He had Zim trapped under the hull of his Doom-mech-whatever-the-hell-it-was, clawing at the pavement futilely in an attempt to work his way out from under the four tons of Irkin alloy.

Savoring his victory, Dib perched on the foot of his own mech two yards away, smugly slurping from a titanium thermos of coffee. They'd destroyed almost half of London before Dib had figured out the encryption codes to Zim's mech and uploaded a few choice viruses, and a part of Dib –the small, sneaky, usually ignored part- was perversely proud of the wreckage.

"Dib!" The alien screamed, "You –nff!- won't get –nff!- away with this, you vile human filth-pig! I'll –gnghr!- get you for this!"

Dib took a long sip wandered over, watching his enemy struggle with vast amusement. It began to drizzle slowly, more a vertical fog than a rain, but the increased participation lent more of an edge to the alien's desperate thrashing. Dib watched his nemesis, his heart sinking.

Climbing back in his own machine he had it squat down, digging its clawed fingers under the rim of Zim's ruined mech-

"Well?" An terse, authoritative voice asked, sounding almost like dad's- but it couldn't be dad's, it was too young, too… irate, dad had always been strung tight as a stretched rubber band but had never held that knife's edge in his words. Who…? Dib resisted the urge to turn over, trying to remember why his room smelled so metallic, and why his bed was so hard-

"Um, Sir?" A new voice, a girl's, faint and high and worried and familiar.

"Sorry, sorry. So, how is he?"

"Seems fine, sir. Pulse rate and body temperature normal… He's settling in to his body fine. Shock onset predicted at normal-"

"You can't tell me that was a normal coping mechanism back there, tyro, he was spasming like a fish full of nerve gas!"

"No, sir, please, sir! We don't know what it is, really sir, no one's made any modifications to the nutrient recipe-"

"And his brain patterns? How are they?"

"Unusual, sir."

"…How?"

"He's…dreaming, sir."

A long pause. Dib tried to slow down his breathing. Wires. Gaz. Clones- He was a clone, shit, why did it have to be him why couldn't it have been another him why wasn't he in his own bed in his own house in his own time- Calm down. Calm down. Shit, calm down. So it wasn't a dream or –he wasn't crazy!- couldn't be a hallucination- so it was real. Real. Shit. Then that voice that wasn't dad's was his…sort of…was that other him, Alpha, and the girl –the girl that he'd woken up to. Didn't know her name, Alpha had pronounced 'tyro' as more of a title –an epithet- than a name.

They were monitoring his brain patterns? Why? Well, obviously they wanted to make sure he wasn't…unstable but it was still…wrong. Feeling. Ish. Dib hoped there weren't any of the monitors in the room; he had always drea- he had always wanted to wake up on some secret, important conversation, with tense sentences flying through the darkness over his head like the missing pieces of a jigsaw.

Be careful what you wish for, he thought bitterly.

"Dreaming." Alpha said after a pause, dangerously soft.

"Y-yes, sir."

"Fucking hell." Dib could almost see the man rub the bridge of his nose wearily.

"If you say s-so, sir."

"Okay, that settles it, tyro, and we don't have enough spare power for another one so we'll have to make do and hope this sucker doesn't blow up in our lap. You're promoted to Handler, effective immediately, congratulations, good job, woo-hoo, take him over to Ground Zero after breakfast and I'll meet you there. Okay? Okay. "

There was a complicated flurry of clicking noises, like metal on stone –those spiderlegs that Alpha had used?- which promptly settled out to a simple four-legged scuttle and faded, and the heavy sounds of the girl breathing hard. Dib lay there, his entire skin prickling uncomfortably under the imagined 'tyro's' stare, then breathed a sigh of relief as soon as the girl's more pedestrian footsteps had faded away.

OOO

"S-sir?"

"Mnh?" Dib responded intelligently, waking up again, this time to painfully bright fluorescent light, and the girl's worried face hovering over his.

"Umm, I'm your new- new- um, guide, yes, and I've been assigned to take you to breakfast, sir."

"Okay." Dib said, sitting up and running a hand self-consciously through his hair, that one tuft reassuringly fighting its way perpendicular again, a single normal detail in this incredibly non-normal setting. The girl was staring at him like he was some sort of fascinatingly dangerous bomb, and she flinched when he scrambled clumsily off the cot. His limbs were longer than he remembered, and it was throwing his balance off… "I'm fine with that." He said, as reassuringly as he could. He'd never been the focus of such nervous attention, and it was making him edgy as well.

She smiled in relief, fidgeting with the cord of her headset. "Th-this way, sir."

The hallways were just as crowded as the last two times he had been led through them, although he noticed less spider-legged Techs than before, and the few that were abroad scuttling intently in the same general directions. Dib, still wearing the same rumpled lab coat and bare feet, felt as if he were in pajamas, his embarrassment not alleviated by the fact that absolutely everyone, including his guide, politely avoided looking at him as much as possible.

The Mess Hall, as the words carved into the rock indicated, was a surprisingly large hall of tables and full of lab-coated, headphoned young men and women, all of them looking somewhere before full adulthood but older than adolescents. Interestingly enough, purple seemed to be the prevalent hair color, shades of it ranging from near-burgundy to indigo to neon to off-black. They were college age, perhaps, but all of them had an ever-so-slightly-unhealthy leanness to the way they moved and the way their coats and gloves hung on their frames that Dib had never seen back home. They ignored him –nothing he wasn't used to- and Dib silently watched a few interactions unseen as he tagged along after his guide through the long tables.

Despite their costuming and thinness –and tallness, he would swear no one was under six feet around here- they interacted a good deal like the kids in the skool cafeteria did. He could almost make out a few cliques, a cluster of slightly-more muscular-techs –or were they tyros?- laughing and giving each other manly shoulder-punches here, a group of impressively goggled kids fixing –or dissecting?- another near-frantic boy's headset as he hovered nervously there, a small cluster of females fussing with each other's hair and admiring the previously noted jocks. After the fourth time tripping over his feet he gave up gawking and kept his head down, trying to keep up with his guide's deceptively quick pace. Finally an unoccupied section of table at the back of the hall, where a mixed group of skittish-looking kids watched them warily and then scattered with mock-casualness to the adjoining seats, throwing furtive looking glances at a resentfully blushing Dib and his equally embarrassed tyro. She didn't explain, and Dib didn't ask, his normal curiosity dampened by the sheer strangeness of everything. Zim's base, he could deal with. Skool, he could deal with. This…was so different than either of them.

Over a small bowl of some sort of tasteless bran-oatmeal with, unexpectedly, fresh orange slices -delivered by what looked like a modified version of the flying skool-spycams-- Dib took the time to study his new guide. She was only a head taller than he was, middle teens maybe, probably a few years younger than the rest of the age-group eating in the Mess Hall. The hair color that had seemed so strange when he first woke to this reality looking positively drab when faced up against the far more vibrant shades that other tyros wore, but she looked very familiar, somehow…almost like what Zita might have grown into, if she bleached her hair and if you took away everything inside Zita's head and poured in a gallon of sheer nervous tension, like a sparrow or a small mouse in a horribly exposed space. Dib expected her to turn into a blur on the horizon if he so much as dropped his spoon. As soon as he had finished the last bite –it was far from enough but the sheer gloopy texture of the bran made him never want to eat anything ever again, although the orange was delicious- she stood up abruptly, walking with the same too-quick stride, back the way she had led him in.

This time he was taken to a smaller room, worryingly labeled Station IV, where Alpha and a small handful of multi-paked Techs were clustered around a holographic display of some sort of exploded-diagram…something…mechanicy, Alpha's many metal limbs turning the image and pointing out various features as he conferred with the others in a hushed, serious tone, his real hands clasped behind his back the a take-me-seriously-pose so reminiscent of Professor Membrane's body language that Dib felt like he was doing something wrong, seeing himself like that. But every figure in the room turned almost instantly as Dib and his tyro entered, looking startled, causing the girl to step back apprehensively and the illusion was broken. This wasn't his Dad giving a speech to a group of adoring scientists, this was…too many unknowns, and the techs didn't look particularly happy, either.

"A tyro and a clone, Dib?" One of the women –a hatchet-faced, anemically pale old woman with wisps of faint plum in her severely cropped grey hair and set of dauntingly complicated goggles- asked, cocking her head to one side. Half of her face was a gut-wrenching mesh of scars and metal staples, Dib saw with an involuntary surge of horror. "To what do we owe this interruption?"

"I- I- I….w-was…told to, to come here at, at, after breakfast and…" Dib's companion stammered, wilting under the combined not-quite-glare of the half-dozen old men and women, each of them decked to the hilt in complicated-looking gadgetry and fearsome looking scars.

Alpha clapped his hands together for attention, frowning. "They're with me. I wanted my newest Beta to work on this afternoon's situation with us, start to get the hang of things. He could be the last clone for awhile, you know, so we might as well do something different for a change. They won't-" He gave the two newcomers a quick glare and the girl flattened herself to the wall, "be any trouble."

One of the men in the back –Dib caught a glimpse of dark skin and a shock of white hair- sighed quietly, breaking the silence. "If you say so, Dib. Now, new gadgets aside, what's this afternoon situation you mentioned?"

Alpha turned back to the holograph's console, bringing up a display of what looked like a three dimensional ant-farm filled with blue and maroon smoke. "At oh-twenty-two hours three platoons of our favorite galactic conquerors are going to sneak-attack the Northwest wing of our humble abode, pillaging like fuck as they go their merry way. They've learned our latest code, it turns out, and they have all the necessary passwords to make it as far as the core generators. Estimated 90 percent casualties on our side; they're packing serious fire-power, and at least the captains of the squads have personal SIR units. The good news is…Beta!"

Dib snapped instinctively to attention as the room's collective attention descended on him. "Um, what? Sir?"

"Tell me what the good news is, Beta." Alpha repeated.

"Um." Dib thought. "How much is a platoon?"

"A set of the bastards is three, squad is nine, troop is twenty seven, platoon is eighty-one of them." Alpha reeled off, looking pleased. "We haven't figured out how they pick the boss but there's one leader per set, one boss leader of the three leaders, one boss boss leader, etcetera. In this scenario, each troop leader –boss over nine other bosses and twenty-six total- each of them are going to have a SIR unit."

"So that's…hold on…three troops to a squad?"

"To a platoon. Squad, troop, platoon."

"But that's only nine SIRS, then. Is that bad?"

The look on Alpha's face indicated that Dib had guessed wrong. One limb worked its way out of one of the paks and delicately tapped a single button, bringing up a wire-frame model of the typical cute, toy-like robot Dib had grown a soft spot for. Another dainty tap and the robot exploded, the tube of light that suspended the hologram filling up with wire-frame machinery, nukes, missiles, rocket launchers, disturbing-looking scythes and saws and blades until the display was forced to overlap the weapons, sending cylinders floating through pronged spheres through nozzles, and still more weaponry was appearing.

"Oh." Dib managed, wilting a little under the tall man's disapproval and the jammed display in the holograph. "I guess it is kinda bad."

"Guess again, Beta. Tell me the good news."

Good news, good news, what was good about this situation? He'd been dragged god knew how many years into the future in time to be slaughtered in a sneak-attack by psychotic little alien toys.

"Wait, how can it be a sneak attack if we know it's going to happen?" Dib thought with irritation, then realized he'd asked it out loud.

"Exactly!" Alpha yelled, suddenly and abruptly delighted. Whirling around he resumed jabbing at the keys, the tunnels popping back up, the former maroon wiggly lines coiling through the tunnels, as before, but this time the blue lines intersecting, running parallel, driving them back, unraveling the ropes of purple to threads, then wisps. Before the display had progressed half as far as before the bulk of the presumably irken force was reduced to a few scraps at dead ends, the blue once again solidly taking up the rest of the space, spreading like smoke.

The female tech that had protested Dib's arrival before stepped forward, indicating a stretch of tunnels with metal legs of her own, zooming the display in on it.

"And where, Alpha, do you propose the pre-ads sleep after you stampede half a dozen troops through their dormitories? It will be in the middle of their sleep rota too, I might add."

"Oh." Alpha's shoulders sagged a little. "What, they changed it again?"

"As of three months ago, Dib."

"What about if we went through…here?"

"And ruin half this months rations from radiation burns? Those new tasers leak, Dib, no matter what the Mech Techs claim this week-" A short, burly tech with a shaved head and a beard like a purple dandelion and no apparent eyes made a grunt of protest and was silenced by a particularly venomous glare from the woman, "-and I know absolutely no one that's going to be happy to glowing patches on the new apples or the midgets frolicking through the kitchens"

"Your suggestion, Quartermaster?"

"Well, if one would take my humble advice into consideration, I would suggest…"

Dib startled, loosing the thread of the conversation as another tech –the surprisingly muscular teak-colored man with the Einsteinian shock of white hair and a deeply seamed face- nudged him in the shoulder with an elbow that appeared more metal-and-plastic plating than flesh.

"He's testing you, you know."

"Yeah?" Dib muttered, still watching Alpha and the rest of the techs gravely discussing things, the wild spark that he'd seen in the man smothered again under the professional stance and sober expression.

"Yep. And take it from me, you do not want to fail his little games. You clones are all the fun he really has, anymore, and he seems to have taken a special interest in you. First time he's let a Beta into the Trid Room since- in a while."

Dib scowled. "Guess I'm just special."

The man ran a hand distractedly through his wild hair, sighing. "You have no idea. And if you two will excuse me, I've got to point out something to those peacocks over there."

As the man headed towards the rest of the techs Dib saw his tyro slumped against the wall, trembling.

"Are- are you okay?" Dib asked worriedly.

"Th-that was the Adgen." She whispered, still in shock. "The Admiral General just …spoke to us."

"Um. Okay?" Dib hazarded.

"Y-yeah. Okay." She smiled shakily. Before Dib could probe further Alpha had called him over, asking another question, something about whether he remembered the exact protein strain that had given Zim that nasty rash that one time. Testing him. And before Dib could look back for his guide he was being led into another room, full of weaponry he'd only dreamed about, the Tyro bobbing along timidly in the background, but she wasn't important anymore because Alpha was still probing, still talking, still showing Dib new things, new things, all with that same smoldering intensity buried underneath his every action but it didn't matter either anymore because everything was going too fast, too intense suddenly and he was being strapped into a chair with no back, the group of old men and women watching intently as Dib pulled off one of his cyan paks, smiling strangely.

"This is going to hurt." He said. "But it's worth it."

And Dib screamed as the pack was pressed between his shoulders, the wired drilling their way through his skin, into his brain-

PORT ESTABLISHED WITH DIB v. bBA': NEW USER. UPGRADING TO DIB v. bBA. UPLOADING BASIC USERINFO; COORDINATION SACHET 00001: ALTERIOR LIMBS ENABLED.

FISION DRIVE ENABLED Y/N?

-"Gaz- I'm going out to infiltrate Zim's base again, okay? I'll be back in" -he checked his watch, "an hour or so. If I don't come back, tell Agent Nessie that the eagle has landed in the chocolate cement, okay?"

Gaz glared over the rim of her gameslaveIII. "You're letting the warm air out." She growled.

"The fate of humanity is at stake!"

"You're letting the warm air out!"

"But Gaaaz- ow!" She threw a lamp at his head with painful accuracy and he ducked hurriedly out the door, slamming it behind him and adjusting his glasses angrily as he wiped away the blood welling out of the gash on his forehead with his other hand.-

…HIGH STRESS LEVEL DETECTED… NEGATIVE. N AFFIRMED. FISION DRIVE NOT ENABLED.

CUTTING TO INDIGENOUS POWER….ENABLED.

PAINCONTROLL...ENABLED.

-A millisecond of agony later and everything went numb. He choked off his scream abruptly, coughing, his ears ringing. He was vaguely aware of Alpha unbuckling the straps on his wrists grimly.

"Well?"

Dib coughed. His throat hurt… "Why?"

"I'd like to know too, Dib." The woman –the Quartermaster- said wryly. "Why all the fuss over a beta?"

Alpha straitened up, his long spine crackling as he gave the pak on Dib's back a thoughtful tap.

"I'd like to try…something different for a change." He murmured, his eyes distant. They hardened abruptly as he hoisted Dib out of the strange chair.

"How do you feel?"

He's testing you. Dib pulled himself to attention, the numb weight on his back settling between his shoulders… it felt like a missing tooth when one probed it with one's tongue. Painless but disturbingly wrong. He'd never noticed on Zim's pak but this bent like stiff rubber, almost, twisting ever-so-slightly and seamlessly to accommodate his spine. He bit down a hysterical wail, and a near-identical rush of manic laughter. He could feel his four new limbs stir inside the pak as he tested them…

"Just fine." He said, lifting his chin to lock gazes with his older self. Alpha grinned savagely and Dib saw the man, the AdGen, smile secretly, turning away.