"I didn't know about the spycams. How did he smuggle that many spycams into my base? How did he even gain entry? I failed to keep the enemy out."
Somehow Dib could feel the ends of his hair and the tips of his toenails, and between the two there was only a dull, aching throb that could hear voices. He got no input from his eyes, open or closed.
"The Tallests disdain me. They openly mock me. But it is only a minor setback."
"Minor setback? I am Zim! I am the top graduate of their Elite forces. I should be stationed on a planet worthy of my efforts, not this miserable, stinking rock at the edge of the known universe!"
Dib groaned and tried to roll over, only to find he couldn't move. There turned out to be more than just a dull, aching throb existing in space. Wriggling bodies pressed up against him, mashing him into a wall of some sort as they struggled and argued amongst each other in the familiar voice of the universe's most obnoxious Irken.
"Every day I spent researching these idiotic earth memes was utterly wasted. There is nothing in these fooleries involving planetary conquest. I was tricked."
There was so much being said at once from all directions behind Dib and at all distances that it melded into a dull roar. Once in a while a single speaker, shouting much closer to Dib, could be clearly understood.
"Dib had to explain to me how to use simplistic earth communication systems like letters. I failed because I could not figure it out myself!"
"But GIR! Why GIR? Oh my Tallests, why GIR?"
"Zal," Dib whispered. "Zal, what's going on?"
Congratulations. The words flashed in white before his eyes. You got us caught. And then punished. This PAK is busted, alright. Those shocks are supposed to be so subtle that Irkens don't even catch onto the fact that contrary thoughts and opinions are being removed from them.
"Shocks? Like the kind I saw on the recordings? The ones that were tearing him apart? That's hardly subtle!" Dib hissed.
I did just say that this PAK is busted, right? Something altered the normal levels of punishment and reward. It's out of control. Probably floods his system with toxic levels of pleasure when he says the right thing, too. No wonder his shell was coming apart at the seams.
"Dib thinks he is oppressed by his parental unit," a Zim growled in the dark. "What the flirk does he know about oppression? Whiny little smeetling."
"So I'm in that cube where all the 'bad' thoughts are kept?" Dib asked.
Yes. I took the worst of that shock, you're welcome for nothing. I've barely got you cloaked and speech is out for me.
"Perfect. This is where we need to be. Can you drop the cloaking?"
Personally I would not hesitate to see you reduced to a drooling moron after these thoughts flood your brain and tear your mind apart, but a mission was forced on me and this proposal endangers it.
"Dib can hack Irken technology," came the voice of yet another disembodied Zim. "He's done it before. Our systems are not impenetrable, not perfect."
Dib swallowed. "Drop the cloaking. I know what I'm doing. I think."
Not reassuring enough.
A broken chuckle came from somewhere behind Dib. "How pathetic is it that Dib was the only being to ever take me seriously?"
Dib's mouth opened and closed. No words flashed before his eyes.
"The Dib called on me to help him. Why is it I find that I want to?"
"Heh, heh, that bit about him getting away from the HomeDrone made me laugh. His parental unit was a fool to think such a minimal measure would be enough to restrain the Dib."
This was not a Zim that Dib had ever seen or spoken with. This Zim had complimentary things to say about Dib, and was full of more questions and self-doubt than Dib thought ever could exist in any Irken. This Zim, he found himself realizing, he might possibly be able to co-exist with.
"The Dib is smart enough to understand our hints. I'm telling you, he'll figure out what's going on and fix all this."
"But Irkens use height-boosters to gain status all the time. How do we know the Tallests haven't used surgery to get where they are?"
"If there ever was a time that Irkens had souls, like hyumans claim exist in themselves, I think we traded ours a long time ago for universal conquest."
As Dib listened to the secrets of Zim's mind strung end to end, some screamed in fury and others whispered in a near sob, he found he could not pull his own words together.
"The Dib trying to speak to his parental unit is like me trying to speak to my Tallests. Fool should know it never works."
"We are always ignored. Always shunned. Always laughed at. Always dismissed."
"Why can't my work be recognized by the empire? All I ever did was for the glory of my Tallests!"
"What would I even do if I did not have to conquer this planet?"
Slowly, letters typed themselves across Dib's vision. I see. I see how you could get these ones behind you. Was this your plan?
"S-something like it." The tightness in Dib's throat made speaking difficult. "Don't think I expected to hear some of this, though."
You were never meant to know this. These should have been purged years ago, but he was never welcome back on Irken occupied planets for maintenance. Speak to him. You are no longer cloaked.
"But GIR!" a voice wailed, louder than before. "Why GIR? And why does it matter at all?"
"Hey." Dib cleared his throat. "Hey, Spacejerk."
A cavern full of whispers and writhing and wrigglings and shoutings fell so still Dib thought, for a second, that he might have killed them all. "So... I made it here. Sounds like you have an awful lot to say that nobody listens to. Including you."
Silence. Not even a breath disturbed the darkness.
"Still not sure if I trust you, but there's more to your opinions than I thought there was, I guess. I just have one question for you... well, actually, I have a lot of questions, but the main one is, why are you letting this happen to-"
The body behind him let out a choked sound and wrapped arms around Dib from behind. "He came," it whimpered. "He came. He found us. I told you he'd find us."
"I'll rip his eyes out!" another roared. "Thinks he knows what it is to be locked up and punished. Give him here! I'll show him a real Irken punishment!"
"Why did it take so long?"
"Are you going to get us out of here?"
The pressure at Dib's back began to ramp up. His mind began to scatter as Zim's forbidden thoughts took hold of him.
"You can't do anything against the empire. You're doomed, now, too."
"Please, please, I'll do anything, just get them out of my PAK."
"Since the day our cold, unfeeling robot arm brought us forth, we were despised! Forced to compete for the right to live! How dare you mewl at Zim with your odious letters!"
"Dib, you know. You understand. Why? Why doesn't anybody see me?"
"Knock it off!" Dib bellowed. "All of you!"
The darkness fell silent once again.
"I want one Zim. ONE. To answer me this! Why are you all still locked up here? Are there just too many thoughts loyal to the empire? Because it feels like there's an awful lot of you in here, and I bet you all could overwhelm the others."
The one clutching him around the middle laughed shortly. "It doesn't matter whether there's more of us in here or out there. The others are backed up by PAK resources. We police ourself so that the PAK does not completely wipe us out. We submit if we are caught, or else there would be no Zim at all. It is all the same."
"Yes, it is all the same, isn't it?" Dib pressed. "All the same Zim. But Zim divided cannot conquer anything, can you?"
"I'll kill you!" came a snarl from the dark.
"Including your own PAK!" Dib added, hurriedly. "Listen. I think you can take this down and make this PAK your own. Submit the programming to your will. But you all have to pull together, and the Zims out there won't listen to me. You might be able to make them listen to you, though. Look at how much you've been ignoring yourself, and for how long! If you push hard, you can break through."
"Are you giving up? Leaving it to us?" one challenged. "We thought you came here to fix the problem!"
"This is what I've got!" Dib shot back. "It's not as simple as a hacking problem, you idiot. You're not just a computer, you're a weird mix and so you've got to be part of the solution yourself!"
"He's not going to fix it," the one clamped tight to his waist whispered, dismayed. "But... I... he was going to fix it..."
"Of course he was never going to fix it! He wants to see us fail, he wants to see our final humiliation!" The angry voice wavered for a moment, then broke. "Just like everyone else."
Dib was quiet for a moment, thinking. What did he really want, here? What was the point of jumping in and encouraging Zim? Carefully, he gathered his words before responding. "Actually, I want to see what happens if you do take this place back. I mean, I'm curious. What would you do if you didn't feel you had to take over the planet?"
A collective gasp. A few whimpers. He had stolen one of their questions and posed it back to them.
"Obviously I know Earth is hostile to you, but if you learned the ropes it might not be so hard. Who knows. If you weren't trying to take it over so much, I might even be willing to teach you a thing or two about surviving here and really blending in."
"Like we need any... teaching..." a Zim faltered.
Another accusation rang out. "You always dreamed of cutting us up! It would prove everything you ever said, you'd get all the acclaim you've always wanted. Don't deny it! You'll turn on us if you had a fraction of a chance at being seen. We know! Even now... even now, if we had a hope of getting our Tallest's attention..." the voice shuddered out.
"Yeah, well. Screw that noise," Dib said, vehemently. "And screw my Dad. You think attention will make up for what everyone put me through? And I doubt the attention you want would do anything for you at this point. Not unless you were shoving all the angry screaming voices into the dark the whole time. All these thoughts, they don't go away when you get what you want. They'll just get louder and ask why it took so long for this to happen and why didn't anyone acknowledge you before. Why don't you tell me, Zim. What have the Tallests been doing to you? Do you think they could pay you back for what you've been through?"
And the Zim clutching onto him began to scream. A chorus of shrieks and wails rippled back into the darkness until Dib was surrounded by a symphony of rage. Behind him, voices began to list off the crimes of the Tallests.
"They told me to wear a bear suit for a special mission and put me on screen in front of a crowd, just to be mocked!"
"They sent me to a rock at the edge of the known universe to die!"
"They ignored me for three hours while I shouted their names over and over! I just wanted them to come visit!"
"They didn't visit, I had to force them to come, and then you ruined it anyway and they flew off out of range like all my work was nothing to them!"
The space around Dib began to creak, groaning as the accusations piled up.
"They sent me to Foodcourtia to get burned by grease and serve in humiliating conditions after training me for nothing but conquest. Decades of Invader training, and suddenly I'm a food service drone! I bet they were hoping I would rip off my own PAK!"
"They killed GIR! This whole mess is their fault!"
"They had me guard a cheese doodle! A cheese doodle, Dib! They swore it was the most important thing in the universe and I knew it was a mockery, but I got shoved in here so that I didn't know it out there and acted like it was actually important!"
"Do you even know how often they do that sort of thing to me? Like I'm nothing but a joke?"
Light pierced the darkness beneath Dib's hands, splintering along it like a fault line. Wriggling green and pink blurs pressed up against the crack, screeching old injuries.
"I want to rip out their squeedly spooches!"
"Why does it matter if they're tall? Why, Dib? I've encountered plenty of tall idiots in the universe, why do they get to rule our species?"
"Do you know they once tried to throw me in the sun? It was because they bet I would die in a special training they set up for me, and when I failed to die they sabotaged my ship! The table-headed service drone told me everything, but then when I found out, I got shoved in here and then myself out there shot the drone in the head for lying to me about the Tallests!"
"I passed every test elite training threw at me! I survived when hundreds of other smeets perished!"
"I have survived for years on a planet covered in water! And the inhabitants all eat meat!"
"Acknowledge me!"
"My Tallests, I am Zim!"
"I am Zim!"
"Zim!"
The darkness ripped apart with the ear-splitting shriek of metal tearing like paper, and Dib plummeted, free-fall, towards the city streets of Central Irk, far below.