Brain Man
by AstroGirl

"Good news, everyone!" said Professor Farnsworth, bursting -- or, more accurately, tottering in a burst-like fashion -- through the door of the Planet Express employee lounge. "I've finished building my wormhole machine! Why don't you all come and see?"

The assembled employees -- Leela, Fry, Bender, and Dr. Zoidberg, all slumped around the television in various comfortable positions -- looked at him without enthusiasm.

"Because All My Circuits is on?" Fry asked.

"Because you haven't said what's in it for us?" Bender added.

"Because your inventions usually turn out to be disturbing perversions of the natural order?" suggested Leela.

The Professor smiled. "Let me rephrase that: Good news, everyone! Come and see my new wormhole machine, and you won't all be fired!"

Grumbling, they got up and followed him to the lab.

"Behold!" cried the Professor, flinging out an arm in a vaguely dramatic gesture. "My wormhole machine! With this device, I shall dominate the delivery industry! All shall tremble before me... and accept my deliveries!"

They looked at it. It was a giant ring made of some kind of strange, stone-like material.

"What are those symbols around the outside edge for, Professor?" asked Fry. "Some kind of obscure alien code that lets you dial up an address for any destination you want?"

"No," said the Professor. "Those are just for decoration. It's actually controlled using this big red button." As he spoke, he flipped up a clear plastic covering and enthusiastically jabbed his finger down onto the aforementioned button.

There was a huge whooshing sound, and a twisty, smoky, shiny special effect came billowing out of the ring. A moment later, it contracted back inward, leaving a shimmery, rippling blue surface in the center of the device.

"Oh, boy!" Zoidberg clacked his claws together happily. "A vertical swimming pool!"

He folded his body into a diving stance, preparing to leap into the ring, but the Professor stopped him with an out-flung arm. "That's not water, you idiot! I've hooked us into the Universal Wormhole Network. The other end of that orifice could be anywhere in time or space... Or even in some wacky alternate universe!"

Leela looked interested. "You mean, like, some weird alternative reality where all of us are mixed up with each other? Like, Fry's a robot, and I look like Dr. Zoidberg?"

"No, of course not," said the Professor. "That would be silly."

"So," said Bender, "anywhere in time and space, you say? I'm hoping for Vegas. Or the Planet of the Robot Hookers!"

"I dunno," said Fry. "If there could be anything at all on the other side of that thing, how do we know it's not something bad? And that it's not about to come through and eat us? There could be monsters! Evil, rampaging alien death monsters! With laser beams and axes! They could be coming for us right now!"

At this point, there was a sudden slurping whooshy sound, and a figure came tumbling through the ring.

Fry screamed. So did Zoidberg, covering his head under his wildly clacking claws. "Oh, no! It's a hideous alien creature!"

"No, it's not," said Leela. "It's just some guy." She went over for a closer look. "Some cute guy. Although he looks like he might be sort of dead."

Indeed, it was a fairly ordinary-looking guy, if you didn't count the crazily spiked hair visible beneath his spacesuit helmet, or the way he was sprawled in an awkward, unmoving heap at the foot of the device.

Dr. Zoidberg scuttled over and poked him. "Yep," he said. "He's dead, all right. A moment of silence, please." He bowed his head solemnly.

The man groaned and raised his own head slightly. "It's a miracle!" cried Zoidberg. "I cured someone!" The groan cut off abruptly, and the stranger's head slumped back down again. Zoidberg shrugged. "Or not. Oh, well. Easy come, easy go."

"I wonder who he is?" said Leela.

"Dunno," said Bender, pulling an extended arm back from a quick foray inside the man's space suit. "He doesn't have a wallet. Which means he doesn't have any money. Which means I don't actually care."

"Well, I care," said Fry. "He's some kind of spaceman from the farthest depths of space! Imagine the things he might have to teach us!"

"Fry," said Leela, "you've been to the farthest depths of space. They're not all that interesting. Mostly there's nothing there but cheap motels and fast food places."

"Oh, yeah," said Fry. "I forgot."

"He must have passed out from the shock of the spatio-temporal transfer," said the Professor. "Or from the way he hit his head after he fell through. Either way, it would appear to be impossible to communicate with him in this state. Unless, of course, you happen to have one of these puppies!" He reached into a drawer and pulled out something that looked like a metal colander that had suffered a horrible industrial accident in an electronics factory. "It's a neuro-holo-projectification helmet!"

"What's that do?" asked Bender.

"It reads whatever's in your mind, and projects it into reality! And, no, you can't use it to act out your perverted fantasies."

"Aww." Bender hung his head dejectedly.

"Now," said the Professor, "I just need to get it onto his head..." He stepped carefully around the man's sprawled-out limbs, yanked his space helmet the rest of the way off, and fitted the device around his skull. It took a bit of shoving to get it on.

"I don't know about this, Professor," said Leela. "Shouldn't he be getting medical attention or something?"

"Nonsense. See this indicator here?" He pointed at a blinking yellow light nestled among dozens of similar lights, including a fair number of red ones, on the top of the helmet. "This says that his brain's only been mildly scrambled. He should be fine in a few hours."

"Well," said Leela reasonably, "then why don't we just wait and talk to him when he recovers?"

"I'm an old man!" snapped the Professor. "I don't have that kind of time!" He flipped a switch on the helmet, and a loud buzzing sound filled the room. This was followed by a bright flash, a number of bleeping and blooping noises, and finally by a twinkling swirl of colors which eventually coalesced into a humanoid figure.

It was something of a disturbing-looking figure, really, what with the angular, corpse-pale face, and the fact that the features of said face were framed by black leather strips, which in turn connected to a black leather outfit that covered its whole body like the carapace of some giant B-movie insect. It was holding a jar labeled "smelling salts."

"Wake up, John!" it said, waving the jar around. "You don't know what these people are going to--!" The words broke off abruptly as the apparition took in the room around it and blinked. "Well," it said. "This is an interesting turn of events."

"Um, excuse me," said Leela. "But did you by any chance just happen to come out of that guy's brain?"

The apparition looked down at the unconscious man, an interested expression on its -- or rather, his -- face. "It would appear so."

"Oh, okay," said Leela. "Just checking."

The Professor made a harrumphing noise, presumably at her lack of confidence in the operation of his machine. He looked over at Fry. "So. What was it you wanted to ask our unconscious friend?"

"Umm," said Fry. "I don't suppose you know what the meaning of life is?"

The creature looked thoughtful. "Well, I was once assured that it was revenge, but I'm becoming increasingly dubious about that. Crichton would probably tell you that it involves beer, football and... what was it? Ah, yes: hot alien chicks in leather."

"Crichton?" said Fry, over Bender's hoot of approval for this particular philosophy of life. "Is that this dude's name?" The apparition nodded. "So you're what, a psychic projection from his unconscious mind? Or some kind of evil brain parasite? Or what?"

"'Parasite' is such an ugly word. I prefer 'symbiote.'" He gave Fry what would probably have been a rather charming grin, if it weren't full of really pointy teeth. "You can call me Harvey."

"Your name is Harvey," Fry repeated slowly, "and... you live in that guy's brain?"

"Well... yes." Harvey gave him a rueful look. "Inside a dumpster, mostly."

"You live in a dumpster, too?" Zoidberg exclaimed. "We're practically neighbors!"

Harvey gave Zoidberg a somewhat surprised look, as if not quite understanding what it was he was looking at. Then he focused his gaze thoughtfully on each of them in turn. "I know this is a terribly clichéd question," he said, "but, erm... Where am I?"

"You're on Earth," said Leela, figuring this was probably the level of specificity that someone who'd just fallen in through a wormhole would be most likely to want.

"I am?" Harvey blinked. "I must say, it's very different from John's memories. Either he's more delusional than I'd thought -- and, being his primary hallucination, I believe I'm uniquely qualified to judge -- or else... Oh, dear. I'm beginning to understand that these things are clichés for a reason." He smiled. "I don't suppose you could tell me the year?"

"Certainly," said the Professor. "It's 3002. Also known as the Year of the Zolglorbian Space Bat!"

"I see." Harvey looked over at the be-helmeted figure of John Crichton, still sprawled at the foot of the now-special-effectsless portal. "Well, John... Welcome home!"

"Wait a minute," said Bender, "You mean he's from Earth? Yeah, right, Professor, wormhole to distant space, my shiny metal ass. I demand my money back! I didn't come here to see no ordinary Earthican meatbag, no matter what he's got in his meatbag brain." He waved a metallic hand dismissively in Harvey's direction, then folded his arms.

"Is that how we got here?" said Harvey. "Oh, yes, I might have known. Wormholes! Why does it always have to be wormholes?" He sounded genuinely upset.

"What have you got against wormholes?" asked the Professor. "I happen to like them. They're shiny and full of physics."

Harvey sighed heavily. "Well, I suppose I shouldn't denigrate them too much. I owe my existence to wormholes, after all." He tapped the side of his head. "Neural chip. Created to ferret out the secrets of wormhole science from John Crichton's subconscious mind. Not an easy task, believe me. When it was finished, the chip was removed, but I... Well. Here I still am. Quite purposeless now, except for the enjoyment of football and hot alien chicks, or at least Crichton's memories of them. And survival, of course. I'm quite keen on continuing to live. Well, to exist." He prodded Crichton's unconscious body with his toe. "Which makes his continued obsession with wormholes deeply annoying. One day, he's going to succeed in killing us with one of his little experiments. It came very close to being today." He winced. "I can already feel the headache we're going to have when he wakes up."

"He must have been sucked through my machine because he was poking around a wormhole opening on the other side." The Professor made a tsking noise. "What a stupid thing to do, messing around with wormholes when you have no idea where they might come out."

"Uh, Professor..." Leela began.

He gave her an innocent look. "Yes?"

But, perhaps fortunately, whatever she was about to say to him was pre-empted by the sound of a sad, metallic sniffle from Bender.

"Oh, no!" said Zoidberg. "Robot influenza!" He scuttled backward, as if afraid Bender might be about to contaminate him. Fry's and Leela's eyes grew wide.

"I'm not sick," sniffled Bender. "It's just... It's a sad story. Outgrowing the purpose you were built for, discovering there's nothing left in life but women and booze and stealing wallets..." He stopped, seeing the way they were all staring at him. "What? I have feelings! For things that remind me of me." He folded his arms again and turned his back on them, muttering under his non-existent breath.

There was a brief, awkward silence. The Professor broke it by clearing his throat, and looked at Harvey. "Well. This is all very interesting. But it leaves us with a question."

"The question of where that bottle of smelling salts he was holding went?" asked Fry.

"That's a good question," said the Professor. "But no. The question I meant was: What are we going to do with you?"

Harvey looked hopeful. "Send us back through? Before he wakes up would be preferable. With any luck at all, he'll conclude the wormhole to be a dud and won't spend the next cycle repeatedly risking his life trying to get it to take him back to the Earth of his own time. Er, you can send us back, I hope?"

"Certainly," said the Professor. He indicated the big red button. "One push re-opens it to the last destination. Two pushes connect it to somewhere else entirely. Quite a sophisticated system, eh?"

"Oh, yes," said Harvey, smiling ingratiatingly.

"No it's not!" said the Professor. "It's crap! I can't tune the damn thing at all! Which is why I think that instead of sending you back, I ought to keep you around for a while and pick your brains. Er, brain."

Harvey rolled his eyes. "Not again. What do you want wormholes for, hmm? Galactic domination? Elimination of your enemies?"

"Faster delivery of pizzas!" said the Professor. Harvey made a sputtering sound, but the Professor ignored him, continuing. "And of everything else. Once I get this baby working I'll be able to make deliveries the very quantum instant they're ordered! Or even earlier! It'll eliminate the need for a delivery crew entirely!"

"Hey!" cried Fry and Leela simultaneously.

"And after that," the Professor continued serenely, "then I'll think about the galactic domination thing. Sounds like it could be fun!"

"Listen to me," Harvey said, intently. "Wormholes are bad news. Look at my poor friend over there." He waved a hand at John Crichton, still crumpled up on the floor, now drooling quietly. "He's been hunted, captured, tortured, had parts of his brain eaten... And not only by me. There are... entities... who would stop at nothing to wrest the secrets of wormhole technology from you if you had them. Believe me, it's not worth it."

"Hmm," said the Professor. "I suppose it would be difficult to invent things with part of my brain eaten..."

Fry and Leela registered their wholehearted agreement with this line of thinking, their voices overlapping in an incoherent babble. Even Zoidberg, who had appeared to be paying no attention at all, joined in with a random cry of, "Yes! Zoidberg agrees with whatever it is we're saying!"

Bender merely continued sulking silently, until Leela poked him in the side with an elbow and hissed at him between her teeth. "Bender! You do realize that with your police record, you're unemployable anywhere else, right?"

"Oh, yeah," said Bender. "Good point. Yes, Professor. It would be a terrible, terrible shame if something ate your wonderful brain. Yes. We would all be, uh... sad. Or whatever."

"Oh, well," said the Professor. "I suppose wormhole technology might be one of those pesky Things Man Was Not Meant to Know. Or at least, things man was not meant to know until after he's perfected his army of atomic mutant bodyguards." He brightened. "And in the meantime, I could cannibalize some of the parts in that thing to make a primo doomsday weapon!"

"Excellent" said Harvey, rubbing his gloved hands together. "Well, we'll just be on our way then, shall we? Especially as I can feel my, er, companion about to wake up at any moment."

"I'm afraid it'll take a minute or two for the machine to recharge," said the Professor.

"Oh," said Harvey. "Well, while we wait, then... margaritas?" He reached behind his back and produced from somewhere -- presumably wherever the smelling salts had disappeared to -- a couple of giant filled-to-the-salted-brim margarita glasses.

"Now you're talkin'!" shouted Bender, his sulk suddenly gone entirely. He grabbed one and instantly chugged it down.

"You do realize that's not a real margarita?" said the Professor. "It's simply an illusory projection that exists entirely at the whim of this fellow's neural impulses"

"Well, it's an illusory projection that tastes like tequila," said Bender. "So it gets my seal of approval!" He tossed the glass over his shoulder, belching. It hit the ground and shattered.

"That's an awfully convincing illusion," Professor, "said Leela.

"Yes," said the Professor smugly. "It is. Real enough to fool anything with even half a brain into believing it actually exists." He took the other glass from Harvey's hand and sipped from it, smacking his lips. "I'm thinking it may have exciting applications in the diet industry. Just imagine: calories that vanish when you stop thinking about them!"

"Hey, wait a minute," said Fry, looking at Bender. "I thought you didn't have a sense of taste?"

"See how good an illusion it is?" smirked the Professor.

While they were engaged in this conversation, Harvey moved off to kneel by Crichton's side. He stroked his face gently -- a touch Crichton's subconscious mind would feel, if not his skin -- and began singing. "Stay asleep, stay asleep, stay asleeeep, John Crichton." When he finished singing and looked up, Zoidberg was staring down at him.

Zoidberg dropped his head and shuffled one sandaled foot a little. "I don't suppose Zoidberg gets a drink?" he said, in a sort of forlornly hopeful voice.

Harvey smiled. "Help me get this man's helmet back on," he said. "And you can have anything you like."

Zoidberg squealed happily and complied, then scuttled off into a corner with a giant margarita and an armload of pizza and Twinkies.

Barely audible over the sounds of Zoidberg's ravenous snarfling, the wormhole machine made a tinny "ding!"

"Ah!" Harvey got to his feet. "I hope that is, shall we say, a good sound?"

"It means the machine's done recharging," said the Professor. "Either that, or I left the oven on. Let's see..." He moved back over to the big red button and tapped it firmly. At once, the whooshy, sparkly special effects started up again, leaving a now-familiar rippling surface inside the ring.

Harvey watched this raptly for a moment, then gave his head a violent shake and turned back to the others, grinning widely. "Well, then, it seems this is good-bye! So delighted to have met you all! Quite a lovely, er, laboratory you have. Sorry we couldn't stay longer! And Professor--" He jabbed a finger in Farnsworth's direction. "Don't forget! Destroy that machine, before something much less benevolent and charming than I am comes through!" The Professor started to answer, but Harvey barely even gave him time to get his mouth open, let alone get any words out. "You will? Good, good! Now, let's see... You, the crustacean person."

Zoidberg looked up from his pile of now-empty Twinkie wrappers with an expression of surprise. "Me?"

Harvey smiled. "You're slightly more corporeal than I am, I'm afraid," he said, holding up a thumb and forefinger to illustrate the slight difference. "Would you mind?" He gestured at Crichton. "Just pick him up. Yes, like that. Don't pinch the spacesuit!"

"OK, said Zoidberg. "Now what?"

"Oh, just toss him on through. Don't worry. There's no gravity on the other side. Besides, he's surprisingly difficult to injure in any serious way."

Zoidberg shrugged, nearly dropping the human, then swung him back and forth a couple of times and let him go with a loud "whoop!"

Several things happened at once. Zoidberg fell over backwards. John Crichton, still unconscious, sailed through the wormhole opening. And Harvey, wiggling his fingers in a cheery wave, disappeared.

A moment later, the margarita glasses and Twinkie wrappers disappeared also. Zoidberg's stomach rumbled. "Awww," he said, sounding disappointed but not really surprised.

The others simply stood there for a while, blinking.

"Uh," said Fry, finally. "Bye, then."

"He certainly was in a hurry to leave," said Leela.

"Probably tired of hanging out with you losers," said Bender. "I know I am."

"Well," said Leela, "I hope he got back to wherever it is he came from."

"He said that Crichton guy was from Earth," said Fry. "Must be some amazing version of Earth even farther in the future than we are." He sounded wistful. "Aww, I wish I could have seen it. I bet it's completely different from anything I've ever known."

"I'd still prefer Hooker World," said Bender.

"Well," said the Professor, "I suppose I ought to do as he says. Good thing I built in a self-destruct device." He tapped the button three times, rapidly, and, with a loud sproing! the wormhole device fell to pieces, which then sat there sparking and buzzing. He sighed. "Yet another brilliant invention lost to science in the interests of me not dying horribly."

"Um," said Leela. "Speaking of inventions, Professor... What happened to your projection helmet thing?"

"Uh, wha'?" The Professor shook his head. "Why it's right... Oh, dear."

"Zoidberg," said Leela, "you didn't take the helmet off him before you chucked him through the wormhole, did you? Not the space helmet, I mean. The one under it."

"Helmet?" said Zoidberg, confused. "I thought it was part of his carapace!"

"Well," said Fry, "that probably explains why he was in such a hurry to leave."

"Yeah," said Bender. "Reason for a hasty exit, number one: absconding with stolen goods. Aww, I knew he reminded me of me."

"At least I've got lots of extra parts to rebuild it with," said the Professor, looking sadly down at the still-smoking pieces of technology that used to be the wormhole machine. "Assuming I can remember how."

"He'll probably get more use out of it than we would, anyway," said Leela.

"Whoever's on the other side of that thing," said Bender, pulling a cigar from his chest compartment and shoving it into his mouth, "I hope they like margaritas."