A Soon to be contradicted View of the Future
Part 1
Tonight was the one night that Fry couldn't have afforded to go any less than perfectly. So, naturally, everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong. He lost his robotic hands, his opera was the laughing stock of New New York, and Leela barely even heard any of what he had managed to perform from it. Worst of all, he almost lost her to the Robot Devil forever. By all standards the night was a downright catastrophe. A catastrophe in all ways but one. She stayed. After he was rejected and lambasted by everyone else in the theater, she stayed to hear him finish. No robotic hands, no elaborate compositions, just heart.
Philip J. Fry and Turanga Leela walked out the back entrance of the Metropolitan House of Opera into the night. The streets were empty and silent, save for the clicking of Leela's heels on the sidewalk, and the only illumination came from apartment windows and the stars above. Fry looked up, and saw the millions of them shining down on him, like they always had. There were just as many things he wished he could say or do right then, but the hand grasped lightly in his told him that his boyish spontaneity could be suppressed for the time being. Fry gave Leela his jacket to shield her from the brisk November night, and she leaned close to him, accepting his arm around her waist. They continued walking in blissful silence through the streets of New New York back to Leela's apartment.
"Well, here we are," Fry said when they got to apartment 1I. Leela opened the door and walked inside.
"Are you coming in?" she asked, turning around after a few steps to see Fry still standing outside the doorway.
"Oh, who, me? Well, yeah," Fry said nervously, and made his way into the apartment the way an adventurer-archaeologist would enter a forbidden temple.
Leela sat down on the lone chair that furnished the room, and scooted to one side to make room for Fry. He followed her lead and sat beside her.
"Leela, I'm sorry all this had to happen to you," was all he could think to say.
"Don't apologize, Fry. You did everything perfectly," Leela said.
"But, but you're deaf! And the Robot Devil!" Fry protested, choking on his words.
"That was my fault for not telling you what happened to me," Leela said, trying to calm him down. "Besides, these robot ones will work until I can get them fixed."
"I guess you're right," Fry said, not wanting to argue with her more than he had to. "I wish you had heard more of the opera, though."
"Fry, it wasn't the opera itself that was important," Leela said, "it's what it showed me about you," she took his hands in hers, "and about myself." They looked into each other's eyes, and Leela scooted closer to him. For a moment they just sat there, until it seemed as if a switch was thrown, and their heads began to slowly draw towards each other. They closed their eyes, and Fry could feel Leela's breath before he-
"Leela?" The telescreen on the wall cut on. "Oh good, you're both there."
"Hermes?" Leela answered sternly, turning her head away from Fry and towards the viewer. "What are you calling about?"
"We just got a delivery that's top priority and needs to be sent out first thing tomorrow morning. Which means you have to be in a condition to fly the ship tomorrow, understand?"
"Can't it wait?" Leela protested.
"No," Hermes replied efficiently.
"Fine. Any more good news you want to give us?" Leela replied sarcastically.
"No, that should do it. Sleep tight, don't let the staplers bite." Leela turned off the screen.
"This Durans Duran."
"Come on Leela, we don't have to listen to him," Fry said, not particularly caring about what they were supposed to do, as usual.
"Fry, it's already past midnight," Leela said, "as much as I'd like to stay with you, I need to get to bed, and you need to get home." Fry lowered his head in dejection, and slowly stood up.
"Well, ok, but, do you think we could maybe make up for the lost time at, uh, dinner Friday night?" The last part of his question barely squeaked out of his larynx. He ground the ball of his foot into her carpet, and looked at her with apprehensive expectation.
Leela paused for a second before responding. "Yeah, I'd like that."
"Yes! Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!" Fry ran down the stairs from apartment 1I, screaming at the top of his lungs. He had finally done it. His prayers to whatever god he could remember the name of at the time had been answered, and he was cackling with such exuberance that some of Leela's neighbors thought he had gone insane. He thought he could have too, but he wasn't going to let the possibility spoil what had just happened. The rickety staircase shook under his steps, causing him to stumble and burst through the front door of the building struggling to remain upright. He surveyed the empty street before him, and then ran down the sidewalk, jumping and spinning in circles as he went. He even tried to swing on a lamppost, but he couldn't hang on and fell into the bushes beside the sidewalk with a dull crunch. As soon as he hit the ground he started to laugh again, pushing himself to his feet. This was the happiest night of his life.
Leela locked her door behind Fry and walked across her living room, toward the window she'd had put in a few months ago. She heard Fry's cries of joy echo through the building as she took off her gloves and pulled her hair out of its ponytail. She looked down from her window to see Fry stumble out onto the street and start jumping around, like a puppy imitating Gene Kelly. He was so cute when he was happy. She walked over to her bedroom after Fry danced his way out of sight, and closed the door to get ready for bed. Crawling under her covers, she looked at the picture of Fry on her nightstand, and then turned out the light.
------------
"Good news, everyone!" the Professor beamed to the Planet Express crew, who were begrudgingly gathered around the conference table the next morning. "Today, you'll be flying me to have Sunday brunch on Trihop Seven, the breakfast planet."
"You made us come in today for that?" Leela said, more than slightly put off. "You have a spaceship, fly there yourself."
"Why would I be going anywhere? What do you think I hired a delivery crew for? Now shut up, all of you, so I can tell you about the important delivery you have to make!" He pressed a button on the table's console, and the large, green tinted holographic image of a planet appeared in the center of the table. "This is Copenhagos h/2pi, where you will be delivering this block of ice-ten." He pointed to a large clear cube sitting in the corner of the room. "You must be careful not to let it touch water of any sort."
"Why?" Fry asked. "Will it irreversibly freeze other water?"
"No, it will make it explode!" the Professor said with the appropriate accompanying hand gestures. He then turned on the giant TV screen behind him. A movie began to play, showing a ship that looked very similar to the Planet Express Ship flying through space. "Long ago," the Professor said over the movie, "the first block of ice-ten developed was delivered to Copenhagos h/2pi." The ship landed on a lush, green planet, and three people got out: a woman, a man, and a robot. "However, something went terribly wrong." The woman and the robot rose over the peak of a large hill, consulting a map before descending the other side. The man, carrying the block on his back with a pair of ice tongs, staggered to the top, his legs wobbling under the weight. He stopped to wipe the sweat from his brow, and continued down the other side. However, he failed to look at his path carefully, and tripped over a projecting rock. He and the ice-ten both fell to the ground, the latter catching fire from contact with the plants on the ground. The delivery boy's companions watched as the man rolled past them down the hill, followed shortly by a skidding fireball. Technically, it was a firecube, but the observers weren't that concerned with formalities at the time. The woman and robot froze as they realized what was at the bottom of the hill: a river. By the time they could move to chase the block, it was in the water, and the movie screen was filled by a blinding light. "And that's how Copenhagos h/2pi became a desert planet," the Professor said with a smile as he turned the screen off. The crew looked nervously at one another.
"Wait," Leela asked, breaking the uneasy silence, "if it destroyed their planet the first time it was brought there, why would they want more?"
"I don't know, people don't tell us why they want things delivered!" the Professor answered, "But, I assume they would want to study it, seeing as they didn't get a chance the first time. Also, there'll be a package for you to pick up and bring back here. Now, off you go!"
------------
"Ready for entering the atmosphere of Copenhagos h/2pi, Captain," Fry announced from his navigator's seat.
"Thanks Fry," Leela replied, "but we've already entered their atmosphere. We'll be on the ground in less than five minutes."
Four minutes and thirty-seven seconds later, the Planet Express Ship flew over Copenhagos h/2pi's capital city of Copenhageen, passing signs for the Einstein-Rosen Bridge, a farmer's market with fresh quark in all six flavors, and Pauli's Personal Parking Place, before finally reaching their destination of General Parking (Pauli Excluded). The city itself was a sprawling collection of semispherical adobe buildings. They all shared the color of the sandy earth they were built upon, and few had any mark of special significance apart from differences in size.
"Okay, Fry," Leela said as the crew lowered from the cargo bay, "with the ice-ten secured to the hover dolly we should be able to avoid the disaster from the last time. You just need to take it to the Quantum Entanglement Station, and bring back what the Professor ordered. Bender and I will stay here and do whatever it is we do when you make deliveries on your own. Think you can handle that?"
"Yeah, no problem," he responded, and pushed the cart towards the city.
------------
"Fry, how could you?" Leela yelled, standing beside him outside the Quantum Entanglement Station.
"It looked like a bench!" Fry said.
"You almost destroyed their entire wave function!" Leela spat back at him.
"How was I supposed to know it would collapse if I sat on it?"
Leela put her hand to her eye and massaged her temples. "It's alright, we'll just go in, have them bill us for damages, get the Professor's order and go home."
"It's not like we ever make a profit on these trips anyway," Bender chimed in.
The trio walked inside the Entanglement Station, ice-ten in tow, and towards the back of the lobby to the reception desk. Sitting behind it was a man dressed in a cloak over a skintight suit with neatly parted gray hair. The nametag on the desk read Leonard Keynes.
"Ah, you must be the delivery from Planet Express," he said as they approached.
"Yes," Leela said, "and we're sorry about the mess we caused outside."
"Don't worry about it," Leonard interjected, "we can just pull another one out of our Hilbert space generator. It'll be fine. However, the order your Professor Farnsworth placed isn't quite filled yet, and I'm afraid it won't be until morning. In the meantime, feel free to show yourselves around, see the sights, and have a good time," he finished with a friendly smile.
"Wait, shouldn't there be some sort of repercussion, or-"
"Not now, big boots," Bender interrupted, "there's a quantum casino across the street with Bender's name on it, and I'd like the chance to do something productive on a mission for once."
------------
Fry and Leela walked around the city, trying to find some less morally questionable activities than their robot companion was engaged in. They visited Enrico Fermi's tomb, strolled through Hyde Act Park in Little Bombay, and went for a ride on the Copenhageen Eye, the quadrant's largest supercolliding Ferris wheel. After a while, however, Fry had had all of the desert sun he could take, and they ducked into a small, dingy café. The type where there's only one row of seats and a plastic countertop over the bins holding possible ingredients for a meal. An elderly woman stood behind it, along with a young man who was presumably her son.
"Velkommen! Hvad kunne jeg blive jer? (Welcome! What can I get you?)" the woman asked them.
"Wha-huh?" Fry said, bewildered.
"Fry, not everyone speaks English everywhere. I think she wants to know what we want to eat," Leela said.
Fry looked at the selection of foods. Seeing something he thought looked pretty good, he tapped on the glass over it.
"Jer savn den kogt gris kugler? (You want the boiled hog gonads?)" the woman asked. Fry nodded affirmatively.
"Also, we need something to drink." Fry cupped his hand around his mouth, moving it up and down. "Drink, you know, drink?"
"Han ønsker hen til indrømme nogen en hvad for nu? (He wants to give someone a what now?)" the younger man asked in shock.
"Ikke, jer gnaven, han ønsker et eller andet hen til drik! (No, you idiot, he wants something to drink!)" the woman said exasperatedly, and shooed her son over towards a stack of cups. He set two of them down on the counter before he pulled a sandslug, a pan, and a small cube of ice-ten out of a drawer. He put the slug in the pan before grating the ice-ten over it, thinking of how lucky they were to have gotten a new shipment that day. As the shavings accumulated, the slug slowly fizzled into a pool of slightly green-tinged liquid, which he poured into the glasses.
"Bon Appetit," he said, setting them down in front of Fry and Leela.
"I'll never understand what these guys are saying," Fry said as Leela picked up her glass and took a sip.
"Ugh, this stuff tastes awful!" Leela said, her face contorted in disgust.
"Maybe this is how they normally have water here, and you have to ask for the kind that doesn't taste horrible by name," Fry conjectured, "you know, like Europe." He took a drink of his own and had to struggle to keep from spitting it back out.
"Oh well, it's better than nothing." Leela sighed and drank another mouthful.
A short time later, the old woman brought out their dinners, which fortunately were more palatable than their drink. Leela and Fry sat and ate, talking about mostly inconsequential things. Leela seemed to actually be having a good time, but as they finished up eating Fry could tell that something unusual was going on.
"Leela, are you feeling alright?" he asked her. "You actually laughed at my last joke."
"Me feel… fine," Leela said slowly.
"Okay, I just wanted to make sure."
------------
Walking back through the streets of Copenhageen, the sun was beginning to go down. The dark made it increasingly difficult for Fry to find his way back to the ship in the unfamiliar city, on top of keeping Leela under control, who apparently had lost the ability to do so herself.
"Fry! Fry! Lottery tickets!" Leela yelled, running to the window of a 711.
"Leela, how many times do I have to tell you no?" Fry said. "Because I don't want to make it five." He pulled her back from the window and kept her walking down the street. "Seriously, I'm beginning to think that you're-"
Fry suddenly fell to the ground with a whump, out cold. Leela looked around her, noticing Fry's sudden absence from her line of sight.
"Fry? Fry? Where Fry?" she called out, turning around in circles. Still seeing no sight of him, she yelled his name again, before looking down.
"Oh, there Fry," she said, and stepped off of his windpipe.
------------
Leela awoke the next morning lying in her bed on the Planet Express Ship, still in her clothes from the previous day. Getting out of bed, she realized she couldn't remember anything that had happened the night before. She and Fry had stopped somewhere for dinner, and then it was just a blank. Intending to go find Fry in hopes of an explanation, she opened her cabin door, but soon realized she had already found him as he was passed out on the floor outside her room.
"Fry, wake up," Leela said, kneeling down to prod him. He didn't stir.
By now, Bender had finished his sleep routine, and walked out of him and Fry's cabin. "Here, let me help you with that," he said, and promptly began kicking Fry in the ribs.
"Bender!" Leela said.
"Ah, fine. It's not like it worked last night, either. By the way, you each owe me fifty bucks for getting you back here."
"Why? What happened last night? I can't remember a thing."
"Well," Bender said, reeling into a flashback, or a frame tale, whichever is technically correct, "it all started as I was leaving the quantum casino entirely of my own free will…"
------------
"I don't care how many worlds your interpretation has, you aren't setting foot in this place again in any of 'em!" a security officer yelled to Bender after throwing him into an alleyway behind the establishment.
"Stupid cheating detectors," Bender mumbled, standing up. "Where else am I supposed to get the three robo-food groups of booze, blackjack, and hookers all in one convenient location?"
With residual frustration, Bender walked through the dimly lit streets, looking for places to buy beer and people to pick-pocket to pay for it. He was about to go into the local ABC store, endorsed by The Jackson Five, Andrew Jackson, and the number four, when he saw Fry and Leela down the street. He was going to go in anyway, but he heard Leela yell, "Bender! Bender, help!" Disappointedly, he walked over to them.
"Bender, Fry no move," Leela said, holding a limp Fry up by the arm.
"Well it's not my problem."
"You take Fry," Leela said, handing Bender Fry's arm, "me need buy timeshare."
She was about to walk off when Bender stopped her. "Wait a second, if you're going to waste your money, why not spend it on me, your lovable pal, Bender?"
Bender puffed away on a recently acquired fine cigar, and led Leela, who was carrying a case of whiskey under one arm and dragging Fry through the gutter with the other, down the street. Bender opened her wallet and looked inside.
"It looks like you spent all your money, chumpette," he said. "You know, you're a lot more fun when you're impressionable."
"Bender, me need sleep," Leela said, tiring from her duty as pack mule.
"Oh fine, we'll go back to the ship. Not like we can do much else around here, anyway."
------------
"…and that's about when Burt Lancaster showed up," Bender said. "I decided to let him clean up the situation and snuck you and sleeping beauty back here to safety."
"Alright," Leela said, "you can tell me what actually happened later. Right now we need to figure out what's wrong with Fry before we-" There was a loud knock on the hull of the ship. "-have to take home the Professor's order."
Leela got up and walked down to the cargo bay, riding down on the elevator. Waiting for her were two men in coveralls. They had a dolly with a large lead box, covered in hazmat labels.
"Is this the Planet Express Ship?" one asked.
"Yes," Leela responded.
"Okay, we just need you to sign here, here and here, and you'll be all ready to take this back to Mr. Farnsworth."
Leela walked back into the ship, reviewing the delivery papers as she went. When she got back to the hallway, Fry was gone. She looked around, but didn't see him.
"What up?" Fry said, stepping out of his cabin.
"Fry," Leela said turning around, startled, "you woke up."
"Yeah, I guess I passed out sometime last night. That stuff we had to drink must have been really good."
"From what little I can remember," Leela said, "it was the worst tasting thing I've ever had."
"I meant good as in got us really drunk."