She yawned, climbed out of the uncomfortable bed, and started to put on a pair of khakis. She had one leg in and the other halfway through, when a booming male voice startled her: "Good morning, Leela."
Nibbler was standing before her, a sober expression on his black-and-white face. Leela looked everywhere, but saw no one else who could have spoken.
The voice came again, and Nibbler's lips moved to it. "I'm sorry about the mess on the carpet last night. I can't appear too intelligent to your friends, can I?"
Leela nearly stumbled over the slacks. "You…you can talk," she stammered. "And you know I'm really Leela. It wasn't a dream."
"Affirmative," said Nibbler.
"So everything else in the dream is real too," mused Leela as her pants fell down around her ankles. "The space brains…the destruction of Tweenis 12…the attack on Earth…the feast of a thousand hams."
"That is correct," said Nibbler, his stentorian tone reminding Leela of any number of newscasters. "The dumbening powers of the Brainspawn caused you to forget these events, but I have made them resurface through my powers of telepathy."
"It's all coming back now," said Leela thoughtfully. "You sent me to deliver a message to Fry, but as soon as I landed on Earth, my brain stopped working and I turned into an idiot like everyone else. Everyone else except for Fry, because…because his brain's built differently."
"Fry's brain lacks the delta wave," said Nibbler, "a signal emitted from all intelligent life forms, sufficiently advanced computers, and some trees. This uniqueness of his brain enables him, and him alone, to withstand the influence of the Brainspawn."
"That's all well and good," said Leela, "but why are you telling me all this, instead of Fry?"
The Nibblonian gave him a condescending stare.
Struck with a terrible realization, Leela sat down on the edge of the bed and put her head in her hands. "Crap," she muttered. "Crappity crap crap crap."
"I regret to inform you that now you are the Chosen One," said Nibbler. "But I see you've figured it out on your own."
"All right," said Leela with resignation. "So I'm the Chosen One. But that doesn't mean anything now, does it? The space brains are gone. Your people ate them all."
"Au contraire," said Nibbler. "The Brainspawn have returned, more powerful than ever."
Thousands of light-years from Earth, Captain Kif Kroker of the DOOP starship Nimbus sat rigidly in his chair, his fingers tented, his eyes rolled back into his head. His senior staff members stood at attention on the bridge, wondering how long it would take their captain to reach a conclusion.
"Computer," Kif finally said, "replay the Cirrus' final transmission one more time."
The bridge speakers came to life, echoing the words of Captain Amelie Beauchamp: "We have responded to the distress call from planet Azaria Prime, only to find a civilization in chaos and ruin. No one responds to our hails. There's no evidence of an alien attack. Wait…our sensors have detected a massive object in orbit around the planet. Sphere-shaped, diameter approximately six hundred kilometers, about the size of a small moon—but Azaria Prime has no moon. The Cirrus is moving in closer to investigate. We're being scanned! The object is breaking orbit…good God, it's a ship! It's moving toward us with incredible speed…bombarding us with some sort of radiation beam…the crew's biological signs are stable, but I feel real funny, and I dunno why. Hey, look at that big ball! I don't wanna play with big ball, I wanna play with dollies! Why nobody play dollies with me? Here shiny red button. Me push shiny red button and find out what shiny red button do. Maybe ship go boom boom…"
The recording suddenly ended. Kif lowered his hands. "Whatever we're dealing with," he said ominously, "it's powerful enough to make a seasoned veteran like Captain Beauchamp disregard the DOOP's Prime Directive—never push the shiny red button."
"What do you suggest we do, sir?" asked his first mate, a man with arched eyebrows and pointed ears.
"Open a channel to Earth, Mr. Spork," Kif ordered. "Get the Planet Express company on the line."
Leela arrived at the PE building with an unshaven face and disheveled hair. To her surprise, Fry had reported for work before her; to her added surprise, his face and hair were in a similar state of disarray. It appeared to her that he hadn't bothered to wash off the makeup he had applied the previous night.
"Fry!" exclaimed Leela as she marched into the cyclops' office.
"Leela!" exclaimed Fry as he stood up from his chair.
"We've got to switch back, now!" they yelled at each other in unison.
They blinked a few times. Fry's stomach gurgled.
"You first," said Leela.
"Zapp proposed to me," said Fry.
Leela's jaw dropped. Her eyes bulged. She fell forward in a dead faint.
Dr. Zoidberg was using his claws to hammer plywood slats over the hole in his clinic's wall, when he heard a voice call out his name. "I'm coming, I am!" he exclaimed, quickly putting his stethoscope around his neck.
He rushed into Leela's office and saw a red-headed man prostrate on a sheet. "What happened to him?" he inquired of the cyclops.
"He fainted," answered Fry.
"Lack of oxygen to the brain," said Zoidberg frantically. "Hook him up to a ventilator, stat!"
"Or, you could wait until he regains consciousness," Fry suggested.
"Who's the doctor here, you or me?" said Zoidberg.
As the lobster tried to resuscitate Leela, Professor Farnsworth's head appeared in the doorway, his jar wedged under Bender's arm. "Good news, everyone!" he proclaimed. "Kif Kroker has asked us to make a delivery to the Nimbus."
"Delivery?" said Fry. "Deliver what?"
"Captain Zapp Brannigan," Farnsworth replied. "His expertise is needed in an alien first-contact situation."
"And why is that good news?" Fry asked him.
"Because," said the professor, "you're all going."
To be continued
