Parallel Lives, Episode One: A Road Not Taken
Full Summary: Episode One of... several. Tasked with transporting several thousand paraboxes accidentally created by Professor Farnsworth, Fry and Leela manage to become trapped in a parallel universe where Fry never went to work at Planet Express. Stalked by an insane duplicate of Leela from yet another universe and harassed by an uncaring bureaucracy, the pair must find a way to unite their alternate selves and regain entry to the Planet Express building and the parabox that is their only way home.
Dawn. The new sun was a sight rarely seen by some, especially those who spent their time working on odd shifts that had them sleeping or working when the sun crested the horizon. Others might see it once a week, when they got up to drag the Sunday paper in from the porch, or scrape the weekend crust of owl-droppings from their hovercar if they lived in that sort of neighbourhood. Some would see it perhaps a dozen times in their lives.
Of course others might see it several times a day. Anyone living or working in earth orbit, for instance. The inhabitants of the great Orbitals that circled the globe saw dawn six times a day, alternatively from the north and south as their orbits crossed the equator. People working in lower orbits saw anything up to twenty dawns each day. Others never saw a dawn in their entire life as they wandered about the eternal darkness of deep mines or dank underground factories, or meandered along the massive, ancient network of sewers that kept New New York from drowning in its own filth.
All of these thoughts flitted through Leela's mind as she watched for the first arc of the sun to peek over the distant horizon. She had rarely taken the time to just take in the sky, the vast bowl of light over her head, or to watch the sun she took for granted start its day until her last visit to her parents had reminded Leela just how lucky she was to even have the chance. It was as if a rather ironic light-bulb had switched on in her head; she'd looked around the dimly lit hovel her parents called a home – cosy as it was – and asked how many times they'd seen a sunrise.
Their answer, whilst not actually surprising, had been something of a shock and made Leela all the more determined to enjoy the life they had given her, painful as it might seem sometimes. And so, on the strength of a their gift to her, Leela had awoken before the dawn one fine spring morning, hauled herself from her bed and made the commute to the Planet Express offices a few hours early. Now she stood on the tower and simply watched the sun as it finally hove above the grey shimmer of the ocean and started its long trek across the sky.
It was strangely uninteresting. And yet...
Leela was still there an hour later, long after the stars had faded from view and the sun was on its way toward noon. That's how Fry found her. Not crying, as such, but she had to blink back a tear when he called her name. She turned and saw him standing a short distance away with that odd half-smile he always seemed to have when he wasn't thinking.
"Hello Fry."
"Hey."
He walked over and joined her at the rail, leaning back on it so low that he almost seemed to be sat on the floor. he let his head droop backward and stared at the sky. "The Professor's been looking for you."
"Did he say why?"
"Oh, the usual stuff. Missions, deliveries, stealing organs..."
Leela closed her eye and laughed, taking the moment to enjoy the feeling of the sun on her face. Fry was still content to stare at the sky when she looked at him again so, sighing, she looked back out over the river. If her parents were a reminder of higher things, Fry was the anchor that kept her feet firmly in the muck of reality.
The silence was companionable, whatever cares and worries they might normally have shared lost for a moment in the still morning air.
"I suppose we'd better get going," she finally said, breaking the peace. "We can't keep our employer waiting, can we?"
"I guess," Fry said. He leaned even further back, if that were physically possible, and smiled at something in the air. Leela grabbed Fry's collar and pulled him upright before he could melt over the rail. He shook his head. "Sorry."
"No problem." Leela held out her hand toward the doors. "Lay on, MacDuff."
Fry tore his gaze away from the sky, a confused frown touching his brow. "I thought you had a thing about people sleeping on the job," he said carefully as he straightened out his coat. "Or does laying mean something else? And anyway, who's this MacDuff guy?"
"Fry, it... it's a figure of speech, I read it in a book from your time. I thought..." her voice trailed off in the face of Fry's almost impenetrable incomprehension. She sighed and smiled at him. "Never mind. Let's go."
"Sure," Fry said, shrugging as he fell into step behind Leela. After a moment she realised he wasn't following again and turned to see what was up. Fry was staring at the sky once more, mouth slack and eyes almost vacant. She finally gave up and turned to follow his gaze.
"What are we looking at?"
"Clouds. That one looks like your mom."
Fry pointed up at a cloud that, Leela noted, did bear a passing resemblance to Munda... assuming Munda was a hunchback with three legs, of course. "So it does... come on, Fry, we'll be late."
"Uh-huh."
She waited in silence until her patience grew too thin. Leela grabbed Fry's collar and dragged him inside.
Professor Farnsworth was already at the conference table when Leela and Fry arrived, trying to prize his fingers from a colourful Chinese finger trap. They sat down as quietly as they could so as not to disturb him.
"Confounded thing," he muttered, ignoring the other employees as they arrived and took their seats. Finally he gave in and looked up. "So, you'vefinally decided to join us, Leela?"
"Hey, she was watching clouds with me," Fry said loudly, putting his feet up on the table with a broad 'I'm rescuing you' smile.
"Thanks a lot, Fry," Leela grumbled, barely able to conceal the sarcasm in her voice. Fry beamed and gave her a thumbs up.
"No problem!"
Farnsworth gave the finger-trap an absent-minded tug and frowned at it in evident confusion. "I don't care what sort of stupidity you were up to, and frankly I never will as I'll have forgotten about it in a few hours, h'yes." He reached up to adjust his glasses, only to realise that his other hand was dragged up too. "Blast and damnation, how did I ever get stuck in this thing?"
"Professor..."
"What? Oh yes, I have some good news, everyone!" Farnsworth reached under the table and, for a moment, struggled with something beneath. Leela pulled a face at the thought of what he might be doing under there until Farnsworth managed to lift a large, plain cardboard box from the floor. He smiled blankly at the assembled staff as he laid the box on the table.
Fry peered at the box. "Isn't that the thing with our universe in it?"
"Oh my no, this is another box with a whole new universe inside. I created it last night," Farnsworth said with a cheery lilt. He leaned his head over sideways as he examined the box. "Along with approximately eleven thousand others. I accidentally left the machine on overnight instead of destroying it."
"And this is good news how, exactly?" Leela folded her arms. This ought to be good.
"Well, uh... it means you have a mission," Farnsworth said, putting his hands together. The finger-trap slipped off his finger but he didn't seem to notice. "Yes, a mission, one so terrifying and dangerous that you may well be too terrified to carry it out."
"Sounds fun, hope you all enjoy it," Bender exclaimed, turning to run for the exit. Before he got anywhere near the door Hermes pulled out a squat, cylindrical device that emitted a loud buzzing noise when he pointed it at Bender. The robot froze in his track and slumped forward, groaning.
Hermes blew on the end of the cylinder and slipped it back into his pocket. "Nobody runs out on their employment obligations," he said happily, leafing through a sheaf of papers. Bender turned his head to glare at Hermes; evidently he could do little else but watch as Hermes smiled and held open a thick book.
"Asimov Code rule four one seven, subsection eleven, paragraph six as amended," he said, holding his pen up to indicate the relevant paragraphs. "All robotic employees that demonstrate unwillingness to follow rules one through fifteen, seventeen and ninety-two will be fitted with suitable restraint devices in order to facilitate compliance with the Code. The alternative was waitin until you were out of the door and then callin in the breakers."
The book slapped shut.
"Oh. Well, I'll just wait here then... like I have a choice!"
Farnsworth clasped his hands together, incidentally re-trapping his fingers in the finger-trap. He looked down and frowned as if he'd just noticed the device. "Well now, with that unpleasantness out of the way, this won't be any more dangerous than your last missions," he said as he tugged at the trap again, testing its strength.
"Our last three missions nearly got us all killed, Professor," Leela said, trying not to let the anger show in her voice. Farnsworth just stared at her and then looked over at Hermes, who shook his head slightly, tapping his briefcase with one hand.
"All right," Leela sighed. "What is it?"
"After accidentally creating so many new universes I feel a certain need to preserve the one we have here. Each of the boxes I created holds a replica of our universe within, and those ones potentially hold replicas again, and if any one of them were to be destroyed it could set of a cascade of wanton destruction and mayhem that might potentially destroy the entire multiverse."
"Sort of like that episode of Star-" Fry choked as Leela elbowed him in the stomach. He gasped and screwed up his face. "What was that for?"
"Any mention of you-know-what is still technically illegal," Leela said, rubbing her elbow. How could a man who was so overweight be so bony at the same time? "I probably just saved your life."
"I was going to say gate! Gate!"
"Oh that asinine mockery of science, as if you could actually walk through the event horizon of a wormhole..." Farnsworth cleared his throat, ignoring Fry's obvious dismay. "May I continue?" He waited for a moment and then smiled at the assenting silence.
"Good. Now, in order to preserve these boxes I have decided to store them in the very centre of the universe, which-"
"Point of order?" With complaints and scrabbling, Cubert Farnsworth, cloned son of the Professor and general know-it-all crawled out from underneath the table, covered in grime and dust and dragging some sort of cabling behind him. He heaved at the cable and then dropped it on the floor. "Strictly speaking there is no centre to the universe."
"What? What are you talking about? And what the devil are you doing under there?" Cubert shrugged and nudged the cable with his toe, as if this somehow explained everything. Farnsworth sighed. "Never mind. I know there's no centre of the universe but it sounds better than saying I want them put in some random spot near the edge. Anyway, there- what do you want now?"
Cubert stopped tugging at Farnsworth's sleeve and folded his arms again. He gave the Professor his 'I'm smarter than you' look and shook his head sadly. "How can there be an edge of the universe when there's no centre?"
"Shut up and get back to stripping that irradiated cable insulation, you annoying little brat." The Professor waited until Cubert had crawled back under the table, then folded his hands together. The finger-trap finally sprung off and flicked away over his shoulder. "Now as I was saying, you will be taking the boxes to a world at the edge... uh, centre... well it's a long way away from here. The world you'll be visiting is the most inert planet in the entire known universe."
The Professor beamed at his staff, as if waiting for them to react in shock or, perhaps, surprise. He looked from face to face, his frown deepening as he moved to each staff-member and noted their apathy. Only Fry seemed to be remotely interested in what was going on, unusually for him. Farnsworth turned to Leela, who feigned interest and even managed to put on a smile.
Fry held up his hand. "What's it called?"
"Nobody knows. There were a few attempts to name it, and eventually they managed to argue down to two candidates; Inertialis, and Procrastinon. The subsequent war was long and bloody but there was no clear winner, so these days everyone just pretends it doesn't exist." Farnsworth took off his glasses and cleaned them, scrubbing at the nano-particles he knew had to be there somewhere. "It's a world so completely inert that anything placed on it will probably last until the end of the universe, which is why I want to store these boxes there. Hermes has already taken care of the permits. All you need to do is load them on to the ship and transport them.
"You'll get there," he continued before Leela could speak, "by following the map I shall provide for you. The world doesn't appear on any official star charts or catalogues because of its, eyuh, 'controversial' nature."
The room fell silent. Mostly through apathy, it had to be said, rather than any particular worry or concern, though Fry and Leela seemed to be at least marginally interested now. Amy was polishing her nails. The Professor stood up and left the conference table without a word, pausing only to pick up the finger trap he'd discarded moments ago. By the time he reached the door the trap was firmly wrapped around his fingers again.
Leela looked across the table at Hermes. He almost cowered under the power of her gaze. "No chance of attacks or anything stupid happening?"
"Nope."
"No alien head hunters, brain parasites, liver maggots, nasal hair harvesters or Grues?"
"You're quite safe from all of those tings," Hermes said, pulling out another sheet of paper. He skimmed through it and then signed the bottom. "Though I would like to have your signature on this waiver of liability for any comments that might mislead you into falsely believing such statements as that."
Leela glared at the waiver, almost willing it to burst into flame. She pushed it aside, giving Hermes a neutral look. "No chance."
"Worth a shot..." Hermes folded up his papers and whistled a jaunty tune to himself as he left.
"Well, you heard the man. Time to load up."
"Do we have to?" Fry kicked his chair back and put his feet up on the table. "It's such a nice day today, I'd really prefer to hang out on the beach or something. Maybe we could go to the park and watch, uh, birds. Or... y'know."
"No, I don't know," Leela said. "As nice as the day is I'd rather get paid. Come on. You too, Bender."
Bender turned his head toward Leela's voice, arms wobbling as he tried to move.
"Looks like I'm stuck here," he said, laughing until he seemed to realise what that would mean. "Aw..."
"I'll get Hermes to... do whatever it is he's supposed to do, I guess," Leela said, looking down at Amy. She rubbed her chin and then snapped her fingers. "Or better yet, Amy, you do it. I'll go prep the ship."
"Fine..." Amy dragged herself from her chair and stomped across the room. She paused at the door and turned to lean against the frame. "You know, Leela, it wouldn't hurt if you lightened up a little now and then."
"I'll lighten up when people start obeying their orders," Leela replied. She walked around the table, stepping to one side to dodge the cables Cubert had straggled across the floor. Amy seemed strangely unnerved by Leela's approach; she opened the door and backed up through it. "Remember who's in charge around here."
"All right, I'm going!" The door slid shut with such surprising ferocity that Leela wondered if Amy had been messing with the controls again. She turned to look at Fry, still in his seat by the table.
"We can start moving a few of these things while we're waiting for Hermes to sort out Bender," she said, trying to give him an encouraging smile. Fry just stared at her and pushed his hands into his pockets.
"Sure."
"Come on, Fry, no need to act like a lazy..." Leela's voice faded away as she looked Fry up and down. He never acted lazy, she thought as she shooed him toward the storeroom. Acting implied the possibility of it all being, well, an act. "Well, no need to be yourself I guess."
Leela didn't often visit the storerooms. Everything she needed to handle ship maintenance was scattered around the hangar most of the time and normally she didn't take such an active role in actually loading the ship except in the most delicate cases. Planet Express rarely kept client packages on site which meant that the storerooms were normally empty when she visited, but today the store was packed to the ceiling with boxes, all the same colour and same uniform shape. Toward the back a few packages on the company's new 'budget' delivery plan mouldered under a dust-sheet. One of them, the one with the air holes and direction arrow pointing to the floor, had started to emit a rather distressing smell.
Leela cast her eye around the room, wondering just where you should start when all the boxes were essentially identical. "Okay, Fry, start unpacking this shelf here. I'll bring around the loader."
"Right..." Fry lifted a box from the nearest shelf and hefted it. The box, strangely slick and cold, slipped from his hands and fell on the floor, popping off its lid. "Oops."
Leela sighed. "Fry, you could have just destroyed an entire universe!" She lifted the box upright and peered into it for a second. Strange how it seemed to just be an empty box, until you reached inside and...
Something grabbed Leela's hand. She yelled in shock and quickly yanked her arm back. "Dammit, Fry!"
"What? I didn't go sticking my arm in there..." Fry leaned over the box and peered in, then quickly stepped back as a long, slender arm, bony and grey, and covered with a fine matting of pallid hair reached out of the box and began waving around. A hideous face followed it, squinting its huge red eyes against the light.
"What the hell?
Whilst Fry merely pulled a disgusted face at the creature, Leela jumped up with a loud shout and kicked it in the head. The grey ape-thing whimpered and gibbered angrily at her before quickly disappearing back into the box. Leela picked up the lid and slammed it back into place again, panting slightly as a delayed adrenaline rush kicked in.
"That's why you need to be careful with these things," she muttered, catching her breath. Fry's replying shrug was just nervous enough to prevent her losing control at him.
"Can't be that bad in all of them, can it?"
"No, it could be even worse," Leela said, leaning forward on the box while she looked around the room again. The towering stacks of boxes had suddenly taken on a rather more disturbing caste, providing portals to untold dangers and unspeakable horrors, not least some bizarro version of her own self with a blood-lust and a large gun. Leela shook her head; her imagination could be far too vivid at times. "Just to be safe we should probably seal the lids on these things. Wait here, I'll go get some tape."
"Right."
Leaning back against the stack of boxes and thinking about their contents, Fry looked around the room and sighed.
Bender wandered around the corner, rubbing his arms and grumbling something about restraining bolts. He stopped and stared at the neatly stacked boxes before letting out a low whistle. "That's a lot of universe."
"Hi Bender."
"Fry..." Bender leaned on the shelves and stared at his fingers. He flicked a possibly imaginary speck of dirt from the tip of one. "You sound like you're experiencing that human emotion I like to call 'easy mark'. What's up?"
"Leela shouted at me again."
"Leela? Feh," Bender started to walk down the aisle, tapping boxes with one hand while he rubbed his chin with the other. Every now and then he'd pause to repeat the procedure on a particular box before moving on. "She's always shouting at everyone, don't worry about it."
"Yeah, but this time-"
"Ooh! Fry, c'mere!" Bender pulled a box off the shelf and held it out, eyes aglow with more than their usual faint yellow light. "This'll do, how about you and me sneak into this universe and loot it a bit?"
"What? No!"
"Aww, come on, Fry, it'll be fun!" Bender held the box up a little higher and rocked it from side to side. "You might even find a Leela that'll do those squishy human things you seem to enjoy."
"I... no, that wouldn't be right," Fry replied slowly. He watched the box rocking back and forth in Benders hands offering Fry a whole world of wonders he'd never seen before, not least a world where Leela might actually be nice to him once in a while. Although that wasn't really fair... Sometimes she was nice. "I mean... well, I suppose it wouldn't hurt to just look..."
"That's the spirit!"
Bender lifted the lid. A toaster, the old fashioned sort covered in chrome and black Bakelite, and sporting an incongruous pair of white wings, reared out of the box with a loud clank and started flapping around near the ceiling. Fry screeched with surprise and dropped the box as the creature swooped and dived at him. He stepped back and fell against the nearest stack of boxes, scattering them across the floor in a clatter of cardboard.
The toaster flapped down and landed on his head, where it a settled down and made contented sizzling noise. Fry tried to push it away but it seemed unwilling to leave its new fuzzy nest so he eventually gave up as a smell of warm toast filled the air.
"Great, Leela's gonna kill me."
"That's the way the booze goes down I guess," Bender said, pulling a cigar from his chest compartment. He turned around. The cigar dropped from his hands, unlit. "Oh."
Bender's surprise was enough to grab Fry's attention. When he looked around he found Leela climbing out of another box. A Leela, anyway. Her hair was black, her clothing – what little she was wearing – had a lot of straps and belts on it, and she seemed to be wearing a lot more make-up than the Leela he was used to. She was also sporting a very large, powerful looking, old-fashioned revolver on her hip. She smiled at Fry as she perched on the edge of the box, one foot dangling into it and the other planted on the floor.
"Hello, Philip."
"Leela? Is that you?"
"Oh, sure it is Fry. Nice to see you again by the way, must have been almost a year since the last time I shot you. Not that you'd remember that..." She pulled herself out of the box and gave the store-room a disdainful glance, almost sneering at the neatly stacked boxes before taking a moment to examine the few cartons tumbled across the floor. Fry started to edge toward the door until the strange Leela turned and, suddenly, he was face to face with the muzzle of that vicious looking revolver. She'd drawn it almost faster than he could blink. "I wouldn't try and escape if I were you."
Fry stopped moving. He swallowed and slowly put his hands up, dislodging the weird flying toaster that roosted on his head. The creature took to the air and swooped at what Fry was rapidly starting to think of as Evila, drawing a surprised yell from her as she fired at the toaster. The bullet passed through the strange beast, puncturing its metal hide but otherwise doing it no apparent harm.
Evila stepped back and swung at the toaster with her free hand whilst the other turned the gun back on Fry. "Must be one of the stranger things I've seen," she said, casually drawing back the revolver's hammer. Denied its comfortable perch, the toaster fluttered to the floor and settled down to roost amongst the boxes where it quietly rattled its lever.
"Wait! What are you-"
"I'm killing you, Philip. Oh I could probably explain why but after the first dozen or so times it gets boring." Evila lowered her gun again and peered at the ceiling. "Of course I could suddenly decide to love you again and forget this whole murderous vengeful rampage but... nah. So long again, Fry."
Bender held up his hand. "How about me?"
Without taking her eyes off Fry, Evila turned the gun toward Bender and fired. The bullet hit Bender in his forehead. He slumped back against the shelving, sparks flying from his neck and mouth.
"Ow! Dammit, that hurt!" Bender rubbed his head and slid along the shelf before he turned to run from the room. "You're crazy, I'm out of here!"
Evila pointed the gun at Fry, her finger tightening around the trigger as she readied herself to fire again. Fry closed his eyes and grit his teeth at the sound of the hammer being drawn back, waiting for the shot. He jumped at the sound of a loud crash... and then didn't die. Evila hadn't fired. Instead the door burst open, cracking Bender full in the face and knocking him into the depths of the storeroom.
"Leela, look out!"
Fry realised he'd shouted. Leela, his Leela, stood framed in the doorway, holding a role of tape in one hand and a wrench in the other, glaring at the messy pile of boxes on the floor. "Fry, what the hell is..." She took in the scene; the toaster, Fry cowering in front of a raven-haired woman, boxes scattered everywhere. "Who isthat?"
Leela's black-haired twin raised her gun and turned to look at Leela with a wry grin.
"Well, lookie here, another me. Hi there, sister!" She holstered the gun and sauntered toward Leela, hips swaying, her smile broadening with each step. "I see you've kept your Wristomatic. They took mine off me when they put me in the institution... shame, I liked it."
"Fry, after I've kicked her ass you're going to explain precisely what's going on." Leela dropped the tape and was about the drop the wrench when her counterpart suddenly drew her gun again. She sprung, swinging the wrench in a wide arc that knocked the gun from the other Leela's grasp, but then the weight of the tool swung Leela forward and over onto her front. Leela let go of the wrench and twisted in the air but it wasn't quite enough to bring herself upright again. She made a rough landing on her butt on the far side of the scattered boxes.
Leela's counterpart spun around, adopting a classic martial-arts fighting pose. She flicked her eyebrow at Leela. "Not bad form, sister."
"I keep in shape," Leela replied, mirroring the other Leela's pose, stupid as it was. She tensed up, waiting to see how her alter-ego would react. Evila seemed to relax a little, letting the tension draw out of her arms and shoulders as she straightened up, and Leela felt herself involuntarily doing the same. She forced herself to tense up again which was fortunate as, without warning, her counterpart suddenly kicked the strange winged toaster into the air, then spun around and kicked it again at Leela's head. Leela ducked as the thing shimmied past her, its wings flapping madly as it tried to right itself.
She was up almost instantly but it was too late. Leela groaned as her twin's booted feet disappeared into one of the boxes, but then just as quickly she lifted up one of the lids and slammed it down over the box. She dragged the box over to the fallen tape sealed it up in every direction she could think of and then sat on it for good measure. Leela looked down at Fry, still slumped against the stacked boxes and staring into space with an odd blank expression.
"Fry?"
"Hm?" Fry looked up at Leela. "You know, she had bigger-"
"Fry! How can you think about something like that at a time like this?" Leela stood up and started righting more of the boxes. She quickly wrapped a seal of tape around each one to stop the lid from coming off. "I told you to be careful and what do you do? You open the first box you look at!"
"I was going to say boots... anyway, I was bored and Bender wanted to have some fun," Fry said with a shrug. He turned and looked at the box that the dark version of Leela had escaped into. It wasn't the one she'd come out of... and what had she said? "Wait, shot me before? Oh crap."
"Wuaaua?" Leela got down on her knees and pulled the tape from her mouth. When she looked up at Fry he was staring at the first box she'd sealed with both hands stuffed into his mouth. "What's the matter?"
"You're trying to kill me!" Fry whimpered at the sight of Leela and backed up against the boxes again. Leela rolled her eye and dropped the tape as she shuffled over to him.
"I'm not trying to kill you, Fry."
"No, but she is, and she's practically you. She said she'd shot me." Fry looked around the room with obvious terror, his hands squirming at the hem of his coat. "She could come out of any one of these things!"
Fry whimpered, and then seemed to remember he was leaning on the boxes. He jumped away from the shelves, crying out in fear as he flailed his arms around his head and knocking the boxes until they rocked forward and collapsed over on him in thunderous wave.
As the dust settled Leela pushed her way through the piled up boxes, wondering what sort of carnage the collapse might have wrought on the universes within them. Perhaps nothing; a universe was a very big place, after all. She threw a few boxes aside as she dug into the pile that covered Fry, until she reached the spot where he was sitting.
Had been sitting.
"Fry, you idiot..." Leela sighed as she lifted up a box and peered into it, wondering how she'd find him. Just about then Bender sauntered up, rattling every time he turned his head and poking at a ragged hole just above his eyes.
"Jeez, you'd think a small piece of lead wouldn't do so much damage. Good thing I'm insured." He paused to look at Leela. "I guess this means I won't be needed to help load up for a while, huh?"
"Oh, sure. Go do... stuff." Leela ignored Bender as he beat a hasty retreat from the room as she stared at the boxes, frowning. Then a thought struck her. Leela put down the box and stepped back a little, looking for the most likely candidates. Eventually she had a dozen boxes lined up on the floor, all with their lids off. She examined each one in turn, then leaned into the first one and cupped her hands around her mouth. "Fry? Are you in there?"
"Leela?" Fry's voice echoed back through the box, and for a moment Leela thought she might have made an incredibly lucky guess. But then, as she leaned back, a completely different Fry crawled up out of the box to peer at her. His hair was green.
"Oh. Sorry, wrong Fry..."
"No problem. Hey, if you were my Leela, what would it take to convince you to go out with me?" The alternate Fry gave Leela a pleading gaze and smiled shyly. It was almost sweet. Leela tipped her head to one side and thought for a moment.
"If I told you, it'd be cheating," she said with a half-smile, before patting Fry on the head. His face fell slightly, but then he seemed to rally and smiled at her again before dipping back into his box. Leela took out a pen and made a large cross on the lid, then moved on to the next box.
After half a dozen propositions from various alternative versions of Fry – and one from Amy, bizarrely – Leela found him. She leaned over the box and peered through the hazy interface between universes. "Fry? Why does everything look upside down?"
"I'm sorta stuck," Fry replied. His voice was very quiet, moreso than the usual effect of distance that the boxes seemed. Leela leaned forward a little further to try and see if she could peep out of the box and spot him but then, as she moved in, she felt gravity twisting in odd ways. With a surprised screech Leela found she was plummeting through the interface and falling down to a dull grey floor and Fry, slumped against the bottom of a the shelf with a strange grin on his face. She landed head first in his stomach, knocking the wind out of Fry's lungs in a loud, pained gasp.
"Sorry," Leela muttered as she pushed herself up. Fry coughed and fell over on to his side. "Thanks for breaking my fall though."
"Don't mention it," Fry wheezed. Leela gave him a cursory glance, decided he was probably going to survive and returned to looking around their new environment. It looked like the store-room they'd just left, though much better kept and generally greyer, with row upon row of perfectly aligned pale grey boxes lining the shelves and neat stack of packages in the distance that seemed to be sitting in some sort of passive stasis field. She looked up at the box they'd just left; it was knocked over, its broad mouth tilted toward the floor, which explained her sudden fall.
"What an odd place," she said quietly, turning back to Fry. He seemed to have recovered enough to sit upright again. Leela reached down and hauled Fry upright. "We'd better find a way back up to that box."
"Right," he grunted, shoving his hands in his pockets again. Leela looked around the room once more, trying to spot a ladder or some other climbing tool, but nothing made itself obvious. Fry was looking about as well by now. He tapped one of the boxes. "This place has even less colour than your apartment," he said, looking up to the ceiling.
Leela ground her teeth and resisted the urge the whack him about the head with one of the boxes, struck by the realisation that she could almost understand why that other version of herself had snapped.
"We'd better scout around and see if we can find something. I don't know how the crew in this universe will take to us turning up in their store-room unannounced."
"Oh, they'll probably just boast about being married again," Fry grumbled. He looked down at his feet and nudged one of the boxes with his toe; Leela almost expected him to add more but he didn't, mercifully. She held up her wrist computer and started scanning around the building.
"Only one life-form nearby and it doesn't seem to be anyone we know," she said, as she passed the scanner over the room. "Whoever it is, they're coming this way, so we'd better hurry up."
Fry grumbled and started walking down the aisle toward the far wall. He turned at the end, seemed about to say something and then stopped suddenly. "Uh... Leela?"
Leela looked up from trying to adjust her scanner to search for 'ladders' and peered at Fry. He was standing very still, and his face had gone very pale.
"What's the matter?"
"The guy with the gun is," Fry said, backing up. A large man with a laser pistol followed him around the corner. He paused for a second and frowned when he saw Leela, then narrowed his eyes at her. Leela glared back at him. She wondered if she could take him down and tensed up, ready to strike.
"Okay... whoever you are..." The man – wearing what was obviously a security guard's uniform – kept his gun trained on Leela as he spoke and from the stance he had taken Leela could see he was a professional, which made her think twice about attacking him. She'd probably be toast before she even reached him.
"Here's how it will work out. You two will come with me and leave the building. You'll pretend that you weren't going to do whatever you were about to do in here and in return I'll pretend I didn't see you."
Leela blinked, caught off guard by the man's willingness to let them go. "But we have to-"
"Look, we've been over this once already. You can do this the easy way or the hard way." To make his point he held the gun a little higher. Leela's only reply was to nod. The guard lowered the gun again and pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. "The exit is that way. After you."
"Why are you doing this?" Leela asked as she edged her way around the guard. He shrugged slightly but didn't take his eyes off her as he shooed them out of the room. They emerged in the hangar a short distance from a very stark, silvery version of the Ship.
Everything was various shades of grey and light, cold blue, and spotlessly clean. The entire building had a quiet hush about it, with a stillness that added to the silent emptiness of the hangar. While the guard locked the store-room behind them, Leela and Fry both looked around the strange, sterile version of the world and then looked at each other.
"I've never seen the hangar so clean before," Leela whispered to Fry. He frowned, taking it as the reprimand Leela hadn't intended it to be, but there wasn't much she could do about that.
At the urging of the guard they carried on up the stairs. The conference room and the employee lounge were both equally spartan and unblemished. They were also deserted, filled with silence, and didn't seem to have been occupied for some time. When they reached the lobby Leela paused and turned to the guard. "Look, I know this is going to sound weird but we're not from this universe and we really-"
"Look, lady, I'm doing you a favour by letting you go again," the guard said as he holstered his gun. He stepped back and regarded Fry and Leela, taking a long moment to look at Fry's face. He frowned and seemed about to say something, but then he opened the main entrance and waved them toward it. "If I report this we all have to fill in at least a dozen forms before I can even call the police. Trust me, this is easier."
"But-"
"No buts. If I have to shoot you I will, but it would mean even more paperwork for the bitch- the boss upstairs. I hate paperwork." The door slid closed with a clunking finality, leaving the pair sealed outside on the street. Leela kicked at the door and yelled obscenities at the guard but it didn't achieve much apart from bruising her toe.
"Well great. Just great, thanks a lot Fry, now we're stuck in some parallel universe with no way of getting home." Leela slammed her fist against the door and then turned away. She folded her arms and glared at the buildings on the far side of the street until Fry thought they might crack and fall over.
"Hey don't blame me, you're the one that started fighting with yourself."
Leela turned her terrible glare on him and then looked away again with a loud humph. Fry slunk away from the door and sat down on a nearby bench, where he stared out across the river, head resting on his hands as he watched the water oozing by. Or not oozing, it seemed a lot clearer than home. Everything else seemed to be fairly normal. He frowned and looked over his shoulder at the Planet Express building. It was grey, like everything inside, and sparkling clean, but seemed to be deserted and untended. Fry looked around the quiet street. He could hear traffic noise in the distance which ruled out any of the usual post-apocalyptic ideas running through his head. "Leela, where is everyone?"
"What?" Leela came over and leaned on the back of the bench. She looked around at the strangely quiescent building and frowned. "That's a good point... we should have met at least one of us in there."
"Maybe that guard threw them out," Fry said with a shrug. He returned to staring over the river; Leela gave him a pitying look and then glanced around, then up at the building again. The sun seemed to be a little dimmer than their own, despite the crystal-clear sky, giving everything a permanent twilight feel and making the shadows less distinct, but somehow deeper. A few buildings still had lights on inside despite the time of day, including the Planet Express building. Leela could see a vague silhouette standing in one of the upstairs windows, in the dome where the Professor normally kept his larger experiments. It looked like a woman.
Leela shook her head slowly as she looked around the edges of the building. "I don't think so," she said eventually, then turned away. "It's possible they're just not in today. I mean, who knows what holidays they have in this universe?"
"Free ice-cream Sunday?"
"It's Thursday," Leela replied, trying to stop her mind wandering off on a tangent. She put her hands on Fry's shoulders and pressed him down until he grunted in submission. "We need to speak to one of our counterparts here before we can get in."
Fry rubbed his shoulders as Leela let him go. "Who?"
"Me," Leela said brightly. She set off toward the road with a determined march. "Who else would believe us?"
Fry bit back on the obvious reply. Considering how the last alternate universe version of Leela had treated herself, the chances of them getting back home weren't too high. He trailed after Leela, glancing around now and then at the quiet streets, wondering whether this Leela would try and shoot him as well.
