Talora: A Futurama Fan Fiction

By soylentOrange

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Futurama is brought to you by Ezekiel's human flavored breakfast cereal, the only cereal made with the taste of authentic free range human. Ezekiel's human flavored cereal: it's tragically malicious!

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Part 1: A Dangerous Cargo

Chapter 1

It was another normal morning, or at least, as normal a morning as a man that lives in a robot's closet ever sees. Phillip J. Fry awoke with a start to the sound of loud, off-key singing. He looked at the clock on his wall and groaned. "4am. That stupid robot is singing at 4am." Fry flopped back down on the bed with a groan, red hair smashing up against his face. The young man tossed and turned in the hope that he could somehow block out the noise and eventually get back to sleep. It wasn't working.

Finally Fry gave up and struggled to extricate himself from his blankets, which had a death grip on his legs. Tripping over some unknown article of food left over from who knows when, he worked his way over to the light switch, which, in a shower of sparks, informed him that the owls had gotten into the building's wiring again. They tended to do that during the winter. Fry thought it had something to do with them hunting out warm roosting places.

When Fry had woken up in the year 3000 from his millennium-long cryogenic sleep, he had expected a cliché futuristic utopia, only to find that technology was just as unreliable as ever. That had been quite a day, the still-groggy redhead thought to himself. Fry was originally from the 20th century, but in a freak accident he had fallen into a cryogenic freezer tube in the very first moments of the new millennium. The next time he took a breath was 1000 years in the future. For most people such an occurrence would have been a nightmare, but Fry soon realized that it was his one big chance to get a fresh start; to make something of himself.

"And I did make something of myself" Fry thought to himself. "I've got a low paying job as an interplanetary delivery boy. I rent my own room from a crazed, egotistical bending robot. I even have a few normal friends!" Being Fry, the irony of everything he had just said passed approximately forty-six feet over his head.

Having by this point found his clothes, and having properly put most of them on, the delivery boy worked his way to the door. The loud singing coming from the adjacent room had stopped a few moments before, so when Fry opened the door he was not surprised to find that Bender was no longer there. There was still four and a half hours or so until the start of work. "Good old Bender," Fry thought to himself, "not even 5am and already out on the town trolling for swag."

Fry was by this point completely awake. "I guess I'll head on down to Planet Express. I can watch television for awhile and then clean myself up in the chemical burn shower." After ducking back into his room to snag a jacket and the remains of a donut he had spied lying under a chair, the red head took one look around the apartment for things his robotic roommate had stolen from him during the night, and headed out the door.

Chapter 2

Unlike Fry, Leela was used to getting a full night's sleep, and this last night had been no exception. At exactly 8:07 the alarm clock robot next to her bed activated. The sudden noise invariably startled the sleeping woman, resulting in a savage blow aimed at the poor mechanical thing. This new alarmbot was a tad smarter than its unfortunate predecessors however. As soon as it sent out its alarm pulse it hurtled itself under the bed, with only milliseconds to spare.

Leela had been Fry's second friend, and first enemy. During the hapless defrostee's first few hours of life in the 31st century it had been Leela's job to implant him with his career chip, a process that included a needle the size of a large ice-cream cone. Needless to say, the idea hadn't gone over that well with Fry. In fact, Leela spent a good deal of her New Year's Eve afternoon chasing Fry through the streets of New New York. Eventually she did manage to catch up to him, but surprised herself by being unable to complete the implantation. Turanga Leela's life had changed irrevocably at that moment. In a sudden epiphany she had seen the injustice of forcing someone to embrace a career that he detested. Instead of installing Fry's chip, she removed her own; a crime punishable by death. Jobless and penniless, Leela, Fry and Bender (the robot ha become fast friends with Fry while the redhead was being chased through New Manhattan), had played the one card they had: Fry's one living relative, Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth.

The professor had taken them in and given them jobs as the crew for his interplanetary delivery business. This had promoted Leela from the belittling job of cryogenics councilor to pilot of an intergalactic spaceship. It had also made her financially well off enough to buy her own apartment, not to mention an endless supply of replacement alarmbots.

The first thing Leela saw this particular morning was her pet Nibbler flying at her face at what seemed like a significant fraction of the speed of light. He had gotten off the bed at some point during the night, and having sensed his companion stirring, wanted back up. Now, Nibbler could not actually fly, although he was a rather good jumper. Neither was he particularly close to Leela's face. Leela had never been very good with depth perception for a blatantly obvious reason. The first thing anyone ever noticed about Leela was her face, or more accurately, her eye. Where you would usually expect to see two eyes separated by the bridge of a nose was one large elliptical orb. It wasn't at all unattractive mind you, but also definitely not normal. It was also very sensitive, and Leela started to hold up her arms in protection, only to find Nibbler inexplicably 3 feet away at the end of her bed. Leela had been abandoned at an orphanage as a baby, and had grown up with the assumption that she was an alien. It had not been until just recently that she had discovered her true heritage.

The purple haired cyclops was actually a human mutant, a class of beings that were not tolerated well by society. Leela had to be very careful to hide her nature from the public

She sighed. Her eye was a constant source of anxiety for her. Everyone she happened across either stared at it or pointedly ignored it, which was just as bad. "In fact", her mind silently said to itself, "The only person I've ever met who doesn't mind my eye is Fry." Ever since their first meeting Fry and Leela had been good friends. No, 'friends' isn't quite the right word, thought the cyclops. She knew that Fry had vastly deep feelings for her. "Love?" she wondered idly to herself as she slid out of bed. Unfortunately, Fry's feelings for her were the only aspect of the delivery boy's mind that could be described as 'vast'. Most of the time Fry was dull, and sometimes he was a down right idiot. "And he's so childlike. I love his boyish charm, but I can't stand his childishness." "Oh well", she sighed. "It's too early to be thinking about this."

The cyclops pushed her thoughts down and away from herself. It only took five minutes to get ready for the day. She took a quick shower and forced her violet hair into its customary ponytail. Nibbler was familiar with the morning routine and waited patiently by the door for the 'its time to go out' signal. As soon as Leela shoved a foot into one of her large black boots however, the fuzzy 3-eyed creature went into a frenzy. "I'm coming Nibbler, sit still for a minute will you?" said Leela. Cute little gibberish noises were the only answer she got. Boots on, Leela walked briskly over to the door, snatched up the leash that was hanging from the brass doorknob, and smiled down at her furry black and white friend. "Who wants a walk?" she asked. Nibbler made it pretty obvious what the answer to that question was. In one fluid motion, oddly accurate for a woman who couldn't judge a foot from a furlong, Leela had the leash attached to the fuzzy creature's collar. Warbling with glee, Nibbler waited for his moment, and when Leela had the door open sufficiently, he went barreling off down the hallway. Or at least, he tried to go barreling off down the hallway. The leash stopped him after the first couple of feet. Laughing at her pet, Leela bent down and cooed: "Aww poor schnoockums hurt himself on his mean leash. I'll tell you what, you adorable thing, on the way to work we'll stop by the ham stall and…" The rest of Leela's statement died in her throat as she was forcibly dragged out the door by her ecstatic pet, who had understood the word 'ham' and would not stop running until he had eaten one.

Chapter 3

"Stupid humans, what do they make these things for anyway?" Bender B. Rodriquez had not been having a very good day so far. In fact, it down right blew. "All I wanted was to loot a business or two, and maybe mug a few orphans before work. Is that really too much to ask?" Sitting next to a human toilet as he was doing at the moment, flushing hundreds of dollars in merchandise was definitely not part of his plan for the day. He had woken up to his meat-bag roommate Fry snoring. Fry was his best friend true, but the snoring thing really got under the bending robot's nerves. Well, technically robots don't have nerves, but still, if Bender had had nerves, snoring would have gotten under them. With his sleep simulator deactivated, Bender decided to go out for an early morning walk, by which he meant pulling a few heists. The robot got his burglar's kit in order while singing quietly to himself.

"Who's great? B-e-n-der!"
"Who's awesome? B-e-n-der!"
"Who's better than you? B-e-n-d-e-r!"
"Oh! Yeah! Bender!"

He had gotten about halfway down πth Street before he found a target. It was a small two storey brick building. The darkened sign read "Qzork's Friendly Appliance Co." It sold your standard ware: televisions, microwaves, carbon nanotube circuitry for various computerized gadgets. More importantly, however, was what it didn't have: a good security system.

It was easy enough to get in. Then again, Bender was an expert at such things. The door was obviously a Ronco, which any amateur knew was prone to resonant oscillations. Grabbing the doorknob with both hands, the robot started to vibrate at a frequency of 359 megahertz. One of many things within a quarter mile to fall apart was the shop's locked door. Stage one complete, Bender walked through the opening and began to whistle calmly to himself. He strutted through the store to the beat of the little tune, pilfering as he went.

Bender was too distracted by his own greatness to notice the brown form meander out from between two shelves. A small mewing noise alerted the self absorbed manbot "Huh?" he muttered as he looked down toward the source of the noise. A shaggy tabby cat was staring quizzically up into the glass cylinders that served as Bender's eyes. "Aww how cute", said Bender, as he reached down to touch the cat. The adorable little creature purred and leaned toward the robot's outstretched hand. Then it bit him. HARD. More startled than injured, Bender let out a loud girlish squeal and started to flail about the room. "Get offa me you stupid mammal! Get offa me!" He wailed as his arm sailed through the air, pulling the cat around with it. Things crashed to the ground as he careened around the dark room, desperate to get this thing off of him. Eventually Bender happened to crash into the checkout counter, sending bits of wood, plastic, and cash register flying amidst curses and unhappy cat noises. At this point the tabby decided this just plain wasn't worth his trouble and let go with a hiss. Before the disoriented manbot could recover his dignity, his assailant was gone.

Meanwhile, the janitor in the adjacent building was calling the cops. Sal had been a janitor at this particular place for only a week, but he knew enough to realize that the noises he was hearing through the wall should not be coming from a closed appliance store at 5:30 in the morning.

Bender got up and brushed himself off. "Stupid jerk" he complained at the long-vanished cat. "If I caught him robbing my owner's store in the middle of the night, I wouldn't have bit him on the hand." Bender was too distracted by his unjust treatment to notice the sirens that had been steadily getting closer, and so he was completely oblivious of officers URL and Smitty of the NNYPD who were walking from their hover squad car to the hole that had once been a shop window. "Freeze Baby, Oh yeah", Ordered URL.

Bender's arms pin wheeled in alarm. Smitty eased himself over the window pane laser at the ready. "Alright punk, turn around. We don't want any trouble." The grey robot turned obligingly, but instead of putting up his hands and surrendering, Bender made a break for it. He pushed Smitty out of his way and ran through the open doorway. URL was too surprised to remember the laser pistol holstered to his waist.

For the next hour and a half Smitty and URL chased Bender through the city. At first Bender had tried to simply outrun his pursuers, but that had proven impossible Who would have thought a scrawny guy like Smitty had such endurance?. A different tactic was in order. The robot ducked into a bakery that had just opened for business. After barreling past the startled shopkeeper, Bender made straight for the bathroom. Unlike humans, robots are not all different in appearance.. If he could get rid of the few items he had managed to swipe before his bout with the deranged tabby, Bender could simply walk away from this heist-gone-wrong. The cops would have no way to prove he was the robot they'd found at the scene.

Muttering to himself about the unfairness of it all, the manbot opened his chest cavity and pulled out the swag. One by one he flushed high-priced electronic gizmos down the toilet. "I don't have any idea what this toilet thing is for, but that hole is too small to flush anything I can think of. Good thing I didn't have time to swipe that tv."

Finally the last of the loot was down the crapper. Done with his task, the robot swaggered haughtily out of the bakery, leaving behind a very confused baker to wonder what a bending robot would possibly be doing in a bathroom.

Chapter 4

The ham stall was about a half mile run from Leela's apartment. Nibbler nearly got there fast enough for the people he passed to experience a sonic boom. Leela couldn't remember if she'd run behind her pet or been dragged, but if the bruises on her butt and legs were any sign, it probably wasn't the prior. Knowing that her pet wouldn't settle down until he had his treat, Leela dusted herself off and walked up to the man behind the counter. The large man gave her a grin and asked, "You mentioned ha… err… that word again didn't you?" "Yes. You'd think I would have learned by now", replied the cyclops with a sigh.

"Go ahead and give me a medium."
"You want cheese on that?" was the response.
"huh, what? Uhh no that's ok" said Leela, more than a little confused

The man laughed and started to hand her a raw dripping chunk of meat. Before Leela had a chance to accept it however, Nibbler jumped up and locked his teeth around the squishy red mass. It was gone in one swallow.

A few minutes later Leela and her pet arrived at Planet Express. First assuring that the security system was off, Leela walked through the door. She took off her coat and threw it onto the couch in the lounge. She let Nibbler go. He could he trusted to take care of himself during the day.

As she was walking through the building she caught the sound of gurgling and bits of a song. "gggarrrgle-king on sunsh-garrgllle" sang a disembodied voice. "Well, Fry's here." Leela thought to herself. "Bender must have forced him out early this morning." Sure enough, the chemical burn shower was occupied. The cyclops could see the outline of a body with Fry's haircut. The hair was always a dead giveaway.

Leela walked out of the room to give the delivery boy some privacy. Silently she hoped that Fry wouldn't try and dry his hair with the spaceship's rockets again. The radiation was bad for him true, but Leela was thinking about the hours of engine calibration that it would cause. The cyclops shuddered.

Leela set off to look for Professor Farnsworth, who was bound to be sleeping somewhere in the building. Captain Leela liked to find out the destination of the day's package as early as possible so she had as long as possible to come up with a flight plan. The professor always provided a flight plan of his own, but the old genius tended to try anything to cut down on gas expenditures during flight. Invariably this led to flying through quadrants of space like "the nebula of despair", or the "zone of no return" in order to save a quarter on dark matter fuel.

Eventually Leela found the professor asleep in the smelloscope room, bent over his universal translator. The translator could understand any form of verbal communication. Unfortunately, for some reason its ancient inventor couldn't discern, it only gave output in an incomprehensible dead language. It looked like Farnsworth had been up late working on his invention, so Leela decided not to awaken him. Professor Farnsworth was famous for having an awful temper if not allowed a full night's sleep. It would be better to let someone else wake him up. Leela closed the smelloscope room's door and headed back down to the meeting room.

By this point, Fry had finished his shower and started on breakfast. If there was one thing the future had that Fry was glad of, it had to be Bachelor Chow. It tasted suspiciously like dog food, but somehow Fry just couldn't get enough of it. Hermes, the staff accountant, didn't much like Fry eating the stuff in the building what with it attracting owls, but, as Fry thought to himself smugly "Hermes isn't here is he?" That was a mistake. Fry had never been good at thinking, but trying to think and eat at the same time was just too much processing for his mind to handle. The cereal spoon in Fry's left hand slipped from his grasp and fell to the table. Instinctively, the delivery boy snatched at the rogue silverware, missing the spoon but managing to knock the bowl containing his cerealesque breakfast over onto his lap.

Of course, this was the precise moment that Hermes walked through the door. "Fry mon, wot did I tell ya about eatin that stuff in here? Clean yourself off and git your butt into the meeting room. "Hermes yelled in his thick Jamaican accent.

"Sorry Hermes" said the guilty party

"I said git!"

Chapter 5

When Fry walked into the meeting room there were only two other people present. The professor's engineering student Amy Wong sat hunched over to Fry's left. Amy's parents were some of the wealthiest humans on the planet and owned an entire hemisphere of Mars. Leela was sitting to Fry's right. The meeting room had always been Fry's favorite part of the Planet Express building. It was on the second storey, overlooking the sleek Planet Express Rocket ship. The employees sat around a rather unremarkable green table. Imbedded in that table, however, was a hologram projector right out of Star Trek.

A giant yellow green ball was currently displayed over the table. Leela and Amy were staring intently at the image of a distant planet, completely mesmerized by the shifting yellow clouds of sulfur-dioxide. Fry sat down next to Leela and waited for Hermes to fetch the professor.

Some time later Farnsworth shuffled into the room with Hermes in tow. "Good news everyone!" the old man announced. This was immediately met with a collective groan. The professor had some unusual ideas about what could be considered 'good'.

Farnsworth continued. "Our government has instituted a tax on doomsday devices. Now, I have several dozen instruments that could conceivably bring about the apocalypse, and I can't afford to pay the tax. Therefore I am cutting all of your salaries."

"Umm, professor," Leela spoke up, "wouldn't it make more sense to have us ship some of your extra devices off planet? That way the government can't tax you for having them"

"Huh-wha? Oh ok if you want. Either that or cutting your pay. It doesn't matter to me. What do you think Fry?"

Fry considered for a moment. Leela never ceased to be amazed at the delivery boy's stupidity. "Hmm, it's tempting," said Fry, "but I vote we move the doom-thingies. After the last time you cut our salaries I didn't have enough money to pay Bender my rent so he made me give him my spleen."

"And you'll get it back when I get my money," interjected the robot.

"But, I thought you couldn't live without your spl…"

Farnsworth cut off Amy's statement before it could be completed. "Anywho, since we've decided not to keep the devices on Earth, you'll have to deliver them… here." The professor gestured to the rotating hologram before him. The sulfur planet shimmered and was replaced by an orb of striking greens and blues. Wherever the crew was headed, it was definitely habitable. "The planet's name is Isat 6, the public storage planet. It's way on the other side of the universe in an area of rather shallow space-time, so it will take awhile to get there. Plan on a week each way.

Amy spoke up again. "But professor, is all of this safe? Some of those machines of yours look pretty volatile."

"Oh my, you're right," agreed the professor. Amy, you'd better go along and make sure nothing gets damaged."

"I'm a bit more worried about us getting damaged," grumbled Leela.

Sensing that the briefing was over, Hermes stood up and addressed the group. "Alright people, you heard da professor. Fry, you go find Zoidberg and tell 'im to get his lazy ass in here. I think he's out eating garbage behind da pizza place across da street. Amy, you help da professor load his death rays while Leela gets the ship ready.

"What are you going to be doing Hermes," Fry asked. He wasn't being smart, he was genuinely curious.

"I 'ave to requisition da professor some permits for da devices he doesn't want to git rid of. Then I 'ave to stamp dem, collate dem, lose dem, find dem again, notify the bureau of requisitions of my intent to send dem, and den finally send dem in several days late. Ahh the cycle of bureaucracy…"

Chapter 6

The robot member of the PE crew finally got to work about half an hour after the staff meeting. He had had no trouble with the police since he had flushed the loot. Smitty and URL had lost track of their suspect when he ducked into the bakery. Dumping his loot had been unnecessary after all. There was really no particular reason that Bender wasn't at work on time. It just never occurred to him to not be 'fashionably late'.

Fry was sitting in the employee lounge watching cartoons, and from the two empty beer bottles sitting next to him, had been doing so for quite awhile. The delivery boy had found Zoidberg almost immediately after the meeting had broken up. Planet Express's alien doctor had indeed been digging in the garbage. The man-sized lobster creature had never made any money in his profession mainly due to his complete incompetence. Once back at the PE building Fry had tried to make himself useful, but just managed to get in the way. Finally he'd given up and plopped down on the couch.

"Yo chump, where is everybody?" asked Bender.

Fry shrugged "Leela's in the ship. She ran out of things to do to keep herself busy so now she's watching the autopilot's hard drive defragment. Amy and the professor are loading the ship, and Zoidberg's around here somewhere. What have you been up to all morning?"

"Oh nothing." Bender flopped down on the couch next to his friend. His body fit snuggly into an indentation the size and shape of his body. It was pretty obvious the robot did a great deal of sitting on that couch.

The robot didn't have long to relax however. Leela came strolling through the door with her hands on her hips. "Are you guys going to sit here on your asses all day?"

"Yes," Bender answered.

Leela responded by walking behind the couch, gripping it near the bottom with both hands, and heaving upward. The robot and the delivery boy went tumbling across the floor. "Come on you bums, we have a job to do!"

Fry followed Leela and Bender into the hanger. The Planet Express Ship never failed to take his breath away. It had always been a secret dream of his to be an astronaut back in the 20th century, but he had never had the grades or the stamina. Every time he saw the ship's sleek green body it was like witnessing one of his dreams materialize in front of him. Fry only wished that his jaded coworkers could understand his feelings about the machine. To them it was just another boring tool.

Amy and Farnsworth were resting on the ship's cargo elevator, which descended out of the vehicle's undercarriage. Several large wooden crates occupied most of the elevator. Large hazard labels adorned the crates like ornaments. An eerie green glow emanated from a crack in one of the crates; another one emitted a low hum.

Leela: "Is everything ready Amy?"

Amy: "Yes captain, we're all set."

Fry smiled when he heard Amy's voice. He had always liked the native Martian. The two of them had even started dating at one point, but the relationship quickly fizzled out when Amy had started to cramp what Fry generously considered his 'style'.

Fry shook his head to clear it. He could daydream about past romance during the trip.

Farnsworth stood up and shuffled over to face Fry and Leela. "Now, I want you to take good care of my precious inventions. If anything is damaged it will be coming out of Zoidberg's pay, got it?" There were no objections. "And Bender, you stay out of those crates. There isn't anything worth stealing in there, and if you were to accidentally set something off you could destroy an entire galaxy cluster. Now you'd better get going. The HOV lane between Mars and Jupiter changes direction in an hour, so if you don't hurry you'll end up stuck in beltway traffic." With that he turned around and shuffled off.

Fry wandered over to the cargo elevator and hit the button to raise it. The rest of the crew boarded the ship. Zoidberg appeared out of nowhere and gave a dejected look at the delivery boy, who was probably the closest thing the doctor had to a friend. "Why didn't anybody tell Zoidberg that we were about to take off?" asked the crustacean. "I dunno, maybe they didn't want you to come." shrugged the red head. Zoidberg visibly slumped. "Aww…" he moaned. Fry couldn't help but feel sorry for the poor creature, so he pushed the elevator button again. Zoidberg climbed onto the descending platform with a warble of joy.

The captain of the Planet Express Ship went through her preflight. Normally the process only took a few seconds but a long trip such as the one they were about to embark on required combing over every subsystem in the ship. It could take days for a tow truck to reach the PE ship if she were to break down in intergalactic space. Spending several days on a drifting ship in the middle of nowhere was not an idea Leela relished, even if she happened to be stranded amongst friends.

Her check complete, Leela took one last look around to make sure nothing, and no-one, was forgotten. Nibbler had figured out that a mission was underway long ago and was currently curled up on Leela's bunk. Fry had just boarded the ship a moment ago and had joined Amy on the bridge. Bender was in the crew cabin. That took care of people. The ship's stores were also in order, although the supply of olives was low again. All in all, good enough. The single open crate in the cargo bay containing a certain red lobster went unnoticed. Leela returned to the bridge and sat in her chair. She gave Fry a nod. Her friend had always enjoyed doing what he called the 'countdown'. Counting backwards from 10 seemed to be an ancient 20th century ritual of some kind, but what it was supposed to represent was a mystery to the purple haired captain.

"Ten… Nine… Eight…

Leela put the ship into gear and a low hum gradually permeated the cabin

"Seven… Six…

The hangar doors above the ship opened, exposing the bright January sky.

Five… Four…

Both engines started to pick up speed. The low humming became a dull roar. The air began to vibrate with expectant energy.

Three… Two… One…"
"Blastoff!"

The delivery ship surged into the waiting void.