My Only The Only One

Chapter 4

The weeks that followed Dib and Zim's new found friendship were rocky at best, neither having very much practice at it. All of Zim's friends previous had been considered more as tools, a means to reach his ends, and Dib, well, people just didn't like him.

Eventually they got into a smooth routine, however. Zim had been allowed free from the brig at the request of Dib, and pretty much slept on the human's floor.

"Like a sleep over!" Dib had said, trying to be optimistic. This earned him a punch to the face and Zim received a mattress the very next day.

Zim wasn't eager to trust Dib at first, the irken putting his back to the wall, just incase the big headed creature got any ideas. But after several nights of restless sleep Zim gave up. Even if the Dib-worm did try something he could easily defend himself.

Dib always woke up first, nudging the irken awake so they could do their individual rituals of hygiene and cleanliness. Dib would take a shower and brush his teeth and, for the benefit of Zim, dry his hair. Zim would just quickly run some cleansing chalk over himself in the corner of the room he'd claimed for himself and put on some horrible human clothing that had been provided for him.

It was simple jeans and a black t-shirt, but it was all the human's had to provide until the manufacturing wing of the space station was fully operational.

To make Zim feel better Dib would always comment on Zim's attire, telling him it looked good on him, and that at least it fit. Zim would scowl, but accepted the compliments and from there they went about their day.

Dib had a job on the space station. He over saw the creation of anti-irken weapons, having been making them since he was eleven anyway. With his help they had created at least fifteen different types of fire arms that were lethal to irkens specifically. Zim wanted nothing to do with this and for the three hours Dib had to go and inspect the latest advancements Zim wondered the halls.

There was nothing really to do yet to occupy ones time on the station except watch movies, if you had managed to save any, and play games with imaginary balls. Not that Zim would be invited to play any real games anyway. For the first time in his life, it seemed, Zim noticed the scorn on people's faces when they looked at him, and the hatred. Despite his being exiled from his race people seemed to have nothing but contempt for him. Not that he cared. The moment he had the means he would get off that human insect hive anyway. He would go find somewhere else to start his lonely life.

Then, just as thoughts of escaping were creeping up into his head, Dib would find him and they'd go back to Dib's sister's room and play some video games with her, only pausing for meals until it was time for bed or she kicked them out. Then they would spend the rest of the time discussing things of science or other races until they fell asleep.

"Alright jerk-wads. Time to stop mooching off my fun. I need to concentrate." Gaz declared quietly one day, squinting an eye at Zim and Dib, sitting on HER bed, playing HER piggy race game.

"Concentrate, on what?" Dib asked, but began putting the game up anyway.

"The manufacturing department is almost finished. I'm going to be in charge of overseeing the entertainment needs of the people here. In short, I'm going to be making video games." Gaz said simply, grabbing a few of her favorite games and putting them into her old school back-pack. "These are going to be copied for people to play now. But in a few years we should be able to start making new ones."

"Wow, who would have thought? Gaz is going to be the one who brings HAPPINESS to these people instead of doom." Dib said which earned him a book thrown at his head. This made Zim snicker.

"You'll hush." She declared, hands on her hips. "It's not like I'm doing this for charity. Dad also wants to start a credit system. Get some monetary flow going. But since the economy is basically nonexistent now he has to start over from scratch. He says the development of things people don't actually need will help get things going. So in about a year stores will be opening to sell these games, along with snacks and other things people don't really need, but will want. That way we can get some cash flow going instead of people just getting things for free."