"—and the PE ship will be in the region of the mismatched Doppler radiation," Leela concluded, primly. She always took a little pride (OK, lots) when she showed off her basic physics knowledge to the engineering intern. She had always been fond of Doppler effects since grade school. Any technique that could let you estimate velocity using only one sensor, she was all for.
"We just have to sit here and monitor the near-Earth defense data until we find it. Good thing you hacked into it so easily."
"Well, actually, Kiffie gave me a guest account, so I could download his PASCAL poems to me," she said. "He sometimes likes to rename stars after me in the DOOP star charts too."
"How sweet," Leela said, straining as much insincerity out of her voice as she could manage.
Oblivious, Amy continued, "but it's strange. I think there are a lot of other users in this database. I think they're actually hacking in too. Hey, there's Kiffie's username! He and the other users are looking at the same data we are. Guess we're not the only ones thinking of this," she said in a manner that would do a Neutral proud, while secretly enjoying the rare sight of Leela the Lecturer deflating somewhat.
"Drat," Leela said, eye scanning the screen. "At least there seem to be only five others. Now we know who the competition will be." Her eye lingered on a particular column on the display. "Hey, Amy—"
"Faye---"
"Whatever the hell you are—is this column how much time they've been logged on?"
"Yeah—looks like a couple of users have been on for a couple of hours. Let's see—they've even managed to scan the asteroid database twice."
Leela swatted away the small voice of despair, and focused. She loved competing. It had been too long. "OK, someone has more resources than us. But if they're scanning twice it means they haven't found anything. What else have these guys looked at?"
"Hmm… someone else has scanned the Oort cloud three times."
Fry and Bender would have asked the computer for help to hide, Leela thought, and the computer would have given them a list of possibilities, all cluttered areas of the solar system. Which one would Fry choose?
And then an image popped into Leela's mind, unbidden.
He looked down, disappointed to a degree that surprised her. After all, it was only the Moon.
And then she saw the reflection off his helmet, and she turned and saw the Earth, as if for the first time-
The memory suddenly blurred, and then
---"She's going to die if you go. Do you understand that?"
He put his chin down on his chest for a moment.
"O.K."
And then he was gone.
That latter memory was sharp and dominant, but she still retained the fading impression of Fry's face the first time he saw the Earth rise over the moon's landscape. Funny how your memories of the same person could feel so—so different.
"We're all looking in the wrong place," Leela said. "We're thinking like people from the 31st century, not someone from the Stupid Ages. I know where Fry would go, if the computer gave him a set of choices."
"Where?"
But Leela was already adjusting the display to magnify the sixth planet of the solar system. The rings of Saturn stood out clearly, looking as solid as a knife blade, but (as even the Stupid Age people might have known) was actually composed of millions of clumps of ice particles, most the size of the PE ship.
Without a word, Amy executed the Doppler analysis.
"Faye, that faint discoloration over—"
"Got it, Lo-la." Moments later, the anomaly filled the screen.
"Saturn's rings?" Amy said. "That's not much of a cover. I mean, the Oort cloud is, like, millions of times bigger. Wouldn't it be smarter to hide there?"
"Who are we talking about, Faye?"
"Oh, yeah."
"Anyway," Leela mused, "I suppose it might look beautiful to someone from the Stupid Ages, if you didn't know that it's just a bunch of ice, and a bunch of methane farms for fast-food freezies." What a simpleton. A cowardly, perverted, simpleton. What had she ever seen in him, - she unconsciously clenched her lips.
Even as the anger seeped its way back into her feelings, she still felt a wistful pang of regret. He was probably there right now, staring at Saturn's rings, thinking it was one of the niftiest things he had ever seen—
_________
It was one of the niftiest things he had ever seen, even niftier than the psychically-controlled console for the Playstation XXX, even better than the Virtual Drinking Game Bender had shown him a few years ago. Clumps of frozen ice and methane floated past the window, and the PE ship had drifted just far enough above the orbital plane of the rings for Fry to watch the individual clumps blend into a continuous blur out in the distance. Planet Express rarely delivered in the Solar System, and never here. He could watch it forever. When the computer, prodded by Bender, had mutely listed a set of possible hideouts, Fry had no hesitation in picking Saturn over that dumb-sounding Hoot Cloud.
Reluctantly, he pulled his gaze away from the window and back to the holophoner. He was sitting on the bridge of the PE Ship, alone. Bender, Zoidberg, and Scruffy ("Scruffy. The janitor.") were somewhere else, probably in the galley, where Bender was diligently trying to figure out if Scruffy had any money on him.
A shower and a few hours of sleep had done wonders for him. The shock and despair that had blanketed his mind during the past few days had receded to the fringes of his consciousness, sniffing for a way back in. But his successful escape, his realization that he wasn't crazy, and the beauty of their hideout--all combined to seal out his fears, and the rusty cogs in his brain were actually struggling to move. He felt more cheerful, even hopeful, even though the computer didn't quite seem to be working properly, and couldn't speak or otherwise explain why they had had to stop somewhere in the Solar System. That was fine with Fry. He wanted time to explore his memories again.
So, for the fifth time today, he tried to focus his concentration and blew into the holophoner again—
The horizon had transformed into a massive wall of fire and foam, thundering toward the island. The moons dimmed and dropped into the sea. All of existence seemed to lurch on its side as columns of fire descended from the heavens and plunged into the sea. He turned around, determined, at the end, to finally face his tormentor eye-to-eye.
It was not as scary as he had feared. An enormous eye on an eyestalk, resting on a nest of eyes, stared at him, unblinking. He stared back, squinting. He thought he could see something move, faintly, behind the pupil. He focused, and stared harder.
He could see the reflections of the pylons and the Changed Leela in its eye, but something else suddenly moved, inside the eye. He could almost make it out-
And the vision dissolved into smoke, while Fry shook his cramped hand. Nothing. Nothing! He couldn't get past that point, couldn't understand what had surprised him so much when he looked into the eye of Them.
He had experienced this memory so many times that he had become desensitized to the terror and panic he had felt at first. Kinda like how Star Wars started losing some of its punch after the twelfth viewing in a row.
The added sense of detachment had allowed him to observe more details of his final memory, to watch the background behind the tragedy unfolding in the forefront of his memory. Yet, all these reruns left him more confused than ever. For example, that black island, and the strange pylons on top. It was so familiar, yet he had never seen it…
"That Scruffy meatbag has no wallet," grumbled Bender, as he sauntered through the doorway. "No ID, nothin'. I thought you coffin-stuffers needed all these cards and cash to function."
"Bender," Fry said, staring absently out the window, lost in thought. Which would have unnerved Bender (had he had nerves), because, while he was used to Fry staring blankly without thought, he had never seen him lost in thought before.
Shrugging, the bending unit extraordinaire began unpacking more cash from his torso and stuffing it under the PE ship couch. He had spent hours unpacking the $2.6 billion dollars so he could be a bit more mobile. He had originally planned to drop the cash in the cargo bay, but like magpies and pirates from times immemorial, he had found it difficult to separate himself from the cash. Thus the couch was now looking more like a very expensive beanbag.
"Bender," Fry said again, watching his friend at work, while an odd feeling crept over him, "how do you find the center of the universe?"
"I look in a mirror."
"No, really. Have we ever gone to the center of the universe?"
"You mean the end of the Universe? Where we saw the cowboy universe?"
"No, the Center of the Universe."
"Why the hell do you care?"
"I don't know. I just feel like it's important."
"OK, I'm bored now," said Bender, pulling out a stopwatch. "Oh look, fastest time yet I've gotten bored around you! A new record! I gotta add this to my scrapbook. Why don't you ask your stupid questions to the computer while I write this down?"
"Its speech thingie is broken, you said."
"Oh yeah, forgot to tell you, I fixed it. Found the loose paper clip Amy had used for a fuse."
Fry looked at the computer console on the wall by the entrance to the bridge. "Computer?"
"Yes, how may I help you?" a deep, yet gentle and friendly, masculine voice said.
Startled, Fry tumbled off the couch onto a heap on the floor, flailing to hide behind something. He had heard that voice once before in his recent past, but couldn't quite place it-
"Computer?"
"Yes?" the baritone voice asked, showing no trace of impatience.
"Why are you talking like that? You're really freaking me out."
"I'm sorry about that. I had no idea."
The phrase triggered something in Fry's porous mind. He had heard that phrase before. Where? And then he remembered crouching in a closet, hearing those same words. That gentle, understanding, patient voice—
"Wait a second! Why are you talking like-"
"—Gary!?"
The PE captain stared at the face on the computer console, tuned to one of the few surviving surveillance holos around the entrance. The familiar face grinned up apologetically.
"Sorry to have to bug you so soon, but Nibbler somehow finally broke out of your apartment. I guessed he might try to come here."
Leela sighed outwardly, swore inwardly. "I'm not surprised. He's been trying to break out for two days now. Hang on." She turned to Amy. "Get to your car and start it up. We're leaving as soon as I handle this."
The trudge to the front hole was getting familiar. The force field protecting the entrance flicked away, and Gary stepped inside. Before the field powered up, something small and dark dashed into the room and clung to Leela's shins.
"Nibbler, honey!" Leela cried. "What's wrong?" Her pet looked awful, and not just because of the cute bandage wrapped around his head, left over from this afternoon's accident. The little creature was shaking with anxiety, fear, and excitement—actually she couldn't tell. He was babbling up a storm, though.
"What's he saying?" said Gary, a bit flummoxed now that Nibbler had appeared.
"I don't-", she was cut off as Nibbler scampered away toward the main hangar. She followed, motioning to Gary to follow. "Come on, help me get him."
The handsome young man grinned. "Aye, Aye …."
"-Captain."
"What?" Fry stammered.
"Captain Turanga Leela reprogrammed my speech circuit 23 days ago," the computer repeated pleasantly. "She also set my charisma timbre to 9.5, baritone level to 7.5, speech tempo to 75% thoughtful, and 25% concerned, and inflection level to 'cute'."
"Leela programmed the computer to talk like Gary?" Fry said.
"Yeah, she did," Bender said.
"Gosh, that's kinda—" Why was it so hard to say? "-lame. I mean, I can see Amy and Kif doing something like that, but Leela?"
Bender's yawn simulator booted up. "So?"
"I mean, she wasn't even dating Gary. They were only going to start last night."
"Big deal. So she's mooning over this handsome, talented guy who looks like he strolled right out of a fan fiction. We processed this information hours ago."
Still off balance, Fry looked around blankly and said, "Computer, what's at the center of the universe?"
"Please clarify the foundation of your question—do you mean the center in the physical sense, or the sociological sense?"
Fry and Bender looked at each other.
"What kind of stupid question is that?" Bender demanded.
"You can only have one center, can't you?" said Fry, prepared to learn that once again, he was being stupid.
"I will assume that you mean the most literal definition, the physical center of the universe."
"Yeah, sure," Fry muttered darkly, actively looking for reasons to hate the computer, and having no trouble finding them.
"The center of the universe is 50 billion light years away, in the M590182 supercluster of galaxies, beyond the observable universe."
"If we can't see it, how do we know it's there?"
Bender shook his head. "I sometimes forget how stupid the Stupid Ages are." Turning back to the red light on the computer consule, the robot asked, "How long to get there?"
"Approximately 100 billion years."
Fry glanced toward Bender, his brows furrowed.
"Is that a long time?"
Bender shrugged. "For a robot? Nah, not if you can generate your own Sudoko puzzles to pass the time. But you? Well, I'd be sweeping your dust off the floor billions of years before that."
Fry faced the single red light that was his best guess of the ship computer's "face". "That seems kinda long. Can't we fly there quicker?"
Gary's voice replied patiently: "Based on current fuel levels I can travel ten light-minutes at subspace speed. After that it would take about 100 billion years to have 85% certainty that the vessel would drift to the center of the universe, assuming a constant velocity upon burnout and no restroom stops."
"Why can't we just fly there straight?"
"As I said," the computer said gently, "we only have enough dark matter to fly for 20 minutes."
"Geez," muttered Bender, "I thought I'd never say this, but we shoulda took that little rat-
-Nibbler!"
Leela burst into the hangar, followed closely by Gary, both whipping their heads around, searching for Nibbler while Leela continued to call.
Amy, who had just finished packing her makeup kit and was starting to walk down the stairs to the Romeo, was startled, and rapped her hand accidentally on the railing. She squealed in frustration. "My nails! Can't you just walk through a door for once-- Oh, hi Gary," she said, her tone and posture switching gears as effortlessly as the PE Ship would have done, had it had gears, or a transmission. She batted her eyes at the young man, who was tapping something into his wrist console, just as Leela was tapping into hers.
"Hey, Amy."
"I've hooked into the security holos, but I don't see Nibbler, " muttered the PE captain. "What is going on with him? He's been acting strange for days now."
"Yeah," agreed Amy. "Last night, I had a hard time dragging him to my place after I took him from you." She resumed trimming her nails with her pocket laser. "You know, maybe he smelled Fry hiding at your place. He's always kind of liked him, you know?"
She glanced up and wondered why Leela was frowning, waving her arms in front of her. Gary, who was standing in front of Leela, didn't notice this, because he had stopped and stared, puzzled, at Amy.
"Leela's pet smelled who at Leela's place? Fry? Wasn't he--"
Too late, Amy realized what she'd said. Instinctively, she twisted her body into her most seductive pose, hoping to shut down Gary's brain the way she was able to shut down most brains with a Y chromosome. However, she forgot her laser was still on, so she nearly sliced off the tip of her cute nose, somewhat ruining the intended effect.
Gary didn't notice, because he was now looking at Leela.
"What's going on?"
Leela would have rather been in a gunfight than be in this situation, so she was deeply relieved when a voice spoke from behind her, even though she had no idea who was speaking.
"Captain Turanga Leela?"
Gratefully she glanced over her shoulder, taking in the young Neptunian and the rest of the white-uniformed crew clustered about him by the doorway to Farnsworth's lab. For some reason Leela felt queasy as she saw the last member of the group, a yarn alien, glide through the door.
"Yes?"
"Sorry to bug you, but we've been sent to give you and Amy Wong a quick psych health check—you know, check for mental and emotional problems from your recent hostage crisis?"
"It was hardly a scary situation. Frustrating really. And anyway, who let you in?"
"Oh, the police gave us building access," the Neptunian said vaguely, as a wheeled cabinet appeared behind him. Leela, Amy, and Gary started to turn to look at the odd device.
It was at that moment that Nibbler's gibbering punched through the oppressive silence of the large chamber. Leela snapped her attention back toward the console. Her little pet had somehow appeared in front of the main PE console, playfully punching a bunch of keys at random. Somehow, by accident, he had refreshed the display of users accessing the DOOP defense system. Leela blinked. Two new users were now scanning the outer planets, including Saturn's rings.
Leela strode toward Nibbler, who hopped into her arms, purring, as if nothing unusual had happened. Without a backward glance the PE Captain started descending the stairs toward Amy's car.
"Amy, we're outta here."
The yarn figure trilled a few notes, which were translated a moment later into "Wait!"
"Sorry," Leela said, striding across the hangar floor. "You can tell me how emotionally damaged I am when I get back." She flashed a quick smile at Gary. "And you can tell me other things."
"This hasn't happened before; we've always gotten her to at least look," muttered the young Neptunian.
A staccato burst of whistles were translated a moment later as, "Quick, go stop her and make her look."
The Neptunian looked incredulously at the yarn creature.
"Um, you want me to try and stop her?"
"They're all gone," a third team member helpfully pointed out.
It was true. Amy's ship was disappearing through the hole in the room, and the footfalls from Gary's stride were fading away down the exit corridor
"How're we gonna get more whale oil?" Fry said.
"Dark matter-" the computer corrected.
"Whatever. Where's the nearest gas station?"
"Fifteen minutes, past the Charon entranceway to interstellar route Sqrt(66), assuming legal flight speeds," Gary's voice said.
Fry turned to Bender. "Can we sneak there and fill up?"
"If by sneak you mean smashing through the electromagnetic barriers onto the starway, dodging all the bounty hunters and DOOP patrol ships, then somehow managing to slow down to actually get fuel—then yeah, maybe."
"Bounty hunters?" Fry said.
"Oh yeah, forgot. Someone's posted a $2 million Woolong reward for us." Bender's head turned momentarily, as Zoidberg entered the bridge. "Didn't say whether it had to be all of us, or just some of us--or whether there was a reward for just returning the hostages" he mused, eyes tracking Zoidberg's waddle towards Fry.
"What's a woolong?"
"Are we playing 20 questions here, or what? All you need to know is that $2 million is not enough to get me to turn myself in. Yet. I'm waiting to see if the reward goes higher."
"Bounty hunters!" Fry said, breathless. "How awesome is that!" His face dropped suddenly. "Oh wait. I guess it's not so awesome, since they're trying to kill us." He thought for a moment, then shrugged. As a delivery boy, various forms of life had been trying to kill him on a daily basis for years now. No biggie.
"Oh, they're not trying to kill us. Just capture us alive."
The young man relaxed even further.
"Oh. Neat. I wonder what one looks like?"
"I can help you, my friend," Zoidberg said. "Turn around."
The robot jumped into the air and spun around, followed a moment later by Fry, whose brain took a moment to decide whether to commit an anal hygiene violation, before taking a wait-and-see approach.
Fortunately there was little to see, as Zoidberg was only pointing toward the viewport, so Fry allowed his gaze to wander past the Decapodian's claw, back to the spectacular view. It was so easy to lose yourself in that sight—the chunks of ice, the creamy hue of Saturn off to the side, the bright stars moving in the background--
Stars moving?
Just as Fry's brain started to realize what that meant, he felt a shudder through the hull as the ship's engine roared to life.