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The Happy Smiley Dib Show!	By : V021 Category: +G through L > Invader Zim > AU/AR-Alternate Universe-Alternate Reality Views: 2643 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Invader Zim, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 9
- 10
- 11
And now, after only nine freaking chapters, Dib finally wakes up! Oh crude irony, how I love you… Blame any freakiness in this chapter on a combination of Pink Floyd’s The Wall and various White Zombie albums. Oh, and there are lyrics ‘commandeered’ from Pink Floyd’s In the Flesh.
Chapter 10: Jackboot Stomp and Electric Head
Following the gurney down the clinically white hallway, Professor Membrane could feel his throat clench dryly as if he was about to have another attack despite the humidified epinephrine mist. Maybe it was the realization of just how dangerous yet vital this procedure was going to be. His colleagues had kept telling him that it was madness to try reawakening the boy this way and that entering his son’s already overwrought psyche would likely kill one or both of them. But he disregarded their warnings of doom because it was the only chance he had left to save his beloved (but insane) son, barring some kind of miracle… And, as a man of SCIENCE, Membrane didn’t believe in miracles. By G-d and Hans Berger, he was going to save his son from being a vegetable or die trying.
“Everything’s ready, sir.” Simmons said as the professor and the gurney entered the Transferal chamber. “But are you sure you don’t want this event televised, sir? After all, if you succeed, it’ll be a triumphant day for SCIENCE! Think of it, sir! Who knows how many other vegetative cases could be cured by this procedure… if it works.”
“No,” growled Membrane, giving the younger man a stern look. “Simmons, this isn’t going to be some lab monkey going in the chamber but my son. After all the times I’ve used him as a human guinea pig, I owe it to the boy not to make saving his life a three-ring circus sideshow.” With that, Membrane turned to lend a hand as the technicians as they lifted his son into the one of the transferal chambers and hooked the boy up. Satisfied that everything was in place, he closed the lid. Taking off his coat and boots, Membrane turned to his ever faithful assistant.
“Simmons, if I don’t make it, I just want you to know that I …” The professor’s voice trailed off in an uncharacteristic choking of emotion.
“I know, sir. I know,” whispered Simmons as he took the clothes aside and helped Membrane into the other chamber. “Ready?”
Membrane nodded, watching Simmons hurry over to the rest of the team in the control room. The lid snapped closed and the machine began humming as it powered up, surging with power. Without warning, the room lurched around and around and around in a spiral of blurry psychedelic imagery as Membrane felt himself being thrown headlong into an astral whirlpool. Then, just as suddenly as it all began, the spinning psychic acid-trip stopped and the professor was surprised to see that he was still lying in the lab.
Once he was sure that his organs weren’t liquefied, Membrane sat up with a cruse.
“FAILURE!” he roared, waving his fists dramatically. “Months of research, construction, and testing in the endeavor to save my only son… all this epic effort to end in a horrific malfunction! I have saved world a thousand times over through the power of SCIENCE only have it fail me! Why! Has my G-d forsaken me for years of tampering in HIS realm! Oh, cruel fate, must my son suffer for—Hey! I don’t remember building that.”
Dropping out of drama queen mode, Membrane furtive glanced around at the bizarre chamber he was standing in. While there was a superficial resemblance to the Telepathic Transference Chamber he built, the professor was pretty certain that the architecture hadn’t resembled something from Geiger’s worse nightmares. There was a sticky, ozone tang to the air that made breathing even harder than usual. He wondered what sort of disaster had occurred to create the amount of shrapnel and wreckage scattered all around. And why was everything so dark?
Membrane made his way toward the control room, taking pains not to touch the slimy-looking walls. Tentatively, he shoved the door open and flinched slightly at the sight before him. To a lay person, the sight of half-rotted mutant skeletons would be the stuff that traumatic stress disorders are made of, but Professor Membrane had seen things far, far worse than this during his college years and later internship with Dr. Merkwürdigliebe. Doing what any real scientist would do when faced by mysteriously dead corpses, Membrane immediately began investigating how these creatures died.
“Hmm… It appears that whatever killed them possessed gigantic ripping claws and fangs. And, judging by the teeth marks, this killer most possess a ravenous hunger for LIVING FLESH! In addition, it must also begin it’s life as some kind of internal parasite, given the way the wounds exhibit a distinctive bursting effect out from the chest cavity. Therefore, I must be on guard, lest I too am consumed by this unknown monstrous entity.” He paused then added. “And I really need to stop talking aloud to myself…”
“Meef?”
Whirling on his heels, Membrane readied himself to face the monster only to find that he was staring down the most obscenely cute bundle of fluff since Tribbles. Hypnotized by its wide red eyes and adorably twitchy antennae, the professor leaned over to pick up the fluffy little green critter. It was fortunate that Membrane had kept the critter at arms length because it soon shrieked with demonic laughter, sprouting a leech-like maw and terribly sharp spider legs. He hurled it across the room and bolted out onto a narrow ramp over a vast chasm, glancing back to see thousands of red-eyed fluff monsters scurrying in pursuit.
As he ran blindly from the tittering horde, Membrane became aware of the fact that the chasm was filled by infernal engines that rumbled and sparked hellish arches of blue-white lightning all around. He stumbled once, but managed to fight the monsters off and continue fleeing. That is, he fled until the walkway ended suddenly right above the gaping maw of what could have been the Devil’s own meat-grinder. Then again, Membrane was pretty sure his uncle-in-law didn’t have a grinder that big.
Shaking off that stupid A.D.D. moment, the professor turned to face the horde of monsters closing in on him. He glanced back and forth between the monsters and the grinder, unable to decide which would be the quickest death.
“No! I cannot give up now!” Membrane barked, seized by a surge of heroic duty. “My son needs me!”
Hearten by the desire to finally be there for his boy, Membrane leapt from the ledge followed by the chattering horde, grabbing onto a chain just in the nick of time. He clung to the chain, causally flicking off the last fluff monster into the grinder as he rose higher and higher through the hall. When Membrane saw another walkway, he jumped onto it. Kneeling down for a second, Membrane tried to catch his breath and figure just where the fudge he was but the respite soon ended when he noticed that the walkway was moving. To add to the unpleasantness, the professor saw that he was being drawn toward the spike-ridden jaws of a ghastly compaction device.
“Oh snap.”
Membrane began running frantically against the conveyor but it was futile. When he was barely inches away from messy, crushing death a wickedly curved meat hook swung past and he snagged hold of it, thereby yanking victory from the jaws of doom. Sadly, it seems that the hook he was riding just happened to also be carrying Membrane straight into the whirring blades of diabolically wicked chainsaw tunnel.
Screaming like a girly man, the professor released his grip on the hook and tumbled through the frightful maze of energy blast, razor chains, and crunching gears. It was by a blind stroke of dumb luck that Membrane managed to catch himself on the edge of tunnel and scurry into its relative safety.
“Good Lord! This place is trying to kill me!” he panted, staring out at the horrible dance of mechanical mayhem, and then a realization struck him. “Of course! The existence of those freakish death traps must be the personifications of my son’s mental defense mechanisms and the horrible little monsters are his latent insanities! And if that’s the case, then I must be inside the boy’s demented mind! The telepathic transference machine was a SUCCESS! —WHAP! —Ouch!”
Rubbing his head, Membrane wondered why his son couldn’t envision a wider tunnel. The further he crept, the narrower and dirtier the tunnel became until the professor found himself crawling along on his belly in the greasy muck. At last, he saw a glimmer of light from four holes in some sort of panel ahead of him and, with a mighty heave Membrane soon clambered out of what appeared to be a sewer manhole.
Slightly annoyed by the filth coating his pristinely bleached lab coat, the professor got to his feet and was shocked to discovery that he was now standing on the sidewalk before the most repulsive looking porn store he’d ever imagined. He glanced up and down the street, desperate to find a piece of decency but his shock and disgust increased when he found that all there was were shooting galleries, strip joints, gay bars, and other sordid businesses as far as the eye could see. The only people he saw were a revolting grab bag of hookers, pimps, dealers, and assorted other lowlifes, all looking twisted mockeries of humanity. Here and there, Membrane could swear he recognized some of his son’s schoolmates amongst the leering streetwalkers. He noticed that some of them were eyeing him with beady predatory grins and decided to risk further harming his delicate sensibilities by going into the store instead of waiting stupidly to be pounced upon by the demons of his son’s id.
He was only mildly relieved to find that the store’s interior wasn’t half as repugnant as its exterior thanks to the flickering dim light bulb. Membrane edged around the display cases and bookshelves, carefully stepping over a large red cat sleeping on the floor as he made his way toward the clerk squatting on a stool behind the back counter. The clerk, a demented looking Chihuahua dog wearing a name badge that said “Ren Hoëk”, smiled greasily at him
“Eh… pardon me, sir.”
“Ah… We’ve been waiting for you,” oozed Ren in his freakiest Peter Lorre voice. He slid a key across the grimy countertop. “Room 2113, the big black door at the very end.”
“Uh, thank you?” Membrane muttered, taking the key and moving down the dingy little hallway. He did his best not to mind the stenches or noises coming from other doors, but the professor was nearly to the point of fleeing for the moral high ground when at last he reached the massive black door with a tarnished ‘2113’ on it. Bracing himself for whatever depravity, he flung open the door.
To Membrane’s surprise, it was just a plain little room with a chair and table and rough brick walls. There was a screen on the wall facing the chair and a quaintly old-fashioned film projector on the table. Breathing a sigh of relief, he sank into the chair.
And then the projector sputtered to life.
The film seemed to be a vintage black-and-white short from the 1950’s. It was a little disturbing when he noticed the title card was almost same as his own show, except that it was…well, spookier. He grew even more annoyed when the scene shifted to a nightmarish version of his own laboratory. Then an announcer came on.
“Welcome to another spooky episode of Probing the NIGHTMARISH Membrane of SCIENCE! With your spooky host, Professor Membrane!”
The real Membrane frowned as he watched his SPOOKY alter ego float on screen. “Is that what my son really thinks of me?! I don’t have freaky metal claws! But that lab coat is kinda neat…”
Getting over his indignation at how Dib represented him, Membrane went back to listening to the Nightmare-Membrane lecture.
“Today is truly a monumental day in SCIENCE!” proclaimed Nightmare Membrane. “For today we shall finally be able to cleanse away the insanity of those poor pathetic creatures lurking on the very edge of society. No longer will they be the dredges of society but instead become productive and happy citizens! By means of the machine behind me,” Nightmare Membrane gestured at the terrible device which, the real Membrane noted with mounting horror, was an eviler copy of his own Telepathic Transferal Chamber. “I shall enter the mind of an INSANE patient and, through careful manipulation of his psyche, rearrange him till he’s sane! Now, let’s bring out our first victim!”
On cue, a pair of burly monster orderlies carried in a misshaped lump bound up in a straightjacket. To Membrane’s terrified shock, the lumpy creature they were tossing into one of the pods looked like his son, but he didn’t have much time to think about the implications of this because as soon as the Nightmare Dib was in place, the Nightmare Membrane had entered his own pod and the machine roared to life.
It wasn’t much of surprise when the machine overloaded and a titanic explosion ripped through the lab. In the middle of all the smoke and sparks emerge the shadow of a young man. He walked in a slow, stately march toward the camera as a peal of music swelled. The smoke began to waft away, revealing the brilliant crimson of stage curtains and the even bloodier red of a gargantuan banner that bore the strange, triangular symbol that Did was always trying to tell his father belong to an evil alien empire. The shadowy young man stepped up to a banner-draped podium to address the crowded auditorium.
“So ya thought ya might like to go to the show…” sweetly purred the young man as he looked around the room. “To feel that warm thrill of Confusion, that space cadet glow.” The young man chuckled, his glasses gleaming like white holes. “I’ve got some bad news for you, sunshine: Dib isn’t well, he stayed back at the hotel. So they sent me along as a surrogate band” Lurking forward suddenly, the young man turned out to be the Nightmare Dib, transformed from a lumpy little monster into a frightening uniformed dictator. “We’re going to find out where you fans really stand!”
Snapping back upright, Nightmare Dib smiled evilly. “Are there any queers in the theatre tonight? Get ‘em up against the wall!” A spotlight appeared and singled out Keef from the audience. “Now there’s one in the spotlight! He don’t look right to me. Get him up against the wall!”
At his command, several gas-mask wearing troopers leapt into the audience and dragged Keef off. But Nightmare Dib wasn’t finished yet.
“That one looks Jewish!” he shrieked, pointing out Brian with the spotlight so the troopers could grab him too. Nightmare Dib’s accusing finger snapped toward the other side of the room as he shouted, “And that one’s a coon!”
Lit up in the spotlight, Aki, Smeedge, and the Letter M looked at each in outrage.
“Oh no he didn’t!” Smeedge barked.
But, instead of grabbing the girls or the Letter M, the troopers grabbed Raccoon Kid who was cowering behind them.
“Who let all this riff raff into the room!” roared Nightmare Did while the spotlight whipped away, landing right on Carl as he took another toke. “There’s one smoking a joint! And another with spots!” Feed up with just singling them out one by one, Nightmare Dib raised his hands and screamed, “If I had my way, I’d have all of you shot!”
With that, more troopers pounded into the auditorium and began firing machine guns into the crowd. Above the screams of the dying and the rattle of automatic fire, Nightmare Dib howled madly with laughter.
“STOP!” Frantically, Membrane tore at the screen to reveal a gapping hole in the wall. He glanced at the still running projector, then down the tunnel before him.
Membrane tripped and stumbled his way down the tunnel, groping through the darkness until he came to yet another door. It was a door that reminded him of a prison cell.
Half-expecting it to be locked, the professor shoved back the latches and the door swung inward with a rusted groan. He stepped inside, blinking in a daze at the glaring whiteness of light and canvas padding. Once his eyes had adjusted to the brightness, Membrane could make out something huddle in the far corner, scribbling furiously away at the wall.
“I’m not crazy… I’m not crazy… I’m not crazy…” chanted the scribbler over and over as it wrote that phrase in spider red marks all over the white walls.
Membrane walked slowly toward the scribbler and gently reached out to it. “Son?”
With a bloodcurdling scream, the scribbler turned on him, its jagged pink teeth and pupil-less red eyes twisting into a mask of rage on an inhuman face of green. Membrane never saw the flashing silver leg claws before they stabbed through his body.
The control room was in absolute pandemonium as sparks and smoke filled the transferal room. Technicians and lab assistants ran around wildly, trying to escape from the impending disaster.
“Professor Membrane! PROFESSOR MEMBRANE MABUSE!” Simmons shouted, fighting his way through the panic throng to rescue his boss. With extra-cheesy sci-fi heroics, he wrenched the unconscious professor from the transferal chamber and carried him to the safety of one of the many failed experiment fall-out shelters milliseconds before the telepathic transferal machine went up in a quantum blast.
Huffing and wheezing behind his respirator mask, Membrane slowly swooned back to consciousness still clutched tightly in the arms of his assistant. For a second, he lay like that and then he noticed the funny looks the rest of the staff gave them.
“Thank you, Simmons,” the professor grumbled icily, staggering to his feet and looking around the shelter. “Where’s my boy? Is he alright?”
There were some sad murmurs and shuffled feet before Simmons spoke up. “Uh, sir, we sort of left him behind…”
“WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN ‘LEFT HIM BEHIND’!” roared the long suppressed parental feelings in Membrane. “YOU BASTARDS LEFT MY SON TO DIE IN THAT EXPLOSION!”
“Now, be reasonable, sir!” Simmons stammered. “The boy was as good as dead already…”
Before anyone could stop him, Membrane flung Simmons across the room with a blast of psychic energy and charged madly out of the shelter. He clambered over the rubble in a crazed search for his poor son. Cresting a small heap of blasted machinery, Membrane saw a sight that made his analytical heart leap with joy.
Standing unharmed and fully awake at the epicenter of the explosion crater was Dib. The boy’s back was turned and he seemed to be staring off into the sky.
Shouting happily, the professor slide down the crater wall and ran to embrace his boy. It came as horrendous shock to him when Dib spun gracefully on his toes and delivered a roundhouse punch straight to Membrane’s face. He went sprawling to the dirt as his mask shattered apart in a spray of plastic and blood. Membrane gasped in the painfully dust polluted air and looked up at his son in disbelief.
Unconcerned for his father’s desperate gasps, Dib turned his back on the helpless professor and telekinetically summoned up Membrane’s badly charred lab coat and the scuffed boots. Putting them on, he took one last, bitter glance over his shoulder at nearly dead Membrane.
“He should’ve let me die.” Dib started to walk away, smiling darkly. “Yes, Zim. You should’ve let me die.”

(a/n: You were all just bricks in the wall.)
- 9
- 10
- 11
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The Happy Smiley Dib Show!