'A River with Currents' - by coldangel_1

[Reply #40 on:]

I'll let you know. But I get first dibs.
More postage tomorrow. I'll try to keep up a one-a-day pace if I'm able.
Heh... that's quicker than Stephen 'let's give supernatural powers to inanimate objects' King could do when he tried his online novel shittick. But I guess he was going for quality, I'm just going for fun. 

[Reply #41 on:]

Fun for you, torture in a sadistly enjoyable way for me, can't wait for the next update.

[Reply #42 on:]

 

Originally posted by coldangel_1:
I'll let you know. But I get first dibs.
More postage tomorrow. I'll try to keep up a one-a-day pace if I'm able.

Why you little... It takes me more than a month to produce one chapter. [/Jealousy] 

 

Originally posted by coldangel_1:
 But I guess he was going for quality, I'm just going for fun.   

What's this quality stuff you're talking about?! 

[Reply #43 on:]

Zapp’s positron blast cut through the air, leaving a flaming trail that flared and expanded. He laughed as the incandescent fireball billowed out and engulfed him. The last thing that registered in his mind was a smell of frying fat.
   The atmosphere erupted in flames that expanded out rapidly. The five fleeing figures were caught by the blast wave and lifted off the ground as it pushed them through the access tunnel, limbs flailing and screams stifled by the roar of burning air. Leela felt something strike her in the side – a piece of debris travelling at high speed – and pain lanced through her.

   They all landed in a heap next to the Planet Express ship, and flames licked all around them for a moment, charring clothes and hair, before the inferno suddenly whipped away and a tremendous gale picked up. They climbed to their feet and looked up through the small secondary dome to see the main cemetery enclosure rupture into shards and explode outward into vacuum, sucking the fire and the air out with it.
   “Oh my…” Kif gasped as the wind picked up speed. “Atmospheric breech!”
   “Into the ship!” Leela shouted over the rushing air, clutching the wound in her side.
   As they ran up the embarkation star of the Planet Express ship, the whole asteroid shuddered sickeningly and vast clouds of dust and vapour whipped past, out through the access tunnel and into the void. Fry was the last up the ramp, and he had to grab hold of the railing at the top to stop from being pulled away by the monumental gale of escaping air. Leela hit the emergency close button and the ramp ascended, sealing the ship and causing it to topple forward and roll on its side.
   “Arrragh!” Leela cried as she fell against the bulkhead. Blood spilled from the wound in her side, and she felt a peculiar coldness creep up from the wound.
   “Leela, you’re bleeding!” Fry said, starting forward to help her.
   “So are you,” Leela noted, gesturing to his face where impact with the ground had torn a gash in his right cheek.
   “I’m fine,” Fry waved it off. “But we need to get you looked at and…” he trailed off as the ship shuddered again.
   “It’ll have to wait,” Leela said grimly, pressing a hand over the wound and making her way aft toward the cockpit. “I think that atmospheric vent may have damaged the asteroid’s orbit… pushed us…” she stepped out onto the bridge and took in the view through the ship’s forward viewscreen and the plexiglass partition of the docking dome. The magnificent disc of the Earth had tilted up to meet them and now filled the view – a beautiful, horrifying panorama that drew nearer with each passing second.
   “We’re falling…” Amy said, staring ahead.
   “Well, see you all in hell,” Bender remarked cheerfully.


One week later.
Taco-Bellevue Hospital.

Fry walked through the hospital corridors aimlessly, not caring that there was no back in his hospital gown. He needed time alone – the entire remaining crew of Planet Express had visited him throughout the day, but their presence only served to drive home the reality of that one glaring absence. Leela was dead. Dead.
   They’d tried to put on brave faces (except Scruffy, who unashamedly sobbed into his moustache), but the looming grief was as obvious as Fry’s missing arm.
   When he reached the coffee machine he tried to hit the button with his non-existent right hand, and sighed.
   Overhead, a television was mounted on the wall showing the evening news. Fry tried to focus on Morbo’s bulbous green head as a welcome distraction. The monster read a report.
   “PATHETIC humans’ preoccupation with placing immense objects above their own heads came to hilarious fruition this week when asteroid funeral station, Orbiting Meadows, was destroyed by insane Earthling Zapp Brannigan. The asteroid fell from Earth orbit and made impact in the South Pacific Ocean.
   “An estimated TWELVE MILLION PITIFUL HUMANS have been killed in New Zealand, the eastern coast of Australia, New Guinea, and the Pacific Islands – swamped by giant tsunamis. BWAHAHAHAHA!!”
   Fry gaped at the television. “Twelve million people?” he murmured to himself.
   “Ah, it’s not so bad,” A cheerful sardonic voice from behind him said. “Most of them were only Australians anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.”
   Fry turned to see the surgeon robot, iHawk. The robot switched its personality mode from ‘irreverent’ to ‘maudlin’ and looked suddenly downcast. “Such a pointless loss of life,” he muttered depressingly.
   “I wonder…” Fry said, “if this was what Zapp intended.”
   “That’s what they’re saying,” the robot replied, flipping his personality switch back to irreverent. “He was crazy in the coconut! Couldn’t be a hero anymore so he chose to be a villain.” And back to maudlin: “…You get your place in the history books either way…”
   Fry suddenly remembered Bender’s brief obsession with being remembered and his subsequent reign of terror on Osiris IV. He shuddered inwardly.
   “You should be in bed, kid,” iHawk said. “But then again, by rights you should be in a coffin too. Guess there’s no keeping you down.”
   At the mention of a coffin, Fry broke down and began to weep. “Oh God!” he cried. “She’s gone… she’s really gone… I… I don’t know what to do.”
   “So you lost someone you love,” iHawk said sadly, then flicked back to irreverent. “Lost love, lost arm, lost mind. It’s all right – people lose things all the time. I lost my wallet earlier when your friend Bender was visiting.”
   “Thanks, but that’s not really the same.
   Maudlin: “You’re right… I’m just a cold-hearted machine incapable of entering the inner sanctum of true emotion.” iHawk brightened up with a flick of his switch. “Now how ‘bout we see to that missing limb of yours, chum?”
   Fry found himself sitting in a surgical chair as a number of robots worked around the stump of his right arm, affixing steel rods and insulated cables. He couldn’t afford bio-replication so he’d settled for a cybernetic prosthesis… not that he cared either way… his mind was a million miles away. Back in the ship in those last minutes…

[Reply #44 on:]

 

“Twelve million people?” he murmured to himself.
“Ah, it’s not so bad,” A cheerful sardonic voice from behind him said. “Most of them were only Australians anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.”

      Damn, that was my future great great... great grandchildren you just killed off.   

Zapp's totally gone off the deep end >< I hope things get better... but it's got to get worse before it gets better.  so I'm mentally prepared.

[Reply #45 on:]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOO
Leela's dead *breaks into hysterical sobs*
You mean evil horrible nasty person, you killed Leela, the one character I relate to and she's dead!
*Suddenly stops crying* Wait, you mentioned timetravel earlier, so Leela could still live, she will liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii ve
wahahahahahahahaha *goes slightly insane in joy*

Love the update Coldy, can't wait for more.

[Reply #46 on:]

 

Originally posted by Tastes Like Fry:
       Damn, that was my future great great... great grandchildren you just killed off.   

And my own future great great... great grand-nieces and nephews. I have an odd way of honouring my own country by destroying large portions of it in fiction...

 

Zapp's totally gone off the deep end >< I hope things get better... but it's got to get worse before it gets better.    so I'm mentally prepared.

Well Zapp's just vapourized himself to some extent... so he's out of the picture...
Or is he?


jle1993 - 

[Reply #47 on:]

Any idea when you're gonna update? This fic keeps me on edge! 

[Reply #48 on:]

Tomorrow...
My tomorrow... which will be in... ehh... twelve hours?

[Reply #49 on:]

Kk, I'll see if I can be the first to reply, I doubt it, but I can but hope

[Reply #50 on:]

Great story!

Hehe Fry gets a Robot arm   

[Reply #51 on:]

One week earlier.
Low Earth Orbit (LEO).

All of the atmosphere from the Orbiting Meadows station and exploded outwards toward interstellar space and provided enough retro-thrust to send the asteroid toppling slowly toward the Earth’s atmosphere.
   Orbiting Meadows wouldn’t be orbiting much longer.
   Leela slumped into the pilot chair of the Planet Express ship with a grunt of pain and hit some buttons on her console.
   “The station’s going to enter Earth’s atmosphere in under three minutes,” she murmured. “That’s not nearly enough time for people in the effected areas to evacuate… oh God… Zapp, what have you done?”
   Fry caught her meaning and gritted his teeth at the implications. “What can we do from here?” he asked grimly.
   “Not a damn thing,” Leela replied. “Just hope and pray… and try to save our own asses.”
   “That’s the winning Bender attitude!” Bender said. “Now lets…” He was cut off by a tremendous lurch beneath their feet. The station’s damaged artificial gravity generator was now being affected by the increasing strength of Earth’s gravity well, causing the Planet Express ship to be thrown about the landing pad like a toy. Huge chunks of structural debris and asteroid fragments were torn asunder and pelted the little green ship while outside the first hazy corona of agitated ionospheric particles began licking around the station.
   “We have to get out of here,” Leela said, grimacing as fresh pain shot through her side. The movement had made her rock in her chair, and now blood ran freely from the shrapnel wound, staining her tank top and spattering the deck. Fry saw her distress and got up from his station to help, but Leela waved him back.
   “Everyone stay strapped-in,” she ordered. “This is gonna get bumpy.”
   Fry looked at her with concern but complied, affixing his restraint harness.
   “Re-entry trajectory is… unpredictable,” Amy said from the navigation console. “We’re already committed to atmospheric entry, but turbulence from the asteroid’s passage is going to play havoc with our handling… plus we’ll have a whole mess of falling objects to contend with when this rock starts breaking up, not to mention the fact that we’re already moving faster than we should be… Too zai zi! Leela, you think you can handle this?”
   Leela narrowed her eye and smirked. “Walk in the park,” she muttered, spooling up the engines and engaging the docking thrusters in one fluid motion. The crew clung to their seats as she manoeuvred the ship to align with the station’s docking gate.
   The gate remained closed, its mechanism damaged by the violent explosions, while outside a pink glow had formed around the outside of the asteroid.
   “Aii…” Leela groaned. Rolling her eye, she pushed the thrust control all the way forward and the ship lurched ahead, aiming directly at the still-closed gate. The nose of the ship hit the reinforced plexiglass barrier, which gave way, splintering under the force. The PE ship flew onward through the gate tube and impacted the exterior gate in a similar fashion – with another crash and fragmenting plexiglass the ship was free.
   …And instantly spinning in violent response to the sudden presence of rushing, burning atmosphere. The little green vessel toppled end-over-end while pilot and gyroscopes fought valiantly to right the uncontrolled tumble.
   “I think I’m going to throw up,” Kif wheezed as he clutched Amy’s hand. The forward viewscreen showed the looming Earth spinning wildly in and out of frame.
   “C’mon you temperamental bitch,” Leela whispered to the ship. With one hand she grasped the manual air-brake handle and yanked it up with all her strength. Large sections of hull on the ship’s nose lifted up in response, catching stratospheric gasses and jolting the ship violently. Leela immediately applied a deft adjustment with the docking thrusters and the ship’s descent snapped into alignment with the Y-axis. The sickening tumble ceased.



   “Alright Leela!” Fry shouted exuberantly.
   Leela’s face was pale and her lips tinged with blue, but she smiled for him. “Thanks Fry,” she said. “But we aren’t out of the woods y…” she trailed off, looking at the monitor in front of her in horror. “Oh you son of a…”
   Above them and all around, the Orbiting Meadows asteroid was fragmenting. Great flaming boulders ranging from hundreds of metres across to pebble-sized meteorites broke away from the main mass, filling the sky with a deadly hail that began shooting past the PE ship on all sides.
   Leela swung the control yoke hard from side to side, having to contend with the buffeting force of the onrushing atmosphere as well as an incandescent onslaught of asteroid debris that filled the sky around the PE ship. To avoid the larger chunks of flaming rubble she had to contend with bombardment by smaller meteors that bit into the ship’s hull like bullets. The console schematic showed a number of ruptures and the sound of impacts echoed throughout the hold.
   “Hang on!” she shouted over the wailing alarms and the re-entry roar. Kicking the lever down with her boot, Leela disengaged the air-brake while simultaneously pushing the throttle back up to full. The ship’s nose dipped down to face oceans and cloudscapes below and began descending at a dizzying rate, outpacing the asteroid matter into clear sky.
   Leela backed the engines down and pulled up, trying to exit the asteroid’s drop zone and bleed off as much velocity as possible. But as the ship struggled to halt its downward plunge, the starboard stabilizer fin trembled and creaked ominously from the upward force. The control surface had been punched through in a number of places by micro-meteorites, and the entire structure was weakened. Leela noticed the danger too late; the fin snapped off with a shriek, spiralling away and sending the PE ship into a violent death roll above the cerulean waves of the Pacific.
   The crew were thrown around in their seats like rag dolls. Leela gasped and shouted out wordlessly as the sky and the sea spun around sickeningly in front of her.
   “Oh God!” she breathed, wrestling with the unresponsive controls. “I can’t… I can’t… Oh God… I’m so sorry everyone… Brace yourselves.”
   Nobody could hear. Fighting against the tremendous G-Forces exerted by their corkscrew descent, Leela operated the console and bled all remaining power to the docking thrusters – it would burn them out, but if she was able to bring the nose up before the ship hit the water then they stood a chance. She engaged the thrusters with a pale, trembling hand, and the ship lurched into violent alignment amid plumes of delta-V, before slamming down, belly-first, on the ocean surface.
   The PE ship skimmed like a stone on a lake for about seventy miles, leaving clouds of superheated steam every time it touched the water. Gradually it slowed, digging in, and then bobbing up like a cork with the help of the buoyancy tanks the Professor had installed after their ill-fated fishing trip. It sat in the water, steaming and crackling, while in the distance the asteroid fell and the sky turned blood red.
   The cockpit of the PE ship was filled with acrid smoke. Bender’s restraint had broken in the impact due to his weight, and he had bounced around the cabin shedding parts until he fell hard against something soft and wet. When he picked himself up he found the front of his casing was slick with blood.
   “Uh oh…” he muttered. “That’s never a good sign.” Looking down he was mortified to see Fry lying unconscious beneath him. Bender’s torso had crushed Fry’s arm into a mangled mess of red pulp and protruding bone fragments. He was still breathing, although erratically.
   “Oh crap… I hope humans aren’t emotionally attached to their limbs,” Bender muttered. He looked around. Kif and Amy looked unharmed, and were groggily unstrapping themselves. Leela was slumped over the piloting console. Bender moved to her side and prodded her shoulder.
   “Cap, we got a minor medical emergency over here,” Bender said. “Are there any spare arms left in the infirmary?” Leela didn’t move and Bender gently pulled her back up so that she was sitting upright. Her eye was closed and her whole side was wet with blood. Too much blood.
   “Oh no… Leela?” Bender gripped her shoulders hard, a surge of electronic dread playing across his circuits. Her eye fluttered briefly and she opened it, focusing on Bender with some difficulty.
   Her lips moved, and Bender had to turn up his audio to register her faint words: “Is… everyone… okay…?”
   “Everyone’s alive,” Bender replied carefully, hoping she didn’t notice the blood on the front of his casing. “Little banged up and down for the count, but alive.”
   “Good…” Leela’s eye closed again. “Tell Fry…”
   “Tell him yourself!” Bender snapped angrily. “You’ll be fine.”
   “Bender… please…” Leela whispered. “Tell him… tell him I love him.”
   Bender stared silently as Leela slumped to one side. “He already knows, kiddo,” he murmured to the dead woman. He kept on staring for long minutes, even when the upper disturbance of a large tsunami passed beneath the ship.

   At length he hit the distress signal and moved to tend to Fry. Leela’s body remained sitting in the command chair. The Captain had died on the bridge of her ship.

[Reply #52 on:]

Oh God no! I knew it was coming but it was so emotional, are you sure you're not human? I loved the detail, and Bender's reaction seemed unusual but approprate. Very good, even with Leela's death I liked it.

[Reply #53 on:]

I am, as Rob Zombie put it, 'More Human than Human'.

I got a little carried away. This flashback section wasn't supposed to last this long but I was having such fun with the explosions and the spaceship... Now to enter into the second phase, the gears will change a bit.
Whenever bender does something out of character, I reckon that's his *true* self shining through.

[Reply #54 on:]

Bender's personality reminds me of a quote from the Phantom of the Opera.

'Masquerade, hide you face so the world can never find you'

Its from the song Masquerade and reminds me of Bender because I think he trys to hide his real self. Sometimes his mask slips though, just like Leela in a sense. 

[Reply #55 on:]

First time reader mr.Coldangel, and the fanfic is truly amazing, and very sad, i cried in leelas death scene. it is very emotinal yet exciting.

ps: i love Phantom of the opera Jile!

[Reply #56 on:]

*sniffle*
so beautiful, I can't say much, my handss arre shhakingg

[Reply #57 on:]

jle - perhaps just like all of us.

Albert - this is the capstone of a trilogy if you're interested. The first two are 'The Real Decoy', and then 'The Hero of Bot-any'... and they can be found here:
 http://www.peelified.com/cgi-bin/Futurama/4-001395-1/
 http://www.peelified.com/cgi-bin/Futurama/4-001405-1/

Technically you don't have to have read them to get what's going on, but they're meant to be chronological. So if you have spare time you might want to look at them as well - they're illustrated.

TLF - Oh my goodness... are you cold?

[Reply #58 on:]

OooOh thanks i definatly have time!

[Reply #59 on:]

Jeesh, talk about enthralling.
I'm not going to say anything else, you know you're good. 

[Reply #60 on:]

You know I do enjoy my airborne insanity 
Remember that scene in my novel where Cale and the gang are forced to take on a pair of MiG-29s by firing stingers out the open rear ramp of the C-130 Hercules? 

[Reply #61 on:]

Oh yeah...although not the whole MiG numbers etc bit because those 'names' don't mean anything to me...and there you were yesterday telling me how numbers are meaningless - when you use them to describe some of your most beloved objects of the sky. 
 

[Reply #62 on:]

Ooohh..... err.... hmmm.
touche
Nevertheless, I still stand by my affirmation that mathematics is The Devil!

Numbers in aircraft designations are always coupled with letters or names, and that means I can remember them. If they were just numbers on their own I would have no chance.


BY THE WAY everyone - credit goes to any1else for providing the ablative re-entry heating effect on the PE ship's underbelly in that last illustration. Isn't she a lovely lass?

[Reply #63 on:]

But numbers ARE words! From now on we're going to be spelling everything with letters!
Stupid teaching degree. I'm advertising learning areas for chocolate's sake...whatever next.

Mmm, currants.

I'm a lovely lasso? Why yes. A velvet rope...

[Reply #64 on:]

But 1 hate 5p3llin9 w1th num6er5...

[Reply #65 on:]

And you want to be a robot....

[Reply #66 on:]

I could be a non-mathematical robot... like Bender. He wasn't able to speak Binary with God, and he has trouble adding up his child support money.

OH!! ALERT - THE LAST UPDATE NOW HAS A SECOND PICTURE ADDED TO IT IF YOU WANNA SCROLL BACK UP TO HAVE A LOOK. IT'S ALSO POSTED IN MY ART THREAD... SOMETHING EMOTIONAL THAT jle1993 REQUESTED.

[Reply #67 on:]

And I thank you for drawing it, its a fantastic pic Coldy 

[Reply #68 on:]

You have amazing writing abilities!

I don't really like emotional storys that much as I prefer comedy, action and sci-fi stuff better but I can still recognise good work when I see it.

Keep up the good work

[Reply #69 on:]

Having just this moment (finally) finished reading "Bot-any," and "Currents," I am left with one thing to say...

WOW! Just... wow. 

[Bender]
Bring it on, BABY! 
[/Bender]

[Reply #70 on:]

 

Originally posted by coldangel_1:
OH!! ALERT - THE LAST UPDATE NOW HAS A SECOND PICTURE ADDED TO IT IF YOU WANNA SCROLL BACK UP TO HAVE A LOOK. IT'S ALSO POSTED IN MY ART THREAD... SOMETHING EMOTIONAL THAT jle1993 REQUESTED.

<sighs> even the red nipple-buttons on Leela's steering column have taken on a melancholy air in that pic 

Neatly written/drawn scene of tragedy there, enjoyed reading/viewing it a lot! I post this to reaffirm that your masculinity isn't being compromised by writing about... you know... those things girls have that us men aren't meant to. Emotions, that's the word... 

[Reply #71 on:]

Well, coldangel, in a fit of Hedonismbot-esque boredom, I came across your fanfics and read them.  I have to say, while I generally prefer comedy to drama, your fics are quite good and engaging.  Maybe it's because they're episodic (I'd equate them in length to an hour-long show) rather than the massive epics I usually see from the dramatic/tragic camp.  Not that the epics aren't good, I just have a short attention span.  I'd give you about a 9/10 for style, 9/10 for plot, and 7/10 for characterization.  I especially enjoyed your Firefly homage (even if it was a bit explicit), and I'm following this story with great interest.  I actually watched "City on the Edge of Forever" last night, and I'm a little worried that I see where you're going with this.

Anyway, keep up the good work.

[Reply #72 on:]

 

Originally posted by coldangel_1:
OH!! ALERT - THE LAST UPDATE NOW HAS A SECOND PICTURE ADDED TO IT IF YOU WANNA SCROLL BACK UP TO HAVE A LOOK.

*scrolls up*

...

You're cold, sir.  Brilliant and awe-inspiring, but cold.

[Reply #73 on:]

Thank you all for your feedback, there'll be more to come.

Jle1993 - my pleasure 

ZoidZoid - I'll try to throw in some sparks of mirth amid the seriousness to counterbalance. I admit this one's a bit darker than the previous two.

SpaceCase - Thanks for taking the time. Those other two stories have been relegated off to the previous months' pages. I'd bump them up, but that might be seen as egotistical.

Marcus - That's right, I'm still a man. It's emotional, but there was also a big explosion and lots of blood. This is balance. 

Nerd-o-rama... I have to confess that I haven't actually seen the episode in question, I just happened upon the quote pertaining to Time Travel and thought it fitting due to Futurama's strong ties to Trek. So this isn't going to resemble that episode in any way barring a monumental coincidence. I've been meaning to pick up Star Trek: TOS so I can get properly in touch with my sci-fi roots, but for the moment I am unable due to a cash shortage.
Re: episodic nature. I'm a firm believer in a begining and an end for stories (fanfic or otherwise). A conflict emerges, a path is trodden, and a resolution is found. I tend to grow irritated of long-running epics at times myself, because a story isn't a story until it's finished... until the capstone is in place. If it meanders on past resolution and into obscurity it becomes a rambling thought chain.
After the hero saves the world and gets the girl we're supposed to fade to black... not follow him home and watch him eat cereal in front of the TV.

Officer 1BDI - That's me name, baby 

[Reply #74 on:]

Haven't seen it?  Okay, good.  Let's just say the episode ended poorly for Our Hero's romantic interest.  Of course, it being Star Trek, she was a flavor of the week, rather than a character we've grown to know and care about, so it couldn't be that similar.  It also has surprisingly good philosophy to balance out the amazingly bad time travel science; I recommend it, if only to see Kirk and Spock posing as 1930's hobos.

And I'm glad you agree on the episodic nature; I could never get into things like "The Other" or "Universe of Malice" simply because they have no resolution.  "Season 5," which I picked up recently, is giving me almost the same problem, with a very strong continuity and subplots out the wazoo.  Fortunately, that at least has a beginning and an ending to each chapter.  And of course, the last lengthy, ongoing shipper-drama-omgeveryone'sdead fic I got involved in reading managed to stretch into infinity (partly the fault of one of my comments, actually) and shows no signs of being completed, thanks to the author's descent into the drug-addled world of elementary school teaching.  Stupid people with their jobs and their real lives...

[Reply #75 on:]

Wow, you're story is great, it has an explosion and a robot.

[Reply #76 on:]

Two weeks later.

Turanga Leela was buried on a hill in the New New York central cemetery, beneath the spreading limbs of an Alpha-Centorian Royal Purple Cherry Blossom that rained a light sprinkle of delicate petals the same colour as Leela’s hair. While the world mourned the deaths of millions of expendable Australasians, hers was just one more number tacked onto a very long list, but for those close to her, the end of a part of their own lives was etched on the marble headstone.
   Her parents, Morris and Munda, attended the funeral. They hadn’t been issued a surface pass, but the authorities weren’t going to argue. Fry’s new hand could crush a man’s skull like a ripe melon, and he was of a mind to do just that; so the Turangas weren’t bothered.
   On the fine Autumn day, the crew of Planet Express gathered at the cemetery, along with Leela’s parents, Cubert and Dwight, Nibbler, Kif, her old co-workers from Applied cryogenics, and even Adilai. Stirring speeches were made about Leela as a friend, a captain, a source of cheap labour. Sentiment was expressed about her strength and nobility and unswerving courage… but through it all, the only thing Fry could think about was the fact that she was no longer there.
   Fry spoke haltingly of his love for the woman, but the words seemed bland and unworthy. He finished with the simple statement: “It’s not right,” before taking out his holophoner and playing a simple, sad tune, accompanied by illuminated images of Leela twirling majestically on a backdrop of stars.
   “Thank you so much, Phillip,” Munda said tearfully, dabbing at her eye with a tentacle. “She would have loved it.”
   At length, the funeral began to break up. The Professor left to begin construction of a ‘mourning dome’, and Amy and Zoidberg went to help him get home. The others gradually drifted away as well, with nothing left to say and the awkward burden of shared grief that didn’t really want to be shared. Fry and the Turangas remained.
   “She was our angel,” Morris said brokenly. “For her to have been taken from us so soon after coming back into our lives, just seems like such a cruel fate.”
   Fry nodded silently, staring down at the headstone.
   It read: ‘Turanga Leela, 2975 – 3006. Friend, Daughter, Captain. In your eye, we saw ourselves.’



Fry disappeared into the city, and for days nobody saw him. Bender became worried when the Stalinist cockroaches in Fry’s apartment took advantage of his absence and began constructing miniature tanks and aircraft out of discarded Slurm cans for their eventual conquest of the Robot Arms building.
   Bender got Amy to help him search, hoping that the orange-haired goon hadn’t wandered into a suicide booth somewhere. After hours of driving around in Amy’s hovercar to all of Fry’s familiar haunts they eventually tracked him to a dingy bar in the Shady district of Manhattan’s Gloomy East Side.
   Fry sat alone at the bar, dishevelled and unshaven, nursing the last in a long line of bottles and smoking a cigarette.
   “Fry, have you been here all this time?” Bender asked.
   Fry glanced up at his two friends and shrugged. “I was at another bar earlier,” he replied with a gravely throat. “But it got demolished to make way for a pet shop… and then the pet shop owner threw me out for getting into a fight with the iguana.”
   “You gotta stop this and come home, buddy,” Bender said, putting a hand on his shoulder. Fry turned away and glared morosely at the bar.
   “Yeah Fry,” Amy added. “We all miss her, but we have lives to live. We have to go on.”
   “No,” Fry muttered. “I don’t have a life now. She was my life. Now I have nothing, I’m just…” He slumped his shoulders. “Just leave me alone guys.”
   “Is this what she would have wanted?” Bender pressed.
   “This isn’t gonna bring her back, Fry,” Amy said. “You can’t turn back time.”
   Fry stared, his mouth hanging open, and with an involuntary spasm of the unfamiliar nano-nerves in his cybernetic arm, shattered the beer bottle. He got to his feet and looked at Bender and Amy with a strange gleam in his eye.
   “Why not?” he said. Without waiting for an answer, he turned and hurried out of the bar.

Professor Farnsworth dozed lightly in his chair, surrounded by various implausible and useless inventions. Fry burst into the lab and breathlessly ran over to the Professor, grabbing him by the frail shoulders and shaking him.
   “Professor!” Fry shouted. “Professor – wake up! I have something really important I need you to do for me!”
   The Professor snored.
   Frustrated, Fry began shouting louder. He tried clapping his hands, but the sharp-edged mechanical one bruised his human hand brutally. He picked up a strange spherical device that the Professor had been working on and slammed it down on the bench with a loud crash.
   The Professor snored.
   Fry was about ready to start slapping the old man when a quiet ‘ding’ sounded from the other end of the room. The Professor awoke spluttering at the small sound and lurched to his feet, hobbling past Fry as if he wasn’t there and moving to an oven. He opened the oven and reached inside.
   “At last!” he exclaimed, brandishing a baking dish. “I’ve managed to bake a sentient cake!”
   “A sentient cake?” Fry repeated, mystified.
   “That’s right, whoever you are,” the Professor said, putting the cake down on the bench. “A cake that can think and feel and engage in conversation.”
   “You take the cake, Professor-F!” the cake said happily.
   “Shut up!” the Professor snapped angrily.
   “I need your help,” Fry said.
   “I’ll do whatever I can,” the cake replied helpfully.
   “Not you!” Fry turned to the Professor. “I need you to build me a time machine,” he said.
   “Preposterous!” the old man said. “Time travel is scientifically impossible – it simply can’t be done!”
   Fry blinked… “But… we’ve done it before!” he argued.
   “When? I don’t remember that.”
   Suddenly, the cake screamed in horror as it was set upon by Nibbler. The little creature had been living at Planet Express headquarters since Leela’s death and had caught the smell of fresh baked goods. Within seconds, the cake was gone and Nibbler was left sitting contentedly in the baking dish. He set about licking crumbs off himself, but kept an ear open and his third eye stalk trained on the two men.
   “We travelled back in time to 1947,” Fry went on. “And… certain events took place… anyway, the point is – it’s POSSIBLE.”
   “Fry, you pungent and insufferable moron!” the Professor shouted, waving his hands in the air. “I know what you want to do and you just can’t! If every person who suffered a personal tragedy took it upon themselves to alter the course of history then the fabric of time and space would wear thin and tear like a notepad rubbed too much by an eraser!”
   “I’m not every person,” Fry said. “I’m just me.”
   “Be that as it may…” The Professor looked sad. “Sometimes things happen for a reason.”
   “Don’t give me that crap!” Fry growled, balling his fists. “You upset the natural order on a daily basis! You’re just afraid that you CAN’T make a time machine!”
   “Balderdash!” the Professor snapped. “I can make anything, anytime, OUT OF anything!”
   “Prove it!”
   “Watch me!” The Professor rolled up the sleeves of his lab coat. “Now, I need to study the effect of our last foray into the past… I’ll need the ship’s black box data recorder.”
   “I’m on it!” Fry said, rushing away.
   Nibbler watched the two men get to work and rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
   So…


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Back once more at the point of no return...

[Reply #77 on:]

That should have been my cake.
That damn greedy Nibbler!

[Reply #78 on:]

Hehehe 

[Reply #79 on:]

HAHAHA, the talking cake officially made this the best story ever!