"You have chosen slow and horrible," chimed the suicide booth's computer voice.

"No, I haven't!" exclaimed Foss. "I want to live!"

"You have chosen to be gravely, but not fatally, wounded," said the booth.

Bender picked a twig from the ground and nonchalantly chewed on it as he listened to the frantic scratching noises from inside the chamber of death. His reverie was rudely interrupted by an intense ringing inside his head. "Yeah, who is it?" he groused.

"Bender, mon," he heard the voice of Hermes speak. "Stop killing Foss and get your synthetic butt over to Planet Express."

"Aww, man," said Bender, seizing the door handle and forcing the suicide booth open. "What could be more important than the realization of my fondest dream?"

"Something awful's going down," Hermes told him. "Fry's injured, and Leela's lost her mind as well as her body."

Foss staggered out of the booth, his shirt in tatters, blood dribbling from several scratches on his arms. "What's this?" he said upon hearing the faint Jamaican voice from Bender's head. "Leela's in trouble?"

"Lost her body, eh?" Bender replied to Hermes. "That happened to me once, but I got it back. So what are you doing now, keeping her head alive in a jar?"

"Can Hermes hear me?" Foss inquired of the robot.

"Not if you don't shut up," said Bender gruffly.

"Yeah, I can hear you, mon," uttered Hermes from within his head. "You'd better come too. Leela needs all the help and comfort she can get."

"What happened to her?" Foss demanded.

"At this point we're as confused as the readers are," was Hermes' answer. "But Zoidberg's looking into it."

"Whatever it is," Bender remarked, "it can't be worse than having a cell phone built into your head."

Confident that Foss and Bender would soon arrive, Hermes stepped into Zoidberg's clinic and surveyed the scene before him. Leela, still trapped in Mildred's body, was shackled to a gurney and quite unconscious. Amy and Zoidberg held vigil at opposite sides of the bed, while Farnsworth's head looked on from a shelf. Fry was absent, as was Delta, who felt compelled to wipe up every drop of blood from the laboratory floor.

"How's she doing, mon?" Hermes asked the crustacean doctor.

"She'll come out of the sedation soon," Zoidberg replied.

"It's heartbreaking to see her like this," said Amy, wiping a tear from her cheek. "Look at her. She's got freckles on her freckles. If she wants to die, I'll help her."

"Here's a bit of news you may find interesting," said Zoidberg, holding up an X-ray photo for Hermes to examine. "I ran a CAT scan on Mildred's head. Turns out she's got a microchip in her brain, just like Captain Brannigan."

"Sweet cockatoo of Timbuktu!" said Hermes in wonder.

"I can only guess that whoever planted the chip in the captain's head is also responsible for the one in Mildred's," the doctor went on. "Which leaves only three questions—who, why, and how much longer until dinner?"

"Maybe that's what Mildred meant when she said she was free," Farnsworth opined.

"She's waking up," Zoidberg observed.

Leela emerged from a peaceful slumber and looked at a blurry world through two eyes. Out of the swirl of her thoughts, one arose victorious. "Fry," she mumbled. "Where's Fry?"

Zoidberg rubbed his claw over her sweaty forehead. "I managed to stabilize his condition," he told the girl. "He's been taken to All Saints Lesbyterian Hospital."

"I killed him," mourned Leela, and a tear streamed down her left temple.

"He's still alive," said Zoidberg helpfully. "Fortunately, you pierced him in the same general area where he was impaled by a giant bee stinger a year ago, so the damage to his organs wasn't much worse than the existing damage."

"It doesn't matter," said Leela, grimacing and straining against the straps that bound her arms and legs. "I tried to kill him. I wanted to kill him. It's…it's like Mildred's body is urging me to kill."

Zoidberg, Hermes, and Amy fell silent at her pronouncement. Farnsworth, however, had more to contribute. "The pieces are starting to come together now," he stated. "Mildred's father was a Chalnoth, so she may have inherited aggressive impulses from him. Perhaps the microchip was keeping those impulses in check, up until the moment she switched bodies with Leela."

"That's crazy, mon," said Hermes, staring at the X-ray in his hands. "If you're right, then somewhere out there is an evil scientist who puts chips in people's heads to cancel out their violent tendencies, and then blackmails them by threatening to turn the chips off. But who would do that? What would they stand to gain?"

"I don't care!" yelled Leela, tears gushing down the sides of her head. "I just want my own body back!"

"She's right," said Farnsworth. "The longer we wait, the more likely she is to give in to Mildred's urges and try to kill somebody else. We must find Leela's body, even if it means Zoidberg has to search the entire city."

"That's eighty million people," said the lobster. "Can I start in the morning?"

"Start where, mon?" said Hermes, shrugging.

"Well, guh," said Amy. "Picture yourselves in Mildred's situation. You're a young woman, and you've just gone from having freckles on every inch of your body and a computer chip in your brain, to not having those things to hold you back. What's the first thing you do?"

"Sushi!" exclaimed Zoidberg.

"Reggae Sunsplash!" said Hermes.

"Buy new clothes, get a makeover, and go to a fancy nightclub in search of some action," said Farnsworth.

"Very good, professor," said Amy.

"I like to think all those years in grad school were worth something," said the scientist.

"I can't go, mon," said Hermes. "LaBarbara would kill me if she caught me in a nightclub."

"I can't go either," said Zoidberg. "I have to stay here with Leela."

"Then it's just the professor and me," said Amy, reaching up to pull Farnsworth's jar from the shelf. "I'll see you guys tomorrow."

"Oh, my," said Farnsworth as Amy pressed his container against her chest.

The sky was clear in New New York, save for a few toxic clouds, and the sun was setting behind the towers. Several dozen city dwellers stood in front of Amy and the professor, waiting their turn to be sucked into the transit tube. "Mildred's seen me before," said the Asian girl. "If she recognizes me, she'll run away. I'd better wear a different shade of eyeliner."

"Er-herh," mumbled Farnsworth, gazing through his coke-bottle glasses at Amy's bulging sweatshirt.

As she was about to step into the tube's suction field, Amy caught a glimpse of something familiar and startling. A one-eyed face topped with a purple crow's nest was peering at her from a nearby alley. "Omigosh!" she cried out. "It's her! It's Leela's body!"

The cyclops quickly withdrew her head. "After her!" Farnsworth commanded.

The nutrient solution in his jar sloshed fiercely as Amy raced along the sidewalk with him in tow. She reached the entrance to the darkened alley in time to see a boot disappear behind a graffiti-laden wall. Panting but determined, she pumped her feet in pursuit.

"Leave me behind!" said the professor. "I'll slow you down!"

"I can't!" said Amy breathlessly. "I'm running too fast!"

I've run foot races with Leela before, and she always won, the girl thought. But Mildred's controlling her body now. That's got to make a difference.

Apparently it did, because when Amy rounded the next corner, she found the image of Leela standing directly before her with a menacing scowl.

Amy came to a stop. She tried to speak, but the cyclops' grim gaze left her flummoxed.

"Give it up, Mildred," Farnsworth ordered. "You don't have a license to operate that body."

"I'm not Mildred," said the one-eyed girl in a cold, almost mechanical tone of voice.

Her hand flew at Amy's face. Instead of the expected punch, the Asian girl received a puff of greenish-yellow, sweet-smelling gas. Her eyes fell closed, and she welcomed the blissful embrace of sleep.

"Amy!" cried Farnsworth as his jar plummeted to the cobblestone street below. Before the container had a chance to shatter on the rocks, it struck an outstretched boot and rolled away toward a culvert. The liquid swirled around the professor's head, rendering him dizzy and disoriented. Then he began to fall, and everything turned black.


To be continued