Chapter 3 - Mother's Day
Bender lay on an operating table, somehow sweating oil from his forehead, looking about nervously. He was strapped down, unable to move away from a horror that seemed to be awaiting him. Suddenly, in stepped Mom, her three sons, Chewbacca and The Osmonds, all carrying assorted surgical implements.
Bender started fretting, "I won't say anything... I'll be good and quiet... please, don't do this to me and my shiny, metal ass!"
Fry looked on, unable to do anything, as he was inside a chamber, just like Farnsworth's new invention. He banged on the glass, but nobody paid attention.
Mom snapped her fingers and the business began. The Osmonds started playing on their medical instruments, while Chewbacca attempted to sing the Jerry Rafferty song, "Stuck in the Middle with You".
Mom began dancing around the operating table, just like Mr Blonde in the film Reservoir Dogs. She picked up a hacksaw that lay next to the table and began playing with it suggestively. Then, in one movement, moved on the fearful Bender and began sawing off his antenna, while laughing like a maniac.
Fry couldn't see what was going on, but he heard Bender's moans and sickening squeals. Finally, he did see that Mom had "Little Bender" in her hands, dangling from the jagged end.
"Hey, boys, he calls that an antenna!"
The three sons all laughed, causing Walt to get enraged that all were laughing, so he slapped Larry.
Fry looked at Bender, who was crying in humiliation and pain. He put his hand to the glass screen, trying to reach his buddy and help him in his torment, but it was to no avail. Bender gave a scared look to Fry, one that would haunt his human friend for a long time, a look of helplessness mixed with terror. Fry began to cry.
His tears flooded more when he noticed Mom and the three sons pouring petrol on his buddy, while Chewbacca and The Osmonds continued to sing away. "NO... DON'T DO THAT... HE'S MY FRIEND... TAKE ME INSTEAD!"
"Your time will come, carrot-top," responded Mom, as she began to play with a lighter and lit a cigarette. She blew a smoke ring, and, while Fry looked on, threw the lighter towards the screaming robot.
Fry jumped up, panting wildly, and in a deep sweat. He looked about, finally realizing that he was in his apartment and in his messy bed. He fell back on his pillow, working out that it was a vivid dream. Still, it left a bitter impression, one that his friend could well be in danger from Mom herself. He had to tell Bender, warn him... but first, some more sleep.
The next day, Saturday, Bender said "goodbye" to Fry as he left their apartment to visit Mom. Fry was still in bed, but managed to remember his bad dream involving his friend.
"Hey, don't go... you'll be in danger!"
Bender came back into the "closet". "What are you going on about now? Mom and myself go back so many years... well four, but I'm her favourite."
"I had a bad dream and you were in it. Mom had imprisoned you and was about to destroy you. There were The Osmonds and Chewbacca... and I think that a smurf may have been in it, but I can't remember." He noticed that Bender was getting impatient, so he tried to keep focused. "Are you sure you should do this... some say Mom is quite evil?"
Bender gave out a gasp. "How dare you say that about my mother... and anyway, what's wrong with being evil? I think you're being prejudiced, Fry... or is it Adolf?"
"Oh, I know it sounds bad, but I'm just worried for you," fretted Fry, while digging a finger in his ear. "And it's Fry, by the way."
"Oh, don't worry... I'll be fine. I'll even steal you some beer from her fridge. Now, I'm off."
And with that, Bender left the building, leaving an anxious Fry in his wake.
In the meantime, the professor had turned up on a nearby beach to sunbathe. The young Farnsworth was wearing a Chippendale style G-string, as he lay outstretched on a giant beach towel with an imprinted picture of a voluptuous, naked lady over the top of it. Cubert sat close by, building sandcastles, wearing a fluorescent yellow pair of swimming shorts with crazy squiggles, zigzags, and all spots over it.
The prof had spotted, in the near distance, two nubile girls frolicking alongside some geeky-looking guy building some large and elaborate sandcastle. He noticed that they were the two young ladies that used to hang around the late Slurms MacKenzie.
"Hmmm... time to show my stuff, methinks."
He strutted down to where the three were playing and, quite deliberately, put on some posing show with his new formed muscles. The girls gave him a few glances, but continued to be more impressed by the geek instead.
The prof had to think fast or he would blow it. "I have an idea that's so ironic and so satisfying... one that will make those years of beach torment finally go." With a sudden movement, he began demolishing the castle, kicking sand in the geek's face. "Take that, my past!"
The two girls looked up at the towering Farnsworth, their interest now gravitating towards this new beach bully. The poor guy who was their past interest sat there rubbing the sand from his eyes as he spluttered, "You can't do this to the new Slurms MacKenzie!"
"Sorry, mister, but I think we have a new Slurms MacKenzie," one of the girls squeaked, running up to Farnsworth and linking arms, as the other soon followed suit. "Oooh, he's bulging with more than just biceps!"
"In your face... Wernstrom!" the professor shouted to the skies, while the girls held onto him for dear life.
Farnsworth, later on that day, wanted to do some more "scientific" exploration with his two new subjects. He asked the observing Cubert to leave him be, as he had other things to do that night.
"But, Dad, I'm meant to be studying you... can't I stay?"
"What... you're not studying what I'm going to do tonight! Anyway, here's some money to go buy yourself a wollipop." Farnsworth then gave him a patronizing pat on the head and turned his attention back to his new found interests.
Cubert trudged off, grumbling to himself, leaving Farnsworth the privacy he needed.
During the day, Bender had gotten dressed up in his finest blue velvet tie, especially to go and visit his mother. He'd been walking about alone in the streets, impatiently awaiting to see his mother. Other than a little petty theft here and there, he'd been behaving pretty well compared to his normal standards, and hadn't mentioned the dirty deed to anybody; just like his confident had asked him not to. What the robot did do, though, was to phone Fry up on the cellphone which he'd stolen on his way to Mom's place, to tell him that he was on his way.
Fry was still laying in his messy, untidy bed - if you could call it a bed - whilst listening to Bender through the receiver, trying to get Fry to calm down. Fry still felt worried for the robot, wondering what would happen to him if Farnsworth should ever find out that his secret wasn't a secret anymore; and he was bound to discover the truth one way or another! And, remembering his dream, he was also worried what Mom and her three sons had in store for his metallic companion, for she wasn't known for her benevolence, so he feared that Bender's life was in danger. This he conveyed to his friend, but Bender just seemed to shrug it off, and hung-up promptly.
Fry picked up two stress balls sitting on the floor, on one side of his mattress, and began to fiddle around with them, whilst hoping for his friend's safe return. Deep down inside his heart, Fry had developed a special buddy relationship with Bender, and therefore wasn't just afraid for his best friend's health, but also afraid what would happen to himself if anything awful should happen to his metallic buddy.
Bender arrived at Mom's large robot factory at just before 9.30pm and rang the doorbell.
The shy, shaking, scarlet-haired, youngest brother, Igner, had been ordered to open the door by Walt, his devious head brother. The loyal sons had been told by their mother to bribe and interrogate Bender, in order to get him to tell her what she wanted to know.
After showing Bender into the spooky corridors of Mom's residence, Igner joined his brothers. Walt immediately stepped out of his central position to grumble at the robot as soon as he set eyes on him. "Mom was expecting you much earlier, where have you been? She will be very unhappy that you've kept her waiting all day, just for you to get here!"
The shivering Igner always became terrified whenever his mother was thought to be unhappy. "Oh my goodness, please don't say she'll try and take over the world again, will she Walt?"
The incredibly shy Larry then whispered nervously, "Oh no, please don't annoy her again, or who knows what she might do this time with that control in... her bra."
After Walt had comforted his two terrified brothers that their mother wasn't about to attempt to take over the world again, with a few helpful slaps to make the point, the brothers reformed their typical line structure of Larry, Walt then Igner. Then they began their journey of taking Bender to a very special room for very important robots.
It was called the VIR room... the robots equivalent to a VIP room. It was especially built for and run by a handful of Mom's most distinguished robots. Inside this room, important metal beings were given tiptop treatment to get them into peak condition, just before they got to their biggest and best treat of all - visiting Mom.
Before his own personal treatment, Bender got to sip tequila with several robo-femmes, until it was finally his turn to enter the robot beauty parlour of his pleasure. For Bender, his tiptop treatment began with a bee's wax polish and shine, given by his new femme friends, who kept applying wax and shining him up in places that made him tickle like crazy and made his metallic body sparkle like a diamond ring. He was then buffed up violently in a robo car wash buffer, just for that extra little gleam against the sunlight, which finally completed his sprucing up as a Very Important Robot.
When Bender walked out of the VIR room, the three brothers were awaiting him outside, getting ready to spring another bribery surprise onto him. The Bender-bribing was to get him to do anything that their mother was to propose to him later, during his little visit with her. She then had ordered her sons to completely fill up Bender's entire compartment with as much money that it could hold.
Walt was always ready to do as his mother asked of him, standing behind his brothers, who were stacking Mom's money into Bender's body compartment, whilst he himself watched closely from behind, checking that they were following his orders to a T. He only took orders from his mother nowadays, therefore, as always, the only work Walt really did was to use his head, ordering his brothers about. Right here and now, though, he was observing everything they did like a hawk, with his arms folded tightly, to match the evil look on his face and the sneaky intentions in his black heart.
Mom's offspring then began taking Bender on the rest of his lengthy, fantastic journey to finally visit the most significant person in his life. As the four of them approached an extra-tall blue door, the robot guessed that his glittering prize, to be with Mom, wouldn't be far from the taking. He'd guessed this, because firstly, Mom's favourite colour was blue, which accounted for her wardrobe being filled with nothing but blue dresses, hence a blue door, and secondly, she had an extra tall, soft, grey blob on the top of her head that was just about the right level to fit under the extra tall door that she could walk underneath comfortably, hence its height.
As the foursome walked closer towards the imposing door, it had become crystal clear to the robot that his guess was right: a hanging printed sign, which had now become visible on the front of the door, simply had the three letters M.O.M. written on it. As Mom was one of the hardest people in the Universe to get in contact with, Bender felt honoured and relieved to have finally gotten to his destination.
Walt knocked on the door to notify her of the arrival of their informant. "We've brought the robot with the secret, Mom."
The old crow squawked and coughed as she called to meet the robot, "Send Bender in to see me, I'd like to have a very private word with him." Mom was even more eager and impatient to meet the robot than he was to meet her, for both her youth and, even more importantly, her life were at stake.
On entering the room, Bender noticed two plush, blue armchairs facing each other, with a circular mahogany table sitting in the centre, covered in layer upon layer of the most delicious delicacies, treats and alcoholic goodies that any robot would find scrumptious.
Mom sat back comfortably in one of the blue armchairs, as she invited her "toddler" to come forward, take the chair opposite her, and spill the beans. She watched the robot frozen by the door, hesitating nervously to come forward towards such an honourable celebrity.
"What are you waiting for... Mother's Day!" she croaked out loud, trying to encourage him to come and sit opposite her. She then lowered the tone of her voice to a more relaxed type of croaking, "Stop standing there, and come and talk to your dear mother."
After the robot had settled down and she had finally grasped his full attention, Mom continued with her little scheme. "Now, Bender, my favourite bot, maybe we can begin to talk more seriously together about the rest of Mommy's life. Remember at the Robot Rebellion when I preached to you all that I wouldn't have very long to live? Well, I really meant it."
She then poured him a full pint of strong rum, whilst attempting to win his weak "heart".
"Now listen closely to what I'm about to ask you... and if you love me like you say you do, and will do absolutely anything for me, your answer will be 'yes'."
From the moment the robot had entered the room, she had been using emotional blackmail in her favour to lure him into carrying out her dirty little deed. "My boys tell me that they overheard you gossiping to that redhead friend of yours, saying something about Hubert, that he's invented something that's brought him back to his youth... is this true?"
"Yes, Mommy... there's a machine in his lab, another of his crazy inventions! He calls it Lazarus, after some ancient geezer that wanted to live forever."
"And is there any possible way that I could get my hands on the plans of this amazing invention?" continued the evil old woman, urging the young robot to tell her where the professor had hidden what she desperately wanted. "You do want to help me, don't you... your dearly beloved mommy to also achieve eternal life?"
Bender felt completely helpless, for although he badly wanted his mother to live till eternity, he knew that stealing the plans was impossible. There weren't any plans to steal... except the ones hidden inside Cubert's brain. Therefore, he told her about the insertion of the metal chip. "I'm really sorry, Mommy, but Farnsworth implanted all the plans and blueprints into that ugly, little clone's brain."
As Mom and Cubert had never met before, she had no idea who on earth the robot was talking about, therefore enquired, about him, "Ugly little clone?"
"Yeah, he's another one of the professor's inventions, and I think he's got a lot of affection for this clone, too. So, if you do as much as lay a finger on him, he'll probably pay a hit-man to do an even more vicious deed to you. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth... that sort of thing, you know."
Mom stopped silent for a minute, trying to think up a conniving little plan of her own, without Farnsworth suspecting a thing. She sat in deep thought for a few minutes, until finally, "PING", it came to her. With a sneaky, mischievous smile written all over her face, Mom looked at the robot and tried not to give too much of her evil plans away. "As I have no idea what young Cubert looks like, could Bender be a real mommy's boy and bring him over for me to take a closer look at."
Bender had agreed to her "closer look at" plans, despite sensing that she wasn't being entirely honest with him. She was still his mother, and he'd still do practically anything for her. Besides, he couldn't stand Cubert, therefore would very willingly commit any dirty deed against him, even if it just meant getting the brat back for his countless pranks and obnoxiousness. In the end of the day, she needn't have bothered providing so many different motor oils, alcoholic drinks and money for Bender, for he was very similar to her three sons: if she told him to jump off the tallest building in the world, he would do so.
After the metal man had gone, Mom thought deeper about her plan to get her away scot-free. She was a very intelligent woman, and should be able to think of a plan before Bender arrived again with the key to her youth. For a start, she was a qualified surgeon and scientist, therefore she didn't even have to kill this "ugly little clone" to get the metal chip from his brain. All she had to do was operate, take the chip out from its original position, stitch Cubert's head back up, then send him back to the unsuspecting Farnsworth.