"Uggghh."

Leela moaned. Her eye was too heavy to open, and it felt like someone had smacked the back of her head with a mallet. Where was she? What was happening? It was disorienting not to know.

"She's waking up!"

"Mom?"

Leela felt a jolt of sudden, inexplicable panic. She made to sit up but was thwarted by a hand on her shoulder, gently pushing her down. The weight of it, and the faint odor of fishing tackle, told her it belonged to her father.

"Dad?"

"It's okay, honey. It's okay."

She felt him push at the bandage around her head. The pressure lifted, and she suddenly found she could open her eye. Morris swam into view, frowning worriedly at her.

"Hey, sweetie. Take it easy, now. You're okay."

"I'm okay?" Leela took a gulp of air, forcing it down to the bottom of her lungs. Breathe, she told herself. Breathe. "Mom," she managed at last.

It was a gut feeling, a tiny inner voice telling her her mother wasn't safe. She needed protection, she needed saving . . . Leela blinked, fighting the rising tide of conflicting memories. Broken glass. A child screaming. Red mechanical eyes in the dark and Lars turning blue, losing air . . .

She felt the soft pressure of a tentacle wrapped around her left hand, and whipped round to face her mother, sitting in the opposite chair.

Munda was pale and scared-looking, but smiling bravely. Her tentacles were bandaged from the tips to her torso, and her face and upper body were covered in tiny cuts, as if she'd been standing in a rain of glass.

"Oh, no, don't look at me like that. The doctor says I'll heal in no time," she assured Leela. She squeezed her daughter's hand through the bandages, despite the pain it must have caused her. "You saved us," she said admiringly. "One more minute and that thing would have been inside. It broke the window. It was shooting in at us with fire and lasers and it was . . . we were all so scared." She trailed off, shaking her head. "It was awful."

Of course – the kill bot. The memory floated to the surface like a softly popped soap bubble.

"The kill bot," Leela said slowly. "I tried to draw it away."

"Yes, you did. You saved us all, it was very brave." Her mother's expression turned stern. "Now never, never do anything like that again."

Leela shook her head.

"Lars," she said, grappling with the memory of the kill-bot's tentacles wrapped around his neck. "Lars, it . . . oh, god. It was killing him!"

She stared around, horrified, and took in her surroundings for the first time.

She was far from alone in the hospital ward. She counted at least twenty beds, all filled, and a makeshift bandaging station down by the door. There were familiar faces all around her. The two-headed old woman in the bed beside her was in Munda's knitting circle - she was doing crochet, ignoring the jagged shard of glass embedded in her left neck. A little boy Leela recognized from the ration lines occupied the next bed down. He was burned like Munda, his skinny chest slathered in ointment. Beside him Leela recognized Raoul, his third arm in traction above his head, and Fly Mutant, out cold. And by him -

"Lars!"

He was lying in the last bed on the ward, apparently unconscious. There was an ugly red weal around his neck – which was packed in ice on either side - but he seemed to be breathing.

Her father seemed to read her mind.

"He's fine," he assured her. "The bot let him go when you appeared, and Brynda says there's no lasting damage. I mean, some hoarseness, and he won't be eating any solid food for a while, but he'll make a full recovery."

Leela sighed in relief. The baby shifted inside her – lazily, as if it was bored, or just waking up. Leela stroked her stomach vaguely, hoping to soothe it back to sleep before it could get into a really good rhythm of kicking. Her head was still throbbing, the last thing she needed was a tandem percussion performance in her uterus.

She squinted down at Lars in his hospital bed.

"Why isn't he awake?"

"Ah . . ."

"Well . . ."

Her parents exchanged nervous glances.

"That would be the horse tranquilizer," her father said at last.

"The what?"

"The nurse might've dosed him a little high," Munda chipped in. "In retrospect. But it didn't seem to be taking hold and we'd used all the restraints on those nasty killer robots."

"So we had to sedate him," Morris explained.

Leela stared at him.

"Lars," she repeated for clarity. "You had to sedate Lars."

It was hard to believe.

Her parents traded uncomfortable looks again.

"When you were hurt, he sort of . . . lost it," her father explained.

"What do you mean, lost it?"

"Well . . ." Munda hesitated. "When they first brought you in, no-one could feel the baby moving."

Leela felt her hand fly to her stomach again. It was absurd – the baby was in there right now, happily punching her in the pancreas, she knew that – but cold fear stabbed through her all the same.

"Brynda didn't want to do a sonogram without your approval," Munda continued. "And Lars -"

"Went into hysterics," Morris concluded. "You know that thing your boy Fry does, where he gets all keyed up and screams at you 'til he stops making sense?"

He waved his arms, in a surprisingly accurate impression of one of Fry's hysterical fits.

Leela winced.

"Yes."

"Well, that was what Lars was doing. Though in his defense, he was making sense at first. There was a lot of yelling about how you put your life on the line for all of us and we owe you -"

"Which we all agreed with," Munda noted. "And thought was very sensible."

"But you know how he gets. There was a lot more about, eh, what Fry would say if he was here, and how you had enough on your plate with killer robots and this war and . . . something about brains? Murdering brains? I don't know." Morris shook his head. "He doesn't get enough sleep."

"Not nearly," Munda agreed.

"The sedative was just supposed to take the edge off," Morris went on. "But he went out like a light. Brynda can bring him round again, but there didn't seem much point if you weren't awake."

"No . . . you were right. Let him sleep."

Leela stared at the bottom bed, trying to picture Lars in hysterics. In Fry, she knew it all too well. He had a madman intensity once something set him off – he would be all flailing incoherence and rash decisions until the mood burned out and Leela had to save him from the consequences. It had always fascinated her, the way he let himself run so completely on emotion, no matter where it led him. But Lars had never been like that. He had always been so steadfast. Easy-going, even in the face of the unimaginable. Maybe he was just older, and tireder, but he never seemed to lose his head the way Fry so often did.

Until now.

Leela was distracted from her wondering about Lars by the sudden appearance of Brynda.

The mutant midwife looked worn to the bone. She'd been serving as the sewer doctor since her predecessor had succumbed to choleric scurvy (one of the many terrifying diseases unique to the sewer) three weeks into the war. The strain of so many starving, sick, and injured patients had only served to make Brynda – who had always been brusquely efficient and not particularly warm – more irascible. Not that the mutants complained too loudly. After all, a doctor with poor bedside manner was better than none at all.

"Good," she snapped now, as she swept into view. "You're awake. How do you feel?"

"Fine. Sore," Leela admitted. "But fine."

Brynda rolled her eyes.

"Follow the light," she ordered, monitoring Leela's pupil as she flashed a tiny pen light on and off. "Just the head hurts? No bleeding? Cramping?"

"No."

"Glad to hear it. Who's the president?"

"Richard Nixon," Leela sighed, as the light was shone in her ears, and then down her throat. "Can I get up now?"

Brynda clicked off the light and tucked it back in her top pocket.

"No."

Her mouth twisted, as if she'd swallowed something unpleasant. She cleared her throat, and Leela realized the midwife was preparing to make a speech.

She jerked a thumb in the direction of Lars.

"He's human. You know how I feel about that, and I won't pretend otherwise. But he before he went down like a sack of potatoes, he made a good point." She cleared her throat again. "You were lucky today. Your head took the worst of it of the fall, but it could easily have gone another way. I could be telling you'd lost your child." Her gaze lit on the burned little boy in the next bed. "I could be telling more than one mother the same thing." She shook her head. "You took a dangerous risk. As your doctor, I'd put you on bed rest for a month just to teach you a lesson." Before Leela had a chance to complain, the woman's glare softened unexpectedly. "But as doctor to everyone else in that hall," she continued. "We do owe you. All of us. So. All things considered . . . I think it's time we had a look at that baby."

The adrenaline shot was a rude awakening for Lars. He came to gasping and flailing desperately, sweat pouring off his forehead like he'd been running in place.

"Leela," he gasped. "Leela!"

"It's okay. I'm okay. I'm here."

Leela held out her hand. Lars seized it like a lifeline.

"The baby," he croaked.

Leela swallowed. That fear was still too paralyzing to voice out loud.

She took his hand instead and laid it on her stomach in time for the next kick. When Lars felt it his whole body convulsed in a shudder of relief. He shook his head, wordless, and Leela realized he was crying. Trying not to, but crying all the same.

She felt a lump form in her throat. If he didn't stop, he was going to set her off too.

She squeezed his hand reassuringly.

"Hey," she murmured. "Wanna see?"

Lying on her back for the sonogram, with her shirt hiked up and cold goo spread across her stomach, Leela couldn't help flashing back to the situation which had landed her here in the first place. The stickiness on her stomach had been warmer then, and her parents hadn't been gathered round to watch, but really . . . . potato, po-tah-to, as Fry would have said.

She'd had six months to get used to it, and Leela still found it surreal to think that she and Fry had made a baby. In a closet, while she was jealous and he was angry and a party was going on in the other room. The whole thing had been so rushed and senseless and unintentional. It felt like a lifetime ago, when she thought of that day. Before she knew the truth about Lars, before Fry left, before brainspawn and sieges and presentient robots. Back when there was just Fry, her best friend who was slipping away from her. Back when the weight of her mistake was crushing her and the only thing that could ease it was him.

Leela sighed, wondering how bad life must be if she was feeling nostalgic about the implosion of her love life. Pretty terrible, she thought -

And then the wand passed over her stomach and every sardonic thought flew out of her head. Sound had filled the tiny curtained space – a fast-paced glub glub glub like surging water.

Lars jumped.

"What is that?"

But Leela already knew. She had never heard it like this before, but that sound had been the backbeat of her own heart all these months. She heard it in her dreams at night, she heard it when she lay awake and listened to the pulse thrum in her own ears . . .

"It's the baby's heartbeat," she murmured.

Lars was still panicking.

"It is? Why's it so fast? What's wrong?"

Brynda shot him a scornful look.

"Nothing's wrong," she said. "The fetal heart rate is always high. Now shut up and let me do my job." She shifted the wand around again. "Ah-hah . . . here we go."

Leela felt her breathing stop. She couldn't tear her eye off the screen, where the swirl of black and white was coalescing like a Roscharch test, into the curve of a cranium, the shape of a heel . . . the form of her baby.

"There she is," the midwife declared.

"She?" Leela said.

"She?" Lars echoed.

"She," Brynda confirmed. Taking in their expressions, she made a tch sound in the back of her throat. "If you wanted it to be a surprise you should've said. I've seen forty patients this past hour. I can't remember everything."

Leela shook her head.

"It's fine."

"I don't mind either," Lars murmured. He was still staring, wonderstruck, at the screen. "Wow. Look at that."

Brynda cast him a skeptical look.

"You have no idea what you're looking at, do you?"

Lars smiled.

"Oh no," he said easily. "She's a blob. But she's the most beautiful blob I ever saw. And one time Yancy's wife dragged us to this modern art exhibition at the Met, so you know. She's got competition."

"I bet," Leela said drily. She felt the corner of her mouth turn up in a smile. "Here. Follow my finger, I'll show you. That's her foot, see?" She pointed. "And that's her head. And that's . . ."

She trailed off, frowning. What should have been her baby's arm was pale and cloudy, lacking the density of her other limbs. There was no bone in it, she realized. No definition. She swallowed.

"That's . . ."

"A tentacle."

Leela said nothing. The room was spinning around her.

"One of a pair," Brynda continued.

Morris nudged his wife.

"I told you you shouldn't knit baby mittens," he whispered.

Leela hardly heard them. She was too focused on the amorphous spaghetti-tangle of her baby's limbs. Her world had narrowed down to this point – to the roaring of blood in her ears, and that image on the screen.

She had forgotten to breathe. When she pulled a breath in at last – gasping, dizzy as if she'd been drowning – her eye burned hot and she realized she was crying. Crying, over this.

"It's really not so bad," her mother said nervously. "You can do a lot with suckers, sweetie. And when you've never known anything else, you don't even have to get used to it."

"Yeah. She'll do great, and she'll be beautiful," Morris agreed. "Just like her grandma. And hey . . . it could be worse. You could be trying to love a little Fly Mutant. Or a Leg Mutant, yeesh. Only a mother could, am I right?"

"Shut up, Morris."

"Right. Sorry. Me and my mouth."

"Leela?" Lars touched her arm, gently. He looked thrown, utterly unsure how to comfort her. "I – I mean, it's not so bad, is it? I don't think it's so bad. She'll just be . . . different. Like you're different. Like I'm different, with my brain." He smiled weakly. "Everyone's got something, right?"

Leela shook her head, tears falling onto the front of her shirt. Annoyed, she reached up and scrubbed her eye.

"It's not – that's not . . . it's not that bad. That's not what I'm . . ." She took a deep breath and met his gaze at last. "Don't you see?" she said bitterly. "All this time – all these months – I've wondering if I did the right thing. It's been eating me alive, watching my people suffer and starve, knowing I did this . . ." She shook her head again. "But now? This would have happened all along. They would have taken one look at her up there" - Leela gestured vaguely up to the surface, her hand flying down in a frustrated fist - "and known what she was. What I am." She exhaled, a long slow breath. "It was always going to be this way."

There was a silence. Leela could hear her mother sniffling. Her father was chomping on his cheek, the way he always did when he didn't know what to say.

Lars coughed.

"So, uh, just to be clear – you're okay with the tentacles? Because I'm okay with the tentacles," he said hurriedly.

Leela softened.

"I don't care about the tentacles. I don't care if she has hundreds of tentacles. She's mine."

"Well, that's reassuring," Brynda said. "But she's only got the two. And in every other respect, she's as happy and healthy a baby as I could hope to see. On the small side, but not in the danger zone - which is nothing short of a miracle, considering how we've all been eating." She began to mop the goo off Leela's stomach. "I'll print you a picture. Congratulations."

"This is incredible," Lars said. "Where's Skreem? She should see this. And Amy, and Bender! We should show everyone!"

"Maybe not everyone," Leela checked him. "But those three, sure. Where are they?"

"I don't know about Skreem," Morris said blithely, "but Amy and your robot friend are down by Undercity Hall. She's overtiming him. Did I say that right?"

"Overclocking him?"

"That's the one!"

Leela swore violently and swung her legs off the bed, grappling for her boots. She yanked her shirt back down, ignoring the way it stuck to the last of the ultrasound gel.

"I have to get to Bender. I have to stop this."

"But you said Amy could do it," her father said, bewildered.

"I didn't mean it! I was lying! Dad, he's a standard issue bending unit, and he's years out of date. If Amy puts twelve top-of-the-line processors in him . . ." Leela shuddered.

"What? What happens then?" Lars had gone pale. He was already grabbing for a new crutch, or anything that might support him as far as Undercity Hall. "Leela? What happens if Bender overclocks himself?"

"It'll kill him. He'll overheat. He can't possibly find enough liquid coolant to sustain him down here."

The fetid Lake Mutagenic was room temperature at least, a stagnant swamp breeding bacteria. Run that through Bender's inner workings and he'd grow algae and rust, without lowering his core temp enough to make a difference anyway.

That was if the shock to his system didn't fry him on the spot.

"We have to stop him. Come on!"

A small crowd had gathered to watch Bender's vivisection. Leela pushed her way through. She still felt woozy from the head wound, and her mother had one tentacle wrapped around her waist, keeping her steady. But the mutants shrank back from the ferocity in her expression, the crowd melting like terrified fog at her approach.

"Hey, eyeball! Join the party!"

Bender was lying on an operating table made of old crates. He waved a cheerful arm at her, as if Amy wasn't digging around in his head.

"Bender!"

Lars lurched towards the robot, slipped on a pool of oil and promptly fell over.

Leela stepped forward more carefully.

"Bender," she ordered. "Stop this. It's crazy."

"Is it, Leela? Is it really?"

Leela felt a flicker of annoyance. That – making a question out of an obvious, objective fact – was something Bender had picked up from Fry. It was his way of trying to derail an argument when he didn't have a good counter.

"Yes," she said flatly. "It is. Your internal mechanisms can't handle the strain of twelve extra processors, Bender. Your head will explode."

"Ten bucks says it doesn't."

"Bender!" Leela threw her hands up in frustration. "Amy," she said, turning to her friend, "stop this. I know I agreed to it, but I was supposed to change his mind before it got this far. It seems like I can't, so – if Bender won't listen to reason, I'll just have to go back on my word. Shut it down."

Amy hesitated, the soldering gun smoking gently in her hand.

"I – I'm sorry, Leela," she said at last. "I have to."

"What?" Leela exploded. "Amy, this is madness! Why would you ever agree to this?"

The Martian girl hung her head. To her credit, she at least looked ashamed.

"I'm sorry," she said again. "But Bender says it'll be fine, and I need his help."

"With what?"

"I can't tell you. You don't want to know."

Bender laughed.

"When I'm running on the power of twelve extra processors, I'll know all the secrets of the universe. Space and time will bend to my whims!" He laughed maniacally, then shrugged as if suddenly bored. "Amy wants to know if some paradox is really unbreakable. I said I'd tell her."

Leela frowned.

"What paradox?"

What could possibly drive Amy to gamble with Bender in this way?

"If it can be broken," Amy said fervently, "you don't ever need to know."

Bender extended an arm and bopped Leela condescendingly on the nose.

"Trust me - you don't ever want to know."

"Bender." Lars had pulled himself up again, with Morris's help. He spat out a mouthful of oil and extended one greasy hand to Bender, pleading. "You don't want to do this. Knowing all the secrets of the universe takes all the fun out of it. Like when someone tells you what happened on All My Circuits before you get to watch it. It's no fun! Don't do it."

For a second, Bender seemed to waver.

And then the moment passed and he grew angry.

"No! You don't get to tell me what to do!" he raged. "You're not my Fry. You only came back to the future for her!" He pointed at Leela.

"You did try and kill me," Lars pointed out. "Wait . . . you know I'm Fry?"

Bender crossed his arms, petulant.

"Amy told me. Don't change the subject. You didn't appreciate my greatness then and you don't appreciate it now!"

"That's not true!" Lars protested. "I think you're great!"

"You're just saying that so I won't overclock myself," Bender sniffed. "Well, screw you. Screw all of you! I'm gonna overclock myself and unlock the mysteries of the universe, and then I'm gonna find my meatbag, wherever he is!"

"Bender," Leela said desperately. "I miss him too, but this isn't the way -"

"Up yours," Bender retorted. "Up all of yours!"

He flung Amy back from him with one arm, and reached into his own head with the other.

"No!" Leela cried, as Lars yelled out "Bender!".

Bender flicked the switch.

There was a scream like an element boiling dry and the robot seized up, his limbs flying out soldier-straight as he began to shudder in place. The pupils in his optics shrank and grew, from pinprick-sized to as big as Leela's fist, then mismatched, then over again, flashing faster than Leela could follow.

"Nnngggh – asdgkljl – one zero zero zero – zero – blmhfff -"

The metal of Bender's casing began to buckle and hiss, turning cherry red.

Lars made a grab for his friend, but he cried out and fell back immediately, blisters springing up on the palm of his hand.

"Don't touch him!" Leela yelled. "He's superheated!"

Lars wasn't listening – she had to throw her whole weight against him to stop him reaching for Bender again. The mutants who had stuck around to watch the show now scattered, fleeing from Bender as if he might explode. Leela's own parents were the only ones who stayed. They didn't have a choice - it was taking all three of them to hold Lars back.

Oily black smoke was now boiling out of Bender's head.

Amy screamed something about processors melting. She reached into his head, still wearing her thick soldering gloves, and pulled out a chunk of twisted plastic, but it was broiling with sparks. One flew out and caught her through the thin fabric of her sweater – it sent her flying into the opposite wall. She landed dazed and gasping, but still conscious.

"The lake!" she shouted.

It was the only thing that could possibly cool Bender enough to save him.

Leela's father looked at her and Munda and nodded.

"Hold him!" he yelled, pushing back at a still-struggling Lars. "He'll mutate in the lake!"

Then he rushed forward and kicked with all his strength at the crate under Bender. The robot rolled out and plunged into the stagnant water, where he sank like a stone. A cloud of foul green steam billowed up, blinding the onlookers. When it dissipated, the surface of the lake was still.

Lars had gone still too.

"Bender?" he said numbly.

Leela had forgotten to hold him back. She'd forgotten to move.

"Morris!" her mother hissed, and then she heard her father say "I'm on it", and splash into the lake himself.

He came up a moment later, dragging Bender with him. The robot landed on the shore with an empty clanking sound, like a heap of spare parts. His visor was closed.

He was cool to the touch now, but unresponsive.

"Bender? Bender?" Amy had crawled her way over to him. She fished a flashlight out of her pocket and shone it into his head.

"What do you see?"

"Nothing," Amy whispered. "He's – he's . . ."

Her voice broke.

Leela knew what it was she couldn't say. He was dead.

Bender was dead.

Behind her she felt Lars sag, his bad leg giving way beneath him. He made no attempt to get back up again. He didn't seem to have the strength.

Amy was weeping, her forehead pressed against Bender's damaged chassis. She was mumbling, words that sounded like an apology.

Leela took it all in, disbelieving.

"No," someone said, firm and decisive. Everyone turned to stare at her and she realized the voice had been hers – the disbeliever was her. "No," she said again. "He's not dead. Amy, pull yourself together. Run some diagnostics. Look at the damage. Do something!"

Amy sniffled. Then she wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her charred sweater and amazingly – amazingly – obeyed. She gestured to Morris to lift Bender's body back onto the crates and then went hunting for her laptop. It came on in a flurry of blips and beeps, but when she connected it to Bender . . .

Nothing.

It was quiet. The parameter scan screen stayed black and empty.

"Try again."

Leela was disturbed by her own voice. It was even, eerily calm. Denial, she supposed, was a powerful thing.

They watched the search icon spin uselessly on the screen, trying to connect with something they all knew was nowhere to be found.

"Nothing," Amy sniffed.

"Try again."

"Leela -"

"Try again."

"It won't work, Leela. He's -"

Leela felt that old anger flare in her again.

"I'm still your captain, aren't I?" she snapped. "I'm ordering you to try again."

Amy gave up and hit the button again. They watched the little glimmer of light on the search icon run the length of the circle once, twice -

Midway through the third rotation, it stuttered.

Lars, who had been slumped on the ground watching the scan with dull eyes, suddenly sat bolt upright.

Amy's breath hitched.

"It can't," she stuttered. "It ca – can't."

There was a soft whine from somewhere inside Bender's head, as if his hard drive was rebooting. On Amy's laptop, the screen began to check the health of his core drives. 392 language centers were declared intact, 378 irretrievable. An entire bending module attempted self-repair and failed. A help message appeared, informing the user that their robot was running on emergency power.

"There has been an issue with your unit's ability to process power from alcohol. We advise you submit your unit for repair. There has been an issue with your unit's ability to process power from alcohol. We advise you submit your unit for repair."

A folder appeared on the main screen.

"Clearing folder," a help bubble informed them.

Leela frowned.

"That's Bender's biggest folder," she said. "There's a whole terrabyte of porn in that. What is he -"

"Folder empty," the help bubble declared. "Writing to folder," it said next. Data began to flash across the screen. Dates, names, times, faces – reams and reams of it, scrolling faster than any human eye could follow. Leela could only make out snatches of it. Co-ordinates for the planet Erosh. The flight manual for a spaceship. Yesterday's date and GPS co-ordinates for the sewer, tagged simply Ree. This filed itself into a subfolder, with more dates and details, ending at a point ten years from now. There were other subfolders – Leela, and Fry, and some other names she recognized – Amy, Cubert, Lars – coupled with more she didn't – Vondra, Risnar, Callie.

And then the folder locked itself and disappeared from the screen.

There was a beat of silence. No-one breathed.

And then Bender's visor slid open.

He stared at them – Amy's tearstained cheeks, Leela's ash-white face, Lars's stupefied expression.

"What?" he said.

"What?" Leela echoed.

"You were – that's not possible," Amy gulped. "Bender, you were dead. How are you here? How are you not . . . how?"

Bender scowled, and then for some reason turned his gaze to the ceiling.

"A light touch, you said! Does this look like a light touch to you?" He shook his fist at the sky, then sat up, examining his damaged chassis with interest. "So I was dead, huh?"

This last question he fired at Leela. She shrugged.

"It . . . looked that way," she admitted.

"It was that way," Amy insisted. "You were dead! You were dead, and then you weren't, and that's not how it works!"

Bender shrugged.

"Maybe God likes me," he suggested.

Leela snorted.

"I doubt it."

To her surprise, Bender laughed.

"You're right," he said. "God's an ineffable bastard. He only brought me back so I can do his dirty work. Speaking of" - he stood up - "I'm outta here."

"Oh no you're not! You're not going anywhere," Leela countered. "You're going to stay here and let Amy repair you, and then you're going to listen to a very long lecture from me about what you just did. It was shockingly irresponsible, even for you, and you scared us half to death."

Bender seemed unconcerned.

"I'll miss you," he continued, as if she hadn't said anything at all. "Captain." He ripped off a fake salute. "Calamari." He saluted again at her stomach.

He spun round to Lars, and hesitated.

"You were alright," he said at last. "You were alright, meatbag."

He crushed him in a sudden hug, then let him go and turned just as suddenly to Amy. The expression on his face was one Leela had rarely seen before – genuine sadness.

"He's a dead man walking," he said ruefully. He hesitated again. "Sorry."

Leela felt panic flutter inside her. She didn't know what was happening here, but she didn't like it.

"Bender." Her mouth was dry. "Where did you go? What did you see?"

Bender was quiet for a beat. His gaze was distant - staring at something she couldn't see, reading an internal file. Then -

"Everything," he said, his voice soft and touched with that strange note again - that genuine, intangible sadness. "I saw everything."

He straightened up, pulling himself back into the present.

"Later, losers!" he cried out, sounding more like the Bender she knew. "One zero zero one -"

A green bubble popped into existence as he continued to chant in binary. It enfolded the robot before Leela's eye.

" . . . one," he finished.

There was a brief, blinding flash, and then Bender was gone.