My Ship, second part: Recede

by Deb H

Sunday 25 December 3003

"Here you are, Amy. I've been looking everywhere for you."

"Mm."

"What are you doing out here?"

"Thinking."

"About what?"

"You."

"Really? Something nice, I hope."

"Shove it, Kif."

"W... what?"

"Kif, what the hell is with you? You treat me like shit the whole week, and then suddenly you get all nice and squishy on me and it's as though nothing ever happened? Not even! There's no way I'm letting that go!"

"I don't understand. What is this all about?"

"You don't understand? That's hardly surprising! Did you ever understand me? Were you even trying to understand me? Or is this all just a little game to you? The Manipulate Amy Game? Is that it?"

"Amy..."

"No, it's my own fault. I should have been well aware that you'd become an absolute jerk in stressful situations. I mean, don't we all?"

"But... I was in charge..."

"So? What's that matter? Is it standard operating procedures for commanders to berate their underlings mercilessly and without just cause? Just because you nearly blew the whole thing, don't take it out on me!"

"I... I didn't..."

"No? Fry was held hostage for a whole week! Fry! The best friend I've got left!"

"But Amy, friendship doesn't have anything to do with..."

"Know what? You're right. Friendship doesn't matter. It makes absolutely no difference whatsoever. It's just a goddam distraction, isn't it?"

"Amy, what are you doing?"

"Oh, you mean this?"

I held up the watch I'd slipped off my arm.

"Kif, I always thought we'd always be friends, even if we didn't work out as a couple. But no, you're right. Friendship doesn't matter. Doesn't matter at all."

"Wait, don't do..."

I threw the watch into the frigid, dark sky with all my might. I listened and soon heard the plunk of it entering the East River.

"Kif, we're through."

And how did we even get to that point?

Well, you spend a week in tense negotiations with a bitterly hostile and superviolent robot, some threads are bound to get frayed.

But still. It doesn't matter how cuddly and creative a man is. If, when you need him the most, he metamorphoses into a pushy and vociferous autocrat, that's a pretty reliable sign of potential trouble in the relationship, isn't it?

Actually, that seems clear now, but I wonder if I wasn't thinking something else at the time. I had an odd thought just as I was coming inside from breaking up with Kif.

Inside our building, we were celebrating our successful mission - using the word successful in a stretch, of course. After all, we'd lost one of our team members, and Santa held Fry captive for a week. And when you add the fact that we were still mourning Leela... let's just say that for a celebration, the mood was hardly celebratory.

As I looked down at everyone standing in their little groups in the hangar, I started to comprehend what I'd done. How long had I been with him? Two years? And I was way happier than I'd ever been in any two year span before that. I was wondering if maybe I'd made a mistake.

I thought to myself, No, Kif was never going to be the right man for me anyway. Not like Fry.

I turned around and started to walk back toward the kitchen. I felt like I could use a really strong drink about then.

And then I came to a halt.

It sort of felt like the whole Universe came to a halt, really. For about half a second I couldn't feel the floor beneath my feet. I couldn't feel the gravity collapsing my spinal cord. I couldn't smell the scent of open cases of liquor wafting in from the kitchen.

But, as though from some distant galaxy, I did hear myself whispering, "Fry?!"

It's been a couple of hours since then, but I still don't know where that thought came from. I mean, I can't be in love with Fry.

Can I?

"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Amy Wong, captain of the Planet Express Ship Turanga Leela."

I jerked my thumb over my shoulder toward the Leela as I introduced myself to the various volunteers. Fourteen crews of varying sizes were here: the Rasheed Wallace, berthed on the nearby world of Tei 2 and carrying a crew of ten, right down to the Muggsy Bogues, a small two person craft that could carry some of the DOOP's experimental weaponry.

They were all parked on the street outside. We were setting things up quickly, but in a lucky twist of fate, our Sunday meeting meant that nobody needed to get Earth change for the meters.

I continued, "I think most of you know Lieutenant Kif Kroker. He'll be leading this mission, and he'll be on board the Leela with myself and my crewmates, Midshipman Fry and Midshipbot Bender.

"On behalf of us all, I want to thank you for volunteering for this mission. I know you've all got loved ones you want to join for Xmas, which is why I'm going to have to make, perhaps, an unusual request. And that is: Don't be a hero.

"Now, nominally, our mission has a single objective. Permanently deactivate the robot Santa Claus.

"But I'll be damned if the only way to accomplish that is by sacrificing ourselves. I want to make sure that on Xmas morning, we're all home safely with our friends or our families. That's the whole point of this mission. I mean, I don't know how many people Santa kills every year -"

A voice from the back of the conference room called out, "Two hundred eighteen last year."

A voice from the side added, "My cousin."

A voice from the back right added, "My neighbour."

A voice from just in front of my feet added, "My cat."

A voice from near the middle of the room added, "My father."

I looked around the room and only then thought about why they'd signed up for this mission - most of them would have some sort of grudge against Santa.

I held up my hand and said to them, "Just don't put yourself or anyone else in harm's way, is all I'm aksing. Not needlessly, I mean. We've tried to put your safety first when we laid out this plan. As long as we all try to think that way, we should have Santa Claus headed for the scrap heap by Wednesday. Now let me hand over to Lieutenant Kroker for your briefing."

He stood before everyone and said, "Thank you, Amy." And I thought, What, not "Captain Wong"?

He began to lay out our plan and describe everyone's assignments. Meanwhile, Bender and Fry went down to the ship to make some final adjustments.

Kif was just explaining the role of the Holly Mackerel when, at about 20:14 New New York time on the 18th of December 3003, all hell broke loose.

I was pouring myself a Pavonis Mons when I heard someone say to me, "There you are, Amy. I thought you'd run off already, but here you are."

"Hey, Zoidberg. Yeah, here I am."

"So, what's with the long face? You were really bringing the mood down earlier."

I looked up at him with a start. "It was just me? I thought everyone was a little sad."

He responded, "Really? I thought they were just getting it from you. You do seem to be issuing more sad pheromones."

I stared into my drink for a while. I think Zoidberg was about to say something when one of the guys on the Rasheed walked in. I think his name was Stein, but everyone seemed to pronounce it more like Stain.

Whoever he was, he said, "Hey, Captain Wong. Some party."

"Not really."

"Yeah, I know. I was just being ironic."

"You mean sarcastic?"

He answered, "Great. A melancholy pedant."

I took a sip from my drink and pointed out, "A pedant who's drowning her melancholity in ethanol."

"Well, like they say, melancholity loves company," he said as he poured himself a drink. "One for you as well, Doctor... um..."

"Zoidberg," the doctor said. "No, ethanol does funky things to my species."

Stain said, "So? It has the same effect on our species."

"Not like in Decapodians," Zoidberg told him. "When we consume it, we carry out the worst, most horrifying crimes you can imagine."

"Really?" I said in surprise. "I didn't know that."

He went on, "Once, I knew someone who had so much to drink, he sang Celine Dion at karaoke! Oh, the horror!"

Stain and I stared at one another for a moment before he said, "Anyway, Captain Wong, I was just gonna say, if it's about Captain Arensen, please don't blame yourself. I mean, none of us knew what she was going to do. If we did, we would have stopped her. I mean, we all heard what you said when we started. You know, about not being a hero and all that."

"Yeah, I know. It's not that. It's just... well, I've got a lot on my mind now."

He and Zoidberg looked at me intently. I didn't feel ready to talk about what was really bothering me. Namely, that one weird thought I'd had about Fry. I tried to come up with some idle chatter I could start so I could avoid thinking about him further.

After I'd whiled away a few more minutes staring into my cup, Stain finally spoke up. "So who's Turanga Leela?"

Oh, man. If he thought I was melancholy before, getting me to talk about Leela would kick melancholy in the ass. I went against my better judgment - which said that talking about Leela would put me on the express track to clinical depression - and said, "Our old captain. My best friend. Fry's girlfriend."

"So what happened to her?"

"Down!" I shouted as the rumbling began.

Just our luck, we'd moved the conference table into the lounge to make more room. Now we were leaving ourselves open to anything falling from the ceiling.

A strong wind blew from the hangar, and then back toward the hangar. My first instinct said we were depressurising, and for a second I actually looked around for handholds before I realised we were on Earth's surface.

Calming down a bit, I looked out toward the hangar, just seeing something smash a hole in the roof as it escaped. Over on the other side, there was another hole. I waited a moment, and nothing further happened.

Kif stood up. "Anyone hurt?" he aksed. There were negative sounds as everyone else stood.

I went over to the steps and called down, "Hey, Bender! Fry! You guys okay?"

"Yeah," Bender responded. "No thanks to that sled though."

"Sled? What?" I aksed in confusion.

"Didn't you see the flying sled go by?"

I shook my head. "What sled?"

"Looked like Santa's."

"Santa's? You think he knows what we're up to?"

"Sure, why not," he said, not exactly comfortingly. He turned away from me and said, "Hey, good thing I landed on top of you, huh Fry?" He walked underneath the Leela's belly before he said, "No, never mind. That was just the bean bag chair."

I looked around and said, "So where is Fry?" Then, thinking better of it, I raced down the steps, saying, "Oh shit! Where's Fry?"

When I got to the hangar floor, I saw two piles of rubble, immediately beneath each of the holes in the roof.

I couldn't lift a single piece off the one I reached first. My body felt numb, and my mind was screaming Fuck! Not this!

Bender called from the other pile, "He ain't over here."

"Help me with this one, Bender!"

My wrist started ringing. Bender grabbed everything off the pile until we were satisfied that Fry hadn't been crushed.

I looked around the hangar again. No sign. I said, "So where the hell is he?"

Kif had made his way down to the hangar floor, and he said to me, "Maybe he's trying to call but he can't get through because you won't answer your goddam wrist!"

I stared at Kif, shocked. I'd never seen him so angry.

I'd never seen him angry at all. Happy, yes. Disappointed, yes. Humiliated, most definitely.

But angry?

There's a first time for everything, I thought, resignedly, as I answered my wrist, "Yeah?"

"Amy, do you think you've been a good little girl this year?" a deep, guttural, humourless voice responded.

"Santa Claus."

"Indeed."

"How'd you reach me, anyway? This is an unlisted wrist."

"I have my ways. Are you going to answer my question?"

"What difference does it make?" No way in hell I was going to let this guy push me around.

"Well, if you must know, I had a very special Xmas present for you. But you won't get it unless you're good."

I looked up and saw Bender milling about, shouting, "Yo Fry! Come out come out wherever you are! Or else I'm gonna have to drink these wonderful, intoxicating beers all by myself! Actually, I'm gonna drink them all by myself anyway, but if you don't come out, you won't get to watch me drink them all by myself! What do you think of that?"

I said to Santa, "The hell are you talking about? Where is all this leading?"

"You don't even want to know what your Xmas gift is?"

"Fine," I sighed. "What is it?"

There was a pause, and then a very familiar voice saying, "What up."

Bender raced over and said into my wrist, "Fry, you're okay! Hang on, man, listen to this!" He downed the bottles of beer he was holding.

I aksed, "Fry, are you all right?"

"Sure. I think Santa's trying to torture me, but he's really bad at it. Oof! What was that? You call that punishment? You got nothing, Kringle! Oof!"

Santa rejoined the discussion, saying, "As you can tell, your friend Fry is alive. And if you're good, you get him back."

"Specify what you mean by good."

"You have something I want. Four somethings, actually."

The EMP guns. This was laughable. Did he think he would actually get us to hand them over voluntarily?

Then again, the last frantic couple of minutes had shown me that I couldn't lose Fry. Not so soon after losing Leela.

I didn't know what to do next, so I stalled. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"I'm sure you don't. If you did, you would be admitting to a felony, which would be very naughty indeed."

He was definitely talking about the EMP rifles. Possessing them was a felony under planetary law. "What do you suggest?"

"Bring your four somethings to my base. I trust you know where it is?"

"Yes. At what time?"

"As soon as you can arrive here."

Then I heard Fry calling, "Don't give in, Amy! I mean, what's this guy gonna do? He'll just keep on with his reign of error, that's all! Ha ha ha - oof!"

Santa said, "Shut up, you! Anyway, are we agreed?"

I looked up at Kif. He was shaking his head and moving a hand back and forth across his neck.

I looked over at all the volunteers. They were looking back at me expectantly.

I looked over at Bender. He said, "The hell are you looking at, chumpette?"

I looked down at my wrist and said, icily, "Very well."

"Good. I look forward to our meeting," Santa hissed, and abruptly hung up.

When I looked up again, Kif had a hand to his forehead, shaking his head. Bender was tossing beer bottles and catching them in his mouth. And the volunteers were whispering to one another nervously.

"Ah, crap," I said to nobody in particular.

"And so I'm looking down at her, right? Holding her head in my hands. And she says... she says, 'Tell him I love him'. And just like that, she's gone."

A pair of hands gripped my shoulders. I turned and looked up into LaBarbara's face. She had tears in her eyes.

Then, I finally took notice of the rest of the room. About twenty of the people who'd flown our mission were crowded into the kitchen. Stain and Zoidberg were still sitting at the table opposite me, and the captain of the Chewy Nougat, a Trapezian who lived in Chicago, had taken the remaining chair. Everyone else stood against the counters or the refrigerator.

There didn't seem to be a dry eye anywhere. Zoidberg's face was buried in his claws. Stain was staring down at his hands, a tear rolling down his cheek. A couple serving together on the Rasheed held one another firmly.

There were three empty cups sitting in front of me on the table. Two more were in front of Stain, and Algra, the Nougat captain, was just finishing up his second drink.

I started talking again. "And so we named our ship after her. And it's because of her that we went on this mission in the first place."

"How's that?" somebody aksed.

"That's what she was doing. She went off to get the EMP rifles, and when she came back..." I choked up again, and LaBarbara bent down to hug me from behind. I continued, "Anyway, she'd been talking to Fry earlier about going after Santa."

"Know what I just realised?" someone from the Mackerel said. "Santa's an anagram for Satan."

Stain replied, "You didn't know that?"

People murmured, "I didn't notice," or "Well, duh," or something.

I said, "So anyway, if you guys were wondering why Fry and I have been all moody, it's not only because of Captain Arensen."

LaBarbara aksed, "So what do you think of Fry, girl?"

I hurriedly looked around, not seeing Fry. Then I looked up at her, trying to elicit further explanation of her question.

She said, "I meant, do you think he'll get over her?"

"I don't know if he ever will. I mean, he met her as soon as he got here, right?"

I heard someone behind me aks, "Why, where's he from?"

LaBarbara told him, "He from de twentieth century, mon."

"Yeah, she was supposed to give him his career chip when he came out of the freezer," I explained. "But he ran off and she chased after him, but then she was all like, Dammit, I hate my job too, and she took out her own chip."

"You really think they were meant for one another?" Stain said.

LaBarbara shook her head and said, "Oh, it was so obvious! Dem two woulda done anything for one another. Shit, dey did. Didn't you people ever hear of dat holophonor opera he wrote about her?"

Nobody had.

A girl from the Clive Anderson said, half to herself, "I went to an opera once about some one eyed chick. Then some robot came and took his hands back. The guy who was playing just sucked with his own hands."

"Dat's de one," LaBarbara said.

The girl giggled but spluttered to a halt when she looked up at LaBarbara. She said, "Seriously?"

LaBarbara nodded, and I added, "Yeah, but even then, Fry hadn't won her over. That took another few months."

"Damn," Algra muttered. "If some girl did that for me, I'd be all over her right then."

"Hang on," someone in the corner interjected. "Did you say 'one eyed'?"

"Yeah," the girl said.

"What happened to her other eye?"

Zoidberg looked up and said, "She only ever had the one. She always did have trouble with that, what with the missing when we played ultimate."

"Yeah, she was a mutant," I continued. "She grew up in an orphanarium. I didn't mention that?"

A slow, wide eyed shake of the head from Stain indicated that I hadn't. Others were also shaking their heads.

I resumed the storytelling. "Yeah, she was found on the steps of an orphanarium. Her parents left her there with an alien note, so nobody would guess she was a mutant. Worked, too, for twenty seven years."

"She didn't tell anyone until she was 27?"

"No, she didn't know until she was 27. How would she know? Spent her whole childhood in an orphanarium, spent her whole life wondering which of the hundreds of billions of galaxies she came from, spent every day letting more and more anger at her unknown species build up..."

I fell silent, and the girl from the Clive said, "So, wait. How did you guys find out?"

"Fry," I told her. "He had the note analysed and found out it was printed on sewer paper. I mean, without him... she would have..."

I found I couldn't continue the story. I bent forward and hid my face in my elbow, trying to absorb some of the tears into my sleeve. I could feel LaBarbara rubbing my shoulders, and then I heard her saying, "All right, ya drifters. Story time's over. Go and enjoy de party."

Then, I heard people milling about and walking past. A few put their hands on my head or my back as they left.

LaBarbara lifted my chin up, and when I looked up, I found her sitting on the table next to me. She said, "Come on, let's get ya some alone time."

She pulled me to my feet and led me into Hermes's office.

By Wednesday, we were no closer to freeing Fry.

Kif and I had argued the whole flight to Neptune. We ended up sending Bender in to negotiate a settlement, preferably one that didn't involve giving up our only weapons.

The EMP guns themselves were kept in plain view throughout the proceedings, just as Fry was bound on the other side of the table. Every eight hours, we would rotate shifts guarding the guns, and Fry would pee, crap, and eat.

Not simultaneously. One at a time.

Anyway, when I got out of the shower on Wednesday morning, I stood in front of the mirror, examining my nude body. My tan was fading, and under normal circumstances, I would have taken a tanning pill and watched my complexion return to the way I liked it.

But these circumstances were abnormal. I wasn't eating very much. I wasn't getting a lot of sleep, either.

I spent so much time in meetings with the other captains and with Kif. Kif kept wanting to take action. He'd talk about "forcing Santa's hand", claiming that Santa was waiting for something. I would always be like, "Well, bl'uh! He's waiting for Xmas Eve!"

Then he'd call me a pacifist and I'd call him an insensitive bastard. And the other captains would continue on talking amongst themselves.

When I looked down at my body that morning, I started thinking about the differences between myself and Leela.

And there were so many. The number of eyes, obviously. She went for conservative colours - except she had a thing for bright green, for some odd reason. I had my pink sweat suit, the sort of thing you'd never see her in. And I stood some twenty centimetres shorter than she did, with narrower hips and smaller breasts as well. I exercised for appearance; she did so for... what? Had she been responding to people who didn't take her seriously? Did she bulk up to prove something? Or did she just have plenty of frustrations to work off?

Probably some combination thereof.

I hated my parents for their presence; she hated hers for their absence, at least until she met them. I couldn't take anything seriously; she couldn't avoid taking everything seriously. I was concerned with appearance, whereas she didn't give a shit.

I had a guess as to why that last part was so. She knew that nothing she could do would make people see her as anything other than a monocular freak. Hence her self reliance: if she wasn't going to get any sympathy from anyone else, she was damn well going to make sure she didn't need any.

As a consequence, she simply could not relate to others.

Maybe I had a similar problem. I always tried to take her out whenever she was feeling down. The trouble was, I kept taking her to clubs and bars, places I liked to go. I never found out where she liked to go or what she liked to do.

I'd always look over at her, slumped at the bar, her face issuing the message I don't want to be here. I felt bad for her, but I thought that if we kept visiting different places, she'd find the one that suited her.

I even got her in bed with me a couple of times. She seemed to approach bisexuality the way she did everything else. Willing to experiment, but in the end finding that it wasn't right for her.

My idle thoughts were interrupted when I heard Kif from down the hallway. "Amy, where are you? It's time for our shift. Everyone's - oh."

I looked up to see his mirror image averting his eyes. I sighed. "Kif, you've seen me naked before. About everyone has, thanks to Bender."

"Regardless, we're up for our shift. If you think you can keep your clothes on for a few hours, perhaps you'd care to join us."

He walked away, and when he was off the ship, I said to myself, "Yeah, and if you can control your urge to try and chop off Santa's head, maybe I won't have to mourn both of my best friends."

LaBarbara sat me down on the couch in her husband's office. As she sat next to me, she kind of turned onto her side and rested her head against the wall. She spread a long arm across the back of the couch toward me and began to look at me.

I looked back at her.

Finally I started to say, "Did you -"

"Shh."

I continued to look at her, trying to ascertain just what the hell was going on here. Her face gave away nothing, and I made a mental note to give her a call if I ever took up tag team poker.

Presently my mind began to wander.

"Twenty bucks says you're thinking about Fry right now."

"How did you know?" I hadn't formed a cogent thought, but my mind had been wandering in the direction of what had been going on the week before.

LaBarbara said to me, "Let me aks you a question first. Do you still have a thing for him?"

"No, I'm just..." I lifted my feet off the floor and folded my legs underneath my ass. "You know, I just like him. I... he's a good friend to have."

"No one's arguing dat," she responded. "But he's more dan dat to you. Why?"

"Well, I mean, he's fun to be around. He makes me see things differently."

For a brief moment I thought back to that conversation I'd had with Leela in the bar the night before her last mission. Now LaBarbara was playing my role, and I had taken the position of Leela. By symmetry, that would mean that I'd be dead within a day.

I thought, Maybe that would be for the best.

Then I realised LaBarbara was talking. "Damn, girl. I know ya got a lot on your mind now, but try to stay here in de present, okay?"

"Sorry."

"Anyway, I was saying, how does Fry make you see things differently?"

"Um, because he's not from our time, I guess. He'll just say something completely random, and I'll just crack up. Or all his twentieth century stories about, like, how they couldn't show nudity on TV, except for this middle aged cop's ass."

She gave a perplexed look, but in short order she continued. "So what about Kif?"

"I broke it off."

She lifted her head up and eyed me strangely. I felt like she was analysing my mental stability, and I wasn't passing the test.

"Ya broke up with Kif."

"Yeah."

"After two years."

"Yeah."

"Just like dat."

I slipped my left foot out of my boot and squeezed at my ankle with both hands. I had tight muscles all over my body - I just wanted to go home, spread out on my bed, and not have to do anything for a few days.

In response to her, I said, "Yeah, just like that."

She stood up and shook her head. As she walked around Hermes's desk, she suddenly turned to me and said, "He wasn't cheating on you, was he?"

"No. But this past week..."

"Yeah. What happened dis week?"

"You weren't here when we told the story?"

"I missed dat part," she said. "Hermes came home Monday ranting about how ya'd stolen de ship and bashed a hole in de roof dat he had to patch up. By dis morning he was madder dan Karl Marx's ghost on May Day. Den ya called saying ya'd killed Santa."

"Yeah, that's about it. We were going to attack on Sunday night, but then Santa came and took Fry. We sent Bender in to negotiate with Santa, but that wasn't going anywhere, and then... well, you heard about Captain Arensen, didn't you?"

She nodded. She sat on the edge of Hermes's desk and repeated, "So what about Kif?"

I reclined across the couch, resting my head on an armrest and my feet on the other, and I clasped my hands across my stomach. "The entire week, Kif was... he was fucking awful."

"What do ya mean?"

"Well, he'd just be all 'Amy, how could you let them go into harm's way like that?' He'd yell at me for how I thought we should play it safe. He kept telling me I was the weak link in our group, and he even thought I was spying for Santa. He thought I was wearing a wire, and so he actually started to rip off my clothes. In front of everyone. God, it was fucking humiliating."

"And Fry was being held hostage de whole time?"

"Yeah. And I just felt so damn guilty the whole time. Guilty and helpless. Oh, and scared. So scared that I was going to lose Fry at any minute."

After I stopped talking, I didn't get an immediate response. As I was waiting, I stared up at the ceiling. Hermes had replaced some of the light fixtures in here, and the new lights gave the office a more open feeling, as though we were sitting on top of a spacecraft.

"When'd ya cut Kif loose?"

"Tonight, during the party."

"So ya dumped Kif hoping ya could get with Fry instead."

I turned to her in surprise. She'd been speaking bluntly with me the whole time, of course, but was that how she saw it? At the time I couldn't see how she could draw that conclusion from what I'd said.

She went on, "Dat's like trying to sell an owl to a bum. He's in mourning, girl. Ya don't know what dat's like."

"I'm in mourning, too. Leela was my best friend."

"It ain't even close. Did I ever tell ya about Dawn?"

I said, "No. Who's that?"

Bloolooloolooloolooloop.

Bloolooloolooloolooloop.

Bloolooloolooloolooloop.

Bloolooloolooloolooloop.

Bloolooloolooloolooloop.

Bloolooloolooloolooloop.

Bloolooloolooloolooloop.

"Yeah?"

"Amy, we need you out here."

"Ai ya. What the hell time is it?"

"It doesn't matter. Santa's leaving."

"Leaving? Where's he going?"

"Earth."

"What for?"

"As you might say, g'uh. It's Xmas Eve."

"Okay, okay, Kif. I'll be out in a minute."

"And so Hermes rushed over. He pushed a couple of guides out of de way, and he was all shouting, 'Ya can't be in labour, wife! De baby's not due for another two months!'"

I was still lying on the couch. I'd turned over on my stomach, and I had my arms folded on the armrest. With my chin resting on my arms, I was looking down at LaBarbara, who was sitting on the floor with her back against the couch.

She continued, "So I said, 'Well, did ya CC Dawn on dat memo? She got her own agenda, husband!'"

I gave a weak little laugh. "Explaining it in terms he could understand?"

"Yeah, something like dat. Dey got me to de hospital quick enough, and when dey got me to the obstetrics ward, dey brought out de forms, and I figured I was on me own. I swear, ya get a form in Hermes's hand, he's in his own little world. But he was right dere by me side de whole time. I couldn't believe how small she was when I first saw her."

"How small?" I aksed.

"She was three thousand two hundred grams. Dey said dat was still big for a thirty one week gestation. And so they put her in NICU, and -"

"In what?"

"NICU. De neonatal intensive care unit. Ya know, for de premature births. We went in to see her every day. Dere was something else wrong every day, but de doctors said she was doing well mostly. Den when Hermes and I went in one day, dey said she was in real trouble. She'd already been battling with pneumonia, and den she came down with bacterial meningitis."

"So... did she..."

LaBarbara shook her head. "She died at 43 days."

"Shit."

"Ya want to know what de hardest part was?"

"What?"

She turned and looked at me over her shoulder. "Explaining to little four year old Dwight dat he wasn't going to have a little sister after all."

We sat in silence for a while.

Then she stood up and said, "Anyway, my point was, at least ya got to spend a few years with Leela."

I sat up and stretched. LaBarbara walked behind Hermes's desk and pulled a bottle of rum from a drawer. She drank a bit and offered the bottle to me.

I was just about to say no when my wrist rang. I poked the button and said, "Yeah?"

"Hey! Spaz girl! How's your Xmas so far?"

I sat there stunned, just staring at my wrist. When I looked up at LaBarbara, she was aksing an unspoken question.

I stammered, "B... Be... Bethany?"

"Fry! You're okay!"

I ran up to him and jumped into his arms. He said, "Ooh... ah... careful with the hands."

When I took his arms and looked at his fingers, they were all red. They felt rough and hard.

"Damn," I said. "It's not frostbite, is it?"

"I don't think so. I can still feel them."

"Well, we'd better get you to the medbay just in case." I gave him another hug. "God, what a relief. I thought he might -"

And then there was an explosion.

Of course, neither of us could figure out what the hell was going on for a few seconds. At first, it was just a low rumbling from the ice beneath our feet. Then I saw Fry look over my shoulder.

He shoved me to the ground, cradling my head in his hands.

As I struck the ground, I got a quick look at a flaming plume some distance behind us. The wind began to blow in our faces, but soon afterward a strong, hot wind rushed at us from the opposite direction. We were quickly shrouded in darkness as the vibrations became dramatic, and then violent. The shaking became so intense that it seemed to overload my brain. I couldn't hear, feel, or even see anything else.

Then, as the rumbles died away, I could hear what seemed to be little splats on the ground around us.

"You all right, Amy?"

As my disorientation evaporated, I found Fry's hands under my head, and his body above mine.

"Yeah. You?"

"Yeah. I think so."

"What the hell was that?"

"I hope it wasn't the ship."

"The Leela? No, it's over the other way."

As he got up and pulled me to my feet, I could feel hot droplets on my face and hands. Confused, I aksed, "Is it raining?"

"The blast must have vapourised the ice," Fry told me.

"Come on, we'd better look for the others."

The air had cleared a bit, so that we could now see a smoky plume in one direction. We started walking.

As we got close, Fry suddenly grabbed my shoulder. I looked back at him, and he pointed down.

I had nearly stepped off the edge of the ice, which fell away into what appeared to be some sort of crater. I could barely see it in the darkness, but there were pieces of wrecked metal down at the centre. The whole thing looked to be at least a hundred metres across.

To our left, I saw the Chewy Nougat. Fry and I made our way over to it, where we found Algra and his five crewmates.

He said, "Captain Wong! Mr Fry! Good!" To his wrist, he said, "I've got Captain Wong and Mr Fry here. They look like they're okay." Then to us, "Now everyone's accounted for except Captain Arensen."

I said, "Wasn't the Muggsy parked in orbit?"

"Yeah. It was supposed to have passed over just a few minutes ago, but I don't think anyone's heard from her."

Then my wrist rang again. "Yeah?"

Kif said, "I was just talking to Mr Zarakha."

"Who's he again?"

"From the Muggsy Bogues?"

"Oh, yeah. Where is the Muggsy?"

"At the centre of the crater, it would seem."

Algra and Fry looked up at me.

I said, haltingly, "Seriously?"

"No, imaginarily," Kif responded gruffly. "Yes, seriously! Mr Zarakha received some telemetry from the Muggsy when it approached."

"It crashed?"

"Not quite."

"What do you mean?"

"Unless you think it was coincidence that the ship happened to strike Santa's sled."

"Actually, they call me BW now."

BW. Bethany Weir.

In four years of college, I made two really good friends. But neither of them were my classmates - they were my coworkers. Fry and Leela.

Bethany was the next name on my list, though.

She said to me, "I saw the news. You guys really blew up Santa Claus?"

"Yep."

"Well, doesn't that just burn the lettuce," she said. She claimed that was a common expression where she came from, but I still think she made it up.

"It was on the news?"

"Yeah. It was the lead story. Y'all are heroes. Anyway, reason I called, I was just wondering if you were doing anything today, because I've got a room at that resort your parents own."

"Really?"

"Yeah. My friend from work was going to join me, but now his girlfriend's got plans for him. You in?"

I lifted my head up and looked at LaBarbara. She held a hand out, as if to say Go ahead.

"Sure," I said to Bethany. "I think I need to get away for a while."

"Great! You still working in New New York?"

"Yeah, same place. You've been here, haven't you?"

"Yeah, I know where it is. I'll be there in twenty minutes or so."

"Okay."

"See you in a bit."

She clicked off.

The cleanup took most of the day Saturday, and it was rough, not least because we had to locate the remains of Wanda Arensen, the captain of the Muggsy Bogues.

Kif assigned us all to the collection of the wreckage. We had to photograph the pieces before we ever touched them, and we had to log them and mark down where they were located.

He was following DOOP procedure strictly, which meant that I was basically out of the loop. The other crews might not have known the procedures, but as active servicemen, they were expected to. Even Fry and Bender, who'd served in the military once before, were expected to pitch in.

And yes, Kif kept right on being an arrogant fuckhead. He seemed to be getting in everyone's faces. It seemed like nobody could do anything without infuriating him. He spent a couple of minutes rounding on Stain, the guy from the Rasheed Wallace.

I mean, Leela could be a hardass, but she just wanted everything to go smoothly. As for Kif, he seemed to be lost in the arcane minutiae of the regulations and couldn't see the bigger picture.

As I sat with Zarakha, the robot who had served alongside Captain Arensen on the Muggsy, I came to decide that I would break up with Kif when we returned home.

Of course, I didn't know that Hermes, Zoidberg, and the Professor had a party waiting for us when we landed.

On the way back to Earth, I found I was aksing myself what I'd ever seen in Kif in the first place. I mean, when he got here for Leela's funeral, he just wasn't much comfort at all. Now that I think about it, the way I felt so much calmer with Fry around - and the withdrawal symptoms when he wasn't around - would explain the way I suddenly felt about him.

But maybe I'd always felt that way about Fry. Certainly I did back when we were dating, but since then he was merely a friend. I have to think, though, that even during that time, my subconscious still had a crush on him.

I don't know. If it wasn't a long distance relationship, I probably would have run into Kif's unpleasant side sooner. But as things were, I'd been infatuated with Kif for two years before I saw the whole story.

In any case, when we landed in the hangar, I grabbed Kif's hand and led him off the ship, snarling, "I want to talk to -"

"Welcome back, my heroic underlings!"

Professor Farnsworth was standing at the foot of the stairs, with everyone else - Cubert, LaBarbara, Dwight, Nibbler, Hermes, Zoidberg, Scruffy - clustered around him. The other ships' crews were starting to trickle into the hangar as well, and presumably the rest would be joining us once they found parking spaces.

Hermes shouted, "Thanks to you deserters, dis is de first Xmas Eve in two hundred years where it's safe to go out after dark!"

"Great," I muttered.

The others were arriving, and Fry, Bender, and Zarakha were now making their way down the steps. The mood was dampening rapidly.

During the day, Zarakha had analysed the trajectory data he'd received from the last moments of the Muggsy. There could now be no doubt that Captain Arensen had flown a suicide mission.

Her ship impacted the sled that Santa Claus had just begun to warm up. He'd been just a couple of minutes away from taking off and storming Earth again.

Zarakha came up behind us and whispered to Kif, "Lieutenant Kroker, I must now leave to inform Captain Arensen's mother."

I whispered, "Her mother?"

"Yes," Zarakha answered. "Her father gave his life defending their home from Santa Claus twelve years ago this night." He saluted to Kif and left.

A week previously, Fry, who'd served alongside Leela, had to bring bad news to her parents. Now Zarakha had to bring bad news to Captain Arensen's mother. I began to wonder who else would die because of me.

"Hey, who wants to know how lovable and handsome Bender saved the day?"

Bender was standing on a work bench on the hangar floor. We all gathered around him to hear his account. For a while I thought he was playing up his own role. He is Bender, after all. But I considered that he had spent an entire week at the table with Santa, in tense and often contentious negotiations. One wrong move, and Fry would have been dead.

And perhaps I would have been dead on the inside.

As the evening went on, I got a chance to speak with some of the other volunteers who'd joined us. I found out that the DOOP was actually supporting the mission, at least by allowing the volunteers to borrow their own ships during winter leave. Someone said that it was sort of a final exam for Kif; if he succeeded, he'd get his own command.

A short while after that, I stepped outside and stood at the seawall, trying to sort my thoughts. Kif showed up, and I took the opportunity to ditch him.

Then, I told everyone about Leela. I had that chat with LaBarbara, and then Bethany called.

I made my way out the front door and listened to the crunching sounds my boots made in the snow. It looked like it had come today, but the skies were clear at the moment.

My wrist reported the time as 02:14 New New York time on Sunday, 25 December 3003.

"Hey, Amy," I heard from above my head.

"Hey, Fry," I called.

Dimly, I could see him on the balcony above me. He was leaning on the railing between the N and the E.

He looked to the north, and I saw a car descending to the street in front of me.

Bethany rolled down a window. "Hey Amy. You ready?"

"Yeah." I walked round to the passenger door.

Fry called down, "Where are you going, Amy?"

I stopped and cast my gaze up to him.

I'm not sure if it was right to leave him like that. We both need one another's help right now, I know that. But at the same time, I was deeply confused.

So I'm taking some time to figure out just what I'm feeling.

I said, "Bye Fry. I'll be back in a couple of days."

I climbed in and shut the door.

"Want to pick up some clothes or something?" she aksed as we ascended.

I saw Fry hold up his hand in a little wave, which I returned. Not like he would have seen me.

I turned back to Bethany and said, "Yeah. How long do you have the room?"

"The whole week, but, you know, you can leave whenever you want."

When I flicked on the light in my apartment, I finally got a good look at Bethany.

I said, "What, did you get neutered or something?"

She giggled and said, "Yeah, I did, actually. Like it?"

Her black hair, which she used to wear in a braid, was now short and dropped down in something of a bob. Her face had already looked a bit boyish, and combined with the new hairstyle, she seemed somewhere in between the genders.

"I had my reproductive organs taken out. I've only got the urethra and the anus between my legs now."

"Did you have your breasts removed, too?" I said.

She told me, "Yeah. I've decided I want to be androgynous. So I call myself BW, and I consider myself an 'it'." She hesitated, then went on, "Would you mind that? Saying 'it' instead of 'she' or 'her', I mean?"

I just stood in stunned silence. I think I blinked, too.

She - um, it - put its hands on its hips and sighed. "Look, it's still me, Amy. Only my body is different. Can you at least accept that?"

"Yeah. Yeah, of course I can. I'm sorry, I just... it's a little bit unusual."

"Well, it isn't really," it replied. It sounded as though it had been through this before. "I mean, there's several thousand of us on Mars alone."

"Out of what, a couple hundred million?"

It smiled at me. "You always could put things into perspective."

I said, "Bet your parents are pleased."

She - it, dammit, it - gave a humourless laugh. "My mother was all like, 'I have no daughter!' Well, okay, that's technically true now, but still, it wasn't the sort of thing I was hoping to hear."

"Well, it does take a little adjusting, but still, she's totally out of line. People have sex changes all the time these days."

"Yes, but not sex removals."

"Well, same thing. The only thing is, you can't have sex now. What difference does that make?"

"I can still have oral sex." It said that as it lowered its chin and tried to give me a seductive look.

I say tried because it wasn't hitting any of my buttons. I simply wasn't in that sort of mood, so I just said, "Thanks BW, but not now."

"Okay. Let's just get you packed then."

I took along one of my other sweat suits and a swimsuit. Then I threw in my VR helmet, gloves, and shoes. Not sure why.

Finally, I grabbed this book. And now, here I am, sitting in the back seat of BW's car, and we're almost at the California Nebula Spa and Lagoon. I was hoping writing all this down would help me sort my feelings out. But no, I'm more helpless than ever.

In the past two weeks, I've lost my two best female friends. I killed Leela, of course, and now Bethany's no longer female. So now where do I go when I need a sympathetic ear?

I think I still have two choices. Today was the first time I really got a chance to have a long talk with LaBarbara, which also made me realise how little I'd known about my friends and coworkers. More than four years working together, and Hermes had never mentioned anything about Dawn.

And then there's Fry.

Even though he's male, he puts me at ease in a way I haven't felt with other men - not even Kif. Except, obviously, that there's one subject I can't talk about with him. And it's precisely the subject that I ought to be talking about with someone.

No, talking isn't quite what I need. What I'm looking for is an answer, since there's one question above all else that's bothering me.

Where am I to go from here?