Butterfly Effect

Dead. Everyone who was important was dead.

Professor Membrane had died in a freak toaster/microwave/bread accident. No one had the faintest clue as to what he was trying to do. The Membrane Labs were shut down immediately, since no one could possibly continue the man's research.

When he died, he left behind two children, a boy and a girl. The girl, Gaz, continued to grow up the exact same way she had been; uncaring and unaffected by everything and anything in the world. Though, she did go to Bloaty's Pizza Hog more often. Later down the road she went to college, majoring in computer graphics. She got a job in Video Game designing and created many games, most of them including aliens, pigs, and or pizza.

One night she was driving down the road, completely at peace with the world, when she saw some lights in the sky. She'd never been very superstitious, but she thought of aliens when she saw this. All the memories from her youth came back and she thought of Zim and Dib and everything that had happened back then. Suddenly, while she was distracted, a drunk driver turned a corner too fast and entered the wrong lane. The paramedics pronounced Gaz dead on arrival.

The only thing the poor little alien had wanted to do was impress his leaders. Well, he did. On some night before Professor Membrane's oh so timely death, Dib finally got worthy proof of Zim's existence. It was the only proof Professor Membrane would even glance at, and that was Zim himself without his disguise. Dib had somehow captured him at his base. Professor Membrane took one look and asked what country Zim came from, completely disbelieving that there were aliens.

But, Professor Membrane had just been speaking with the head of the Swollen Eyeball via video screen of a video screen, and happened to be looking on as Dib announced his finding. Finally believing in Dib, the head Swollen Eyeball contacted Dib and negotiated the rights to Zim's existence. In the end, he was handed over to the Swollen Eyeball and Dib was allowed to watch everything they did, and he also got to hear Zim's cursing and frantic yells directed at him.

No matter how hard he tried, Dib felt enormously guilty as Zim ranted. Feeling the pressure and how serious the situation was, Zim admitted to lots of things, and made confessions to things Dib never would have known otherwise. And it made his heart sink even deeper. Their fighting had all been a game, all of it. They only ever played with each other's heads. Yeah, Zim got burned sometimes, but he always shook it off. Now Dib learned that they could have been more…could have been comrades…maybe even friends. But it was too late for any such thing, not when Zim was in hysterics and now talking only in Irken.

Due to Zim being alien and water having negative effects on him, they didn't know what to do to sedate him. They could have tried something that worked on humans, but who would know if it killed him, or ruined the body beyond their use. So they didn't do anything about it and made sure he was strapped efficiently. What Dib saw that day gave him nightmares for several years. A six month voot cruiser trip away, Tallest Red and Purple had hacked into Zim's computer, giving them the information they needed to hack into the Swollen Eyeball camera feeds. They watched every moment of Zim's torture and laughed, and when Zim eventually switched to speaking Irken only, they laughed even more. But at the end of it all, they had to admit, with how long Zim lasted on Earth and especially with how long he lasted in that room full of humans, they were, for once, impressed.

After Zim's death, Dib stopped hunting the paranormal. He stopped having dreams of grandeur in which everyone loved him and girls hung on his arms and stopped the alien menace. Because now he knew that there was no enemy menace. If there actually had been an army behind Zim, like he always thought there was, they would have stepped in by now and stopped them from taking Zim. There had been seven months in between Zim's capture and that torturously fateful day. And Zim had always been keen to let Dib know how he had to listen to Gir's doom song for six months before they reached Earth.

The only thing Dib did that another ordinary boy might not have done was to keep Gir in his closet. The poor little robot didn't know what to do as Zim's base decided to shut itself down. The main computer regarded Zim's death as a way to catch up on lost sleep, but it seemed that Gir didn't even know Zim was dead yet. So he lived ignorantly in Dib's closet. Dib made sure to keep a waffle iron and cake mixes handy as well.

From then on he lived each day basically the same. He would wake from nightmares and Gir would be there to comfort him without knowing he was comforting, then Skool and home again. But his father's sudden death shook him, making him stray from the usual path. The Labs shut down with the belief that no one could continue Professor Membrane's work. But Dib just couldn't let that be. He stole away to the basement everyday since then, hoping to learn as much as he could from his father's past inventions.

Without meaning to, Dib became a well-known scientist, having many colleagues and associates in the scientific field. Every once in a while he would create new kinds of video screens for Gaz to expand her video gaming career. Letting her adjust her newest games to the latest technology before it was even released. It seemed like such a good life…until he got a call from a certain organization: The Swollen Eyeball. They wanted Dib to return and develop alien capture devices with them.

He didn't accept. He couldn't. The nightmares suddenly started afflicting him again, worse than before. Zim spoke to him in these dreams, blamed him for what happened. He often accused Dib of trading Zim and their playful games away for the peaceful life of a scientist. It utterly pissed him off. It wasn't his fault! Well…it was, but he hadn't realized what could have been…. In any case, it didn't matter how many hours he spent sitting and trying to reason the matter out, because the nightmares merely continued.

Because of Dib's lack of attention, Gir began to wander outside the house more often. He'd been stuck inside for so long, just waiting to be free again. He was determined that Zim was out there somewhere…he just kept forgetting where exactly. Looking through the old things in Zim's base, he found the voot cruiser, and it was in workable condition. It was the perfect thing for finding Zim. He could fly it high and search from the sky, despite the fact that he could fly on his own. In the sky, Gir got completely distracted, playing with the many buttons the voot offered. All the weapons were disabled, to Gir disappointment, but the lights were still working. He lit the voot up, inside and out, for quite a while until he heard something crash down below him. Suddenly afraid he'd done something wrong and pressed the wrong button, Gir flew the voot back to Zim's base and went home. Dib didn't even notice Gir's absence.

Gaz's death hit Dib as though he'd swallowed a hot bowl of lead. He just couldn't accept it. After the funeral, he became very reclusive, only coming out to showcase new theories or inventions. Eventually, he simply moved to the countryside, letting his assistants take control of his lab. Bringing Gir with him, Dib isolated himself from other humans, preferring the peace of the country, although, he did bring along Zim's entire base to mess with. Dib spent most of his time figuring out Irken technology, and discovering how shitty Zim's inventions actually were. Which, of course, only made him guiltier over Zim's death. And the nightmares got even worse from there.

Probably the worst thing he could have found in Zim's base was Mini-Moose and all the detailed instructions written in Vort that Zim probably never read. Dib remembered seeing Mini-Moose once when Zim attempted to use him. It had harmlessly bumped against his face until Zim snatched it back and ran back home to fix it. Just by looking, Dib could tell that Zim never figured out how to use Mini-Moose. But Dib readjusted several settings and basically redesigned Mini-Moose so that it actually was a lethal doomsday device.

He supposed it was ironic. All those years of learning and inventing had been aimed at helping people. Yet now he had created a literal bomb that could devastate a whole continent, possibly the whole world. That night, in the dream world, Zim promised to leave him alone forever if only Dib used the bomb. Just once, he promised, and the nightmares would end. Dib woke in a cold sweat and thought long and hard about Zim's deal. Just once couldn't hurt, could it? No one would know it was him, after all, he was a genius and could keep people from finding out.

Making sure he was well out of the blast zone, and even the aftershock zone, Dib programmed Mini-Moose to go to a certain destination and go off at a particular time. Dib had become accustomed to watching a sci-fi show on BBC every Friday, so he had Mini-Moose go off after the show was over, he didn't want it being interrupted by the news stations.

Gir was extremely happy about the explosion, it had killed hundreds, maybe thousands, and the entire country was in a panic. Everyone was trying to figure out what happened. Dib smirked and was thankful he decided to take a reprieve from living in the city, otherwise pulling this off would have been impossible. No one ever suspected him. Mini-Moose also never returned.

Although he'd made promises, the nightmares still drove Dib crazy. So he started to drink, hoping the alcohol would drown out his mind. It worked…for a while. A year after the incident with Mini-Moose, Gir began to nag about wanting to be useful, too. Dib hadn't bothered to dabble in Zim's base after Mini-Moose, but Gir's insisting convinced him to play with technology once more. Since Zim had never accomplished giving Gir upgrades, he decided that was something to tackle first. It took two years, but he managed to make Gir a useful little drone.

A little too useful. Being Irken designed, Gir thought it best to entirely wipe out the nearest town. And though he chastised Gir, Dib was secretly proud. It was the exact thing Zim would approve of. Sure enough, the nightmares lessened. And after wiping out another, larger town, the nightmares stopped completely. Dib was starting to get addicted to how it felt to have power in his hands. He could tell Gir to destroy any city and Gir would do it so cleanly that neither of them were ever caught. Which is exactly what he did.

First on the list was his old hometown; it burnt to the ground, even the catacombs underneath the Skool. With that done, he started targeting random cities and towns. Each time he destroyed a place he targeted another one more quickly than the last. No one was able to prevent his rein of terror. Eventually, Tak landed on Earth once more. They joined alliances, though Tak was disappointed that Zim was already dead before she could torture him.

But when Dib told her how Zim always wanted to destroy Earth, she was all for it. Destroying Earth seemed like a way of paying Zim back, the way Tak saw it. The way Dib saw it though, it was more like finishing what Zim started. Dib took away Zim's chance to destroy Earth. He'd always protected Earth, helped it, cheered it on, but to what end? Everyone died eventually, as was proven to Dib repeatedly. With Tak's help, everyone on Earth soon died.

After a whole year of fighting humans and blowing up whole cities together, Tak seemed to grow attached to Dib, though she wouldn't admit it. Never had Dib become so familiarized with a woman. She was Irken, like Zim, and violent, like him. But Dib also saw bad things in her. Tak only did things for herself, she wanted to rise in rank and overcome the Tallest by killing and defeating whatever she could. It was so similar to Zim…but she was different. Zim had nothing personal against anyone, except Dib, he only had simple goals in mind, like defeating Earth. Over time, Dib began to resent Tak.

When finally their bio-scans showed that there wasn't a living soul left on Earth, Dib relaxed. Apparently, so did Tak. One night, while aboard Tak's ship, Tak got a little too close to Dib, quite a bit too close, actually. With a swift order to Gir, Tak was also wiped out. An enemy he no longer had to worry about. He stole her ship, destroyed her SIR Unit and left Earth.

The ship itself seemed to recognize that Tak was no longer there and that it was being piloted by a foreign being. Slyly, it sent messages to Gir programming and caused Gir to blow up inside the cockpit. Scientists on an alien planet found Dib's body a few days later. They examined Dib's corpse intensely before classifying him as an unidentified space vermin. Gir, on the other hand, was recognized as Irken technology, even if he was broken and unusable, and was set in a museum for all to see.

Days earlier, Tallest Purple and Red were bored and decided to see how Zim's old planet was doing. So they tried to tap into the systems there, but found nothing to hack into. Sending their own probes out, they witnessed and marveled at the planet's utter destruction. Upon seeing Dib destroy his own planet and murder Tak, they were honestly impressed with Zim. Why wouldn't they be, Zim's dying words had been an Irken curse that forced his consciousness into Dib's, causing Dib to eventually bend to Zim's will. They'd laughed at the time because they thought Zim's consciousness was too weak to overcome anyone else's.

Perhaps if they captured Dib and probed his mind, they would be able to replicate Zim and restore his entire being into…oh, the ship just killed Dib. Oh well for that plan. The Tallests then forgot about Zim entirely and moved on to eat at Food Courtia. Because that's all you can do when cornered with death, is move on.

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A/N

…ever started watching a movie and someone walks by and whispers (loudly) 'they all die in the end!'. Yes, well, in this case it's true.

Dealing with stuff like that sucks…which is why I think everyone should write at least one story in which the author (or authoress) murders every character.

Wrote this to hopefully get some stress out of me. Hope you like. Plz review, it would make me (and Dibbeh) happy :)