CHAPTER 3

"NO. NO. NOOOOOO. Where is iiiIIIITTTT?" Zim cried furiously as he swam through the musty junk heap.

"Nothin' over here. Just computer parts, junk mail, and what I really hope is a plastic skeleton," called Dib from another corner of the basement.

"Hahaha! I forgot about him!" Zim chuckled as he leapt back into the sea of various odds and ends like a rich duck. It had to be down here somewhere, he thought. The bottom most floor of the base was once a storage room for scrap projects but had long ago mutated into a wasteland of anything Zim didn't want to deal with. That list consisted of 13 years' worth of broken inventions, discarded experiments, dead rodents and, hopefully, an in-tact time machine.

Without warning, Zim was yanked out of the garbage by the antenna and lifted eye level to Dib. "Alright, this isn't getting us anywhere. Can't you just build a new one? Don't you keep blueprints at least?"

Zim flailed like a feral cat until he was dropped on top of the pile. "HAH! Heuuumans and their 'blueprints,'" he chortled, "I simply remember everything important. Obviously."

"So you remember how to build it?" Dib deadpanned.

"I…" he paused. "I can figure it out! I did it before, all I need is… uhhhhhhh… metal? Yes, metal! And some gargantium, no, irrasplodisium! Wait… Doh! Curse my prior self's overzealous self-confidence! Wait, yes! That's- oh no, that can't be it. Maybe-"

While Zim argued with his own memory, Dib plopped himself face down into the garbage, resigning himself to having to listen to this for at least the next 12 hours. But before he could completely zone out, something shiny caught his eye, mere inches from his face. And then Dib got an idea. A wonderful, awful idea.

"Hold that thought Zim. I don't think we have to build that time machine after all…"

"Heh?" said Zim.

The dim basement light caught Dibs glasses, turning them into mirrors as wide toothy grin spread across his face. He clutched in his hand a fist sized ring of missing keys, upon which hung an employee ID card for Membrane Labs.

"I think I know someone who might have one."

The plan was simple. Step one: Invade.

This… actually went surprisingly well. God knows Membrane never changes his fuckin locks, don't even mention re-inforcing cyber security. But what the storage facility lacks in locks it more than makes up for in surveillance. Every square foot of the premises is swept hourly by cameras, but if you know the schedules, which Dib did, and could loop the cameras, which Zim could, it was as easy as just walking in. One painfully long elevator ride later, Dib swiped the card at the deep storage gate, and it opened on command. With a flourish he motioned Zim to go first, and they both proudly marched in the most dangerous warehouse on the planet.

Step two: Get in, get the machine, and get out. Don't take anything else to avoid suspicion.

"Oh my god"' thought Dib, staring starry-eyed at the pure magnitude of science, "I am going to take absolutely everything."

Matter disintegrators, star exploders, two different models of cloning devices- boy was Dib glad Zim never bothered to break in here. Shelves stuffed with devices deemed "unfit for public access" seemed to stretch for miles. The two decided to split up in order to cover more ground, taking anything not nailed down. Whatever organization system the bunker had, it was unintelligible to the both of them. They trusted each other completely.

Lost in an area seemingly designated for moose repellants, Dib suddenly stopped. What tripped him off, he didn't know; a change in the air. A ghost of a footstep. But reflex kicked in and he sprang forward, grabbing a net gun from a low shelf and firing instinctively behind him, smiling when he heard a familiar grunt. "You've gotten rusty," he smirked at the figure struggling against unbreakable ropes.

"Oh great. You talk again." said Gaz.

"Heh, no thanks to you," he retorted. He casually leaned on the gun and collected what he'd dropped in the fray. "So, how's home? Been enjoying the peace and quiet?"

"Hardly," Gaz spat. "Ever since you pulled your little stunt, Dads been crazier than ever. After he lost his favorite punching bag, I've been getting the brunt of his so-called "parenting.""

"Huh. Who coulda thunk," he said. Man, if that isn't karma, Dib doesn't know what is. Despite his better judgement, he's actually kind of enjoying this. "You graduated, right? Whatcha been up to? Beat 'Ultimate Vampire Piggies' yet?"

"Actually, I'm a scientist now. Guess I had enough brain cells to figure out I should just play along."

"Oh? How's that working out for you?"

"About how you'd expect," she sneered. "It's so boring, I'm running of caffeine pills just to stay awake." She finally stopped struggling, realizing it's a lost cause. "…he doesn't even let me game anymore, says its "unbefitting of a young scientist" or something. Down here's the only place within the shock perimeter where my stupid brain-chip can't get a signal. I don't even know how it works. He can read my thoughts or something, so whenever I try to do anything interesting it electrocutes me."

"Interesting," Dib said, "I didn't think we were the same size but it looks like the shoes on the other foot now, huh?" he slipped the grapple gun into a seemingly endless coat pocket.

"Ugh," she said, "Whatever. What are you doing here anyway? I thought you fucked off to play 'spin the bottle' with Zim."

"First, gross, so gross, what the fuck. Second, what does it look like, I'm robbing the old man blind!" He chuckled. Gaz rolled her eyes. "What? It's not like I'm in the will."

"You're even more of an idiot than I thought if you think anything down here works." She grumbled, "This is just where Dad puts the shit he doesn't wanna admit he was too dumb to fix."

"Eh," Dib shrugged, "I'll figure it out, I'm twice the inventor he'll ever be. Plus, I have a secret weapon…" he grabbed a pair of heavy metal clacking balls off a shelf and shoved them into his pocket with the rest of his loot.

"Please spare me the details of your boyfriend's engineering prowess," Gaz whined.

"He's not my boyfriend," he said, dry gagging, "he's like 400 years old and smells like a severed foot that was left in Listerine for a month!"

"Yeah, I don't care." She grimaced. After a beat she spoke again, quietly. "You know? As dumb as it was, I almost envied you."

"How-what? Why? How could you possibly envy me? Was it the daily paralysis? The forced mutism? Oh, how about the maddening certainty I was crazy?" he burst.

She gritted her teeth, then said bitterly, "You escaped, didn't you?"

Dib was stunned for a moment. It occurred to him for the first time that he had never thought about what happened to Gaz after he left. He felt guilty. Like he had abandoned her somehow. Not like she didn't give him reasons to. She must've seen his stupor, and looked away. She mumbled something he didn't catch. "…What?"

"I'm sorry, okay?" she blurted. "I treated you like garbage our whole lives because I thought it would make Dad love me more. Or like, at all, I guess."

It was at this point the growing pit in Dib's stomached dropped. It… it sounded like she was crying. His sister, who he'd never seen cry. Ever, not even when they were children.

"I was horrible. I saw everything dad put you through but by the time it got as bad as it did… it's not like I could've done anything about it anyway." She took a deep breath. "I didn't know if I'd ever see you again, get the chance to apologize, I-" Another uncharacteristic sob caught itself in her throat. "I was seventeen, Dib. I was only thinking about myself when we should've been in it together…"

The real gravity of their horrific childhood must have just hit Dib now, because he started laughing. Not a joyful laugh but something more somber, like the brain is suddenly confronted by a truth so obvious that its obliviousness to the situation was almost humorous. "I'm sorry, I," he laughed some more, then found a hint of a tear in his own eye, "we really are some fucked up kids, huh?"

"Yeah, I guess so…" she conceded.

An idea sprung into his mind- one he wouldn't have even humored a year ago. One that was, as ideas go, the equivalent of shooting a hornet's nest with a machine gun from orbit. "…Do you wanna get out of here?"

Somehow, she pounced on him, free of her bindings, holding his shoulders, her face inches from his. "More. Then. ANYTHING."

He shoved her off, "Alright then, its settled." He started pacing. "Getting you out shouldn't be a problem, there's plenty of room in my knapsack, and it's not like there's internet in a pocket dimension. I'm just a bit worried about the chip… I'm sure Zim could remove it but,"

"Oh no, you are NOT letting Zim pick at my brain. No way. Not happening." She insisted.

"Well we could ask Dad to remove it, but I'm not sure he'd be the most receptive to the idea," He remarked.

"Ugh." She considered her options. "When did I get this desperate?" she lamented. She conceded, though and agreed to climb into the "bag of holding" as he called it, the fuckin nerd. Tabletop was never really her thing, even if she had had friends to play it with.

"Oh, wait!" Dib objected the moment she went fully inside, pulling her head out by her hair just enough to stick out, "You know this place, where would I find a time machine?" he asked.

"I hate you with the rage of a million suns. Row 19, column 67. Straight past the toasters, can't miss it." She grumbled.

"Thanks Gaz!" he squeed. "Now, where did Zim end up…?"

He barely had time to ponder out loud before an explosion rang out halfway across the bunker. 'Yup,' thought Dib, 'there he is.'

"Let's get the fuck out of here before Zim kills all three of us."

"That's probably a good idea," she remarks. "…I missed you."

"Sap."

"Bastard."

They both knew it meant 'I love you'.