Leela awoke refreshed and alert on the third morning of the space voyage. She yawned, stretched, and felt a stiffness in her muscles from her exercise regimen of the previous day. Only one cure for that, she thought, and slipped back into Fry's gym shorts. Without bothering to put on a shirt, she dropped to the floor, executed fifty flawless push-ups, stood, and began to jog around the corridors of the new ship. It's the first time I've gone topless since switching with Fry, she mused. It's so strange.
She found Zapp on the bridge, lounging in the captain's seat, staring blankly at the stars through bleary, half-closed eyes. The spaceman swiveled to face her, and she felt an impulse to cover her chest that quickly passed. "Morning, Fry," he mumbled.
"Morning, Zapp," said Leela, running in place. "You could use a shave, you know."
"So could you, soldier," said Zapp.
Leela glanced down at her (Fry's) legs and was startled by their hairiness. He's talking about my face, she reminded herself.
"I couldn't sleep," said Zapp wearily. "I've been sitting here all night, thinking about Captain Beauchamp, the Cirrus, Azaria Prime, and the thing that destroyed them. A ship the size of a moon, equipped with some type of intelligence-inhibiting beam? It's too fantastic for even me to imagine."
It's gotta be the Brainspawn, thought Leela. But what would they need with a giant spaceship?
"Nothing in my experience has prepared me to face such an enemy," Zapp went on. "I hope this delivery won't prove to be a waste of time."
My woman's intuition isn't functioning at the moment, but I don't need it to see that Zapp's got demons within as well as without. "You'll do just fine," Leela assured the captain.
From deep within the bowels of Raven, she heard Fry's cell phone play Walking on Sunshine once again. "Must be Mildred," she said aloud to herself. "She's been calling me five times a day."
She tried to jog away, but Zapp seized her by the arm. "I'd watch my back if I were you," he advised. "That woman's part Chalnoth. She's got only half of what we like to call a soul."
"Duly noted, sir," said Leela, shaking off the spaceman's grip.
On the way to her quarters she passed Bender, who was also running, and waving his arms as well. "Danger! Danger!" the robot wailed at the top of his voice circuits.
"What's the danger?" Leela asked him.
"Prolonged confinement leading to spurious input sensor signals!" Bender ranted. "Consequence: delusional, panicked robot!"
"Oh, I get it," said Leela calmly. "You've got cabin fever."
"That's what I just said, Amy!" exclaimed Bender, and he rushed off, spouting, "Danger! Danger!"
The phone had been ringing for over a minute by the time Leela reached it. "Hello?"
"Hi, it's Mildred," said a pleasant girl's voice. "I hope this isn't a bad time."
"It's never a bad time," said Leela. It's always a bad time. I wish I could bring myself to hang up, but the poor girl's so much like me…
"I assume you're keeping the same hours, even though you're in space," said Mildred. "I'd hate to call at the wrong time and wake you up."
"Don't sweat it," said Leela.
"I know how much you like parrots," said Mildred's voice. "There's going to be an exhibit of trained parrots at Madison Cube Garden a week from Friday. If you're still alive by then, maybe we can go."
"Trained parrots, eh?" said Leela with interest. "What are they trained to do?"
"All kinds of tricks," Mildred answered. "And talking, of course. According to the ad, there's one parrot who can recite all the works of Shakespeare and Shakespeare's cloned head, and another parrot who can tell the future."
"That sounds really cool," said Leela, straining to make conversation. "Back in the 20th century everybody had a parrot. They were as common as pigeons are now. But they didn't say much; mostly all they did was swear."
"Life was so different back then," said Mildred wistfully. "I love listening to your stories, Philip. It's like getting in a time capsule and going back in time."
Just as Leela opened her mouth in the hope that she would think of something to say, the door to her room slid open and Captain Brannigan appeared, his bloodshot eyes now fixed with determination. "Yes, Zapp?" she said politely.
Without speech or hesitation, he lunged forward and snatched the phone from her hand, closing it and ending the call. Locating a waste ejection port in the wall next to the mirror, he thrust the phone inside and pushed the button, causing the communication device to be hurled into deep space, where it gravitated toward the gigantic ball of garbage launched from Earth a year earlier.
"What are you doing?" Leela blurted out. I mean, besides sparing me from making a total ass of myself on the phone with Mildred?
"Possibly saving all our lives," was Zapp's response. The voice in my mind…it cut off, just like that! I'm free of it!
"All right, weisenheimer," said Leela, hands on hips. "Explain how ejecting Fry's…er, my cell phone is supposed to save us all from destruction."
Zapp fingered his chin and looked at the ceiling. "They're all connected," he mused. "The voice, Fry's girlfriend, my cure…if only I could remember what happened!"
Leela sighed impatiently. "First of all, she's not my girlfriend. Second, I'd appreciate it if you didn't bring my girlfriend into this."
"And why not?" said Zapp sharply. "I knew that mongrel was trouble since you first laid eyes on her."
"Shut your yap, Zapp!" Leela snapped. "I've had all I can take of your racist claptrap!" Now you've got me speaking in rhyme!
"That's insubordination, officer," said Zapp, his tone grim. "I've every right to clean your clock…"
Hoo-boy, Leela worried. I'm a guy now. He won't think twice.
"…but, for some inexplicable reason, I lack the desire."
Whew.
Zapp turned and walked quietly away. Leela, driven by curiosity, followed him all the way to Zoidberg's clinic. In the distance they heard Bender's voice, persistently warning them of danger.
The doctor was standing, but his eyes were closed and a wheezing sound periodically emerged from his throat. The sound of footsteps aroused him, and he snapped to attention. Zapp and what appeared to be Fry were staring at him with bemused expressions. "What?" said the crustacean. "So I sleep on my feet. It's how I've survived all these years without a home."
"Well, now that you're up," said Zapp, "I'd like that brain scan I asked for the other day."
As Leela watched, Zoidberg swept the head-examining device back and forth along the captain's temple. "When Fry told me that his girlfriend called him five times a day," Zapp explained, "it occurred to me that the voice spoke to me five times a day, more or less."
"I have an idea," said Leela sarcastically. "Maybe the voice in your head is God praying to you."
"Anyway," said Zapp, ignoring her, "that's how I figured out that somebody was using Mildred's calls to send messages to my brain."
"Hmm," Leela recalled. "Now that you mention it, there was some static on the line."
"Exactly!" said Zapp with a wave of his hand. "The static, as you call it, must have been a piggybacked signal."
"But a signal's no good unless there's a receiver at the other end," Leela observed.
"A receiver?" said Zoidberg, gaping in amazement at the readout of his instrument. "You mean, like the microchip implanted in the captain's frontal lobe?"
Zapp's jaw dropped a mile.
to be continued
