"That was cruel," Amy said distantly.
Her voice sounded muffled, buried as she was in the depths of one of the Professor's storerooms. The Professor had three official storerooms at Planet Express. Two of them contained inconceivable horrors and the third was so full of junk you had to tie yourself to the doorknob to be sure of finding your way out.
It was this one Amy had plunged into. Lars was keeping one eye on the rope for her.
His other eye was on the Professor, who was drooling in the corner of the lab where they had left him. He seemed fine, but Lars had decided to check his breathing on a regular basis just in case. The Professor was pretty old, after all. It probably wasn't healthy to keep him sedated like this. But what else could they do?
"What you said to Fry," Amy repeated, a little louder than before. "Hey. Can you hear me? It was cruel."
Lars sighed.
"I heard you. I know it was. But what was I supposed to say? 'Sorry, kid, you should sit this one out. It's a suicide mission.' He would've tried to do it anyway. I couldn't let him."
"So you made him feel like dirt for his own good? Schmeez."
"It was the only thing that would've worked." Lars leaned back against the door frame, easing the weight off his bad leg. "It's the only thing that would've worked on me."
He hadn't enjoyed it, watching Fry's face crumple as he said the words. It was disorienting, watching Fry react while the ghost of the feeling echoed in his own head.
But knowing the feeling was what had made him so sure it would work. And it had worked. Now Fry would stay where he belonged and Leela wouldn't have to lose the man she loved twice over.
Fry would understand when it was when it was over, Lars told himself. When Lars was dead. He'd understand it then. And Leela would be able to convince him he wasn't a waste of space. She'd give him the baby and marry him and make him feel like he could do anything.
It wouldn't matter.
Lars shook himself.
Go away, he told the image of Fry's crestfallen face in his mind's eye. You're getting everything you want. You're getting everything I want! Stop making me feel bad.
He peered into the depths of the storage closet, trying to distract himself.
"What are you doing in here anyway?" he asked Amy. "Is this where the Doomsday devices are?"
"No. They're in cold storage, with the goop the Professor uses to freeze off his warts."
Amy reappeared in his line of vision. She was carrying an armful of circuit breakers and had what looked like fifty feet of copper wiring looped around her torso.
"I'm building a long-range radio transmitter," she said. "On an encrypted wavelength. So when you and Nibbler go to Eternium, we can talk to you without the Brains listening in. Neat, right?"
Lars blinked.
"You can do that?"
Amy nodded.
"I think so. If I adapt the Professor's encrypted network and merge it with some stuff from the schematic for his Sniff-o-Scope, I should be able to create a radio signal that can transmit securely anywhere in the universe. Um. Theoretically."
"Theoretically?"
"Normally the Professor comes up with the ideas," Amy admitted. "I just do what he tells me to. But I think I can do this on my own. Just give me a day. Two days, max."
"Okay. Is there anything I can do to help?"
Amy shook her head.
"No, I got it."
Lars nodded. He hadn't really expected to be of any use.
He cast a lazy eye over the contents of the store room.
"Look at all this junk. Don't you brainiacs ever clear anything out?"
He lifted the lid on a barrel of toxic green gunk.
"What's this goop?"
Amy glanced over.
"That was paint. For the ship. It was supposed to absorb stellar radiation and turn it into rocket fuel, but it glowed in the dark so much it turned Fry and Leela blind. Bender had to fly them home." She stifled a laugh. "Guess how it ended."
"Leela yelled at you and made you paint over the ship," Lars guessed.
"No," Amy grinned. "We hid two rooms over while she yelled at a wall. Then we made Zoidberg paint over the ship."
Lars watch the paint drip, glowing eerily green, from the tip of his finger.
"Good call."
He picked up the can next to it, which was open and had been emptied out, so that only a coating of some thick tar-like substance remained, lining the inside. Lars eyed the label.
"Prune Zoom," he read aloud. "Is this paint too?"
"No. That's the Professor's old-man strength laxative."
"It says 'take one spoon sitting on the toilet'," Lars said warily. "Uh . . . Amy? It's empty."
He glanced back at the Professor, wondering if the sedative they'd given him had the power to forestall a violent explosion of the bowels.
Amy seemed to follow his train of thought.
"Don't worry," she said. "He didn't take any."
"How do you know?"
"Um." Amy shuffled her feet, shame-faced. "Because I maybe . . . followed Hermes home." She fidgeted, her voice shrinking smaller and smaller as she continued. "And I, um, maybe . . . spiked LaBarbara's curried goat. With the whole can."
"Amy!"
"I know! I know it was awful! I'll find a way to make it up to them somehow. Eventually. But I couldn't risk Hermes talking to Leela. The Professor might have told him the truth about you. And Cubert, he's the Professor's clone. He's a genius. What if he worked it out on his own? What if he knows a time paradox duplicate is always doomed? I couldn't take that chance."
Lars winced. He hadn't even considered Cubert. Amy had been smarter than him about this.
"I know, but . . . the whole can?" he said weakly.
"I had to be sure. Trust me, they won't be getting off the toilet for the next 48 hours. At least."
Lars sighed.
"I guess you did what you had to do."
He moved further into the room, poking around for something to distract himself.
"What about all these boxes? What are they full of? Cats?"
He picked one up from stack of seemingly empty boxes to his left, and looked inside.
And went on looking.
The box didn't stop. The interior of the box looked down and down - or was it up and up? - to the ceiling - or maybe the floor - of another room. The room had yellow tiles and smelled like hydrochloric acid. It looked a lot like the Professor's lab.
Lars craned his neck, lowering his head nearer to the box to get a better view . . .
"Don't do that!"
Amy snatched the box out of his hand.
"It's a parabox," she explained. "If you lose your balance you'll fall right into a parallel universe."
"Oh. Yeah," Lars remembered. "I forgot about those," he admitted. "That feels like a thousand years ago. Didn't the Professor destroy them all?"
Amy sighed.
"Who knows? He lies about his experiments all the time. All I know is, Zoidberg told me the Professor started the experiment again when they were under siege. He said that's how they got supplies. They were sending Zoidberg into the parallel universes to steal stuff."
"Wow." Lars re-evaluated the shabby little cardboard box, impressed. "So there's a whole other world inside this box?"
"A whole universe. Like ours, but different. Who knows what it's like?"
Amy fastened the lid on the box.
"They freak me out," she admitted. "It was bad enough going to that one universe where my favorite color was yellow - spluck! I don't even want to imagine how different some of the universes could be. That's the theory with parallel universes," she explained. "Every time you make a decision in this world, you create another world where you made the opposite decision. A daughter universe. That's what they call it." She shuddered. "There could be universes where I never lost weight. Universes where I never left Mars. Universes where I never met Kif. Maybe I'm a coward, but I don't want to see those realities."
Lars squeezed her shoulder.
"I get it." He gave her a wan smile. "I'm a time paradox duplicate. Been there, done that, and all I got was this lousy larynx."
"And a broken heart."
"Yeah." Lars sobered. "I'll leave the boxes alone. One alternate version of me is enough. I don't want to know about any others."
Amy seemed satisfied with this.
"Good," she said. "Hold this." She dropped a heap of the copper wiring into his arms. "I need the Professor's soldering gun. Have you seen it?"
Lars shook his head.
"No. Maybe it's under all this junk."
He rolled the Professor's chair out of the way and picked up a handful of the papers on the desk. Most of them were pictures - high resolution images of deep space the Professor must have taken with a telescope. Lars stared at them, transported. Some days he still ached for spaceflight. Lars Filmore wasn't supposed to care, but Philip J Fry had always dreamed of seeing the stars, and there were moments when the night sky was so beautiful all he wanted was to be up there surrounded by the stars again.
The pictures the Professor had taken were as beautiful as anything Fry had ever seen through the windows of the ship. Constellations, strung out in glittering webs of stars. Nebulae glowing pinkish-purple, dusted with spots of winking white light like sprinklings of crushed diamond. Red dwarf stars, burning like the embers of a dying fire, and black holes, sucking in light and matter, pulling the eye deeper like an unblinking stare.
There were pages and pages of notes beside the pictures, written in the Professor's cramped hand, but Lars couldn't make out the words. They seemed to be in some kind of code.
Amy glanced at them.
"I wonder what he was doing," she murmured. "I've never seen him use this cipher before. He must have been working on something big."
Lars smoothed out one of the pictures, a shimmering rift in space that danced like the green-blue curtain of the northern lights. A quasar or something. It was pretty.
"Maybe it's not an experiment," he said thoughtfully. "Maybe he just started cracking up. They were trapped in here with the blast shutters down for months. Maybe he just missed seeing the sky."
Amy brushed her fingertips across another expanse of stars, tracing shapes in the constellations.
"Maybe," she agreed. "It is beautiful."
There was a knock at the door and Amy jumped, sending pages flying across the floor.
"Hello." Kif stepped into the room, flanked by two of his DOOP soldiers. "Oh, I startled you! I'm sorry."
"It's okay!"
Amy straightened up, shoving a fistful of crumpled pictures into the arms of the snoring Professor. She dropped the copper wire on his desk and hurried over to Kif, fluffing up her hair as she went.
"I don't mind," she said, flushed. "You didn't mean it." She nodded at the soldiers. "Hi, boys."
"Ma'am!"
"Ma'am!"
They fumbled to salute.
"Ma'am!" the one on the left said, looking agonized. "Permit us to apologize, ma'am, for our conduct while you were in custody, ma'am!"
"Um . . ."
"For shouting at you, ma'am! And sir! And pointing our weapons at you without just provocation! It was not fitting behavior for a soldier, ma'am and sir!"
"It's okay," Amy said quickly. "You were still learning. We forgive you."
"That's a relief to hear, ma'am! Sir?"
Lars bit back a laugh.
"Sure. Yeah. I forgive you too. Uh. Be absolved."
He made a magnanimous gesture with his hand, and the soldiers seemed to relax.
Kif sighed.
"At ease, men."
They sagged in obvious relief. Kif ignored them, stepping forward to kiss Amy instead.
Amy dived into his arms like they'd been separated for a thousand years, not less than a day. Kif kissed her with more restraint, his long fingers laced delicately at the small of her back, as if she was something precious he could only hold onto by not squeezing too tight.
Amy seemed to sense his reluctance. She pulled away, frowning.
"You didn't just come to see me, did you? What happened? Kiffy?"
Kif hesitated.
"I've been recalled to Headquarters."
"DOOP headquarters?"
"Yes. I . . . They aren't happy I took such an active role in ending the mutant war. My instructions were to observe the situation and provide military assistance to the authorities of the member planet, Earth. I wasn't supposed to intervene."
Amy blinked.
"But . . . you did the right thing," she insisted. "You made them come to the table and negotiate. You helped make peace. That's what the DOOP is supposed to do, isn't it?"
"It used to be. Once." Kif shook his head. "But . . ."
"But?"
"Peace hasn't been the first priority of the DOOP for a long time now. I disobeyed orders. They'll want to punish me."
"Punish you?"
Kif winced.
"I'll be demoted. They'll strip me of my captaincy, back down to lieutenant. Maybe even further. And I'll probably be reassigned."
He sighed.
"I can try to convince them of the Brainspawn threat. I can try to defend my actions here on Earth. If I'm lucky, they may be lenient. But Amy, if it doesn't work . . ."
His hands fluttered to her shoulders, hesitant as butterflies.
"I'll never hold a position of real power again. It could be years before I'm posted back to this sector of the galaxy. It's not the future I'd hoped to give you. It's not the future you deserve. If you can't - if you don't -"
He shook his head, looking miserable.
"I would understand," he said at last.
Amy squeezed his hands.
"Don't," she said. "Silly. Don't even say it. I would love you if they busted you all the way back to private. I would come see you even if they sent you to the worst craphole in the universe! I wouldn't care. You're my fonfon ru. My smismar, Kiffy. Always and forever. Got it?"
Kif nodded.
"Oh. Good." He cleared his throat. "Men, a moment alone, please."
"Yes, sir!"
"Anything you say, sir!"
The soldiers saluted smartly and stepped back through the door, their posture ramrod straight.
Amy giggled.
"They take your orders now."
"Yes." Kif laced his fingers through hers. "I sent them away because it didn't seem very captain-like to go weak at the knees in front of them."
Amy blushed, as she gathered him to her and kissed him.
"Silly goose," she breathed. "I love you."
"Oh. That's ever such a relief, because you see, I love you too."
Lars decided to check the Professor's breathing again, until the sound of heavy kissing died away. Kif and Amy were blocking the door.
"Wait." Amy pulled away suddenly, flustered. "Kif, there's something I have to tell you. But, I can't tell you."
She glanced at Lars, biting her lip.
"Amy?" Kif frowned. "What is it?"
Amy took a deep breath.
"I'm keeping a secret from you," she said carefully. "It's not about you or me, or our relationship. It has nothing to do with that. But I can't tell you what it is. It's important, and I made a promise."
"I see." Kif absorbed this. "The reason you're not telling me," he said at last. "Is it because you don't trust me?"
"No. No! Kif, I trust you more than anyone. The secret is . . . it's to protect someone else. Some people else. And soon enough you'll know what it was, and I hope you can forgive me."
"Then why are you telling me now?"
"Because. Even if I have to keep secrets sometimes, even if you have things you can't tell me sometimes . . . I don't want anything to come between us. I don't want us to hide things from each other. I want -"
Kif folded his gloved hand over hers.
"I understand," he said softly. "You want us to be open with each other, even when we can't be honest."
Amy looked up at him, eyes shining.
"Yes," she whispered.
Kif nodded.
"I trust you," he told her. He squeezed her hand. "I have to go now."
"Okay. Okay." Amy sniffled. "Don't let them make you feel small. And don't let them demote you without a fight! You did the right thing, and if they can't see that, they don't deserve a captain like you in the first place."
An expression Lars couldn't read passed over Kif's face. He nodded tightly, then pressed a kiss to Amy's forehead.
"Wait for me," he urged her. "And I'll fight for you. I promise."
The door swooshed shut behind him, and Amy made a little choking, tearful sound.
Lars gave her a minute, staring down at one of the Professor's pictures as he waited for her to recover herself.
He twisted the ring on his finger, staring at the hungry edges of a black hole. The collapsing heart of a star, crushing in on itself, reducing itself to nothing.
"Amy?"
"Yeah?"
Lars took a deep breath, to fight the sudden tightness in his lungs.
"I need you to help me do something. One last thing."