flatlining."
[PROCESSING...ONLY ONE MATCH FOUND FOR ALL SYMPTOMS NAMED]
Why are you even bothering with this?
Be quiet you, Zim commanded the Control Brain. Fury bubbled up within him that wasn't his and he shuddered. If you please, he supplemented.
"Name the match."
[DEPRESSION. IT IS USUALLY MEDICATED AMONG HUMANS, BUT THERE ARE SOME CASES WHERE IT GOES UNTREATED AND THE PATIENT ENDS THEIR OWN LIFE OR THEY ARE NO LONGER ABLE TO FUNCTION NORMALLY IN SOCIETY. WHAT PURPOSE DOES KNOWING ABOUT THIS ILLNESS HAVE TO DO WITH YOUR PLAN?] The snark in the computer's voice was blatantly obvious and Zim didn't like it.
"It's none of your business you robot!" He snapped. The computer just sighed deeply and retreated into silence. Zim sank back in his chair and grumbled.
What is the point of you doing this, the Control Brain growled. Pity? Possession? Weakness?
An Irken is not to be flawed. Zim will not stand to have a Defect Dib. He struggled to control himself, the seven in the Control Brain's last sentence. Prime numbers weren't twos but they also weren't threes.
He isn't even Irken at heart! You're just lying to yourself and to him. He's more human than you but you're more of a Defect than him.
That struck a chord and Zim began to tremble. His hands clenched and unclenched as his breathing became irregular. Twos everywhere! "Z-Zim is...not a De...fect..." Twos again! His PAK whirred and steamed, slowly overheating. Upon reaching critical temperature, it shut down.
Zim slumped over, eyes blank. His mouth remained unhinged as his PAK worked frantically to rectify the problem. According to its mainframe, the issue was the mental state of the main personality. Therefore, the solution would be to let the main personality rest and allow access to the backup personality, which was more level-headed and controlled.
INITIALIZING BACKUP PERSONALITY. EXECUTE COOL-DOWN PROCEDURE. UPON COMPLETION REINSTATE MAIN PERSONALITY!
A large forked metal appendage came out of Zim's PAK and delivered jolts of electricity to the unconscious Irken. He jerked erect and a wide sneer spread across his lips.
"Good...very good...," he muttered. "Now to talk to Dib. I think I may have found a solution to both our problems." Zim stood up, dusted off his uniform, and took the elevator to the main floor of his base. It was time to start his plan...but first he had some loose ends to tie up.
Translation Notes:
(1) DIB bekaruff'ttli'etsusetsu ZIM_ DIB arud'aruprethsetsu qiumaitsacethkedlieryas- etsuv'trelyas tsakitsam'etsu DIB lierookkeesetsu ZIM se'eettssuu DIB danitsaganumase'tsak- i'tsalk it'setsu okenakelieryas relitsagantsalk* ZIM wel'okeumadan wel'okerreellitsadan itsaf't i'tsalk n'oketsalk-: Phonetic Irken. Translation: [He] baffles [me], [the way he] adapts [so] quickly. Every time [he] looks [at me I] see [his] disgust. It is only right; [I] would be worried if it were not [so].
(2) Logic Core: the part of the PAK that handles the thinking process. It sends each individual thought to the Control Brains and they evaluate the thought, then send back a yes or no. That was, essentially, the Irken logic compass and, much like a conscience, was a small voice in the back of their PAK telling them yes or no. Zim's Logic Core has had issues since day one, resulting in his ineptness when coming up with proper 'take over the world' plans. Therefore, though he understands the concept behind a Logic Core, he has never actually heard the Control Brains in his PAK.