Chapter 4 Kidnapping - Cubert
When Bender had gotten back to his tiny apartment that Saturday night, he found an upset room mate. Fry just grabbed onto his best friend, giving him a relieved hug, hoping that nothing bad had happened to him, but the robot brushed aside Fry's concerns, by telling him how "she treated me like a king" then demanded that he be left alone to sleep for now. Fry, now happier than he was earlier that day, let his knackered friend be and went to this own bed.
Whilst sleeping, Bender started to have what he considered as extremely amusing dreams, one after the other. He dreamt that his mother was planning certain different horrifying ordeals for the brat. In his dreams, an old witch turned up representing Mom. She wore a long, blue dress and a tall, pointed, blue witches hat, which sat on the top of her blue-tinted, tall, soft blob.
In his first dream, the witch stuck Cubert in her giant, black cauldron, made plenty of witch's stew out of him, and ate him for her supper, out of her long black ladle.
The same old witch appeared in his second dream. She stuck the little boy in her freezer, and made enough orange-flavoured ice-lollies out of him, to lure as much little children from the area back to her dark, spooky cave.
In his last dream, the witch simply finished the brat off by strapping Cubert down to her electric chair to frazzle him before her eyes. It was a lot more entertaining than that boring, repetitious TV!
The next morning, after Bender awoke, he began to have wicked fantasies about the clone, wishing that his dreams had been real life, as he wanted Cubert to be tortured gruesomely by the witch; maybe when he kidnapped the brat and brought him to Mom's home, she might just finish the job properly.
The robot had awoken long before Fry, leaving the apartment whilst his friend was still asleep. He then took the NNY tube straight to Planet Express. Although he didn't work during the weekend, he had to find a way of getting Cubert away from Hubert by the end of today - not just for the sake of his dying mother, but himself too. He entered the building and headed towards the laboratory, where he could hear their voices. The prof seemed to be trying to teach Cubert about the birds and bees.
"... And after a minute of hard work, the man and the woman lie in bed and talk about Space 1999. The end."
There was a snort and a sharp reply: "I know how a man and woman do it, although I thought it was Dr Who that was the end conversation."
"No... it's certainly Space 1999. Hand's up who has made love... See, I win!"
Bender sniggered to himself whilst he secretly listened, for he knew that it was actually Blake's Seven that was the final topic of conversation. Still, he couldn't correct them, especially since he was meant to be on a covert mission.
After a short talk, Bender seemed to hear footsteps coming towards the door, therefore he hid behind a corner. Father and son both walked out of the door, then the building, together talking about what a great time they were going to have today. As Bender watched them from the window entering the prof's new trendy hover car, it seemed to him that they were going towards the beach again, like they had the day before, so he took the NNY tube to the beach, and just kept his fingers crossed that his hunch was right.
On the previous night, the lover-man, Hubert Farnsworth, had promised he'd give his two new devoted fans, Slurms MacKenzie's ex-babes, a ride in his sports car... and he had never once broken his promises to anybody. Well, at least anybody that counted.
Meanwhile, Cubert reluctantly did as he was told and remained at the beach, building sandcastles for his own amusement, just so that he would not see anything that he was a little too young to see.
As soon as Farnsworth had driven off with his two female friends, the dreaded Bender was right there on the scene. He knew that this was the perfect time for him to pounce on the urchin.
"Yo, Cubert," called Bender. Then he began to tease him, "What ya doin' just sitting all on your own building sandcastles like a baby, just because daddy wants you to?" Continuing his patronizing remarks, "Are you scared to be a real man and do what real men do?"
Cubert felt angry at the accusation Bender was putting to him, so stood up furiously in defence of himself. "I am not scared, you smelly, metal dustbin. Besides, you can't talk about me being a kid, when you're only 4-years-old yourself!"
"Well I may not have a wiener, but at least I have girlfriends; and I may only be 4-years-old, but not only have I tasted alcohol before, I also get drunk regularly. Do you?"
Cubert was lost for words. He just sat there, gloomy and in silence by his sandcastle.
Bender continued attempting to provoke Cubert, "See, you're just a little baby, a little scardy-cat that's just too frightened to do things that grown men do... unlike me, for example."
"I am not!" the clone hollered, trying to make his voice louder than the robot's.
"Then prove it. Come to the liquor store with me, and we'll both get as pissed as hell."
Cubert wanted the chance to act like an adult for once, and it seemed like Bender was his big chance to escape from being treated like an infant. After all, Cubert wanted to be seen by other adults like the young man he thought he was. Besides, if Bender could drink so much alcohol at 4-years-old, then why couldn't he when he was nearly a teenager... it just wasn't right! Sure, Bender was a robot and he was human - two different machines - but, even so, it just seemed wrong to him.
The robot took the youngster straight to the liquor store as promised, using some of the money Mom had given him the day before to buy two bottles of good quality whiskey: one for himself and the other for the curious adolescent, who was unwittingly being lured to Mom's place. His plan was to get Cubert so drunk that he wouldn't know what hit him. He wouldn't know what he was doing or where he was going, unlike Bender himself, who gulped his drink down in barrels, just to keep himself from getting sober.
They then found a park bench next to a pond with ducks and sat down. Bender proposed a drinking game, one that might spur the youth onwards in the quest to get him drunk. "Tell yer what, meatbag, why not make this more fun. How about if we set each other mathematical questions, and if we fail to answer them, we have to swig the bottle?"
Cubert looked at Bender with surprise. "You mean even nerds can have fun... I just thought drinking was for the stupid masses?"
Bender, already bored with Cubert, decided to go first. "Shut up and answer this..."
After thirty minutes, Cubert was wading in the pond chasing ducks, declaring them to be his best mates, except for one duck that he declared to be the Adam Sandler duck, one he despised.
Bender was trying to catch the clone, and was wondering if this plan was as good as he hoped it would be.
"Damn you humans, why can't you behave like us robots! Come here! No, don't leak fluid into their home. Ewwww!"
After catching and carrying Cubert out of his new-found "nest", Bender noticed that he was now sound asleep, and put him in a new nest, his compartment. Then, to the next part of his plan: bringing the boy to Mom's lair. The robot's little scheme was finally making progress, as he managed to get Cubert all the way to Mom's front door without any hassle. He rang the doorbell, as he did the day before, and awaited one of Mom's three sons to answer.
It was the dominant brother, Walt, with a sly face and rugged voice like usual. "You're early today, we were expecting you later. You could have at least warned us that you were coming."
"I'm sorry, but I didn't know myself until about half-an-hour ago," apologized Bender.
"Oh, I suppose you're here now. Come on, bring him in!" Walt, then opened the door fully and stood aside to let the two of them inside from the porch.
After having his fab dreams about what Mom had planned for Cubert, Bender, in some way, still hoped for these fantasies to come true. Remembering how much he hated the nauseating little monster, the robot handed the clone over to Walt willingly, and walked out proudly.
After Bender left Cubert, he went back to his own apartment, telling Fry he'd been to the liquor store to get himself some whiskey, the remains of which he was still carrying. Whilst the two of them happily drank the small amount left in the whiskey bottle in the apartment blocks, the teenager was in another world at Mom's place.
As Cubert was drunk and legless, Walt picked him up and tucked him neatly under his arm. He walked back into his centre position with his brothers by his sides, then they walked together down one of the many corridors inside their home until they came to a large metal door. Behind this door was the operating table that Mom had planned on doing the brain surgery on Cubert.
The brothers first prepared the intoxicated youngster for his operation by cleaning him up and changing his wet and dirty clothes. As he'd again fallen unconscious, he was laid down on the operating table, with all the tools and equipment Mom needed to cut him open.
When Mom finally entered the surgery, all three sons stopped whatever they were doing at the time and stood up straight, as if the queen had walked through the room. To them, though, she was more beautiful, more important, and much, much more intelligent than any queen that had ever existed. Oedipus would have been proud!
She was dressed like a hospital surgeon in her protective blue clothing and surgical gloves, as she gave a majestic stride of splendour towards the operating table: she didn't want to be the queen of any one country anyway... after all, one day she would be the queen of the Universe!
She gave the unconscious child an anaesthetic, so that he wouldn't wake up during the brain surgery, then unwrapped her surgical tools which were sitting on a small trolley next to the table. Looking straight at Walt, the most intelligent of her three sons, she held out her hand in his direction. "Scalpel!" she croaked at him: the operation on Cubert's brain had begun.
Hours went by behind the silent, closed door. The operation had begun with the taking out of the original stitches Farnsworth had inserted, shaving a small piece of his hair off to get to his head, then finally cutting him open and carefully digging out the much wanted item. After taking the microchip from Cubert's brain, Mom stitched him up again, and both her and her three sons, who assisted in the operation, felt much happier now that they had the professor's secret in their grasp.
Mom's sons redressed and checked that their patient wasn't in a life-threatening state, then dumped him on the streets of NNY. Cubert was drugged up and half asleep, more-or-less in a stupor. He was so confused, he began to wander the big wide world by himself, eventually getting himself lost.