Chapter Two: Closing Doors Opening Windows

Dib looked at his hands. They were shaking. He sighed and turned away from his laptop computer – it was getting impossible to type. Hell, it was getting difficult to do anything at all. He’d been high-strung for the past three days, ever since Zim had shown up.

He still couldn’t believe the situation that he had somehow gotten himself into. He’d honestly thought that he’d never see Zim again. He’d thought that that part of his life had been over. He’d given up, after hanging onto it for a year even after the alien he had discovered had left, after pouring his life into the pursuit of some kind of childish altruistic goal that didn’t even make /sense/ to him anymore… he’d left it all behind. Made peace with himself, and moved on, away from the insanity.

Then it had come back and bit him in the ass.

He glanced over his shoulder, through the open door of his bedroom, and into his tiny living room, where the new couch was opened into a small bed. Zim lay on it, asleep. His wig and contacts lay on Dib’s coffee table off to one side, along with the gloves and facemask that were the newest additions to his disguise. Dib looked back at his computer screen, at the half-finished email that he had been trying, unsuccessfully, to type. At the bottom of the screen an icon blinked, telling him that someone had messaged him while he hadn’t been paying attention. After saving the email and closing that window, he opened the message.

Fyre-byibi : hey dib, you havent been on all week. u there? it read.

Dib checked the time. It was one thirty in the morning. He typed in a quick response.

Rattracks_d : no Mat, I’ve been abducted by aliens but luckily they let me have acess to a computer and the internet.

Dib almost laughed at his own words. They were almost true, sadly enough, yet totally wrong.

Fyre-byibi : well, u should be happy then. is that where youve been since tuesday?

Rattracks_d : yep

Fyre-byibi : and they wouldnt let you go to class?

Rattracks_d : yep

There was a long pause before the next line of text came to the page.

Fyre-byibi : *sigh* Dib… please don’t do this again…

Dib hesitated before typing in a response. He wished that Mat hadn’t brought that up…

Fyre-byibi : come to class tomorrow, ok?

Rattracks_d : … okay.

Fyre-byibi : :)… good. now go to bed, its late.

Dib smiled involuntarily. His friend – one of the few he had managed to acquire - worried too much about him sometimes, particularly since… Dib wrenched his thoughts away from that subject.

Rattracks_d : yes mother.

Fyre-byibi signed off at 01:34:06 AM.

Dib rolled his eyes and snickered softly to himself. Then he sighed, the small bit of amusement he had managed to garner from the conversation gone, and closed his computer, listening for the soft ‘click’ that signaled that it had gone into hibernation mode. The room, now lacking in the light from its screen, was pitch black until Dib’s eyes adjusted and he could see by the faint moonlight streaming in between the cracks in his bedroom window blinds. There was another, much fainter and differently colored, glow coming from the living room, but Dib closed the door on that before undressing and going to bed, if not to sleep.

***

”You’re going to skool?” said Zim, disbelievingly .

“School,” Dib corrected. “I’m in college now, and yeah, I am going. If I don’t, it’ll attract more attention that I want… I think I can get away with saying that I was sick, but if I skip more there’ll be problems.”

Zim raised an eyebrow at that – or he would have, had he been wearing his mask which actually contained them, unlike his real face. His antennae bent upwards slightly; Dib suspected that that was the actual gesture.

Without another response, Dib left, closing the door behind himself with a remarkably final-sounding click. Zim just stood there for a moment, not sure what to do – after three days they had been unable to come up with a workable idea using just the junk equipment that Dib had and the small amount of Irken technology that Zim had brought with him. He still had the Voot Cruiser, hidden far away, but it was too large to sneak into the town, much less Dib’s apartment and certainly not the laboratory, underground.

He started to head down the secret tunnel, but only got so far as bolting the three locks on the door – two of them new – before changing his mind. What was the point? The last three days had only frustrated him, trying to make his technology compatible with Dib’s. He considered for another moment before suddenly becoming aware of the glow from the screen of Dib’s computer, left thoughtlessly open on his desk. It was the one piece of equipment that Dib hadn’t let him touch, claiming that Zim would ruin it.

Zim considered the computer. It was open… that meant it was unlocked. He could access it… a plan started to form in his mind, and action followed thought. He sat at the computer and, perhaps against his better judgment, opened an internet window and began to work.

***

Mat was one of those people who was easy to spot in a crowd. Dib wasn’t nearly as noticeable, with his dark hair and habit of always wearing black, but Mat’s bright purple hair was quite distinctive on the mostly subdued campus. He was six and a half feet tall and skinny as a beanpole, making the phrase ‘stand out’ literal in his case. Dib, at 5’8”, knew he was short, and standing next to Mat made him feel tiny.

“Gonna try to tell me that you were sick?” was Mat’s idea of a greeting.

“Yep,” Dib shrugged.

“Them aliens brainwash you into thinking that?”

Dib almost choked, but recovered in time. “Probably.”

They got into the line at the little coffee shop that the students referred to as ‘The Rat’. Its actual name was ‘East Atrium Café’, since that was its location, but no one called it that except the people who worked there. It had gotten its nickname from the appearance of its owner, whose picture was prominently displayed on the counter. The word “Rat” had been scratched into the top of the frame by a pencil a long time earlier.

“So what really happened?” Mat asked as they waited in line.

Dib had already prepared an answer. “I got a roommate.”

Whatever answer Mat had been expecting, if hadn’t been that one. “A roommate?” He thought for a moment. “Hey, I thought that your apartment was only a one-bedroom…”

“Well…” Dib thought quickly. “It was a bit of an emergency.” Another half-truth.

“Old friend?” Mat gave him a dubious look.

“You… could say that.” If you stretched the truth *really* badly, he added silently.

***

~Mordain

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