Hey Spacejerk

Thoughtcrimes

Zim's wormy tongue dangled an inch over the edge of his lip, his teeth parted to allow great draughts of air in and out. Dark patches of scarlet stained the brighter ruby of Zim's eyes, giving them a mottled appearance. His antennae hung limp at the sides of his head.

"Since... you have been... so keen... to attack the mind of your future.... slave... master... with hideously boring... details... I will... enact the same... upon you."

Dib's knuckles whitened around the datapad. For the first time it crossed his mind that this was all a lead-up to finding Zim's corpse. It would, of course, be rigged with some trap that would murder Dib the second he figured out what had happened. He didn't need to know much about the alien's inner workings to see that he was in very bad shape, maybe even dying. No bruises and no apparent broken bones to indicate a fight, though. Whatever was killing Zim was attacking from inside.

Definitely PAK malfunction,Dib scrawled. But without knowing which parts of his letters had triggered Zim, he was stuck as to why the PAK was lashing out.

Zim took a long drink out of a bright purple can, crushed it, and threw it over his shoulder. Words came to him more smoothly now, though his voice cracked often. "Most of my tools and machinery were badly damaged in the crash. I've spent hours stripping it all down to bare components and reassembling it. It is missing key and most essential programming from the Empire, but I have done my utmost to adhere to their guidelines." He slumped back into some creaky seat. Now that Zim wasn't hogging the camera, Dib could see wires and circuits and strange implements strewn on a desk in front of Zim. A concrete wall served as the backdrop. It looked similar to his own cell, minus any sink, toilet, or bed.

"I received your latest communication." Zim picked up some device and fiddled with it, keeping his eyes down. "I have come to the conclusion that this ghost of yours is a hallucination, Dib. The situation may even be worse than a mere hallucination, but I will not know until I have been inside your head. I have strong suspicions that one of our battles affected you in ways neither of us expected."

Dib's mouth dropped open.

"Though I am surprised how badly you misplaced your senses." Zim glanced up at the screen. "Disappointed, really. Did you actually think you imagined me? Fah. You don't have the imaginative capacity to construct my greatness."

Overwhelmed, Dib clapped one hand over his mouth and held up the other. The recording paused itself, and Dib breathed slowly through his nose.

He remembered, so clearly that he felt it all over again, the crushing weight of the fear that he really was crazy. That he had imagined everything and made up lies for attention, just like everyone kept telling him. How close he'd come to accepting it. How he'd begged and pleaded for a scrap of proof from Zim. Why had he even needed proof? Zim had captured him several times before now, those experiences should have been proof to himself. And if Zim was a figment of Dib's imagination, why had his classmates all known Zim's name? Why did Gaz know? Memories flashed through Dib's mind of Skoolchildren hurling dodgeballs at Zim or kicking him when he wasn't expecting it, abuses that Dib had long learned to avoid but Zim had no preparation for. And yet Dib had been unable to access these memories or follow a chain of logic about them for months. Why?

Zim didn't think he was crazy at all. Zim believed him. Zim was even echoing one of the possibilities that Dib would, in later letters, pose to explain his inability to write an essay. That maybe there was something medically wrong with him.

Dib's eyes darted around the room, checking for the ghost he hadn't thought of since he first arrived. While hauntings had the tendency to be anchored to a location or object, there was an unsettling amount of weight to the realization that Dib hadn't seen her once since he woke up with a scar on his head. He would know for sure if he spent a couple of weeks in his room, but that was out of the question for now.

He hunched over the datapad, listing every battle with Zim that he could remember. He drew lines through the motorized planet fight and the wormhole to a moose, neither of which left lasting damage on him.

In addition to these, he crossed off the rubber pig incident, the organ harvest, the balogna incident, the slow-motion effect, and the massive water balloon fight. These were unlikely to have done long-term damage since each had been thoroughly reversed. It was too much of a stretch to presume the damage Zim mentioned could have come from these incidents, since Zim said even he hadn't expected it, meaning he hadn't planned for it.

Technically the Halloween incident hadn't been a battle between Zim and Dib, but the alien saw things very differently most of the time. Did that count to him? The ghost certainly could have come from the strange, nightmare dimension inside his head. Dib dropped a question mark beside it.

This left the hypnotic zit, the virtual reality simulation of Dib's life, and the microscopic battle inside Dib's body as the strongest possibilities. He dropped asterisks next to each. The zit and the virtual reality might have left some lasting psychological damage, hidden until cued by an external stimulus. The fight with Zim in his microscopic submarine had involved frying parts of Dib's brain. Zim had only meant to delete a single piece of information from Dib's brain and was interrupted before he could do more damage. He put a second asterisk by this battle, marking it as the most likely suspect.

Bracing himself, he lifted his head and croaked, "Go ahead." When the screen only tilted itself diagonal, Dib shook his head. "I mean unpause."

"But I would pay many monies to stop up your noise hole about your insubordinate behavior and thoughts toward your parental unit," Zim continued. "It is a ceaseless revolting whine that grates with every word. Do you remember that book I enjoyed in Hi Skool?"

Dib did remember. English Lit consistently confounded Zim throughout Hi Skool and hardly a day went by when he wasn't screeching angry questions at their teacher. Except there was a space of about two months where Zim asked few questions and wore a disturbingly wide smile on his face. That was when they were assigned George Orwell's 1984.

"It was possibly the only worthwhile idea any hyooman ever conceived. Indeed, I wonder if another Invader was here before me. This idea of 'Big Brother' is rudimentary and its implementation was unwieldy, but I recognize the base concept. It is only too bad that it is considered mere fiction in your society." Zim's lip curled. "You and your species would benefit greatly from learning to curb your 'thought crimes'."

The screen faded.

Dib touched the scar on his head once more. Whatever Zim had done, Dib had not once been punished or even scolded for his thoughts while in captivity. Based on this, Dib concluded that Zim had not altered him to meet the 1984 ideal. Dib could only think of one other reason Zim might bring up a human book and praise it in conversation like that. Dumbfounded, he wrote down two questions.

Is Zim's PAK monitoring his thoughts?

Is Zim asking ME for HELP?