It had been hours. Or maybe days.
Fry's hold on time was slippery, somehow, still shuttering in and out like a movie played out of sequence. Bender kept trying to talk to him, but Fry's replies felt slurred and confused, even to him. Sometimes, if he really tried, he found he could form the words he wanted – but the effort tired him so much he forgot what it was he'd been trying to say in the first place, and just ended up falling asleep again.
They were driving. Driving and driving, but Fry couldn't find the energy to ask where they were going, and Bender didn't seem to feel like telling him. Or maybe he had told him, and the information had just leaked out of Fry's head like everything else, too much effort to hold onto.
Bender was real. Fry was sure of that.
The blue light wasn't real. He was almost sure of that.
Had the brains been real? They had felt real enough at the time, but now they seemed like a bad dream, like one of his nightmares come to life.
"Nah, invasion of the body snatchers was real," Bender said. "We were lucky, meatsack. We barely made it out of there in -"
Fry shuttered off again. When he resurfaced it was colder, and Bender was saying "if you love her so much, tell her" in an irritated tone, as if they'd been having a conversation Fry couldn't remember at all.
He wondered how long they'd been talking for, and how much time he'd lost. But wondering made his head hurt, and the world was bathed in blue again, and soon it felt easier to fall asleep again.
The next time he woke up he was in a room somewhere. On a planet. He could tell because the air didn't have that recycled, tin can taste it did in the hovercar. He was lying half-upright in a bed. He felt a momentary burst of panic at that – Bender had gone, Bender had left him alone in this strange place with his brain all broken – but no, Bender was in the room too. He was just out of reach, talking to someone.
Arguing with someone.
It sounded like they were trying to whisper, but Bender had never been good at whispering, and the girl he was arguing with was either upset or angry. It was making her voice louder than she realized.
"I can't!" she was insisting. "He'll remember me!"
"No he won't."
Bender sounded so indifferent Fry could almost hear him shrug.
The girl said something Fry couldn't hear.
"No, he won't. I told you, he already didn't," Bender rebuffed, as if this was a trump card in the argument.
The girl went quiet, then, and there was another lapse, as Fry's grasp on reality stretched like taffy. There was more conversation, he thought, between Bender and the girl. There was the buzz of a strip light, flickering above his head. Like the lights at Planet Express. Houses didn't have lights like that, he thought vaguely. Maybe he was in an office somewhere. Or a store.
An old store. It smelled like mildew and powdered milk.
He wondered if the girl lived here. It seemed like a sad place to live.
She was in front of him now, trying to talk to him.
"Philip?" she said softly. "Philip, can you open your eyes? I – I need to look at your head. I think you have a concussion."
Off to his left, Bender snorted.
"Concussion? Is that all? Scaly, he gets those all the time. He talks like he's drunk, his head swells up, he sleeps it off. No big deal."
The girl sighed.
"This is a bad one. And concussion is serious," she said. "It could give him brain damage."
"Can't give him what he's already got."
"Be serious! He's hurt, and you're not taking care of him."
"Not taki – not – you don't know anything, up yours! I saved him, didn't I?" Bender was angry, but underneath it Fry thought he sounded agitated. This suspicion was confirmed when Bender backed down from his attack, and asked, grudgingly, "What else was I supposed to do?"
The girl was feeling the lump on Fry's head now.
"Give him water," she said patiently. "He's dehydrated. And I bet he hasn't eaten anything in days. His blood sugar is through the floor."
"Hey, I tried to feed him! He said he felt sick!"
"That's the concussion. But he still needs to eat, Bender. And you should make him drink water, no matter what. Humans need water."
Bender huffed.
"So I forgot the water. I brought him here, didn't I? It's not my fault I don't know what to do with him. I already told you, you biological creatures are a mystery to me. A gross, sweaty mystery. Anyways, Big Boots always muscled in when he was sick. All that puking and crying and touchy-feely junk is her area. I don't get involved."
"Ow," Fry mumbled. Someone had stuck something sharp in his arm.
"Sorry," the girl said. "I didn't think you would feel that. It's just vitamins and water, to make you feel better. Philip, does your head hurt?" The pads of her fingers felt raspy and cool, pressing lightly on the side of his head. "When I do this, does it hurt?"
Fry wanted to drift away again, but she kept saying his name, drawing his focus. He should probably answer her, he decided.
"A little," he managed at last. "It feels bruise-y."
"Okay. How else do you feel? Philip?"
"Headache."
"Okay," the girl said, and then Fry was falling forward and her voice turned into Bender's, saying "hey, hey, hey, stay awake meatbag" and he realized he must have fallen asleep again.
"Philip," the girl said. "Why don't you want to open your eyes? Does it hurt?"
"No," Fry mumbled. "Sleepy. And dizzy," he explained, when something more seemed to be required of him.
"Can you try and open them?" the girl coaxed. "I really need to look at your eyes, Philip."
She was nice, Fry thought. He should help her.
He opened his eyes. He caught a glimpse of a young face and a worried smile, and then his vision blurred and her face became fuzzy, a streak of grayish-green in duplicate, in triplicate . . . the room spun around him and he shut his eyes again, feeling sick.
The girl sighed.
"He has a concussion," she confirmed. She must have been talking to Bender again. "I can give him something to help, though. Just let me look in that bag you stole. I think the DOOP have a medicine for growing back bone too. It'll help his ribs."
"His what?"
"Just wait here."
The girl's footsteps moved away, and Fry was left in the silence with Bender. He still couldn't open his eyes, but he could feel his skin prickling, as if Bender was staring at him.
Fry could feel himself frowning. He was thinking about the girl. He might not have got a good look at her face, but her voice had had a high, childish quality to it. She couldn't be more than a teenager. Yet Bender had brought him here, to this serious, sad little girl, as if she was the best doctor he knew.
"Bender?" he said uncertainly.
"Yeah?"
"Where are we?"
"It doesn't matter. Forget about it, meatbag."
"But -"
"I said forget about it. It's not important."
Fry let his head fall back. There was no use arguing with Bender, not when the robot was in this mood.
He wondered if Bender was thinking about the same thing he was. The last time he'd had a concussion. It hadn't been anywhere near as bad as this one, but his thinking had been blurry then too. Bender and Leela had fought about it. About how he shouldn't be left alone.
That wasn't the only thing they'd fought about, but Fry couldn't bring himself to remember that now. It was too painful.
It was better to remember being half-asleep, and feeling Leela comb her fingers gently through his hair.
That was a good memory, and Fry was sad to leave it. But something was worrying at his arm, and there a damp patch spreading up his sleeve. It had soaked up as far as his elbow now. It didn't hurt, but still, he had the distinct feeling he was being . . .
Chomped on.
"Uh. Bender?"
"What?"
"Something's eating me."
The girl must have been nearby. There was the sound of glass breaking as she dropped a vial of something and yelped "Bender!"
Bender muttered "uh oh", and there was a pop pop pop sound, like tearing bubble wrap, as he lifted a weight off Fry's forearm.
"Forget about that," he blustered. "That never happened! You didn't see anything!"
Then he moved away, to have an argument he must have thought Fry couldn't hear.
"Relax, would ya? I took my eye off her for ten seconds. It's not my fault she got away from me. Last time I was here she couldn't even lift her up her own big head! She got ninja moves in two weeks! How was I supposed to know?"
There was a long silence.
"Two . . . two weeks," the girl echoed at last. "You think you saw us two weeks ago?"
"Right."
"Two weeks."
"Right." Bender sounded uncomfortable. "Your face is doing that thing again. Why's it doing that?"
The girl laughed. It didn't sound as if she found Bender funny though. More as if she found him sad.
She sighed.
"It doesn't matter," she said quietly. "Here. You should have some alcohol. And boot down for a while. You must be tired. I can look after Fry."
She sounded worried. Don't worry, Fry wanted to tell her. Bender's a robot. He's indestructible. But his head was lolling forward again, and he could feel himself falling asleep.
It would be a waste of his time anyway. Any minute now Bender would probably laugh in the girl's face.
Except that Bender wasn't laughing. Fry waited and waited, battling sleep, but Bender's familiar derisive laugh never came. There was just the silence, stretching out to fill the empty space.
The last thing he heard, before he went under again, was the clink of Bender picking up a bottle. And the sound of the robot's voice, hollow and tired-sounding, as if the edge of his usual bluff had been sanded off somehow.
"Yeah. Whatever, scaly. You do that."
The next time Fry surfaced the lights were off, and the girl was stitching up his head in the gloom.
He could keep his eyes open without wanting to be sick now.
Not that there was much to see. Maybe the girl could see in the dark, but Fry couldn't. His surroundings remained as much of a mystery to him now as before.
"Bender?" he mumbled.
The girl jumped. Fry felt the smart as her hand slipped and she accidentally stabbed him in the ear.
"Ow," he said, on principle.
"Sorry." The girl dabbed at his ear. "Bender's okay," she said. "He's sleeping."
"Oh." Fry considered this. "Am I sleeping?"
The girl had gone back to her stitching. She must have numbed part of his head, because Fry couldn't feel the needle going in and out there at all.
He still couldn't see her clearly, but it sounded like she was smiling when she said, "Why would you think that?"
"Because." Fry's tongue still felt heavy, struggling to get the words out. "If I'm asleep, then this is a dream. And that makes sense."
The girl stopped stitching.
"Why?" she said curiously.
Fry shrugged.
"This feels like a dream."
The girl hesitated.
"But I hurt you," she pointed out eventually. "Just now. You said 'ow'".
Fry shrugged again.
"You can hurt in dreams." He stared at the fuzzy outline of the girl's face. "I dream about Leela sometimes. And when I wake up, it hurts." He touched a hand to his chest, where it ached, dully, every time he thought of her. "Here."
The girl lowered her hand.
"Oh," she said quietly.
See? Fry thought. You're a dream. A not-dream person wouldn't have said "oh" like that, as if his dream pain was the most devastating thing she'd ever heard. A not-dream person would have said "that's dumb" or "who's Leela?".
Fry went on with his theory, emboldened.
"See? Dream," he said. "Also, something was eating me. It had no teeth and it drooled a lot, but it was definitely eating me. And Bender told me it didn't exist! Explain that."
"I -"
"Also." Something else had occurred to Fry. "Bender brought me here," he said. "So you'd help me. Like you're his friend. But Bender doesn't have any human friends. Not unless they were my friends first. So I bet you don't exist either."
"But . . . I do exist," the girl said, puzzled. "You're talking to me."
To Fry's relief, she didn't sound offended. Just mildly fascinated, the way Leela did sometimes when he was walking her through his thought process and she was waiting for him to discover the flaw in his logic.
Fry shrugged.
"Just because you're a dream doesn't mean I have to be rude."
The girl laughed. The sound burst out of her like a hiccup and she clamped a hand to her mouth, as if shocked at herself.
"Sorry," she mumbled. "That was rude. You weren't trying to be funny."
"Eh." Fry waved her apology away. "That never stopped anyone laughing at me before."
He settled back, tipping his head back until he heard it hit the bed post. It was a little disconcerting not to feel it.
"Anyway," he reminded her. "This is a dream. So who cares? I don't. I don't care about anything. I should feel like seven shades of crap right now, but I don't."
He moved his hand up and down like a wave, to illustrate how weightless and pain free he felt.
Then he let it fall, sobering.
"I don't want to wake up," he admitted.
There was a silence, broken only by the distant sound of Bender snoring.
Bender didn't really snore. It was a sound effect he'd downloaded years ago to annoy the crew. But he'd forgotten to remove it and Fry had never reminded him. There was something comforting about Bender's fake snoring. After all, it wasn't as if the robot breathed, or moved in his sleep. Most of the time he didn't even lie down. It could get a little creepy, sometimes. You couldn't tell if he was still alive. Or whatever robots were.
The girl said nothing. Maybe she was listening to Bender's fake snore too, or maybe she was lost in some thought of her own.
"Why?" she asked at last.
Fry shook his head. It was easy here, in this place of warm pink clouds and distant conversation. It didn't hurt.
There was something waiting for him at the border of wakefulness. He didn't know what it was, but he could feel the shape of it, lurking in his memory like an ugly iceberg.
Gunshots in the rain, and a smoke-filled room, and a girl with no fingernails.
Something linked those images together, made them taste like grief and bitter anger, and Fry wasn't ready to remember what it was. It was better to stay here, in the upside-down world of his dream, where he didn't destroy everything he touched.
He shut his eyes.
"I'm tired," he said. Maybe that could be his answer. It felt like an answer.
He was tired. Tired, and empty, and running dry on everything that made him want to live in the real world.
He opened his eyes.
The girl had touched his hand. She was looking at him, in the dark.
"You're not tired," she said quietly. "You're just . . . alone." She swallowed. "It's hard to be alone."
Fry swallowed. There was a lump in his throat now, and it hurt. More dream pain.
The girl stood up, hesitating by his bedside with her hands full of bloody gauze.
And then she ducked her head, unexpectedly, and kissed him on the cheek.
"Go home," she whispered.
She stepped away.
"You should take him," she said, in a shaking voice. "Now, before it wears off."
Before what wears off, Fry wanted to ask her – but she wasn't talking to him. Bender wasn't snoring anymore. When had the sound stopped? Fry hadn't noticed, but he could feel Bender awake again, staring at him through the dark.
The robot tried to lift him up, but Fry's limbs felt heavy and uncoordinated. They wouldn't co-operate with his attempts to move. Eventually Bender gave up and just picked him up, muttering in binary under his breath.
"I'm sorry," the girl sobbed. "I'm so sorry -"
There was a high thin wail, like the cry of a baby, and Bender swore, and then the room dissolved around him and -
Unconsciousness rolled over Fry in a wave of green light.