50 year old Professor Hubert Farnsworth, scientist, receding auburn hair, weak and overworked, overlooked Venice from his gondola. A sinister cloud or poison fog of some kind enveloped the city.
"I don't see how sitting on a moldy beach will improve my health," he shouted. "What I need is another invigorating 80 hour work week. Gondolier! Turn around!"
"Shut your old trap, old man! No stops!"
Steaming and trapped in his blanket, the Professor was unable to steer or stop. He was prey to the whims of the shady bending unit gondolier.
"Get the hell out!"
The Professor landed with a thud on the muddy shore.
"My suitcases!"
Bender laughed and escaped quickly down the canals.
"We are so sorry, Professor Aschen–Farnsworth," Hermes the hotel manager cooed insincerely, helping the professor up. "That gondolier was not licensed, just another ex-con-bot kidnapping defenseless tourists. One of the many unspoken dangers of our sexy city."
The hotel manager was accompanied by a reclining golden hedonismbot who had exaggerated his tarnished and rusty exterior with cheap paints, fragrant glop and sticky oils in its wigs, false lashes, and worst of all, its belly had been rubbed shiny and smooth and Professor Farnsworth could see that most repulsive feature–his own face reflected back at him. He stumbled back, nauseated.
"Ulgh!"
"Welcome to verdant, fecund, decaying, teeming Venice!" the pleasurebot crowed.
"Tadpole! Tadpole!"
Professor Farnsworth's attention was drawn to a straight-backed, strictly dressed Mrs. Wong. Her clear eyes focused on her pack of identically dressed and bonneted children-teen Leela, twin children Fry and Amy, and smirking, adolescent Zoidberg, who ascended from the water as his mother called.
The Professor's jaw dropped as he hungrily devoured the nubile crab's every sensation. His color: tender pink and semilucent peach, in places blushing, the flesh tantalized by fresh blood. His texture: salt crusted, gooey, amorphous, and, oh yes, sharp. His putrescence. The sensitive movements of his mandibular tentacles, the veiled, subtle smirk of youth.
"Oh, my."
"Tadpole!" his mother called. Zoidberg joined the family and they all went into the hotel.
"Now, I know you told me vacations were for lazy moochers and that you wouldn't be staying longer than a few days-" Hermes began.
"Whoever said that I said that is an idiot! I'll stay as long as I like! Now, fetch me some extra fiber toast, cholera-infected strawberries, and a newspaper with two eye holes cut out! I'll be on the beach!"
And so a week turned to two, the Professor ogling young Zoidberg and falling ever more obsessed with him and his smartly dressed family.
"Stay away from my little kids, nasty pedophile man!" Mrs. Wong finally screamed after chasing him off of the beach and up and down the canals. When she left, the Professor realized the streets of Venice were empty.
"Excuse me, young newspaperbot. But, where is everyone?"
Tinny Tim held up his newspaper.
"It's the cholera, sir. All the water in Venice is infected. Maybe you 'adn't 'eard on account of those lowlifes in the tourism industry."
Bender the gondolier quickly smashed the newspaper stand with an oar until no newspapers were left. Then he grabbed the newspaper in Tinny Tim's hand, put it into a pepper grinder, and ground it over a bowl of salad.
"Free fresh salad with gondola ride! And don't forget to buy your strawberries, here! Freshly infected strawberries!"
The Professor waved. "Are you perhaps selling youth?"
"Don't be stupid. But I am selling makeovers. You'll look even better then when you were young!"
A few hours later, in Bender's makeover salon, the Professor stared back at his reflection. He looked greasy and painted, like that ghoulish robot clown he'd encountered when he first arrived in town. Sweat poured down his brow and mingled with the paint.
"No refunds," said Bender.
"Maybe this will be enough of a disguise to whiff that tender young seabud under his mother's own nose," the Professor mused.
Bender frowned. "You need to pay me money for having heard that."
"Then I'll also take ten pounds of strawberries."
And so, the Professor went back to the hotel in Venice from which everyone had fled except for the Martian family with the multicolored, multi-species children.
Professor Farnsworth laid back in his beach recliner, makeup melting in the sun, going nuts on fistfuls of rotting strawberries. His eyes beneath their sunglasses were fixed on Zoidberg, splashing in the water with his siblings, fins twitching and semi-erect.
"Tadpole! Tadpole! Come out of the water! That crazy pedo is back! Cover your flawless preteen body!" Mrs. Wong barked.
Zoidberg turned, but it wasn't to face his mother. He turned to face the Professor, the sun flashing powerfully behind his hard chitinous shell. The Professor could not see his face, only his lithe, sturdy Apollonian outline. Staring at this outline, void of detail, this pure form, was like staring into the sun itself. Zoidberg offered one outstretched claw, but the Professor could not rise to meet him.
"Oaaohhh-GKK!-aaaahh-hh-RK! Auhh..."
"And so Dionysus claims another life for his own, hmhmhm," Hedonismbot tittered, reaching over the Professor's corpse to steal the dead man's strawberries.
"Delicious."
Zoidberg soon approached the old man and the golden bot.
"Hey mature human, I wanted to say I've been digging the sexy vibes we've been sharing all summer... I want you to know I'm interested."
"He's dead," Hedonismbot said.
"Very interested!" Zoidberg amended, one delicate and youthful mouth tentacle waggling suggestively.
And so the gulls and crabs descended upon the cholera-ridden bodies washed on the beaches of Venice, and the moral is–