My Ship, fifth part: Abandon
by Deb H
Thursday 12 January 3004
"You paying attention? This all going to be yours soon, you know."
"Not for a while, Mom. It'll be yours first."
"It mine already. Half mine. Then all mine. Then all yours. You have to know how to make traditional kung pao buggalo."
"I know how. You hit the kung pao buggalo button."
"More to it than that! Must choose right meat! Not too firm! Not too growth hormoney! Just right!"
"I'll be fine."
"You say that when you go off to college! You come back with ugly boys who not appreciate you! No more! Find man who appreciate you! Treat you with respect! What man ever respect you?"
I turned and looked over my shoulder at Fry. He was done with his breakfast, and he was staring out the window. He seemed like he wasn't listening to us.
My mother continued, "No man, that who! Not even green boyfriend! Your love life suck!"
That was the sentence that really hurt.
My love life did suck.
I thought it had been going so well. I thought I'd finally found true love.
She was right about Kif. He hadn't shown respect for me. Sure, he said all the right things, he got me all the right gifts. But when I really needed someone, he wasn't it.
Fry was.
No, no, no, I said to myself. Let's not take that road.
My father hurried in and said, "Come on, hurry! I not be late to my own execution! It look so bad!"
He's actually my uncle, but I'm still thinking of him as my father.
"I'm ready," I said. "Fry?"
Fry came back over from the window and said, "Yeah. I'm ready. Are you?"
I answered, "I think this is about as ready as I could be."
My father lifted my chin up and said to me, "Why you look like that? It look like you at father's funeral!"
He was the only one laughing.
My mood sank even further, but my emotional load seemed to lighten a bit when Fry took my hand and laced his fingers with mine.
"Okay, we go now," my father said. "Where your mother?"
I looked around. She wasn't in the room.
After a moment, she came in and said, "Ready?"
She was dressed the way she normally did, including the belt with a horseshoe buckle, the artificial leather vest, and her omnipresent cowboy hat. I had considered it – okay, agonised over it – and I had ended up wearing a black sweater. Fry had taken his cue from me and was dressed in a black suit and a black shirt, no tie.
The four of us walked out of the house knowing that three would walk back in.
But as those intolerable sluts, the fates, would deem, only two of us would walk back in.
After I heard the news about my uncle turning himself in, I logged out and went to my quarters on the Leela.
The software me had the proof. He was my uncle, not my father. And my father was long since dead.
The questions were racing through my head. Did my mother know? How did he change their pilot licenses? How could I not have found out?
And most importantly, why?
Why would my uncle kill my father and take his place?
They'd both had a share of the family fortune, so money wouldn't be it. Did they hate each other? I hadn't noticed, but at that age I hadn't been particularly aware of specific matters of interpersonal relations like that.
I was still pondering the whole thing when I heard a knock at the door.
"Amy? You in there?"
When I got up out of my bed and opened up the door, nobody was there.
"Amy?"
The voice was coming from down the corridor. I looked outside, and there was Fry.
"Hey," I said. "Come on in."
"Hey Amy." He gave me a hug, and we settled on the bed.
"So I heard about your father."
"Yeah."
"Um, your uncle, I guess."
"Yeah. How did you know I was here?"
"Just guessed. You weren't home, so I tried to call you, but I couldn't get through."
Then I noticed that my wrist had been off. I wondered when I'd shut it off.
"So you came looking for me?" I aksed.
"Yeah. I thought maybe you'd want me around."
"You thought right."
He put an arm around my waist, and I leaned over into his shoulder.
He said, "So do you think he did it?"
"I know he did."
"How? Did he tell you?"
"No, I haven't talked to him yet," I said. "But... remember what Clyde and Choto wanted me to do?"
"Yeah."
"Well, I... maybe I should just show you."
I got up and led Fry off the ship. As we walked up into the Professor's lab, I headed over to the closet and got out our VR suits. When I plugged us in, our point of view suddenly changed to the Martian surface. I looked around, and behind me was the meridian marker outside Airy.
Someone called Fry's name, ran up to us, and embraced him. It took a moment for me to figure out that it was the software me.
She said, "Fry! I missed you so much! How've you been?"
He looked back and forth between the two of us, saying, "Ummmm..."
Both of us were wearing my normal pink sweatsuit. She still had the same haircut and everything, and I couldn't spot any other ways to distinguish her from me.
She said to me, "Haven't you told him about me?"
I responded, "No, I was just about to."
"So... who are you?" he aksed.
"I'm her," she said, pointing to me.
He turned to me and said, "Did... did you clone yourself?"
"No," I told him. "Well, sort of."
"Yeah, I'm a software copy."
I added, "Yeah. You know how you can download a robot's brain?"
"Yeah?" he said.
"The Professor figured out how to do the same thing with human brains. She's a copy of me."
She said, "Yeah. I act just like she would if she was a computer program."
"So you're a computer program?"
"Yep."
"How do I tell you apart?"
I said, "Software Amy's the one you can't see when you take the helmet off."
Fry stood there for a moment. Then he turned to the software me and aksed, "So what do you do when nobody's logged in here?"
"I do a lot of reading," she told him.
"You do?"
"Yeah. I've got access to the entire Internet. I read a lot about your family."
"Really?"
"Yeah. Especially your nephew."
"The Professor?"
"No, your nephew," she said. "The first human on Mars."
"Yeah. You know, I still can't believe that someone from my family was the first person on Mars."
"Well, he was a lucky man."
"So was I."
"Anyway," I said, "he aksed me how we found out about Uncle Marcus."
"Yeah? Well, that was pretty easy. We went looking through the records and found that their UI numbers had been swapped."
"The hell's a UI number?" Fry aksed.
"That big long number on your pilot license," she said. "It's a unique identifier for any individual. The number on Dad's current pilot license is actually the same as the number on Uncle Marcus's original birth certificate."
I added, "But after we sent that in, we found out what the Martian punishment for identity theft is."
The software me continued, "So it's my fault that Uncle Marcus is going to be executed."
"No, it's my fault," I replied. "I'm the one who sent it to Clyde and Choto without finding everything out."
"Don't blame yourself," she said. "It was bound to get out some day."
"I guess," I said.
When Fry and I got home that night, Bender wasn't around. Fry threw some shrimp on the barbecue, and we had a quiet dinner.
"What?" he suddenly aksed me.
"Hm?"
"Not good times for you, are they?"
I shook my head. "I just... how come everything I do lately ends up killing somebody?"
"It's not that bad," he said. "You still have Bender. Hermes. BW. Nibbler. Your mother."
He trailed off, but I added, "You."
"Well, we're all here for you."
"For how much longer, though?"
"What?"
I reached out and grabbed his hand. "I just know it, Fry. It's not done yet. I just... I can't stop feeling that you're next."
"It's just the guilt," he said. "Like how you keep blaming yourself."
"Well, it is my fault. Shit. You'd think I'd have learned better from Leela. She never had to deal with anything like this."
There was silence for a moment.
Then Fry said, "Of course she did. Like when she met her parents."
"What? What do you mean?"
"Well, she came back to the office that night. She spent the entire day down there talking to them. And when she got to the office, she was all glum and everything. I was like, 'Leela, what is it?' And she goes, 'Eeh, nothing.'
"Well, she was obviously needing to talk about it, but she was just all quiet, like she is sometimes. So I get her a cup of coffee, and we settle on the couch, and she's like, 'Man, I really owe you a big one.' And I'm like, 'All I did was put the cup in the coffee maker.'
"And she goes, 'No, for... for coming down there. I mean... if you'd... if you'd been there just a half second later...'
"So I said, 'It's not important.' And she goes, 'Come on, Fry. You of all people know how much bullshit that is. I mean, if you hadn't fallen out of your chair, you'd never be here with us. You know, sometimes... sometimes a fraction of a second does matter.'
"And you know what I thought about then?"
I shook my head.
"Well, there were a whole bunch of times when Leela and I almost kissed."
I said, "Yeah. She told me."
"She did?"
"Yeah. She told me about some of those times."
"What did she say about them?"
"She was talking once about you, and she was all like, 'I mean, I know it would never work out. Just look at him. I can't even talk to him without him making some stupidly suggestive remark.' And then I said, 'Well, he can't talk to you without you telling him to straighten up, or correcting his grammar.'"
Fry said, "Well, that's the thing. It wasn't like that at all when we finally did get together. I mean, I still made the stupidly suggestive remarks, but she just didn't get mad at them. And I tried even harder to do my job right. You know, so she wouldn't yell at me."
"Yeah. So anyway, then she said, 'But there've been times when, just for a second, that doesn't matter. You know? Like I don't see the uncoordinated moron I usually see in him. He just looks like this sweet, hopeless romantic. But then next thing I know, that's gone and he looks like the same immature 20th century kid.' And then she just says, 'If that hopeless romantic was there all the time, we'd be fucking in five different positions every night.'"
We both laughed a little. Then after a moment, he went on, "I guess I'm saying, don't obsess over what you've done. I did, whenever she shot me down. I'd sit up in bed agonising over all the stupid things I said to her. It didn't help. Just, you know, think about what you'll do differently next time."
After we cleaned up the plates, he said to me, "Oh, you know what? There's a Leela Fund meeting tomorrow night. Want to go?"
"Leela Fund?"
"Yeah. The Turanga Leela Memorial Scholarship Fund. It would be great if you could help out."
"Where's the meeting?"
"Somewhere in the sewers. They gave me the address."
"You know how to get there?"
"I looked it up online."
I aksed him, "They have sewer maps online?"
"Yeah," he told me. "
Bender, Fry, and I got into work the next morning and had three deliveries to make. I aksed Choto where BW was.
"It's not feeling well today," she said. "I told it to stay in the hotel, but it said if it felt better, it would come in later today."
So I rounded up my posse and took off. The first delivery was a quick one to Triton.
"Triton," I scowled as we landed.
"What?" Fry aksed.
"Nothing."
"No, really, what is it?"
I sighed. "Triton's the name of Kif's new girlfriend."
"You jealous?" he said.
"No," I groaned. "Just pissed that she was hovering there, waiting to grab him on the rebound. That's not how it works."
"Well, maybe their species has different customs."
"Well, you know what else?"
"What?"
"She was calling him 'Kiffy'. I mean, that's what I called him."
"So? There aren't many affectionate terms you can really make out of 'Kif'."
"Yeah, but still, didn't you hate it whenever your girlfriend called you the same thing an ex did?"
He shrugged. "All the girlfriends I ever had just called me Fry."
He was right. When we started dating, after we broke up, and right to today, I've just called him Fry the whole time.
I said, "Well, that's sort of how you know you have a really special relationship. When you give each other different names."
"Well, I didn't need to. I know which one of my relationships was really special."
After a pause, he said, "Well, I'm going to go make the delivery."
He left the bridge, and then Bender entered, saying, "What up, babyface."
I stared at him. "Were there a lot of impurities in your beer this morning, or what?"
"What?" he aksed. "I'm just testing some new names for you guys. I'm also thinking about 'cashflash' for you."
"What about Fry?"
"Sparky."
"Sparky?"
"Yeah. Fits, doesn't it?"
"Bender, Fry hasn't been sparky at all ever since Leela's gone."
"Yeah, I know," he said pensively. "I miss the old Fry. I wanna go out and party with him like we used to."
"I don't think he'll ever be like he used to."
"Well, he is going through the stages of guilt. Only, you know, really slowly."
I looked up at him in confusion. "What are you talking about?"
"He seems like he's in stage 118 right now. I'm way ahead of him. I'm in, like, stage 8,389. Oh... hang on...." He looked away for a second, and then turned back to me. "8,390."
"I thought there were, like, five stages."
"Well, I don't know about you biological things, but for us robots, there's 16,384. Fry's spending hours in each stage."
"But he's a human. He doesn't go through the robot stages."
"Amy, pay attention," he said as he sat down in his chair and leaned toward me. "To first order, Fry's behaviour can be approximated by your standard die casting unit. Didn't you ever wonder why he and I get along so well? It's because we can treat each other as equals, just like die casting units and plainly superior bending units can treat each other as equals."
Just then Fry came back in.
"Hey bro," Bender said. "How'd it go?"
"Eeh, nothing special happened."
We stopped briefly at the Planet Express building to see if BW was back. It wasn't, so I grabbed the other two packages and started back toward the Leela.
Then Hermes called, "Amy, do ya have a minute?"
"Yeah."
I handed the shipments to Fry and followed Hermes into his office.
He aksed me, "Do ya want to take some time off?"
"Time off? What for?"
"I thought ya might want to go to your father's trial."
"Well... I'm not sure if I'm ready to go just yet."
"Right. I just wanted to make sure ya know dat if you want to, you can."
"Can... can I bring Fry?"
"Fry?"
"Yeah. I need him around."
He aksed, "But who's going to make de deliveries?"
"BW and Bender could."
"By demselves? I don't think so."
"Why not?" I said. "BW's got a pilot's license. And you let Fry and Bender make all those deliveries by themselves."
"Well, I'll think about it."
"Okay."
When I got back to the bridge and took off, Fry aksed, "What was that all about?"
I turned to him. "Fry?"
"Yeah?"
"Do you want to go with me to Mars later this week?"
"For the trial?"
"Yeah," I told him. "Hermes said I could take time off to go. I aksed if you could come too, but he hasn't decided yet. So if he says yes, will you come?"
"Sure. When?"
"I don't know. Maybe Wednesday or Thursday."
The two deliveries took up the rest of the day. When we got back that night, Hermes was waiting for us.
"So how did it go?" he aksed.
"Pretty uneventful," I answered.
"Did you hear de news?"
"What?"
"Your father entered his plea today."
"Hm." I wasn't interested; the important part of the trial would be later in the week, when the DAs would be trying to show how Uncle Marcus could have changed the records. No doubt they would also try to find a motive; I hadn't been able to think of one, at least.
But then Hermes said, "He pled guilty."
"Wh... what? Guilty?"
He nodded. "De sentencing's tomorrow."
That was when it finally struck me. My father's going to die, I thought.
Fry's hands went onto my shoulders.
Hermes aksed me, "Do you want to go?"
"Tomorrow?"
"Yes."
I looked back at Fry. He just shrugged, as though telling me it was up to me.
"I don't know."
"Well, let me know if ya decide to go. You and Fry can take de rest of de week off if ya need it."
"Both of us?" Fry aksed.
"Yeah."
Still in stunned silence, I sat at the conference table.
Hermes said, "I'm sorry, Amy."
I nodded. I was still deep in thought.
Why would he enter a guilty plea?
He might not have been able to make a plea bargain, but at the very least, forcing the case to go to trial would have meant anything could happen. Maybe some key piece of evidence was gathered inappropriately and it would have to be thrown out. Maybe you'd get some sympathetic jurors. Maybe there was some way to lighten the sentence by proving extenuating circumstances or something.
"Amy?"
I looked up and saw Fry sitting on the table next to me. He said, "You ready to go?"
"Yeah," I replied. "Where's Hermes?"
"He just left."
"He did?"
"Weren't you paying attention?" he aksed.
"I guess not."
"Well, he said to let him know when we go to Mars."
I said, "Yeah. I heard that part."
"We've got to hurry to the meeting," Fry said abruptly.
"What meeting?"
"The Leela Fund meeting?"
"Oh, right."
"How about you, Bender? Want to come?"
"Nah, I'll just stay here and keep a lookout," Bender said.
"For what?"
"You know. Stuff."
The meeting was in some sort of hotel conference room. As we entered, I said, "Why would they have a hotel in the sewers, anyway?"
Fry said, "Yeah, I aksed the same thing. Apparently a lot of mutants from other cities' sewers visit New New York."
The Turangas were there, of course. They introduced us to the others. Raoul, the guy with an extra arm on the side of his head, was there. He's the Supreme Mutant, their equivalent of a mayor. I also met the principals of Martin Luther Thing High and Curie Academy, their two high schools, as well as some teachers and a few other interested participants.
The meeting itself was kind of dull. Mostly they discussed some of the details of how they would select the winners. Fry was adamant that they not make leadership experience too important. Nobody really listened to him until he got up and said, "No, no. It just won't work like that. Remember what we're trying to do here. We're trying to find people like Leela. Aks yourself this: If this was 2993, and we were looking at an application from someone named Turanga Leela, how would you evaluate it?"
Mrs Turanga said, "That's true. She never had much of a chance to be a leader at the orphanarium."
Raoul aksed Fry, "Okay, well, what do you suggest?"
"I don't know," he answered. "That's where I need your help. What kinds of things are most likely to lead to success?"
That argument went on for some time, until Mr Turanga aksed us to move on to the subject of universities. He wondered if there was any way for them to reach a college outside Earth.
I said, "Kl'uh! Why not Mars?"
"Oh yeah," he said, "you went to Mars. Any way you could help there?"
"Of course. I'll check with my parents. We should be able to swing it."
That was the only topic all night that was resolved hastily.
When the two of us got home, Fry turned on the TV and started flipping through the channels, settling on a Martian news station. They were of course talking about Uncle Marcus. Meanwhile, I noticed I had sixteen messages. It became clear that they were all reporters seeking comment.
As I listened to the interminable string of requests for reactions, I looked back at the TV set. Across the ticker at the bottom of the screen ran the words: LEO WONG'S WIDOW INEZ AND DAUGHTER AMY UNAVAILABLE FOR COMMENT.
"Well, good night, Fry."
"You're going to bed?"
"Yeah. I don't really want to watch that."
"I guess you can hear it all from the source, right? Just talk to your father?"
"Well, I guess he's really my uncle."
"Oh. Yeah. Must be confusing for you."
"Yeah, well, I'll figure it out. Night."
"Good night, Amy."
"Morning, Amy."
"Hey, Leela."
We were in a wide plain covered with grass. The occasional bushes and trees sprang out from otherwise uninteresting places.
"Come on." She reached down for me, and I took her arm as I started to climb her tree.
We moved easily to higher and higher branches. Along the way I aksed her what type of tree it was.
"It's a pine."
"Never heard of that."
"Not surprising. They're extinct."
We continued on our way up. Finally, there were no more branches.
She said, "Bit of a shock about your father, isn't it?"
"Yeah. Sometimes I missed Uncle Marcus. Turned out he was there the whole time."
"So... did your mother know?"
"I don't know. I haven't talked to her."
"Why not?"
"Been busy."
"Not yesterday."
"What?"
"Could have called them yesterday."
"I guess."
The tree started to sway as the wind picked up.
"So... you cloned yourself."
"Not really. Not my body."
"Then what?"
"My mind."
She turned and looked at me skeptically. "So it's an organic mind... rendered in artificial hardware?"
"Yeah, sort of."
"You think that's wise?"
"Why? You think she'll try to escape or something?"
"No. But you saw her yesterday."
"What about her?"
"You saw how she missed Fry."
"Yeah?"
"Come on, Amy. Think about it. If you were trapped in a computer for an entire weekend, wouldn't you want to see the people you know?"
I thought about it.
She said, "That must be kind of odd. You know, having a virtual duplicate."
"Yeah. I just have to try not to get too used to talking to myself."
She smiled in amusement.
"But there's something wrong."
She looked at me, raising her eyebrow.
"I'm starting to get nervous every time we make a delivery. I just... I think something's going to happen to Fry. You know? I feel like he's going to... I don't know, fall off a cliff or get shot or something."
"Amy, will you listen to yourself? I mean, what do you have to go on? Just a feeling? That's not enough."
I looked down out of the tree. It was a long way to the ground.
"I'm just saying, there's a difference between being careful and freaking out," she added.
"How high up are we?"
"Want to find out?"
"What?"
In the next instant, she grabbed me around my waist and jumped off the branch. Green and blue cycled around us as we tumbled toward the ground.
I said, "Do you have rocket boots, or what?"
She smiled. "No."
I couldn't tell, but it looked like we were racing toward a lake or something.
Then I woke up.
I stayed in bed for some time. After all, I'd woken up at 05:40 or some weird time like that.
I might have drifted off a couple of times after that, but I was still curled up in bed, staring out the window, when I heard Fry.
"Amy? You up?"
"Yeah."
I rolled over to face him.
He aksed, "You want to go to the sentencing?"
"I probably should, shouldn't I?"
He shrugged. "It's up to you."
"When is it?"
"In, like, an hour."
"An hour?"
"Yeah, so we should really be going."
I said, "Yeah, we'd better go."
I jumped into the shower. It was about 07:10 then, so I figured the sentencing would be at eight. When I got out, I aksed if he knew where the courthouse was.
"No. I thought you'd know."
"Well, I only went there once."
"What for?"
"I was a graffiti artist in high school."
He seemed amused. "Really?"
"Yeah. Hang on, let me look up the directions."
I punched up the directions on my wrist, and then we went off on our way.
In the car, I continued the discussion. "A few of us would spray paint things on the school walls. I was working on a mural when I got caught."
"What kind of mural?"
"Well, everyone worked on it a little bit. It showed Mars, with a chain and a padlock around it. Then beneath that it said Break free."
"People must not have liked it on Mars, I guess."
"Not really," I agreed. "At that time it was kind of in trouble economically. I mean, other than my parents, nobody else really had a lot of money, and they didn't invest very much in the local economy. So a lot of people would graduate from high school and they couldn't get a job or anything. It was tough then."
"What's it like now?"
"It's still – oh crap! I was supposed to call Hermes!"
"I called him."
"You did?"
"Yeah. When you were showering."
"Oh. Thanks, Fry."
"Forget about it."
"So, yeah, some of the factories and mines that used to be there have been moving to other planets. Some people have blamed my family for hoarding wealth. They say it's turning Mars into a ghost planet."
"Hm."
"I read one article where someone thought my parents were trying to send property values down so that they could buy the entire planet."
"You think they are?"
"No. I mean, what can you really do with an entire planet that you can't do with half a planet? It just seems like... like my parents are bored with their wealth, you know?"
"Is that why your father pleaded guilty?"
I turned to Fry.
"It's easier than suicide," he said.
I murmured, "Maybe."
We landed in Jesburg, the Martian capital, to find the courthouse parking lot full. I parked on a street a few blocks away.
"What time is it now?" he aksed me.
"07:58. We'd better hurry."
"That's New New York time?"
"Yeah."
"What time is it here?"
Mars, of course, rotates slower than Earth does, so the day is about forty minutes longer. We divide it into hours and minutes like on Earth, with the extra minutes at the end. So the clock runs from 00:00 to 24:39, which explains why you'll never see any analog clocks on Mars. It also means that the time we call noon, 12:00, isn't exactly the middle of the day. But the time zones and the eccentricity of Mars's orbit have more to do with what time the Sun is at its highest, so nobody really cares.
After some wrist manipulating, I got the time in Isidis Planitia, where Jesburg is located. "11:52," I said.
"We still got some time. It's at noon local time."
For some reason I hadn't come to the logical conclusion, that they would not schedule it in New New York time.
In amongst all the TV cameras and reporters, I saw a cowboy hat. I sat next to the person who belonged to it. "Hey Mom."
"Amy!" She gave me a hug. "You just get here?"
"Yeah. Hi Dad."
He turned around. "Hey, you call me Marcus now. I not pretend no more."
"You working on wish list?" my mother aksed.
"What?" I said.
"You going to inherit everything. And you going on shopping spree right away, right?"
"But... what about you?"
"Yeah, I still control account after they get Marcus. But when I gone, it all yours."
"Well, that won't be for a while."
"Whatever."
After that, we did all the normal courtroom histrionics. Stand up, the honourable Judge Whoever, sit down. After the judge banged her gavel, she removed her glasses and eyed my uncle.
"Mister Wong. You will no doubt recall that yesterday you entered a guilty plea for the charge of identity theft. Martian criminal code states quite explicitly what will happen to someone who is convicted of this crime."
Quit stringing us along, I thought.
She went on, "It would be great if there was a little flexibility in there, since you've clearly shown contrition, and it's not as though you were hurting anyone. Nonetheless, you know what I'll have to do.
"Marcus Richard Wong, on behalf of the people of the Planet of Mars, I am sentencing you to death by brain and heart deactivation. Your sentence shall be carried out in two days, at 09:00 in this building, room 18. Adjourned."
Fry and I went back home that night. I'd spent much of the day talking to my parents, trying to get them to explain what happened. And once we got home, we found Bender waiting for us.
"What up fleshwads," he said. "Heard they're gonna send your uncle to the old scrap heap."
"Yeah."
"Well, lemme know if there's anything old Bender can do to cheer you up."
"Like what?"
That seemed to stump him. "Umm... well... you want a beer?"
"You'd give me one of your beers?"
"Of course. Not! Ha ha ha ha! Ohhhh! Bender, you are a kidder! Well, good night."
I couldn't find anything to watch, so Fry ended up finding a hockey game. I tried to keep awake, but I was just really tired, and I must have fallen asleep briefly at least once.
Fry said, "So... Amy."
"Hmmm?"
"Have you been having dreams?"
"About Leela?"
"Yeah."
"I've had a few dreams," I said.
"Like what?"
"Well, the first couple of nights, I had a couple where she told me to tell you what really happened."
"Really?"
"Yeah. Actually, most of them have been kind of like that. You know, we're just talking about what I'm going through, and she kinda gives me advice."
"What does she say?"
"One time, she said to keep an eye on you."
"Why?" he aksed. "Because that was her job?"
"Well, not like that. She was saying that, you know, you might be trying to keep your feelings inside. She was worried that might not be good for you."
"You know, I guess that's kinda true. Sometimes I do keep my feelings inside a little bit."
"So what are your feelings?"
He sat forward, looking down at the floor. "I think... I'm holding up better than I would have thought."
He saw the uncomprehending look I gave him, and he continued, "Well, I'd always known that something like this was possible. You know? I mean, we've had so many close calls and times when we could have been killed. It's sort of a shock, I think, that we even survived this long without something like this happening."
"I guess," I said.
Then he said, "I'm just..."
I looked up and aksed, "What?"
"I'm... just wondering how you're holding up."
"Me?"
"Yeah," he said. "Do you really think that I'm going to get killed soon?"
"I don't know. I just, well, I don't understand why all of this has to happen at once. You know? The way things are going, you'd be next."
"Maybe. But I never think about the way things are going. I try to think about the way things are going to go."
"Yeah, if you're thinking about anything at all."
He giggled and gave me a push. I pushed him back, and he got up and tried to pin me into the corner of the couch. I grabbed the pillow underneath me and used it to pop him on the side of the head.
That turned it into a full scale pillow fight. We hopped from one end of the room to the other, with Fry getting in more blows. I needed something to turn the bout around, so I suddenly leaped up and raced down the hallway into my bedroom. I emerged with two of my pillows. Big, overstuffed, broad, they would doom him to failure.
And they did, for a moment. I was pummelling him with attacks from my two pillows, forcing him into a corner, when he somehow twisted one of them out from my hand and then slipped between my legs. As I bent down trying to grab my pillow back, he hit me with it, right across the back of my head.
I was already off balance, and so that attack sent me sprawling across the floor. I raised my pillow to block whatever strikes were coming my way, but instead, Fry lowered himself down on top of me, putting a knee into my stomach. He said simply, "Admit defeat!"
"Never!" I countered.
"Oh. Okay then." He got up and settled on the couch. After a moment, I got up and joined him there.
After I went off to bed that night, I found myself staring at one of the boxes full of stuff we collected from Leela's apartment.
In amongst the blernsball scorecards, bills, and electronic components, there was also a small notebook, with worn corners and creased pages.
I sat down on the corner of my bed and started to read.
I woke up to find Fry running his fingers through my hair. He was lying next to me on my bed.
"Morning," he said.
"Hey." I looked at him, but then something struck me. "Oh god. Did..."
"What?"
"Did we... you know..."
"Have sex?" he aksed incredulously. "No! Of course not."
Once I started paying attention to what was going on around me, I realised that he was right. First, we were lying on top of the undisturbed covers. Second, my clothes were still arranged neatly on my body, with no bra straps or anything showing. And third, I still had the notebook in my hand.
"You want to go back to Mars today?" he aksed me.
"Yeah. What time is it now?"
"It's, like, 09:15 or so."
"What time is it in Isidis?"
"I'unno," he responded.
According to my wrist, it was 12:30 there.
"Little over twenty one hours," I said to myself.
This time, the flight was more quiet. Fry was watching the traffic around us, but at one point, he reached out and held onto my right hand.
We flew over the Tharsis mountains on our way to my parents' ranch in Arcadia Planitia, a couple thousand kilometres north of Olympus Mons. I tripped and fell out of the car, in slow motion.
"Yeah, I always forget about the low gravity here," Fry said.
"That's because all the buildings have artificial gravity," I told him.
"Yeah, I don't like that. I would so want to be in low gravity. You know, put up a thirty foot basket and dunk on it. That would be great."
"We have a thirty foot basket."
"What? You do? Why didn't anyone tell me?"
"I dunno. You were only here a couple of times."
So we all played two on two. Fry was thoroughly disappointed to find that he could only jump a metre up. None of us could do much better, of course, and so we lowered the basket to the regulation ten feet. We changed the teams around a couple of times, and Fry and my mother made the best team. Fry had a tendency to attempt things that I knew he couldn't possibly do, like reverse dunks and halfcourt shots.
That, and he narrated his possessions, which could be kind of annoying.
I couldn't sleep that night. Probably a combination of the time change and the dread.
In any case, I pulled the blanket off the bed and headed for downstairs. But on the way I saw that Fry's light was still on. I knocked, and he looked up.
"Hey Amy. You warm enough there?"
He pointed at the blanket, which I'd wrapped around myself.
I aksed him, "Can I come in?"
"Sure."
I saw that he had the notebook from Leela's desk. He put it aside as I sat down next to him on the bed. He opened the drapes, and the sunlight came flooding in. It was about 10:00 there, eight hours ahead of Isidis. But my parents had decided to change to Isidis time this week.
"Amy?"
"Yeah?"
He said, "What happened?"
"Hm?"
"I think you said you were there when your father died?"
"Yeah. You want to know what happened?"
He nodded.
I told him the story.
"I was about four. This is, like, the earliest thing that I can remember. Uncle Marcus visited the ranch every once in a while, and I don't really remember any of those. I just remember how happy I was to see him, and how he'd let me ride on the tractor.
"So there was one night when I was awake and staring out the window, and I see the tractor go by. So I ran outside and hopped into the cab, and I shouted, 'Hi Uncle Marcus!' So he looks over, and he goes, 'Amy? What you doing –' And then we crash.
"It turned out that we were heading right for one of the stables, and one of the beams smashed right through the cab. My father, who was actually the one in there instead of Uncle Marcus, was killed right away. And some piece of débris sliced into my skull and went right into my brain, right here."
I lifted up the hair at the back of my scalp, although I figured Fry wouldn't really be able to see the scar. He didn't say anything for a moment, but he just looked at the back of my head.
I continued, "And that also happens to be why I keep saying skr'uh and stuff like that."
"Why's that?" he aksed.
"Apparently the speech centre is back there. The doctors said that the shrapnel caused limited damage in there, but it was still enough to cause something that they called consonant substitution syndrome. If I say it normally, like duh, nothing happens. But if I emphasise it like an exclamation, like bl'uh, then the letters get changed. And it all happens subconsciously, so it doesn't even matter what I try to say."
"Really?"
"Yeah."
"So you try to say duh, and g'uh comes out?"
"Yeah. Were you wondering about that?"
"I kinda figured it was a Martian thing," he said.
"Nope."
We watched the buggalos graze outside.
He said, "So... how come your uncle's been filling in for your father?"
"Well, I talked to my mother and my uncle yesterday. Apparently the three of them all agreed to it in advance."
He seemed just as surprised as I had been. "They did? Really?"
"Yeah. They said my father had been going through some rough times. Depression and stuff. He told them he was contemplating suicide, but he didn't want to leave me without a father. So he tried therapy, antidepressants. Nothing helped. Finally they decided to... you know, to help him do it."
Fry said, "They don't have suicide booths on Mars?"
"No. And I think they didn't want the authorities to get anywhere near the body. You know? It happened here, so we got the family doctor down here to sign the death certificate. Handled everything internally, so nobody could aks questions."
"So they planned the whole thing out ahead of time?"
"Yeah. I mean, nobody could tell Dad and Marcus apart anyway. I thought I could, but apparently not. They figured they could get away with it, and they did. Until now, anyway."
"But... why would your uncle have to take your father's place? I mean, couldn't your uncle help raise you without having to pretend he's your father?"
I answered, "Yeah. That's what I aksed them."
"What'd they say?"
"They told me they wanted everything to be as normal for me as it possibly could. They said they didn't want me to have to grow up with a de facto dad. They wanted me to have a real dad."
"But he's not your real dad."
"Well, nobody knew any better."
"What about your uncle? Seems like he decided to turn himself in if he ever got caught."
"Yeah. He said they figured nobody would catch on until I was grown up."
I leaned back on Fry's bed and started tapping the sheets.
"So do they do it?"
I started to giggle. After I'd cleared that from my system, I said, "I aksed them that, actually. They said they do."
"Seriously?"
"Yeah. My mother was all, 'Your father was a better lay than your uncle, though,' and I was like, 'Whoa! Hey! I don't need to hear that!' So, of course, now all I can think of is my parents doing it. Eeyugh."
Fry spread himself out on the bed next to me.
"So I've been looking through this book," he said.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. There's, well, there's a lot of stuff in here."
"I know. I read some of it."
"You know what really surprised me?"
"What?"
He picked up the notebook and started to flip through it, holding it over his head. Then he said, "Here it is," and handed it to me.
It was a page I hadn't seen before.
In the upper left hand corner, in Leela's handwriting, read Leela Fry.
Beneath that, Turanga Leela Fry.
In the upper right hand corner, Fry Leela.
Other things were written all over the rest of the page.
Turanga-Fry Leela.
Mr and Mrs Philip J Fry.
Phil and Leela Fry.
Philip and Leela Fry.
Philip J and T Leela Fry.
Leela Turanga-Fry.
Turanga-Fry Leela again.
"I like that one," I said, pointing to Turanga Leela Fry.
"I liked Turanga-Fry Leela," Fry said.
Noting that it occurred on that page three times, I added, "Guess she did too."
"But I think it would have been better if she didn't change her name. Turanga Leela. That's a great name. Throwing Fry in there just doesn't work, you know?"
"Maybe. You didn't want her to change her name?"
"Well, it'd be up to her, of course. But you know what I woulda wanted?"
I shook my head.
"If she kept her name, and I changed mine."
"What? You mean get rid of Fry? What would we call you?"
"No, I'd keep Fry. I'd be Turanga Philip Fry."
I kind of liked it.
Then Fry said, "I saw something else interesting in here too."
"What?"
He flipped back a few pages, into a section filled with sketches. He stopped on one.
"Yeah, I saw that one," I said.
It showed him lying on the ground, her kneeling over him, her back showing, her hand holding his. The space bee's stinger could be seen sticking out of his chest.
Beneath that, she had written the words Second chance.
"When she came out of the coma," he explained, "she said, 'Fry, you're alive'. And before she went into it, the last thing she saw must have been the bee stinging me. So I think that in those last few seconds before she lost consciousness, she must have thought I'd gotten killed."
I looked at the caption again. Second chance.
I said to Fry, "You know, after you started going out, I aksed her what made her change her mind. She said she'd always been waiting for you to finish growing up, but then she was like, 'But I always had this tiny feeling that if we did start dating, maybe that would make him feel a little more responsibility. So, I guess I finally took that chance.'"
"Think that's what that means?"
"Looks like it. You know, she thought she'd lost that chance, and then she got it back when it turned out you were still alive."
"Yeah. Well, that's one thing she was bad at."
"What is?"
He looked over at me, saying, "Taking chances."
"Well, here we are."
"Yeah."
"You ready?"
"No."
"Well, I ready. Been ready a long time."
"Yeah. I know."
"Hey, why you so down? You going to inherit! You be rich!"
"I am rich. And besides, Mom's still around."
"Well, she not be around one day. You take care of her till then, okay?"
"Of course."
"Mr Wong? We're ready for you."
"That my cue."
"Okay."
I hugged him.
"I'll miss you, Uncle Marcus."
"I miss you, Amy."
He hugged my mother.
"I miss you too, Inez. Take care of Amy."
She nodded. She hadn't said a thing since we left the ranch.
"I ready now."
"You're ready?"
"Yeah."
"This way, please."
Fry, my mother, and I sat in the viewing gallery of room 18 at the courthouse.
The room was sparsely decorated. A large clock was mounted high on the front wall, with a plain wooden chair underneath that. We were sitting in a row of similar chairs, with another row behind us. Those chairs were all occupied by reporters with notepads or television cameras. There weren't any windows anywhere.
In a moment, the guards walked out with my uncle. When I went to courtrooms on Earth, I noticed that they tended to use handcuffs and shackles and stuff, something that Martian authorities don't bother with. People who have to make court appearances are implanted with tracking devices. If you don't show up back at the courthouse when you're supposed to, it injects a tranquiliser into your bloodstream, and they come get you.
My uncle didn't have any restraints. The guards just flanked him as he sat on a couch.
They went through a bunch of formalities. Reading the charges, checking his identity, things of that nature. Finally, they said, "Mr Wong, we will now inject this fluid into your body. It contains nanites that will deactivate your heart and brain, thus terminating you. Do you have any last words before we proceed?"
He said, "No. Give me the stuff."
"Very well. Proceed."
They injected him, and then a curtain slid across the room. After a few moments, the guy emerged to make the announcement. "Marcus Richard Wong is deceased. Time of death, 09:06."
My mother released her grip on my right hand. Still showing no expression, she got up and walked out of the room.
"Mom?" I aksed. "Where are you going?"
I turned to Fry. He was still holding on to my left hand.
Then a pow emerged from the hallway, like maybe a transformer blowing.
Immediately, Fry shoved me to the floor.
I said, "What was that?"
He answered, "A gunshot."
I was only familiar with the modern types of weaponry: lasers, blasters, photon beams. I had only passing familiarity with the older types of projectile weapons, in which a bullet was fired out of a gun barrel. A few of these were mounted on the walls of the ranch.
I could only guess that such guns would make loud bangs when they fired their bullets.
In a moment, Fry got up and said, "Wait here. I'll go see what it was."
The reporters and broadcasters were giving one another perplexed looks.
A couple of minutes later, Fry came back into the room. He looked down at me.
"Um... Amy? I... I think you should see this."
"What?"
I got up and took his hand. He led me out into the hallway.
I don't even know how I reacted when I saw my mother's body. Was I crying? Screaming? Staring helplessly? I don't know.
She was spread across the floor, with a gun in one hand. The handle was made up of something that looked like pearl, and there was a cylinder at the top that looked like the place where you would load the bullets. Smoke, predictably, emanated from the barrel.
As Fry wrapped his arms around me, I buried my face in his jacket.
I could faintly hear conundrum around us. I think the cops were trying to seal off the scene and clear the reporters out.
But all I could think about was what she'd said in the morning: "This all going to be yours soon, you know."
Of course I wanted it. Everybody wants the inheritance from their parents, large or small.
But I don't want it this soon.