Fifty Words, One Shot: Magnet

#43 – Magnetic


All he needed was an opportunity. So he waited. He’d gotten good at being patient after all these years but the time for waiting was nearly over. Because he now had the tool necessary for his plan to end the chase once and for all.

As the bell releasing the class from calculus rang Dib stole a glance at Zim. The subject of his scrutiny was rising from his seat slowly as the rest of the class rushed out of the room. Trailing Zim’s progress out the door with his eyes, he quickly gathered his notebooks together and hastened to follow.

Zim hadn’t gotten far. As Dib stalked his foe to their next class he noted the way the alien skirted past the main portion of the hall traffic by hugging the wall as well as the annoyingly slow speed of his progress.

“What’s the matter Zim? Forget to recharge your batteries last night?” he taunted. Not giving him time to come up with a comeback, Dib elbowed his way past Zim and was about to rush toward the Tech Science classroom when an unexpected sound made him come to a halt. The unmistakable sound of a body hitting concrete. Looking back he barked out a laugh at the sight of his green nemesis picking himself up off of the floor. Several other snickers followed from around the hall and the last thing Dib saw before continuing toward his destination was the withering look Zim shot him.

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“-which is why the predestination paradox will overturn any dangers to actual human time travel.”

‘Ugg. And these same people think that I’M crazy for believing in aliens. That theory was never anything but a clever way to explain plot-holes in time travel movies’ Dib spent the entire class period half observing Zim and half listening to his classmates give their pre-science fair presentations. Everything from designs for a hamster powered perpetual energy machine to the impossibility of machine assisted immortality had been covered by his peers and Dib wanted to bash his head against the wall. It was times like this that made him wonder if his people were too stupid to be saved from annihilation. But it was his turn to present so he pushed such thoughts away and gathered his paperwork. This was his moment...

“Are we REALLY going to have to sit through another hour long lecture about how Dib thinks his boyfriend is from the moon again?” Jessica asked the teacher in the most innocent voice the girl could muster. The rest of the class broke into giggles.

‘Stupid bitch’ Dib hissed internally as he pulled something from deep within the pockets of his coat. He’d cleared it with the teacher ahead of time but the rest of the class had no idea that the small blaster he’d just set on the table in front of him was part of his project. Dead silence rang through the room as the eyes of each and every student widened fearfully.

“Actually, today we’re going to talk about E.M.P.” Dib answered in a dangerous tone. The shocked expressions of his classmates didn’t falter. “Now for those of you present today that don’t know, E.M.P. stands for Electro Magnetic Pulse. Scientists have been studying its effects and causes since the early days of air burst nuclear weapons. Does anyone here know what E.M.P. does?” The paranormalist slowly scanned the room before allowing his eyes to rest on his enemy’s expression of confusion. Not taking his eyes off of Zim, Dib continued. “E.M.P. fries circuit boards, electrical conductors, microchips... In the simplest of terms, E.M.P. destroys the computer brains of anything within its range. This,” he motioned to the blaster lying on the desk, “... is a working prototype of an E.M.P. blaster that I’ve been tinkering with for the past few years. This small gun will emit a pulse strong enough to destroy all electronics within a 3 foot radius. Today will be its first public demonstration."

He paused, soaking in his foe’s sudden look of abject horror as he picked up the weapon. "So, who’d like to be my assistant?”