The thing about being handcuffed to another person and locked in a cell with them 24 hours a day, Lars reflected, was that even if you really, really liked each other at the start, there came a time when you just started getting on each other's nerves.
They were two days away from New Year and Leela was still negotiating with Nixon. Kif hadn't visited since Xmas Eve. Lars was cold, and miserable, and had a permanent crick in his neck from trying to sleep with his arm stretched halfway up to Amy's bunk. Amy felt the same way, minus the crick in her neck.
And they were both going out of their minds with boredom.
Right now they were in the middle of their fiftieth consecutive game of 'I Spy'. Amy was running out of patience and Lars was running out of ideas.
"I spy . . . something beginning with M," he said valiantly.
Amy groaned.
"It better not be mold again. It was mold the last two times. We agreed, no more mold!"
"It's not mold. C'mon, what do you take me for?"
"Ugh." Amy flipped over onto her back. "Fine. Is it . . . man? A man? There's that hot dog guy across the street."
Lars squinted up jealously from his position on the floor.
"You can see the hot dog guy?"
"Yeah, he's on the corner. He's asleep."
"It's not him. I can't see that far."
"Okay. How about . . . metal?" Amy rattled their cuffs against the bedstead. "It's metal, isn't it?"
"No. And it's not me either."
Amy groaned.
"I can't believe I'm playing this with you. 'Me' isn't an option! Why would that even be an option? You can't spy what you are."
Lars frowned at her.
"No-one ever said that. It's not in the rules."
"I Spy doesn't have rules. It doesn't need rules. No-one else would even -"
"If I Spy doesn't have rules," Lars pointed out reasonably, "I don't see why I'm not a thing I can spy. It has to be a thing I can see, that's all. And a thing you can see." He held up his hand as evidence, turning it around in front of his face and waving to her. "I count."
"You do not!"
"I do too. Anyway" - Lars held up both hands this time, forestalling Amy's angry response. "It's not me. And you obviously give up, so I'll just tell you." He jerked his thumb towards the corner of the cell. "It was that mushroom behind the toilet."
"What?" Amy exploded, spring-boarding off her bunk in fury, and almost dislocating Lars's shoulder. "That doesn't count! That's mold!"
"No, it's not. It's a mushroom. Mushroom. M. It counts."
Amy threw her hands up.
"It's mold!" she snapped. "Mold grows into a fungus. It's still mold!"
Well, that was just crazy.
"You think everything is mold," Lars reminded her. "That shadow on the ceiling was mold. The slime on the window bars was mold. The white stuff on your bread was mold. Not everything can be mold, Amy."
"Yes, it can!"
Amy erupted in a burst of irate Cantonese. Lars couldn't understand most of it, but he thought he caught the word that meant 'idiot', somewhere in the flow of furious swearing.
He shrugged.
"Hey, I tried. I'm sorry I'm not a world expert on mold, like some people -"
"The mushroom at issue is indeed an outgrowth of mold. Does that settle the question?"
Lars froze. Opposite him, Amy did the same.
They unfroze at the same time.
"Nibbler?"
"Good afternoon."
"Nibbler?"
"Yes." The Nibblonian hopped into view, perched on the empty upper bunk. He swung down and landed lightly in front of Lars. "Hello."
"Hello?" Lars echoed. "Hello? Hell, no! What are you doing here?"
"I returned to Earth yesterday. You seem to be the most accessible members of the crew."
"We're in jail," Lars pointed out.
"Yes. But the sewer is currently being blockaded by an army of kill-bots. The headquarters of Planet Express are under siege, and I could find no trace of the robot Bender. Or of your younger self. He may be dead already. And time is running short. Already it may be too late to save the universe."
"Save it from what?" Lars rubbed his eyes. "No, wait. Don't tell me. Evil brains. Right? I'm right, aren't I?"
Nibbler blinked, two eyes together, and then a whole flurry of blinks from the third eye on his eyestalk. It looked like he'd had a tiny seizure.
"How do you know that?" he said slowly.
Lars glared at him.
"Because. A lot happened after you disappeared to go do mysterious things on your mysterious home planet. You wouldn't believe it. Leela started a mutant war. Evil brains attacked Fry. We overclocked Bender. It's been crazy. And you weren't here for any of it."
It was hard to square up to something that was a foot high and covered in fur, but Lars gave it a shot anyway.
"The last time I saw you, you thought Leela's baby was going to destabilize the whole universe. You only went to your people to find out if she was some kind of problem you needed to solve. Why should I trust you?"
Nibbler was silent.
"I would never have hurt Leela," he said at last. "Even if my people had commanded it."
Lars swallowed back the bitter taste in his mouth.
"Yeah. Well, good news everyone. It's not my baby, so, crisis averted. The universe is safe."
Nibbler twitched.
"That is a relief. But the universe is far from safe. The "evil brains" as you call them, are an ancient race known as the Brainspawn. They have been locked in conflict with my people since both our races were young. Some years ago, we believed we had succeeded in driving them out of the universe. We do not know what went wrong, but one thing has become clear: two years ago, something enabled the Brainspawn to return. They have been infiltrating the universe ever since, unbeknownst to its protectors. It's true" - he glanced at Lars, inclined his head in embarrassment - "I did return to my people to discuss the potential consequence of Leela's pregnancy. It could have proved disastrous for us all. But I never got the chance to share my news with the council of elders. Within hours of my arrival, my planet was attacked."
"Attacked?"
Nibbler hung his head.
"The Brainspawn had been massing for some time. They planned their invasion well. While we prepared the feast of a thousand beasts, they were preparing for war. Many thousands of my people died in the initial assault. Much of our civilization was destroyed. Priceless artifacts and heirlooms of my people. Buildings older than the planet we stand upon now. You cannot conceive of the scale of the destruction. It was the final, decisive blow of the war between our peoples. We will not recover from it."
Amy reached out a hesitant hand.
"You don't know that," she said gently, stroking behind his ear the way Leela liked to do. "You survived. I bet there are others too. You can rebuild. We'll help. You can't give up hope."
Nibbler shook his head.
"You don't understand. Some of my people did survive, it's true. But they have been enslaved. My home planet, Eternium, has become the base of operations for a full-scale assault upon the universe. Hundreds of thousands of Brainspawn muster there now. The planet has been raddled with tunnels, forming a gigantic Infosphere. The leader of the Brainspawn sits within it, assimilating all the information the universe can provide. His troops move from planet to planet, destroying all in their path. Their force is formidable. In a matter of years they will have learned all they need to finish the Infosphere. They will then destroy reality itself, and consider their task complete."
Lars sat down, hard. His head was spinning.
Amy shivered.
"There must be something we can do. We can't just let them win."
Nibbler twitched away from her hand.
"We have one last hope," he said somberly. "There is one being in the universe who possesses the power to withstand the Brainspawn's psionic attack. A creature known by our peoples as "The Mighty One". He has long been prophesied to destroy the Brainspawn. The prophecies are clear on this: The Mighty One himself possesses no great strength or ability, no cunning or intellect. But in love of another, he will create the most formidable weapon the universe has ever seen. He will wipe the world clean of their influence and so save the universe. This prophecy is the only thing the Brainspawn fear."
"And you . . . you think Fry is this Mighty One? Because I once trapped a big stupid brain in a library book?"
"That was but one incident where you proved your immunity. You do not remember. We had to remove your memories to maintain our cover on this world. But you defeated the Brainspawn after that. You banished them from the universe."
"How?"
"You detonated a reality bomb of Nibblonian origin."
Lars frowned.
"But I didn't make it."
"What?"
"You said – this prophecy, you said I'd make a weapon. Because I was in love with an Other."
"No, no, I said in love of another -"
"Whatever. I didn't make a weapon, is what I'm saying. Maybe you got the wrong guy."
Nibbler shook his head.
"Our most prominent theologians have studied the prophecy. They agree, the weapon you created was yourself. You made yourself The Mighty One."
"I don't see how."
Nibbler coughed.
"You are your own progenitor."
"What?"
"You ensured your own conception. In love of another. In the act of . . ." He waved a paw vaguely. "Your grandmother. You remember."
"Oh. That." Lars winced. He tried not to think about that. "Well, okay. I banged my own grandma. Everyone knows that. But I wouldn't say I was in love with her -"
"In love of," Nibbler snapped. "In the physical act of love!"
"I don't know. That doesn't sound right to me."
Nibbler gnashed his teeth, chittering in frustration.
"In addition to the unique circumstances of your conception," he said slowly, "there was another event. One you do not recall. On the eve of December 31st, 1999, my people ensured you were cryogenically frozen. We trapped you in a cyrogenic chamber, so that you would live long enough to reach the 31st century and fulfill your destiny. But the Brainspawn discovered this. In an act of diabolical manipulation, they sent you back in time to confront me and prevent your being frozen."
"You . . ." A white hot blanket of rage had settled over Lars' mind. "You did . . . what?"
"You were angry," Nibbler continued. "Much as you are now, in fact." He hopped quickly out of reach. "But I appealed to you, for the sake of the universe, to make this sacrifice. To make it . . . for the sake of Leela."
"I . . ."
"You see? You understand? You sealed your own fate in that moment. You sent yourself to the future, made yourself the adversary of the Brainspawn . . . for love of Leela. In love of another."
Lars slumped.
"I see," he said quietly.
Nibbler straightened up.
"Good," he said. "Because time is short. We have an opportunity to destroy the Brainspawn, but we must act now."
"You want to blow up their Infosphere," Lars said.
"Yes."
"But that's your home planet. Your people are still on it. You said it yourself, the brains enslaved them -"
Nibbler drew himself up to his full height, which was roughly as high as Amy's shin.
"Every one of my people understands the threat the Brainspawn pose to the universe. Every one of us knows it is our duty to stand against them. We are a long-lived race, and can go many millennia without needing to reproduce and replenish our numbers. We are not children, Mighty One. We understand what we must do. If the end of our species is the cost of victory . . . we accept that cost."
His fur bristled. His eyes shone with determination. But Lars couldn't help but notice his eye-stalk. It was twitching again.
This time, he thought he understood why.
"It's the end of me too," he said quietly. "Isn't it? That's why you're really here. You need a Mighty One to get past the brains. You need someone to plant the bomb and make sure it goes off. And I'm dead anyway, so you're coming to me."
There was a long silence. Eventually Nibbler nodded.
"The Brainspawn don't know of the existence of a duplicate. They are currently expending their energy on the task of finding and destroying Fry. They may have killed him already, I can't say. His resistance to their powers of psionic attack is mighty, it is true, but he is no great warrior, and he faces them alone. The Brainspawn have many abilities, not least of which is the ability to bend lesser creatures to their will. They will find Fry. They will destroy him. They will raze this planet to ash, if they must. Unless we strike first."
"With me. I'm your secret weapon."
"Yes. The Brainspawn consider you of no consequence, as I did. This is an opportunity we will never have again. We must act now, while their focus is on Fry. Your Professor will provide us with a device capable of destroying Eternium, and together you and I will infiltrate the planet. I worked to construct the New Infosphere – I can lead you to the hub, where the bomb will be deployed at maximum effectiveness."
"But you won't get out." Amy spoke up, sounding horrified. "I know the devices you're talking about. I helped the Professor build them! They're not bombs, you can't just set a timer and run away. They're Doomsday devices. They're for the end of the world. We made them in case of an event so awful destroying the planet was the better solution. You'd take out the brains, but you'd destroy the Nibblonians too. You'd kill yourselves. You can't!"
Lars considered this. He considered Nibbler.
"I can get into Eternium on my own," he offered. "You don't need to come with me. You should stay here with Leela and these guys, and protect them instead."
Nibbler shook his head.
"I told you, the Infosphere is vast. It is built into the very mantel of my home planet. The scale is beyond your human comprehension. You will never find the hub alone. I also told you, my people understand the cost of victory. We accept that cost. I accept that cost." He dipped his head, ashamed. "I am sorry to ask this of you. I am sorry to involve you in our war, again. But if the Brainspawn win, they will not just have defeated my people. They will seek dominion over the entire universe. To know and to destroy, that is their only purpose in life." He met Lars's gaze, challenging. "What is the purpose of your life, Philip J Fry?"
"Lars." Amy grabbed his arm. "You can't do this. There has to be a better way. The Professor and me, we'll make a better bomb. With a remote detonator. We'll -"
Lars peeled away from her grip, shaking his head.
"We don't have time for that. The Brainspawn are getting stronger every day. And we can't keep the truth about me a secret forever. What if Fry isn't dead? What if he comes back here? You heard Nibbler – the Brainspawn would blast this whole planet to mush to get to him. I can't just sit around and wait for that to happen. I won't do it. I'm dead anyway, Ames. You know it, I know it. If it's coming for me anyway then I want it to mean something. I want to go out protecting the people I love. Because that's what my life is worth. That's the purpose of me. I spent so long trying to find it. I thought it was coming to the future. I thought it was marrying Leela. I thought it was having a family of my own. But it wasn't any of those things. It was . . ."
Love, he thought. He could see it all so clearly now. Leela, Bender, Amy, Skreem, the baby . . . they had all needed him, and he had needed them. And every step he'd taken, every person he'd let into his heart and made a part of him, all of it had led him here. To this moment, this choice to save them, which didn't really seem like a choice at all.
"I understand it now," he told her. "It took me a long time to get here, but . . . I'm where I'm supposed to be. And this is what I'm supposed to do." He squeezed her hand. "It's okay, Amy. It's okay."
Amy rolled off the bed and dropped to the floor. She yanked him closer with their cuffed hands and flung her other arm around his shoulder, pulling him into a sloppy hug. Lars could feel her tears against the side of his neck.
"It is not okay," she choked. "You stupid, noble jerk."
Lars hugged her closer, glad for Amy, and her warmth. It felt strangely like a confirmation. Proof he was doing the right thing. Proof of love.
I love you, he thought. I'll die for you. I'll die for all of you.