Peculiar Institution
Invader Zim and all related characters, trademarks and logos are copyright Viacom. All other original characters are mine.
"...the victorious army slaughtering all who resist, making prisoners of the rest, looting by right of the sword, and thanking their god to the sound of cannon. All these are terrifying scourges which undermine all our belief in eternal justice and all the trust we have been taught to place in divine protection and human reason."
- VNV Nation, Chosen
They were herded into an auditorium. If she stared straight ahead at the people in front of her and didn't look around, or up, or to the side, the situation felt almost like a school assembly or an All-Plant Meeting. Everyone had that drained, blank aura of resignation hanging on them like soggy clothes.
Someone sneezed. Quin made the mistake of turning her head to see whom, and caught full sight of one of --
-- of….
She squeezed her eyes shut and fought to keep from hyperventilating. Not real, not real, not real. They don't exist, and this isn't happening.
She shuffled along, eyes still closed, until she bumped into a wall of flesh, and rocked back on her heels, nearly falling. No one grabbed her or tried to help her. Only the close proximity of her fellow …attendees… kept her upright.
The lights went out. Music blared, loud, martial, heavy on the percussion and somehow not quite right. Laser beams shot from corners and smoke billowed as a large disc descended from the ceiling and hovered barely fifteen feet above them. After a few minutes the music ended, the lasers stopped, the smoke faded away. The disc and its occupants were now visible. Quin's hands clenched into fists, even as part of her gibbered in disbelief.
On the disc were two of … them.
Very tall two. The tallest she'd seen yet, looming over the guards like giant animated Pixie stix. The one in red waved.
"Welcome, human slaves of the Irken Empire! You have been gathered here as part of a very select group!"
"You slept through our invasion," said the one in purple. "Talk about slackers!"
"Well, you won't be doing that anymore!" They broke into laughter.
"Anyway," the red one went on at last, "to bring you up to speed, we've arranged a special broadcast of Earth's subjugation, just for you. And because it's such a crowd-pleaser, we'll replay the execution of Bill Gates."
A moment's stunned silence, and then the auditorium erupted in cheers. The giant Pixie stix waved their hands, rather smugly. "Yes, yes, it was the least we, The Tallest, could do for you, our newest minions. Transmission, please!"
A screen popped into existence behind them. The disc bobbed up. "I like balcony seats," Quin heard one say.
The transmission began.
Quin watched. She had to; her eyes refused to close, and she couldn't look away. Not that looking away or closing her eyes would have helped; the sound system was right from Dolby's wet dreams. Purple, amber and crimson starships flowed across the screen like all the B-movie invasions rolled into one. Cities -- London, Moscow, Washington, Cleveland, Beijing -- gone, countless more in ruins. Large chunks of continents obliterated. Staring, zombie-like people loaded into ships, steered into holding pens.
"And now some local color!"
The scene changed to the Metro Detroit area. She watched, stony-eyed, as Metro Airport evaporated. "Well, it always was over budget," the man next to her muttered. Comerica Park collapsed on itself, Ford Field reduced to rubble. Aliens posed for pictures outside the smoking husk of Somerset Mall. The cracked, battered grid of highways turned into landing strips for invader vehicles.
The Giant Tire tossed into the air and used for laser practice.
Something in Quin stirred at this, fracturing the numb disbelief that cushioned her and kept her from going stark raving bonkers.
The Giant Tire had been a roadside monument to the local economy since before her birth. She had grown up less than half a mile from its large rubber roundness. She'd counted the arrows lodged into its treads, and even shot a few into them herself. It was from the Giant Tire she'd grabbed Lenny Bronkowski's crowbar in a fit of hysterical strength and smashed the backseat window of the locked car and saved the babies. She'd dropped her first hit of acid at the Giant Tire. In its shadow she discovered Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy really was the ultimate make-out music. Broke up with her first boyfriend there. Her first girlfriend, too. Read her college acceptance letter in its smelly, late April solitude.
And now… it was gone.
Quin began to move through the crowd to one side of the auditorium. No one noticed her. She was good at not being noticed; it entailed equal parts of "I'm not important enough to bother with" and "I belong here, obviously." Not rushing was another important factor. Quin didn't rush.
The auditorium was one of the newer, larger community theaters. The catwalks had been removed, and the stairs leading up to them, but one of the smaller, built-in ladders to the dim lights and circuit breaker boxes was still intact. Probably not considered important to bother with.
It would be just about the right height, Quin thought. As long as they hadn't moved.
She climbed the first few rungs slowly, facing the crowd. There were guards on either side of her, not three yards away. They didn't see her, their solid-colored red eyes glued to the transmission screen. She spun around and scurried up the rest of the way, expecting a bolt of something-or-other to nail her between the shoulder blades.
It didn't happen.
At the top of the ladder, Quin turned, staring into the air over the crowd. There. The disc was there, just where she'd thought, where she'd hoped. It hadn't moved.
And neither had they.
Had Quin paused to think -- had she been capable of thinking, at this point -- she would have realized the futility of her actions. But Quin wasn't thinking. The part of her brain that thought and planned and calculated odds of success was currently cowering in abject terror. The screaming primal I'll kill you if it's the last thing I do part of her brain was running the show.
The screaming primal part of Quin decided on the red one. Somehow it reminded her of her boss.
Poised like a trapeze artist, Quin swung up, and out.
And let go.
She flew up, and out -- just enough -- and plummeted toward the disc. Toward the red one.
The red one looked up suddenly, and ducked.
Quin collided with the purple one, howling in pain and fury as they crashed to the disc. Her hands shot to its neck, fighting for a grip, as her knees dug into its side through its clothing. Its green skin didn't feel like skin, didn't feel like anything the thinking-Quin could have put a name to, but its purple eyes widened in heart-warming anthropomorphic panic and if she could just exert a little more pressure, a little more pressure, just a little more PRESSURE ----
Something grabbed her by nape of her neck. Quin spun in mid-air like a drunken piñata. The red one glowered down at her. She kicked it. It blinked at her. She kicked it again, higher up.
Something else yanked her out of the red one's grip. The purple one glared at her through slitted eyes, antennae folded back. Its hand -- its claws -- encircled her throat.
And pressed.
The world went black.
"Well, it worked," said Purple.
The Tallest had left Earth's surface as soon as their attacker was properly secured for transport. Once on the Massive and in their private conference room, the rulers of the Irken Empire and an ever-expanding portion of the universe turned their attention to the matter at hand.
"Not as well as we'd hoped," Red grumbled. He drummed his claws on the table, scowling down at his untouched brain-freezy. "Only one. Initial reports said there'd be at least ten."
"Initial reports can be wrong. That's why they're initial."
"They shouldn't be wrong. Decommission that sector's Intelligence officers to janitorial duty on Dirt. That'll teach them."
Purple nodded, calling up an electronic pad and making a few notes. He gestured, closed that screen and punched up another. "Maybe we shouldn't have included the Gates-human's execution," he said, peering at a slideshow of diagrams, graphics and screenshots. "It always makes them happy."
"Yeah, I noticed that. Like we did them a favor."
The Tallest looked at each other and laughed.
"We'll drop the execution for the last of the orientations." Purple made another note, deleted one of the slideshow screens. "If they're not happy, maybe more of these 'freedom fighters' can be flushed into the open."
"Mmn." Red sucked loudly on his brain-freezy. "Feh. Rebels. Filthy stinkbeasts are more trouble than they're worth. Remind me why we're bothering with this back-of-beyond dirtball planet."
"Because in an amazingly lucky duel of one-upmanship, Zim and Tak did conquer it."
Red's antennae drooped slightly. "Oh. Right."
The Irken Empire's success was not due to its numbers, its technology or its Armada. Other civilizations could and had matched it in one or more of those areas. What made the Empire different -- made it successful, made it superior -- was one simple philosophy.
No waffling.
Irkens might and did equivocate, rethink, reprioritize… in the interest of completing the job. Goals ended in success or failure, preferably the former if the Irkens involved wanted to avoid being catapulted into the nearest star. "Abandonment" wasn't in the lexicon, and neither was "changing one's mind."
If an Invader conquered a planet, the Irken armada came in for the Organic Sweep. What purpose the world and its dominant species, assuming it survived, would serve was decided by the Tallest. Even if the world in question had been thought non-existent, and its conquering Invader an embarrassment and nuisance, procedure had to be followed. Always. The Tallest knew this, even if they didn't particularly like it. Anything else might result in a loss of face among the galaxies and star systems that were on Irk's to-do list. Or give some of the other, less complacent subjugated species ideas. Earth's outbreak of rebellion wasn't the only one the Empire had encountered, just the most recent.
Red reached over to Purple's console and hit a sensor button. The screen on display went blank, grew larger and hovered in mid-air. The Tallest stared at it.
"What an ugly species," Red muttered.
"At least this one's not too short."
"Like that matters!" Red propped his chin in his claw. "What is it, male or female?"
"Female. I think." Purple sounded doubtful. "Hard to tell, really. I get them confused."
"It went for you this time."
Purple shot his co-ruler a look. "Because you ducked."
"You could have ducked. Did it say anything? 'Give me liberty or give me death'?"
"No."
"Ranting about the …" Red paused. "…the… big world organization … thingy and black helicopters?"
"United Nations. Nope."
"The bourgeoisie and the power of the proletariat?"
"Wrongo."
"Well, what did it say, then?" Red demanded in exasperation.
"Nothing. Just screamed and made the usual futile attempt to kill me."
"Quiet and determined. I can appreciate that in an assassin." Another suck on the brain-freezy. "So what do we do with it? Toss it out the airlock, or catapult it into the system's sun?"
"I don't know, Red. Neither seems to work."
Red choked on his brain-freezy. "What, are there "Irken Overlords Shot Me Into the Sun And I Survived!" stories hitting the underground tabloid screens? Have you got brain worms? These things can't even live through a simple laser in the eye!"
"I'm saying that every time we punish these humans for their pathetic attempts at overthrowing us, we end up with more pathetic attempts at overthrowing us, not less."
"So they're stupid." Red shrugged. "Eradicate the species. Problem solved."
"We decided against that, remember? They're perfect for retail. We need them pacified, not extinct."
"Oh. Right. An example, then. Something that'll chase thoughts of rebellion right out of their inferior little heads."
"Exactly." Purple tapped his chin. "Slavery," he said thoughtfully.
"Duh! They are slaves, Purple."
"No. You don't get it. Make that —" The Tallest waved a claw at the large hovering screen. "— our slave."
"Oh, no. Bad idea." Red paced, claws folded behind his back. "Why would serving us, the most superior beings of a superior race, be a punishment? What would we do with it? Slaves are work. You have to keep them fed, and cleaned up, and with this bunch, watered." He grimaced. "Then there's the irrational demands, the elaborate humiliations, the denigration and lording it over them just because…you … can…."
Red looked at Purple. Purple looked at Red.
They laughed.
"Call back the highest ranking of those decommissioned Intelligence officers," Purple said at last. "Have him go through what's left of the native data and see what our little stinkbeast can do."
Flying through the air at a rock concert, lasers crisscrossing above the crowd and smoke machines blasting away. But the music. The music wasn't right. Sure, it had a good bass and catchy rhythm, but it made her uneasy.
She veered to her left, trying for altitude. She wanted to see the band. She hoped it wasn't the Backstreet Boys.
She flew higher, but still couldn't see the stage. The lasers blinded her; the smoke choked her. Quin looked down at the audience. Pale emotionless faces looked back at her.
The audience began to cheer, a tinny roar like a thousand toy trumpets gone mad. Suddenly afraid, Quin shot for the ceiling. She didn't want to see the crowd, or the stage, or the band.
The ceiling melted into the night sky, a night sky she'd seen only on those rare trips up north, far away from the city. The moon was a forlorn ivory coin surrounded by malignant amber and crimson stars. The coppery stench of burnt ozone and blood clung to her like a lover's touch. She swallowed bile. Wrong, wrong, wrong! She could get away, if she could fly fast enough--
An invisible net snared her in its grip, pulling her back and down.
She screamed. She kicked and flailed, desperate to escape. A wasted effort. She could see the stage, the small lighted disc, and the people on it, not people but things, things that shouldn't exist. They had caught her, the two of them, with their red and purple eyes and their green alien faces made more horrible by their matching, too-human grins and their claws reaching for her and --
Quin jolted awake and stared at her surroundings, panic-stricken.
White room. Small. Empty, except for the bed-like platform on which she lay. Light shone down from small half-globes in the ceiling. No doors. No windows. No things looming over her. Quin took a shaky, deep breath. They hadn't killed her.
Correction. They hadn't killed her yet.
The room swayed gently. Probably an after effect of her capture. Not having been choked unconscious before, she couldn't say for certain. She also felt like she'd been scrubbed with Comet. She gripped the edge of the table-bed and swung her legs over the side.
Her clothes were different. The jeans resembled the ones she'd been wearing, but the faded areas, ragged hems and frayed knees were gone. The color was a rich, deep blue -- too rich. Quin rubbed her thigh. Stiff, brand new denim. She yanked off her t-shirt. The stains were gone, the red deepened to crimson, and off-the-cardboard-hanger new. She stripped to the skin. Her bra, her underwear, her socks, even her Adidas cross-trainers had been replaced.
"A last wardrobe instead of a last meal?" she muttered as she dressed. Granted, laundry hadn't been a priority during those chaotic days before a scout-ship scooped her up, and neither had bathing. But why would aliens care?
Movement in her peripheral vision. A portion of the left wall slid up. Two aliens peered at her. One gestured with a gun right out of a '50s pulp.
Scenarios from dozens of bad late night sci-fi movies flitted past her mind's eye in a heartbeat. In each and everyone the unarmed and outnumbered heroes effortlessly defeated their well equipped and numerous captors. Quin hesitated.
She wasn't that lucky.
She wasn't that brave.
She wasn't that dumb.
With a little sigh, she stepped through the opening. The aliens shifted position, one behind her, and one in front. Neither spoke as they escorted her through a long series of interconnecting corridors, onto at least three different elevators and through more corridors. Some aliens watched as they passed; others ignored them. Quin kept her gaze lowered and tried not to think.
She almost bumped into the guard in front of her when it stopped. The corridor ended in a door marked with the aliens' insignia: two ovals in the upper corners of a downward-pointing triangle. The guard waved its open hand before the ovals. The door opened, and the guard gestured her inside with its gun.
Among the instinctual traits the human species maintained from its primal beginnings was a very simple, very useful one: fight or flight. Millennia of civilization, social training and lack of continuous physical threats to personal existence had weakened and diverted but not destroyed it. Until this point, Quin's actions had been dictated by what her rational mind perceived as the best course: cooperate, keep calm, don't make waves. Wait and see.
Now instinct reared up with one bit of advice:
Get the hell out of here.
Quin dove to her left. Claws raked her shirt as she scrambled to her feet. She pivoted on her heel and her attacker, thrown off balance, collided with the wall. The other guard shouted something. Metallic, spider-like cables roped around her arms and legs and shoved her through the doorway.
Quin fell on her hands and knees. She bounced upright and lunged at the rapidly closing door, hammering it with her fists.
"Well, hi there, you sleepyhead you! We wondered when you were going to wake up!"
Quin froze in mid-hammer and turned around.
Some part of her had expected this. The aliens from the auditorium had obviously been important, and she had just as obviously attacked them. A confrontation was inevitable. Her death, probably quick and very painful, would now follow.
What she hadn't expected was to confront her future executioners as they lounged on a couch and sucked on Slurpees.
"You cost me five thousand monies," the red one said. It rose.
Quin backed up against the wall. With their green skin, antennae, solid-colored eyes and lack of noses and ears, the alien guards and soldiers were disturbing enough. Now that she could see them clearly, unobscured by smoke and lasers and blind killing fury, these two went beyond disturbing and into terror-inducing.
Their bodies were roughly humanoid: one head, two arms, two legs (or so she guessed; their robe-like clothing made it hard to say for certain about the legs) But the arms were spindly twigs, except for forearms that bulged out like a steroid addicts. They ended two long claws; no palms. The waist was impossibly long and thin, more like a skeletal thorax. The head jutted forward on an equally impossibly slender neck, giving them a somewhat hunchbacked appearance. From this angle she could see what appeared to be incongruous backpacks, white with colored spots that matched their eyes. They moved in a manner at once fluidly human and jarringly insect-like.
The original bug-eyed monsters. Where's a can of Raid when I need it? she thought wildly.
"Oh, don't whine," the purple one snapped as it joined the other. "You'd've blown it on more lasers."
"So? You'll blow it on smoke machines. That's so lame."
"It is not!"
"Is too. I'll prove it." The red one's head snapped around to Quin. "You! Earthenoid! You prefer lasers to smoke machines, right?"
Quin looked at it.
"Well?"
Quin blinked.
The red one glared at its fellow. "Purple, you cut its vocal cords again, didn't you?"
"Nooo, I didn't," the purple one – Purple – sniffed. "I was very careful this time not to damage it. Unlike some people I could mention."
"I didn't think their heads would pop off like that." It paused. "Kinda funny, actually."
Their voices sounded male. Not just male, but like human men. In fact, if she closed her eyes, she would swear she was listening to her boss Roger. Not so much the voice per se, but the tone. Though with aliens, sounding male might not necessarily mean being male —
"Ah, ah, ah! No going back to sleep!"
Quin's eyes flew open. Their argument abandoned, the aliens loomed over her. A good three feet and more over her. She tried to shrink into the wall.
"Eh, don't bother. The door won't open for you," the red one said cheerfully. "Your hearing's fine, we know that. I'm waiting for an answer."
"Come on, speak for the Tallest, okay?" the purple one added.
Quin glanced from one to the other. Answer. She had to answer the question. She knew she did. She rummaged past her state of absolute panic and remembered the dynamics of talking.
"You're speaking English."
The aliens looked at each other. "No," said the purple one, "you're speaking Irken."
"But—"
"You're speaking Irken," the red one repeated flatly. "All races of the universe speak Irken, proof of our superiority. Except for those fellow dirt-monkeys of yours, the…"it paused. "…the Frooks?"
"The French," the purple one corrected. "They insisted we couldn't be real alien invaders because real alien invaders would speak French."
"So we shot them into the sun," the red one finished. "That gets almost as many cheers as the execution of the Gates-person." They sniggered.
Whatever belief in a sane, logical universe Quin had managed to cling to since waking up to find an invading starship in her apartment complex's parking lot evaporated like water on a summer sidewalk. She'd fallen down the rabbit hole. Or into a Kafka short story. Or maybe a Monty Python sketch.
"Airlock," she heard herself say.
The aliens blinked. "Hmm?"
"Airlock," Quin repeated, amazed at how calm she sounded. "If you're going to kill me, I'd like to be thrown out an airlock."
The aliens looked at each other, then at her. "Um, no," said the purple one. "We're not going to do that. Though technically we should since instant death is the automatic mandatory punishment for attacking a Tallest — "
The question escaped before she could stop it. "What's a Tallest?"
They fixed her with an unnerving stare. "The tallest Irken. The Tallest. The Almighty Tallest," the red one snapped. "Undisputed rulers of the Irken Empire. Us."
"Tallest Red, Tallest Purple," the purple one went on, waving at its companion, then itself. "Your new masters."
"My what?"
Red rolled his -- its -- eyes. "Duh! Hasn't the clue ship docked yet? 'Welcome, human slaves of the Irken Empire.' The remnants of your inferior species will find their niche as sales assistants, selling imported goods and snacks once your planet's conversion to a shopping mall is done."
"Except for you," Purple said. "You're serving us personally."
She had not only fallen into the rabbit hole, it'd been filled it with cement. Survival instinct and civilized mind had declared a truce and met for coffee." Serving you personally…?"
"Catering to our every whim, jumping at our every command, bringing us snacks and drinks. You know, the usual stuff a slave does."
"Though we do have some specific duties." Red ambled over to what appeared to be a computer console and did something to it Quin couldn't see. A monitor screen popped up. "Well? Don't just stand there, dirt-child, come see what the rest of your pathetically subjugated life is going to be like."
Quin didn't want to. The fight -or- flight mechanism was telling her that having a wall at your back was A Good Thing; while it closed off one avenue of escape, it limited the angles of opportunity for attack. Her civilized mind was arguing for obeying. Red was drumming its claws, and Purple was reaching for her shoulder --
Quin scurried to the table.
"Enthusiasm, that's what we like to see!" Purple said in a yay-team voice as it followed. "To start, proper cleaning is a necessity. We expect you to bathe three times a day at least, four if we've really had you running."
"Three times a day?" Quin burst out "Why?!"
"You stink," Purple said bluntly. "Worse than Vorts. Zim always referred to your kind as 'filthy stinkbeasts." Its mouth twisted. "He was right about that, at least. Janitorial spent hours on you."
The screen pivoted so Quin could see it. "We know all about you, thanks to your data system." On display was her driver's license. Her new driver's license. The driver's license still in her wallet, left behind when she dived out her window and into the dumpster. Her image disappeared in a flood of text and dates, too fast to read. "Upon review of your training, we've decided to make you a seamstress."
Purple pushed a button, and the stream of data halted. Quin stared at the display screen. "That's… my freshman year report card. From high school."
"Oh," said Purple. "Okay. According to what's left of you databases, most of your species' females are seamstresses." It cocked its head. "You are female, aren't you?"
"I have a BA in Library Science, with an Art History minor," Quin said. "I've done database construction. I can code. If I cross my fingers and wish real hard, I even fumble my away around a car engine. And you want me to sew?
"Yeppers," Red answered.
"Why?"
"It's obvious. Look at these scores!" Purple tapped the neat, ubiquitous row of Ds that marched behind the heading Home Economics. "Perfect."
"Perfect? I almost failed! Stanton only passed me with a D because she felt sorry for me! Look, see those? Under Advanced Placement English? Those are As. As are good. Ds are bad. You get Ds in things you're not good at. I'm not good at sewing."
The Tallest looked at the report card. "I don't like them," Purple said petulantly. "Ds are better than As."
"They're not."
"Yes, they are."
"No, they're not! As are better than Ds. You can't change that just by saying so." Quin ticked off the first four letters of the alphabet on her fingers. "A, B, C, D. D comes after A, which is why As are better than Ds."
Purple bent so its head was level with hers. "Ds are better than As because we're The Tallest and we say so."
Quin stared at them. At that moment, the formica table where survival instinct and civilized mind met for coffee tipped over.
"That," said Quin calmly, "has got to be the most ridiculous, asinine Orwellian doublespeak I have ever heard, and I've listened to Bill Crystal on NPR for years. What next, two plus two equals five?"
Red snorted. "Two plus two equals four. Even your inferior species should have figured that out by now, foolish idiot stinkbeast dirt-child human."
The epithets weren't obscene. There was in fact a schoolyard nastiness to them that in other circumstances she might have found absurdly funny. But the childish names masked a mentality of seeing everything and everyone else as an it rather than thou that infuriated Quin more than it frightened her.
"You can call me anything you like, but my name is Veronica!"
"We know," Purple said. "We have your records, all of them… Veronica."
"Veronica Rene Teresa Quin." Red grinned at her. "Ron. Ronnie. RT. Quin."
"Quin," Purple repeated. "Yes, I think I prefer Quin."
A finger of ice trickled down her spine. She tried not to shudder. Maybe there was something to the old folklore of not giving out your name….
"Cold?" Red asked with mock-courtesy.
So much for not shuddering. "Not really."
"Or Blackjack," Purple went on. "What do you think, Red? Does she look like a Blackjack?"
Stacy's nickname for her. Jason's, Rick's… "Don't you dare call me that," Quin snapped. "You have no right to call me that."
The Tallest straightened to their full height, and looked at her.
Quin's throat closed up. She could hear her blood pound, her skin felt electrified. There was nothing humorous, or childish, or human about The Tallest now. She was an idiot. She was dead. They were going to kill her and there was nothing she could do.
"I think," Purple said at last, "that we should continue this later." It tilted Quin's chin, ignoring her instinctive flinch. "Our little person needs time to…adjust. Call the guards, Red."
Quin heard the other Tallest speak as if from a distance. Her attention was fixed on Purple, who had coiled a lock of hair around one claw and was examining it curiously. "Does it naturally come in two colors like that?"
"No."
"Interesting." It tugged on her hair experimentally, then let go. "Is there anything you wish to say, Quin?"
Apologize. Apologize. Apologize, you damn stupid over-proud fool!
She couldn't. "No."
"No, my Tallest," Purple corrected her, sighing. "You'll learn. Now where are those --? Oh, there they are. Take her to the last suite on 7th. Yes, 7th. Are you arguing with me, soldier?"
Purple rolled his eyes and closed the screen. There hadn't been much to see, anyway; after a rather timid examination of the suite, the human had curled up on the bed, hugging her knees, and stayed in that position since. The observation nanos' reports would be available in the morning.
"Give it time, Red. I think she's going to be fun."
Red scowled. "We didn't enslave her so she could be 'fun'!"
"You're just mad because she's not afraid of you."
"Oh, she's afraid of me, all right." Red plopped down in a chair and sucked on his tepid brain-freezy. "It's buried under all that fury. Why did I agree to be the Bad Tallest?"
"Because you like it."
"Oh. Right. She's not afraid of you, though. Not much."
"That's why she's going to be fun."
Invader Zim and all related characters, trademarks and logos are copyright Viacom. All other original characters are mine.
"...the victorious army slaughtering all who resist, making prisoners of the rest, looting by right of the sword, and thanking their god to the sound of cannon. All these are terrifying scourges which undermine all our belief in eternal justice and all the trust we have been taught to place in divine protection and human reason."
- VNV Nation, Chosen
They were herded into an auditorium. If she stared straight ahead at the people in front of her and didn't look around, or up, or to the side, the situation felt almost like a school assembly or an All-Plant Meeting. Everyone had that drained, blank aura of resignation hanging on them like soggy clothes.
Someone sneezed. Quin made the mistake of turning her head to see whom, and caught full sight of one of --
-- of….
She squeezed her eyes shut and fought to keep from hyperventilating. Not real, not real, not real. They don't exist, and this isn't happening.
She shuffled along, eyes still closed, until she bumped into a wall of flesh, and rocked back on her heels, nearly falling. No one grabbed her or tried to help her. Only the close proximity of her fellow …attendees… kept her upright.
The lights went out. Music blared, loud, martial, heavy on the percussion and somehow not quite right. Laser beams shot from corners and smoke billowed as a large disc descended from the ceiling and hovered barely fifteen feet above them. After a few minutes the music ended, the lasers stopped, the smoke faded away. The disc and its occupants were now visible. Quin's hands clenched into fists, even as part of her gibbered in disbelief.
On the disc were two of … them.
Very tall two. The tallest she'd seen yet, looming over the guards like giant animated Pixie stix. The one in red waved.
"Welcome, human slaves of the Irken Empire! You have been gathered here as part of a very select group!"
"You slept through our invasion," said the one in purple. "Talk about slackers!"
"Well, you won't be doing that anymore!" They broke into laughter.
"Anyway," the red one went on at last, "to bring you up to speed, we've arranged a special broadcast of Earth's subjugation, just for you. And because it's such a crowd-pleaser, we'll replay the execution of Bill Gates."
A moment's stunned silence, and then the auditorium erupted in cheers. The giant Pixie stix waved their hands, rather smugly. "Yes, yes, it was the least we, The Tallest, could do for you, our newest minions. Transmission, please!"
A screen popped into existence behind them. The disc bobbed up. "I like balcony seats," Quin heard one say.
The transmission began.
Quin watched. She had to; her eyes refused to close, and she couldn't look away. Not that looking away or closing her eyes would have helped; the sound system was right from Dolby's wet dreams. Purple, amber and crimson starships flowed across the screen like all the B-movie invasions rolled into one. Cities -- London, Moscow, Washington, Cleveland, Beijing -- gone, countless more in ruins. Large chunks of continents obliterated. Staring, zombie-like people loaded into ships, steered into holding pens.
"And now some local color!"
The scene changed to the Metro Detroit area. She watched, stony-eyed, as Metro Airport evaporated. "Well, it always was over budget," the man next to her muttered. Comerica Park collapsed on itself, Ford Field reduced to rubble. Aliens posed for pictures outside the smoking husk of Somerset Mall. The cracked, battered grid of highways turned into landing strips for invader vehicles.
The Giant Tire tossed into the air and used for laser practice.
Something in Quin stirred at this, fracturing the numb disbelief that cushioned her and kept her from going stark raving bonkers.
The Giant Tire had been a roadside monument to the local economy since before her birth. She had grown up less than half a mile from its large rubber roundness. She'd counted the arrows lodged into its treads, and even shot a few into them herself. It was from the Giant Tire she'd grabbed Lenny Bronkowski's crowbar in a fit of hysterical strength and smashed the backseat window of the locked car and saved the babies. She'd dropped her first hit of acid at the Giant Tire. In its shadow she discovered Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy really was the ultimate make-out music. Broke up with her first boyfriend there. Her first girlfriend, too. Read her college acceptance letter in its smelly, late April solitude.
And now… it was gone.
Quin began to move through the crowd to one side of the auditorium. No one noticed her. She was good at not being noticed; it entailed equal parts of "I'm not important enough to bother with" and "I belong here, obviously." Not rushing was another important factor. Quin didn't rush.
The auditorium was one of the newer, larger community theaters. The catwalks had been removed, and the stairs leading up to them, but one of the smaller, built-in ladders to the dim lights and circuit breaker boxes was still intact. Probably not considered important to bother with.
It would be just about the right height, Quin thought. As long as they hadn't moved.
She climbed the first few rungs slowly, facing the crowd. There were guards on either side of her, not three yards away. They didn't see her, their solid-colored red eyes glued to the transmission screen. She spun around and scurried up the rest of the way, expecting a bolt of something-or-other to nail her between the shoulder blades.
It didn't happen.
At the top of the ladder, Quin turned, staring into the air over the crowd. There. The disc was there, just where she'd thought, where she'd hoped. It hadn't moved.
And neither had they.
Had Quin paused to think -- had she been capable of thinking, at this point -- she would have realized the futility of her actions. But Quin wasn't thinking. The part of her brain that thought and planned and calculated odds of success was currently cowering in abject terror. The screaming primal I'll kill you if it's the last thing I do part of her brain was running the show.
The screaming primal part of Quin decided on the red one. Somehow it reminded her of her boss.
Poised like a trapeze artist, Quin swung up, and out.
And let go.
She flew up, and out -- just enough -- and plummeted toward the disc. Toward the red one.
The red one looked up suddenly, and ducked.
Quin collided with the purple one, howling in pain and fury as they crashed to the disc. Her hands shot to its neck, fighting for a grip, as her knees dug into its side through its clothing. Its green skin didn't feel like skin, didn't feel like anything the thinking-Quin could have put a name to, but its purple eyes widened in heart-warming anthropomorphic panic and if she could just exert a little more pressure, a little more pressure, just a little more PRESSURE ----
Something grabbed her by nape of her neck. Quin spun in mid-air like a drunken piñata. The red one glowered down at her. She kicked it. It blinked at her. She kicked it again, higher up.
Something else yanked her out of the red one's grip. The purple one glared at her through slitted eyes, antennae folded back. Its hand -- its claws -- encircled her throat.
And pressed.
The world went black.
**
"Well, it worked," said Purple.
The Tallest had left Earth's surface as soon as their attacker was properly secured for transport. Once on the Massive and in their private conference room, the rulers of the Irken Empire and an ever-expanding portion of the universe turned their attention to the matter at hand.
"Not as well as we'd hoped," Red grumbled. He drummed his claws on the table, scowling down at his untouched brain-freezy. "Only one. Initial reports said there'd be at least ten."
"Initial reports can be wrong. That's why they're initial."
"They shouldn't be wrong. Decommission that sector's Intelligence officers to janitorial duty on Dirt. That'll teach them."
Purple nodded, calling up an electronic pad and making a few notes. He gestured, closed that screen and punched up another. "Maybe we shouldn't have included the Gates-human's execution," he said, peering at a slideshow of diagrams, graphics and screenshots. "It always makes them happy."
"Yeah, I noticed that. Like we did them a favor."
The Tallest looked at each other and laughed.
"We'll drop the execution for the last of the orientations." Purple made another note, deleted one of the slideshow screens. "If they're not happy, maybe more of these 'freedom fighters' can be flushed into the open."
"Mmn." Red sucked loudly on his brain-freezy. "Feh. Rebels. Filthy stinkbeasts are more trouble than they're worth. Remind me why we're bothering with this back-of-beyond dirtball planet."
"Because in an amazingly lucky duel of one-upmanship, Zim and Tak did conquer it."
Red's antennae drooped slightly. "Oh. Right."
The Irken Empire's success was not due to its numbers, its technology or its Armada. Other civilizations could and had matched it in one or more of those areas. What made the Empire different -- made it successful, made it superior -- was one simple philosophy.
No waffling.
Irkens might and did equivocate, rethink, reprioritize… in the interest of completing the job. Goals ended in success or failure, preferably the former if the Irkens involved wanted to avoid being catapulted into the nearest star. "Abandonment" wasn't in the lexicon, and neither was "changing one's mind."
If an Invader conquered a planet, the Irken armada came in for the Organic Sweep. What purpose the world and its dominant species, assuming it survived, would serve was decided by the Tallest. Even if the world in question had been thought non-existent, and its conquering Invader an embarrassment and nuisance, procedure had to be followed. Always. The Tallest knew this, even if they didn't particularly like it. Anything else might result in a loss of face among the galaxies and star systems that were on Irk's to-do list. Or give some of the other, less complacent subjugated species ideas. Earth's outbreak of rebellion wasn't the only one the Empire had encountered, just the most recent.
Red reached over to Purple's console and hit a sensor button. The screen on display went blank, grew larger and hovered in mid-air. The Tallest stared at it.
"What an ugly species," Red muttered.
"At least this one's not too short."
"Like that matters!" Red propped his chin in his claw. "What is it, male or female?"
"Female. I think." Purple sounded doubtful. "Hard to tell, really. I get them confused."
"It went for you this time."
Purple shot his co-ruler a look. "Because you ducked."
"You could have ducked. Did it say anything? 'Give me liberty or give me death'?"
"No."
"Ranting about the …" Red paused. "…the… big world organization … thingy and black helicopters?"
"United Nations. Nope."
"The bourgeoisie and the power of the proletariat?"
"Wrongo."
"Well, what did it say, then?" Red demanded in exasperation.
"Nothing. Just screamed and made the usual futile attempt to kill me."
"Quiet and determined. I can appreciate that in an assassin." Another suck on the brain-freezy. "So what do we do with it? Toss it out the airlock, or catapult it into the system's sun?"
"I don't know, Red. Neither seems to work."
Red choked on his brain-freezy. "What, are there "Irken Overlords Shot Me Into the Sun And I Survived!" stories hitting the underground tabloid screens? Have you got brain worms? These things can't even live through a simple laser in the eye!"
"I'm saying that every time we punish these humans for their pathetic attempts at overthrowing us, we end up with more pathetic attempts at overthrowing us, not less."
"So they're stupid." Red shrugged. "Eradicate the species. Problem solved."
"We decided against that, remember? They're perfect for retail. We need them pacified, not extinct."
"Oh. Right. An example, then. Something that'll chase thoughts of rebellion right out of their inferior little heads."
"Exactly." Purple tapped his chin. "Slavery," he said thoughtfully.
"Duh! They are slaves, Purple."
"No. You don't get it. Make that —" The Tallest waved a claw at the large hovering screen. "— our slave."
"Oh, no. Bad idea." Red paced, claws folded behind his back. "Why would serving us, the most superior beings of a superior race, be a punishment? What would we do with it? Slaves are work. You have to keep them fed, and cleaned up, and with this bunch, watered." He grimaced. "Then there's the irrational demands, the elaborate humiliations, the denigration and lording it over them just because…you … can…."
Red looked at Purple. Purple looked at Red.
They laughed.
"Call back the highest ranking of those decommissioned Intelligence officers," Purple said at last. "Have him go through what's left of the native data and see what our little stinkbeast can do."
***
Quin dreamed of flying.Flying through the air at a rock concert, lasers crisscrossing above the crowd and smoke machines blasting away. But the music. The music wasn't right. Sure, it had a good bass and catchy rhythm, but it made her uneasy.
She veered to her left, trying for altitude. She wanted to see the band. She hoped it wasn't the Backstreet Boys.
She flew higher, but still couldn't see the stage. The lasers blinded her; the smoke choked her. Quin looked down at the audience. Pale emotionless faces looked back at her.
The audience began to cheer, a tinny roar like a thousand toy trumpets gone mad. Suddenly afraid, Quin shot for the ceiling. She didn't want to see the crowd, or the stage, or the band.
The ceiling melted into the night sky, a night sky she'd seen only on those rare trips up north, far away from the city. The moon was a forlorn ivory coin surrounded by malignant amber and crimson stars. The coppery stench of burnt ozone and blood clung to her like a lover's touch. She swallowed bile. Wrong, wrong, wrong! She could get away, if she could fly fast enough--
An invisible net snared her in its grip, pulling her back and down.
She screamed. She kicked and flailed, desperate to escape. A wasted effort. She could see the stage, the small lighted disc, and the people on it, not people but things, things that shouldn't exist. They had caught her, the two of them, with their red and purple eyes and their green alien faces made more horrible by their matching, too-human grins and their claws reaching for her and --
Quin jolted awake and stared at her surroundings, panic-stricken.
White room. Small. Empty, except for the bed-like platform on which she lay. Light shone down from small half-globes in the ceiling. No doors. No windows. No things looming over her. Quin took a shaky, deep breath. They hadn't killed her.
Correction. They hadn't killed her yet.
The room swayed gently. Probably an after effect of her capture. Not having been choked unconscious before, she couldn't say for certain. She also felt like she'd been scrubbed with Comet. She gripped the edge of the table-bed and swung her legs over the side.
Her clothes were different. The jeans resembled the ones she'd been wearing, but the faded areas, ragged hems and frayed knees were gone. The color was a rich, deep blue -- too rich. Quin rubbed her thigh. Stiff, brand new denim. She yanked off her t-shirt. The stains were gone, the red deepened to crimson, and off-the-cardboard-hanger new. She stripped to the skin. Her bra, her underwear, her socks, even her Adidas cross-trainers had been replaced.
"A last wardrobe instead of a last meal?" she muttered as she dressed. Granted, laundry hadn't been a priority during those chaotic days before a scout-ship scooped her up, and neither had bathing. But why would aliens care?
Movement in her peripheral vision. A portion of the left wall slid up. Two aliens peered at her. One gestured with a gun right out of a '50s pulp.
Scenarios from dozens of bad late night sci-fi movies flitted past her mind's eye in a heartbeat. In each and everyone the unarmed and outnumbered heroes effortlessly defeated their well equipped and numerous captors. Quin hesitated.
She wasn't that lucky.
She wasn't that brave.
She wasn't that dumb.
With a little sigh, she stepped through the opening. The aliens shifted position, one behind her, and one in front. Neither spoke as they escorted her through a long series of interconnecting corridors, onto at least three different elevators and through more corridors. Some aliens watched as they passed; others ignored them. Quin kept her gaze lowered and tried not to think.
She almost bumped into the guard in front of her when it stopped. The corridor ended in a door marked with the aliens' insignia: two ovals in the upper corners of a downward-pointing triangle. The guard waved its open hand before the ovals. The door opened, and the guard gestured her inside with its gun.
Among the instinctual traits the human species maintained from its primal beginnings was a very simple, very useful one: fight or flight. Millennia of civilization, social training and lack of continuous physical threats to personal existence had weakened and diverted but not destroyed it. Until this point, Quin's actions had been dictated by what her rational mind perceived as the best course: cooperate, keep calm, don't make waves. Wait and see.
Now instinct reared up with one bit of advice:
Get the hell out of here.
Quin dove to her left. Claws raked her shirt as she scrambled to her feet. She pivoted on her heel and her attacker, thrown off balance, collided with the wall. The other guard shouted something. Metallic, spider-like cables roped around her arms and legs and shoved her through the doorway.
Quin fell on her hands and knees. She bounced upright and lunged at the rapidly closing door, hammering it with her fists.
"Well, hi there, you sleepyhead you! We wondered when you were going to wake up!"
Quin froze in mid-hammer and turned around.
Some part of her had expected this. The aliens from the auditorium had obviously been important, and she had just as obviously attacked them. A confrontation was inevitable. Her death, probably quick and very painful, would now follow.
What she hadn't expected was to confront her future executioners as they lounged on a couch and sucked on Slurpees.
"You cost me five thousand monies," the red one said. It rose.
Quin backed up against the wall. With their green skin, antennae, solid-colored eyes and lack of noses and ears, the alien guards and soldiers were disturbing enough. Now that she could see them clearly, unobscured by smoke and lasers and blind killing fury, these two went beyond disturbing and into terror-inducing.
Their bodies were roughly humanoid: one head, two arms, two legs (or so she guessed; their robe-like clothing made it hard to say for certain about the legs) But the arms were spindly twigs, except for forearms that bulged out like a steroid addicts. They ended two long claws; no palms. The waist was impossibly long and thin, more like a skeletal thorax. The head jutted forward on an equally impossibly slender neck, giving them a somewhat hunchbacked appearance. From this angle she could see what appeared to be incongruous backpacks, white with colored spots that matched their eyes. They moved in a manner at once fluidly human and jarringly insect-like.
The original bug-eyed monsters. Where's a can of Raid when I need it? she thought wildly.
"Oh, don't whine," the purple one snapped as it joined the other. "You'd've blown it on more lasers."
"So? You'll blow it on smoke machines. That's so lame."
"It is not!"
"Is too. I'll prove it." The red one's head snapped around to Quin. "You! Earthenoid! You prefer lasers to smoke machines, right?"
Quin looked at it.
"Well?"
Quin blinked.
The red one glared at its fellow. "Purple, you cut its vocal cords again, didn't you?"
"Nooo, I didn't," the purple one – Purple – sniffed. "I was very careful this time not to damage it. Unlike some people I could mention."
"I didn't think their heads would pop off like that." It paused. "Kinda funny, actually."
Their voices sounded male. Not just male, but like human men. In fact, if she closed her eyes, she would swear she was listening to her boss Roger. Not so much the voice per se, but the tone. Though with aliens, sounding male might not necessarily mean being male —
"Ah, ah, ah! No going back to sleep!"
Quin's eyes flew open. Their argument abandoned, the aliens loomed over her. A good three feet and more over her. She tried to shrink into the wall.
"Eh, don't bother. The door won't open for you," the red one said cheerfully. "Your hearing's fine, we know that. I'm waiting for an answer."
"Come on, speak for the Tallest, okay?" the purple one added.
Quin glanced from one to the other. Answer. She had to answer the question. She knew she did. She rummaged past her state of absolute panic and remembered the dynamics of talking.
"You're speaking English."
The aliens looked at each other. "No," said the purple one, "you're speaking Irken."
"But—"
"You're speaking Irken," the red one repeated flatly. "All races of the universe speak Irken, proof of our superiority. Except for those fellow dirt-monkeys of yours, the…"it paused. "…the Frooks?"
"The French," the purple one corrected. "They insisted we couldn't be real alien invaders because real alien invaders would speak French."
"So we shot them into the sun," the red one finished. "That gets almost as many cheers as the execution of the Gates-person." They sniggered.
Whatever belief in a sane, logical universe Quin had managed to cling to since waking up to find an invading starship in her apartment complex's parking lot evaporated like water on a summer sidewalk. She'd fallen down the rabbit hole. Or into a Kafka short story. Or maybe a Monty Python sketch.
"Airlock," she heard herself say.
The aliens blinked. "Hmm?"
"Airlock," Quin repeated, amazed at how calm she sounded. "If you're going to kill me, I'd like to be thrown out an airlock."
The aliens looked at each other, then at her. "Um, no," said the purple one. "We're not going to do that. Though technically we should since instant death is the automatic mandatory punishment for attacking a Tallest — "
The question escaped before she could stop it. "What's a Tallest?"
They fixed her with an unnerving stare. "The tallest Irken. The Tallest. The Almighty Tallest," the red one snapped. "Undisputed rulers of the Irken Empire. Us."
"Tallest Red, Tallest Purple," the purple one went on, waving at its companion, then itself. "Your new masters."
"My what?"
Red rolled his -- its -- eyes. "Duh! Hasn't the clue ship docked yet? 'Welcome, human slaves of the Irken Empire.' The remnants of your inferior species will find their niche as sales assistants, selling imported goods and snacks once your planet's conversion to a shopping mall is done."
"Except for you," Purple said. "You're serving us personally."
She had not only fallen into the rabbit hole, it'd been filled it with cement. Survival instinct and civilized mind had declared a truce and met for coffee." Serving you personally…?"
"Catering to our every whim, jumping at our every command, bringing us snacks and drinks. You know, the usual stuff a slave does."
"Though we do have some specific duties." Red ambled over to what appeared to be a computer console and did something to it Quin couldn't see. A monitor screen popped up. "Well? Don't just stand there, dirt-child, come see what the rest of your pathetically subjugated life is going to be like."
Quin didn't want to. The fight -or- flight mechanism was telling her that having a wall at your back was A Good Thing; while it closed off one avenue of escape, it limited the angles of opportunity for attack. Her civilized mind was arguing for obeying. Red was drumming its claws, and Purple was reaching for her shoulder --
Quin scurried to the table.
"Enthusiasm, that's what we like to see!" Purple said in a yay-team voice as it followed. "To start, proper cleaning is a necessity. We expect you to bathe three times a day at least, four if we've really had you running."
"Three times a day?" Quin burst out "Why?!"
"You stink," Purple said bluntly. "Worse than Vorts. Zim always referred to your kind as 'filthy stinkbeasts." Its mouth twisted. "He was right about that, at least. Janitorial spent hours on you."
The screen pivoted so Quin could see it. "We know all about you, thanks to your data system." On display was her driver's license. Her new driver's license. The driver's license still in her wallet, left behind when she dived out her window and into the dumpster. Her image disappeared in a flood of text and dates, too fast to read. "Upon review of your training, we've decided to make you a seamstress."
Purple pushed a button, and the stream of data halted. Quin stared at the display screen. "That's… my freshman year report card. From high school."
"Oh," said Purple. "Okay. According to what's left of you databases, most of your species' females are seamstresses." It cocked its head. "You are female, aren't you?"
"I have a BA in Library Science, with an Art History minor," Quin said. "I've done database construction. I can code. If I cross my fingers and wish real hard, I even fumble my away around a car engine. And you want me to sew?
"Yeppers," Red answered.
"Why?"
"It's obvious. Look at these scores!" Purple tapped the neat, ubiquitous row of Ds that marched behind the heading Home Economics. "Perfect."
"Perfect? I almost failed! Stanton only passed me with a D because she felt sorry for me! Look, see those? Under Advanced Placement English? Those are As. As are good. Ds are bad. You get Ds in things you're not good at. I'm not good at sewing."
The Tallest looked at the report card. "I don't like them," Purple said petulantly. "Ds are better than As."
"They're not."
"Yes, they are."
"No, they're not! As are better than Ds. You can't change that just by saying so." Quin ticked off the first four letters of the alphabet on her fingers. "A, B, C, D. D comes after A, which is why As are better than Ds."
Purple bent so its head was level with hers. "Ds are better than As because we're The Tallest and we say so."
Quin stared at them. At that moment, the formica table where survival instinct and civilized mind met for coffee tipped over.
"That," said Quin calmly, "has got to be the most ridiculous, asinine Orwellian doublespeak I have ever heard, and I've listened to Bill Crystal on NPR for years. What next, two plus two equals five?"
Red snorted. "Two plus two equals four. Even your inferior species should have figured that out by now, foolish idiot stinkbeast dirt-child human."
The epithets weren't obscene. There was in fact a schoolyard nastiness to them that in other circumstances she might have found absurdly funny. But the childish names masked a mentality of seeing everything and everyone else as an it rather than thou that infuriated Quin more than it frightened her.
"You can call me anything you like, but my name is Veronica!"
"We know," Purple said. "We have your records, all of them… Veronica."
"Veronica Rene Teresa Quin." Red grinned at her. "Ron. Ronnie. RT. Quin."
"Quin," Purple repeated. "Yes, I think I prefer Quin."
A finger of ice trickled down her spine. She tried not to shudder. Maybe there was something to the old folklore of not giving out your name….
"Cold?" Red asked with mock-courtesy.
So much for not shuddering. "Not really."
"Or Blackjack," Purple went on. "What do you think, Red? Does she look like a Blackjack?"
Stacy's nickname for her. Jason's, Rick's… "Don't you dare call me that," Quin snapped. "You have no right to call me that."
The Tallest straightened to their full height, and looked at her.
Quin's throat closed up. She could hear her blood pound, her skin felt electrified. There was nothing humorous, or childish, or human about The Tallest now. She was an idiot. She was dead. They were going to kill her and there was nothing she could do.
"I think," Purple said at last, "that we should continue this later." It tilted Quin's chin, ignoring her instinctive flinch. "Our little person needs time to…adjust. Call the guards, Red."
Quin heard the other Tallest speak as if from a distance. Her attention was fixed on Purple, who had coiled a lock of hair around one claw and was examining it curiously. "Does it naturally come in two colors like that?"
"No."
"Interesting." It tugged on her hair experimentally, then let go. "Is there anything you wish to say, Quin?"
Apologize. Apologize. Apologize, you damn stupid over-proud fool!
She couldn't. "No."
"No, my Tallest," Purple corrected her, sighing. "You'll learn. Now where are those --? Oh, there they are. Take her to the last suite on 7th. Yes, 7th. Are you arguing with me, soldier?"
***
"I still want to throw her out an
airlock."Purple rolled his eyes and closed the screen. There hadn't been much to see, anyway; after a rather timid examination of the suite, the human had curled up on the bed, hugging her knees, and stayed in that position since. The observation nanos' reports would be available in the morning.
"Give it time, Red. I think she's going to be fun."
Red scowled. "We didn't enslave her so she could be 'fun'!"
"You're just mad because she's not afraid of you."
"Oh, she's afraid of me, all right." Red plopped down in a chair and sucked on his tepid brain-freezy. "It's buried under all that fury. Why did I agree to be the Bad Tallest?"
"Because you like it."
"Oh. Right. She's not afraid of you, though. Not much."
"That's why she's going to be fun."
