a noob's first attempt at literature

[Reply #440 on:]

   

Originally posted by fryismyhero:
more soon? pretty please with sugar on top?

actually, more right now     .  This is really the second half of that first update, but I didn't post it earlier because I realised just in time that I'd made a huge mistake.  Oh, and I've come up with a name for the fic.  I'm going to call it "The Leelazarus Effect".
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Part 2
Chapter 3

“… and when you balance the equation using the theory of nonlinear quantum dynamics, the wave functions collapse to the nullspace of the echelon matrix so that only the real part of the transformation remains, and after some simple algebra you’re left with a solution of 14.”

“So when Fry told me that 14 was the answer to the ultimate question, he actually knew what he was talking about?”

“It would seem so.”

“Huh.  Who woulda thought?”

Leela’s attention was drawn to a light that had started to flash on the console before her.  The ship’s computer informed her that the Planet Express Ship was entering the Eta Orionis system.  Leela pressed a few buttons and eased the ship to port.  The background hum of the darkmatter engines dropped below the threshold of hearing as the PE captain eased back on the throttle.    “We’re here,” she announced.

Outside the viewscreen were a couple of blue sparks, which quickly swelled into the disks of two young stars.  A cloud of planets and asteroids were sprinkled throughout the system wherever they had managed to find a stable orbit.  None of the worlds showed any signs of life.  Most of the them were desolate balls of ice and liquid hydrocarbons orbiting at the very fringes of the star system.  Of those that hadn’t been ejected into deep space, the remainder lay so close to their parent stars that they had become trapped; tidal forces dragging on one hemisphere more than the other until one side of the planet remained eternally aimed at its sun.  Only one had been lucky enough to form in a place where the ever changing gravitational fields of the binary system did not pluck it from its orbit or leave tidally locked to it’s parent star.  Sensors showed the remains of an intelligent civilization on this planet, but all life was gone now.  The brains had been to this place.
 
“I’m guessing that’s where we’re going?”  Leela gestured at the tiny grey marble on which her instruments promised she would find the ruins of an entire race. 

“No.  Once the brains have removed the life from a world they leave it.  We will find nothing there but smashed concrete and scarred rock.”  Nibbler brought up a map of the star system on the ship’s viewer.  “The time travel device was said to be … here.”  Nibbler pointed at one of the tidally bound planets orbiting the more distant star.
 “The brains most likely placed it on the dayside, where they would have as much free solar energy as they could want.  Once we discover the device’s precise location with the ships sensors we will have to land on the planet’s surface to use it.”

“Alright, just let me change course and…  Hey, wait a minute.  Wouldn’t the extreme temperatures from a sun that never sets be enough to instantly fry us, not to mention the constant bombardment by deadly ultraviolet radiation?”

“Did you bring sunscreen?”

“Well yes, but…”

“You’ll be fine.”

Leela squinted against the brilliant glare of a sun which, at this particular longitude, happened to stay at just the right height and direction in the sky so as to make it impossible to avoid staring into it.  Nibbler was somewhere up ahead beyond the next sand dune, and at the moment Leela was glad to have him out of sight.  After all, if she could see him she might be tempted to wring his adorable little neck.  A drop of sweat trickled down Leela’s forehead.  The PE captain wiped at it distractedly with her left arm, but only managed to grind tiny bits of brownish sand into her sunburned face.  “Stupid talking gerbil,” she grumbled under her breath.  “I should never have let him talk me into this.  Now I know why Fry keeps complaining that I never park close enough to where he has to deliver the packages.”

Nibbler scrambled over the top of the nearest dune and called down to his companion.  “Leela, are you unharmed?  It is imperative that we locate the device before the brains are alerted to our presence on this planet.  We do not have time for standing around and enjoying the scenery.”

“Enjoying the scenery?!  I’ll show you enjoying the scenery when I cram it down your cute little throat, you lousy excuse for a stuffed animal!”  Murder shone in the depths of Leela’s eye.  Nibbler squealed and took off the way he had come trailing a plume of fine sand.  A now dangerously disgruntled cyclops followed him at a slow but steady pace, mulling over possible recipes for gerbil stew in her head.

Luckily for the sole remaining Nibblonian in existence, his race was not destined for extinction this day; for when Leela crested the rise and looked out onto the desert plain beyond, all thoughts of ass-kicking were forgotten.  A boundless waste stretched to the curving horizon.  It was truly a breathtaking sight, but Leela didn’t even notice it.  Her attention was drawn straight to the metallic obelisk  that stood half a mile away.

“Can you make it work?”

“I am uncertain.  My race intentionally stayed away from matters of time travel, and so never developed the technologies that are required to accomplish it.  I assume that there is an interface of some kind that will allow us to properly use the device, but we may have a problem if this is not the case.  The inner workings of this device are as much a mystery to me as they are to you.”

“So then if this thing is broken…”

“I will be unable to fix it.”

“Hmm…  Leela ran her hand along the sleek black form of the obelisk.  It seemed to be made of solid crystal, definitely nothing like any technology she had come across before.  It was a little frightening actually, facing something so incredibly alien.  “Is this how Fry felt when he came to the future?”, Leela wondered.  “Suddenly being faced with a world that was far beyond his understanding…”  Thoughts of Fry sent a wave of dark emotions crashing against the cyclops’ mental defenses.  Gritting her teeth, Leela forced herself to clear her mind.  Later she just might have a chance to save her friends, if she could just keep herself together a little while longer.

Nibbler started to chatter unintelligibly from a few dozen feet away.  Leela jogged over to her pet, who was digging emphatically into a low mound of sand.  The PE captain bent down to help, and the sand was soon cleared away.  The mound had been hiding a small stone pedestal.  A small button was positioned in an indentation in the top of the pedestal.  Leela pressed it cautiously.  At first nothing happened, but just when Leela was beginning to walk away she caught movement out of the corner of her eye.  A small panel detached itself from the nearby obelisk, revealing a microwave sized compartment and sending a light rain of desert sand drifting to the ground.  In the compartment sat a small device, no larger than a standard laser pistol.  It was cylindrical in shape with two prongs on one end and a pistol-like handle on the other.  A green dial on the device’s side was the only clue that it wasn’t a weapon at all. 

Leela reached out and gently lifted the time travel device out of the obelisk.  It was a little heavier than she would have expected, but it showed no clear signs that it was capable of manipulating the very fabric of the universe.

“Huh.   Somehow I expected something… bigger.”

Nibbler did not respond, but gestured for Leela to hand him the device.  The Nibblonian muttered gibberish to himself for a few moments before twisting the nob.  A green shape flashed into existence above the time machine and began to congeal into a series of numeric symbols and Earthican letters.  It was the current date.  Nibbler handed the device back to his friend.   

“This is indeed the time travel device that we were searching for.  With it you will be able to go back to the 31st century and warn The Mighty One before the brains start their attack on Earth.  Together, the two of you will be able to stop the brainspawn’s conquest of the universe.”

“Why ‘you’?  Aren’t you coming too?”

“Leela, if it were possible for me to travel through time I would have done it long ago in the hopes of warning you before any of this could happen.  You see, when two identical consciousnesses occupy the same time coordinate in spacetime, there is a kind of quantum interference.  With a mind as small as yours the effect will result in nothing more serious than a few minor headaches, but for me it is a far more serious problem.  If I were to go back to the 31st century, my brainwaves would interfere destructively with those of my past self.  We would cancel each other out and cease to exist.”

Leela crossed her arms. “That is the biggest load of scientific mumbo-jumbo that I have ever heard, and I have no idea what it meant, but I’m guessing that the answer to my question is no, right?”

“That is correct.”

“Great.  So not only do I have to back in time and change the past without creating a universe-shredding time paradox, but I get to do it alone.  No pressure or anything right?”  She sighed.  “Oh well, it’s not like it’s the first time I’ve been given some impossible task, and hopefully it won’t be the last.  Now let’s head back to the ship before I’m cooked enough to serve on a plate.”

Nibbler looked at her quizzically.  “For what purpose do we need to return to the ship?  You don’t propose taking it with you do you?”

“Well you don’t expect me to flap my arms and fly back home to Earth do you?”

The Nibblonian considered this for a moment.  “Oh, yes I see your point.  But what of me?  If you take the spaceship and fail your mission I will be stranded here in this scorching desert forever.”

Leela’s mouth twitched upward in the tiniest hint of a smile.  “Did you bring sunscreen?” she asked.

“Yes, I suppose so but…”

“You’ll be fine.” With that she turned and strolled off toward the Planet Express ship.  Nibbler scurried after her.
_____________________________ _____________________________ ___________

Leela boarded her ship.  “Strange,” she thought, “I still think of this as my ship even after being fired and then frozen for all this time.”  She paused for a moment to consider to think and then headed for the bridge.  From the captain’s chair Nibbler was just barely visible through the front view port.  He lay half concealed by a dune a safe distance away.   Noticing that she was looking at him, Nibbler gave the cyclops a nod.  He was ready for her to proceed.

Calming herself with a deep breath, the captain of the Planet Express ship began to turn the time device’s dial.  When the correct date was hovering in the air in front of her face, Leela pulled the trigger.  The machine started to vibrate and glow softly.  She noticed that Nibbler was speaking to her.  Her ears couldn’t possibly hear him through the ship’s hull, but the words were in her head just the same:

“When you reach the past you will find that the time device will be without power, but do not worry.  It will eventually recharge itself enough so that you can use it again if the need arises.  Now I wish you good luck and a safe journey.  Trust in yourself and in Fry, and you shall succeed where I failed.”

Leela pushed the button for the exterior speaker and started to respond, but found that she was unable to.  She could mouth the words, but it was as though the sounds waves refused to travel.  There was only a few moments to ponder this little bit of information before things started to happen at an alarming rate.  The world outside the ship started to fade as though a dense fog was rolling in over the parched desert.  Leela concentrated on Nibbler’s dim form.  The Nibblonian receded farther and farther into the gloom that was descending from everywhere at once.  Strange colors and patters began to swirl in the dim grey void that had swallowed the universe.  Reality started to twist and peal away like so many scraps of burning paper.  Layer upon layer lifted away until only Leela and the ship remained.  The grey fog was replaced by utter blackness.  Leela stared out her view port at utter nothingness, the absence of space and time that exists between universes.   All at once something opened up underneath the PE ship, though words like ‘under’ no longer had any real meaning.  Even so, the ship tipped over on it’s ‘side’ and  ‘rolled’ into this new abyss.  There was the sensation of acceleration.  Leela braced herself as she fell faster and faster through nothing.  A light appeared somewhere up ahead.  Something was approaching, and it was coming way too fast.  “I’m coming Fry”, Leela whispered.  She shut her eye and held on.

[Reply #441 on:]

 

Originally posted by soylentOrange:
  The Nibblonian considered this for a moment. “Oh, yes I see your point. But what of me? If you take the spaceship and fail your mission I will be stranded here in this scorching desert forever.”

Leela’s mouth twitched upward in the tiniest hint of a smile. “Did you bring sunscreen?” she asked.

“Yes, I suppose so but…”

“You’ll be fine.”

Heeheeheeeeee!!! i think i just found my favorite part of this fic so far!

[Reply #442 on:]

Yay, at least someone is writing again.  (I’m sooo busy… and lazy…)
 

“… and when you balance the equation using the theory of nonlinear quantum dynamics, the wave functions collapse to the nullspace of the echelon matrix so that only the real part of the transformation remains, and after some simple algebra you’re left with a solution of 14

ehh… I don’t feel like checking that that all makes sense…  maybe later.
 

[long description of binary star systems]

Y’know, In class a few weeks ago I was thinking about what it would be like to live on a planet at a Lagrangian point in a binary system.  Your thoughts seem to be along the same line… interesting.

instantly fry us

Intentional allusion to Leela’s preoccupied thoughts?  If so, I’m impressed.
 

A boundless waste stretched to the curving horizon.

"wasteland,” perhaps?
 

Strange colors and patters

patterns

twist and peal away

peel 

While I like the explanation of why Nibbler can’t go along, I’m confused by you bringing up the Grandfather paradox.  Didn’t Fry prove that the paradox had no consequences?  Or was that a special case in your version?  Still, overall, some excellent writing.  You’re even heavier on the science asides than me at times, which I think is a good thing.  Just be careful about overuse.  Keep up the great work.

[Reply #443 on:]

Two updates in one day?  SCORE!!!

[Reply #444 on:]

 

Originally posted by SoylentOrange:
Outside the viewscreen were a couple of blue sparks, which quickly swelled into the disks of two young stars. A cloud of planets and asteroids were sprinkled throughout the system wherever they had managed to find a stable orbit. None of the worlds showed any signs of life. Most of the them were desolate balls of ice and liquid hydrocarbons orbiting at the very fringes of the star system. Of those that hadn’t been ejected into deep space, the remainder lay so close to their parent stars that they had become trapped; tidal forces dragging on one hemisphere more than the other until one side of the planet remained eternally aimed at its sun. Only one had been lucky enough to form in a place where the ever changing gravitational fields of the binary system did not pluck it from its orbit or leave tidally locked to it’s parent star.

Somebody has been reading astronomy, yes? 

[Reply #445 on:]

I'm minoring in it 

[Reply #446 on:]

 

Originally posted by soylentOrange:
I'm minoring in it   

Really? What's your major? If I may ask?

[Reply #447 on:]

physics.  I wanted to major in astronomy, but I was told it's actually better to get a bachelors in physics and then worry about astronomy in grad school.  I'll be in school until the end of time I swear...

[Reply #448 on:]

Wow, that was so cool. It just keeps getting better...

What was the 'huge mistake', if you don't mind me being nosy?

I liked the explanation for why Nibbler can't go as well ("a mind as small as yours", teehee), but couldn't Leela just have taken Nibbler back to earth in the ship first, then used the time travel device?

Waiting for the next part... I hope you don't disappear...again. 

[Reply #449 on:]

 

Originally posted by soylentOrange:
physics.  I wanted to major in astronomy, but I was told it's actually better to get a bachelors in physics and then worry about astronomy in grad school.  I'll be in school until the end of time I swear...

Until the end of time? Hence the time travel references in your Fic?   

Astrophysics.. shudder.. my knowledge about physics is limited to the movement of electrons, which also happens to be my job.   

[Reply #450 on:]

@arkan: heheh get this.  Originally Leela didn't head back to the ship.  She just turned the gizmo on and went back in time.  Problem?  Now she's stuck in the past without any way to get home.  That line where Leela says "What, do you expect me to flap my wings and fly home?" was really a jibe at myself.  What's really bad is that I have an outline of the whole story, start to finish and it mentions the PE ship over and over again... 

@Corvus: electrons eh?  I'll take astrophysics any day.  At least I can see the stuff I'm studying.

[Reply #451 on:]

I enjoy the stories that you write, but I'm more impressed by the attention that you pay to the world of physics and astronomy.  Granted, Futurama is a fantasy and you could easily get away with 'magical' explanations, but you're staying true to the original premise that Futurama was written by geeks and nerds.

That said - I'm one of the orginal Trekkies.  I'll always be loyal to Star Trek: TOS but there were some major flaws in the stories that have always irked me.  The Doomsday Machine, one of my favorite eps of all time really irks me from a scientific standpoint:  The DM's hull was composed of Neutronium, mined from the core of neutron stars.  Even if the hull were a scant millimeter thick, the size of the DM would have made the machine have a massive gravitation well.  Neither starship, Enterprise or Constellation would have been able to get close enough to take offensive action before the tidal forces would have torn the ships apart.  Much less flying the Constellation down the maw of the machine and detonating an overloaded impulse fusion reactor within the machine.

You have married the 'shippy' parts with the technical parts very well.

BTW, great update!

[Reply #452 on:]

 

I enjoy the stories that you write, but I'm more impressed by the attention that you pay to the world of physics and astronomy.

cool. I'm thinking about writing a science fiction novel eventually so I guess it's good to know that people think I encorporate science well into my stories   . 

 

I'll always be loyal to Star Trek: TOS but there were some major flaws in the stories that have always irked me

Oh man don't even get me started on star trek.  I love the show too, especially TNG, but from watching it (especially TNG) you'd think that everything in the universe can be made possible with the use of tachyons.  Of course, if by some crazy chance tachyons don't magically solve a problem you can just add the word 'flux' to the end of a string of random words and you've saved the day!  Neutronium hulls are just another example of some writer hearing a cool science fictiony word and randomly sticking it in the show somewhere. 

[Reply #453 on:]

Another great story man these should be sent to Fox or the guy who made the Simpsons so he can make them into futurama episodes.

[Reply #454 on:]

*notices JBERGES' post for the first time*

 

Didn’t Fry prove that the paradox had no consequences? Or was that a special case in your version?

I'm not sure that was really a paradox.  Everything he did in the past was consistent with the events in his original timeline. 

 

Still, overall, some excellent writing.

why thank you 

 

You’re even heavier on the science asides than me at times, which I think is a good thing. Just be careful about overuse.

Ya know, I was just thinking that I'd hold back some on the sciency stuff.  Sometimes I go overboard with it  . 

 

Intentional allusion to Leela’s preoccupied thoughts? If so, I’m impressed.

*cough* Uh-huh, completely intentional.  Yep, sure.  *looks the other way*

I've just finished writing a huge piece of the story.  Leo's gonna hate me when he sees it  .  Expect updates in the near future...

[Reply #455 on:]

 

Leo's gonna hate me

He'll be the only one! 

Yay!!

[Reply #456 on:]

well, it's not the big update I promised, but it's something.  It hasn't been beta'd so beware of grammar   

_____________________________ ____________________

Part 3
Chapter 1

The impact never came.  After a few tense moments, Leela cautiously opened her eye.  Through the front viewport she could see an ocean of low sand dunes stretching away to the horizon.  Naturally her first thought was “Oh crap, all that and it didn’t even work”, but then she noticed something.  The dunes weren’t nearly as big as they had been five minutes ago, and even more strange, Nibbler was nowhere to be seen.

Leela reached down to pick up the time device from where it had been resting on her lap.  Her hand came up empty.  Startled, the cyclops jumped out of her seat and looked around frantically.  It only took a moment to find it where the device had rolled between a bulkhead and a piece of navigation equipment.  She bent over to pick it up, and was relieved to see a hologram flicker into existence over the device as soon as she touched it.  A message blinked in the air:  “destination reached.  Travel time -1000 years, 2.5 days”  A moment later the message flickered and went out.  The time-amajig was dead, but Leela had made it; she was in the past.

Feeling optimistic for the first time since she’d fallen into the cryotube a thousand years ago, “no,” she corrected herself, “just over a day from now,” Leela gently put the time gizmo in a safe place and sat back down in the pilot’s seat.  A quick scan of the HUD showed that the PE ship had come through the rift virtually unscathed; another testament to the professor’s skills as an inventor.  “I’ll have to be sure and thank Farnsworth when this is all ov… wait.”  Leela had caught sight of something strange on the radar screen.  “Hold on, that can’t be right.”  The whole outer edge of the screen was full of static, as if something was interfering with the signal.  “Maybe not everything was as well built as I thought.”, she muttered.  But wait, was it her imagination or was the inner edge of ring of static a little closer to the ship than it had been a second ago?  More curious than worried, Leela stood up and walked to the viewport.  Holding one hand over her eye to block the intensity of the desert sun, the PE captain stared at the horizon.  If she squinted hard enough she could just barely make out a tiny black speck, probably nothing more than a vulture looking for dinner.  But then another speck came into view right at the edge of sight.  “Eh, just a couple of birds.  No big deal…  Ok, make that three,  four, err, five birds…”  her words trailed off as more and more specks came into view.  Within a matter of moments there were dozens of them, but Leela wasn’t watching anymore.

The engines of the Planet Express Ship awoke with a low grumble.  Leela’s hands flew over the controls.  “Come on damnit, wake up you worthless hunk of metal!” she screamed after glancing out the front viewport.  The sky was now full of tiny specks, so many that the radar screen was saturated with them.  Whatever these things were, they were coming in fast, and the engines weren’t quite warm.  It was going to be close. 

The lead dot grew in size as it approached until it’s lumpy pink shape was unmistakable.  A green light blinked on the HUD.  “Ok, time to leave!”  Leela yanked up on the stick as hard as she could.  The PE ship reared back on its haunches, paused for a moment as if to take a breath, and blasted into the sky.  The converging tide of brainspawn swept skyward a moment later.

[Reply #457 on:]

Oh.. right.. the brainspawn. Forgot about those. 

 

Originally posted by soylentOrange:
well, it's not the big update I promised,

Well... when does it come then??? I. Can't. Wait!!!

What? Waddaya mean I have no patience?? 

[Reply #458 on:]

Nice little segment. Ooh, brains!! I'll have more to say once this 'big update' materialises...

[Reply #459 on:]

the big update will materialize when leo gets a chance to beta it.  it's 8 pages long so give him a break 

[Reply #460 on:]

Yay!! 

[Reply #461 on:]

 

Originally posted by soylentOrange:
the big update will materialize when leo gets a chance to beta it.  it's 8 pages long so give him a break   

Wow. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be jealous on you for cranking out an 8 page update or feel sorry for Leo. 

[Reply #462 on:]

ok, so it's been almost three weeks since I sent the update to Leo to be beta'd.  I wonder where he went?  Anywho, I read through this and tried to make it as coherent as possible on my own.  Enjoy! Oh, and from here on out yes there is a reason why Leela is majically unaffected by brainspawn stupifying rays.  If you read carefully enough you might figure it out)  I'll post the end of part 3 later on this week once I've done some tweeking to it.
_____________________________ __________________

Part 3
Chapter 2 (Le grande update part 1)

Rays of pale green arced by the Planet Express ship, sometimes missing by just a few meters.  Leela gritted her teeth and yanked sideways on the stick, sending everything outside the viewport into a crazy spiral.  Somehow the brains were staying with her, though how they were managing it when Nibbler had made it a point to mention that they were completely blind, she had no idea. 

“How did they know where to find me?”, she wondered.  “And how did they get there so fast?”  It didn’t make any sense.  One of the brains strange glowing weapons hit the laser turret, and passed right through.  There was no hull breach, but all of the systems in that part of the ship immediately lost power.  Leela countered with a series of complicated evasive maneuvers, but the damned brains just matched her move for move.  It was time for a new strategy.  Leela redirected power from all systems to the engines and sent the ship into a broad turn to port until she could see her target in the distance.  The Planet Express Ship hurtled into an asteroid field at breakneck speed.  The brains followed.

The cockpit jumped up, down, left, right as Leela sent her craft careening between asteroids.  Her eye squinted in concentration; it was all she could do to keep herself from becoming a radioactive crater.  The gap between her and the brainspawn slowly increased.  Every once in awhile one would make a bad move and find itself smeared evenly over half a square kilometer of barren space rock.  One of the brains calculated the risk and decided it was time to end this chase before too many of its fellows got themselves killed.  The blob of grey matter accelerated toward and past its quarry until it was stationed a short distance ahead of Leela’s bow.    Leela’s face contorted in an evil grin.   She laughed aloud and accelerated.  A glimmer of understanding shot through her enemy a split second too late.   The Planet Express ship smacked into the brain at thousands of miles an hour.  Leela turned on the windshield wipers and veered to starboard, nearly missing a jagged lump of cratered iron.

The brains started pulling back.  Maybe they had seen what Leela had done to their friend.  Still Leela did not slow her ship.  When the brains finally circled the perimeter of the asteroid field Leela intended to be long gone.

The asteroids began to whiz by the ship less and less frequently, until there was only one solitary rock up ahead.  As the Planet Express ship drew closer it soon became apparent that it was not really an asteroid, but a small dusty moon that had been ejected long ago by its parent planet.  Leela brought her ship in low over the moon and hugged its surface, hoping the giant ice ball would hide her exact course out of the star from any brain that had happened to make it through the asteroids intact.  She was not prepared for the squad of brainspawn that had been lying there in wait for her.

Skimming only twenty meters or so off the surface, Leela crested a ridge and suddenly found herself face to face with a dozen brainspawn, including one that was much bigger than the rest.  Luckily the very ridge that had kept them hidden from Leela also had kept her hidden from them.

Leela aimed for the center of the mob as a dozen green tendrils enveloped the Planet Express ship.  Power failed, systems crashed, and the engines went out with a ‘whump’.  Leela felt the effects of the brains’ fields as they worked within her.  It became impossible to think clearly, though in truth there was really nothing she could have done anyway.  Psychic force fields were sucking momentum from the ship.  Speed dropped off at an alarming rate.  The brains just needed a few moments more and it would all be over, a few moments that, unfortunately for them, they were not going to get.  Now nothing more than a projectile, the PE ship crashed through the squad of brainspawn, scattering them every which way and taking out two who had been a little two slow to get out of the way. 

The stupefaction fields vanished for a moment as the disoriented brains tried to reacquire their target.   Leela felt her wits returning.  Unfortunately, the power was still gone.  All she could do was watch as gravity slowly pulled her ship toward the surface of the moon.

The ship hit at just over two hundred kilometers an hour and skipped like a stone.  Leela was thrown around in her restraints like a rag doll.  Up ahead in the distance a jagged cliff rose five kilometers in the air.  The ship dug long furrows in the regolith as it bounced and skidded over the surface.  The wall of rock loomed larger and larger until it filled the whole viewport.  Leela groaned as she realized she wasn’t going to stop in time.  “I am so tired of crashing into things.” 
_____________________________ _____________________________ ____________________

The big brain hovered over the crash site for a long time.  The scar left by the doomed human’s pitiful little spacecraft ended abruptly in a pile of rubble at the base of a cliff.  The impact had sent a sizable chunk of the cliff face crashing down so that now only the section of the vessel aft of the laser turret was visible to human eyes.  The big brain saw a good deal more.

A few of his underlings approached, having finished tending to the injured.  They floated about anxiously, not quite sure if they should disturb their leader’s concentration.  Finally one of them asked if there were any life signs in the buried ship.  As if the answer wasn’t obvious.  The big brain watched as the offender began to glow in embarrassment under his superior’s scrutiny.  <That one must learn discipline if he is to survive against the Nibblonian menace> the big brain thought to himself.  Then to his followers:

<Come, there is nothing left to be done here, and much to be done elsewhere.  Signal the others;   I have come to a decision.  At long last it is time for us to come out of hiding> 

Excited queries jumped back and forth between the underlings.  None of them knew what to make of this announcement.  It was amusing that they did not realize he heard every last one of their thoughts.  Finally one of them had the courage to ask directly. 

<Sir, does this mean that the war has begun?>

<Yes.  Spread the word; the invasion of Earth begins in 12 hours, and this time we will let nothing stop us.>
_____________________________ _____________________________ ____________________

When Leela opened her eyes she found herself sitting in the dark, restrained to a chair.  It took a moment for her to remember why exactly that made any sense.  Before she tried to move she first did a mental survey of her own body.  She ached all over, but at least nothing felt broken.  Forcing her stiff body to cooperate, Leela switched on the dim light of her wristamajig and carefully untangled herself from her harness.  Standing was a little easier than she had expected it to be.  Carefully she worked her way to the emergency supply closet that was at the back of the bridge.  She easily found the emergency candles and matches behind the clown suit.  “Someone really needs to get rid of this thing,” she remarked to herself for the hundredth time, but she knew it would never happen.  Somehow the clown suit had become a traditional part of the ship, just as important as pre-blastoff ice cream sundaes and in-flight drinking games.   

Once there was enough light to see by, Leela knew her next objective should be restoring some power.  Candle light was good and all, but all the candles in the universe couldn’t protect her from the brutal cold of space that was seeping through the hull, or provide her with clean air to breathe.  Unfortunately there was no response from any of the bridge consoles.   The only way that all of the emergency power could fail at once was if every last battery onboard had been completely drained.  “That’s what those weird green rays did,” Leela realized.  ”Somehow they sucked the energy right out of the circuits.”  If she was going to get power back she would have to get the darkmatter reactor working again, which meant she had to get to the engine room.  Still, Leela found herself reluctant to leave the safety of the bridge and go rummaging about the dark corridors by candelight.  “If only Fry and Bender were here, it wouldn’t be so damned spooky.”  Suddenly she remembered the urgency of her mission.  She had to get to Earth, and she had to do it immediately if she was going to complete her mission.  “Pull yourself together Turanga,” she commanded herself.  “If the brains knew I was still alive they would have gotten me already.  They aren’t hiding in ambush in the hallways.” 

Unconvinced but refusing to show any kind of weakness even to herself, Leela grabbed a candle in one hand and headed toward the hatch.  She hesitated a moment before opening it.  Reaching a decision, the PE captain took a few steps backward and reached into the emergency locker.  She rummaged around for a moment before her hand found what she was looking for.  She pulled out a sleek little laser pistol and checked it’s charge.  It wasn’t much, and she wouldn’t need it, but it would make her feel better to have it.  Now Leela walked to the hatch with a bit more confidence in her step.  She hit the manual release and stepped back.  The door creaked as it was slowly drawn apart by hydraulics hidden in the bulkhead.  Brandishing the most primitive of lights in one hand and the most modern of weapons in the other, The PE captain took a deep breath and walked into the dark corridor.
_____________________________ _____________________________ ____________________

Leela reached the engine room with the blood pounding in her ears but otherwise without incident.  She was relieved to find that the reactor was in good shape.  It had shut itself down when it detected a power loss to its monitoring systems, but the darkmatter was still hot enough that Leela soon had it running as good as new.  The lights came on a few moments later.

Back on the bridge, Leela ran a full diagnostic on all of the ship’s systems.  Life support was chugging away at full capacity, the reactor was running smoothly, navigational and defensive systems were up and operating.  The engines, however, were another story.  The exhaust nozzles  had gotten pretty banged up while the ship was skidding along the ground.  They were fixable, but it was going to require some sledge and blowtorch work.  Luckily the professor insisted on keeping those exact tools onboard at all times, just in case some incriminating fender damage had to be removed in a hurry.
_____________________________ _____________________________ ____________________

It was a bit of tricky business trying to wriggle through the laser turret dressed in a bulky spacesuit.  Normally Leela would have made Fry do it, and then gotten Bender to give him a quick shove through the narrow spaces.  Still, Leela managed to work her way up the ladder, squeeze between the chair and the firing console, disengage the clamps that held the transparent dome to the top of the ship, and then lift the dome and climb out onto the hull without getting hopelessly stuck.  The PE captain shook her head to clear it of the headache that she felt coming on.  The throbbing dissipated but didn’t go away; maybe she hadn’t quite come out of the crash unscathed after all.   Oh well, a headache was easily ignored.  Leela did a quick scan of her surroundings.  The radar hadn’t shown any brains nearby, but you didn’t survive long as a Planet Express employee by relying on instruments alone. 

The landscape was typical interplanetary space rock.  A flat, grayish plain stretched to the too-close horizon in one direction.  It was unbroken save for a few small craters and the deep trough that the Planet Express ship had cut as it had come down.  The other direction consisted of an impossibly high vertical wall.

Leela activated her suit’s maneuvering jet and flew the short distance to the damaged engines.  She sighed when she saw the damage.  The metal was bent and warped where it had smashed into the surface of the moon.  The fusion torch glared into life with a flick of a switch.  Leela’s helmet immediately increased its opaqueness to compensate.  Sighing again and shaking her head to clear it, Leela maneuvered to within reach of the hull and started to work.  She didn’t notice the bright white spark that flew by overhead.
_____________________________ _____________________________ ____________________

Progress was slow, much slower than she had expected.  The damage was extensive, and it had to be fixed perfectly.  If the engine exhaust was deflected by any kind of impurity in the nozzles it would send the ship careening out of control.  Leela’s body was screaming at her to drop everything and take off.  It was everything she could do to supress the urge and concentrate on what she knew had to be done.  Worst of all, time was running out.  Nibbler had purposely sent her back in time so that she would get back to Earth only a few hours before the brains attacked.  After all, if Leela altered the series of events that had led to her past-self falling into the freezer tube, who knows what could happen?  Unfortunately, Nibbler hadn’t taken into account the possibility of being marooned for six hours on a lump of rock…  “Stupid brains,” she muttered between slams of her anvil, “what the hell were they doing on that planet anyway?  They can’t have known that I was going to be there, could they?”

Eventually there just wasn’t any more time.  Leela could float around pounding at her ship for the next ten hours or the next hundred years.  It wasn’t going to matter, she was still going to be too late.  Making one last inspection, Leela clicked off her torch and slid it back into its pouch at her waist.  Satisfied, she throttled up the jet at her back and coasted expertly over the ship’s tail section and back to the laser turret.  It was even more difficult going in than it was coming out.

Leela bolted for the cockpit, shedding bits of spacesuit as she ran.  Once she was buckled into her captain’s chair she paused to think for a moment.  What were the chances that she was going to blow herself to hell?  Small, but not nil.  Good, those were better than average odds for any mission she’d ever flown for Planet Express.  Leela jabbed the button that would start the engines.  There was a low hum which steadily built to a roar.  Something clanged loudly several times.  Leela held her breath, but nothing else happened.  Cautiously, The PE captain pulled back on the throttle, pushing the ship into reverse.  There was a great deal of scraping and grumbling as the ship shook itself free, but after several tense moments there was nothing outside the front viewport but the blackness of space.    One last check of the radar yielded no contacts.  Leela put a course into the navigational computer and shoved the throttle as far forward as it would go.  Finally, and at long last, she was going home.
_____________________________ _____________________________ ____________________

The Planet Express ship flew uncontested through empty space.  Leela, having run out of things to do hours ago, occupied herself by pacing up and down the length of the cockpit.  She was worried.  The crash had eaten up too much time.  By the time she made it back to Earth the brains would have already begun their attack; it was too late to stop it.  Somehow she’d failed her mission before it had even really had a chance to begin.

“At least I’ll still have a chance to save Fry,” she reassured herself.  “… if I don’t somehow manage to screw that up too.” 

Unfortunately, Nibbler didn’t know the exact time that the PE building had gone up in a fireball.  However, he had mentioned that the sun was going down when it happened.  That made it sometime around 6pm, plus or minus ten minutes or so.

There was a timer displayed on one of the bridge monitors.  It was steadily ticking down until the ship’s computer would signal that the ship had re-entered the solar system, which it had estimated at about 5:35.  Leela glanced at it for the hundredth time.  An hour and a half to go…  The Planet Express ship was one of the fastest ships in existence but to Leela it seemed as though she was clunking along like some primitive 20th century space shuttle.  She sighed and went back to pacing.

[Reply #463 on:]

 

Originally posted by soylentOrange:
She easily found the emergency candles and matches behind the clown suit. “Someone really needs to get rid of this thing,” she remarked to herself for the hundredth time, but she knew it would never happen. Somehow the clown suit had become a traditional part of the ship, just as important as pre-blastoff ice cream sundaes and in-flight drinking games.

Ah.. a clownsuit. An important piece of equipment for any modern day space traveling delivery company? 

[Reply #464 on:]

why yes of course, only slightly less vital than the 'L' unit 

[Reply #465 on:]

Yay, words! 

I loved the sciency bits, as well as the way Leela kept mentioning Fry and Bender...especially at the end where she was thinking about being able to rescue Fry without sparing a thought for the rest of the poor PE employees... Yay! 

More! More! More! More! More!

[Reply #466 on:]

Glad you're enjoying the story Arkan  .  It was such a pain in the ass to write this section, it's good to know you're reading it  .  I wonder, is anyone else still reading this or does PEEL usually slow down over the summer?  Anyway, Here's the last bit of part 3.  This'll be the last update for a bit.  I'm going on vacation and I'm going to start working again (let's hope), so I won't have much free time.


Part 3
Chapter 3
The Planet Express ship rocketed out from behind the cover of the sun and set the tiny glimmer of Earth in its sights.  The brains had done a thorough job.  Sensors showed the space around Earth littered with the wreckage of the DOOP navy. 

A legion of brainspawn rose up from the planet’s surface to meet the intruder as Leela passed the orbit of The Moon.  They tried to block her path, but this time their enemy was ready for them.  A torpedo arced away from the ship.  The brains tried to break it apart as they had done to all of the DOOP weapons that had gotten too close, but Nibbler had warned Leela that they would try this.  The torpedo detonated remote detonated as soon as the brains got a grip on it with their strange appendage-like force fields, coming well short of its target.  Leela had known that that would happen too.  That’s why she’d spent a good portion of her trip home searching the ship for things she could pack inside the torpedoes.  Bits of silverware, rubble from the crash, and even the sledge hammer she had used to fix the ship went flying in all directions.  They pounded on the brains and on the ship with equal number and force.  The brains however, didn’t have the luxury of a metal hull.  The PE ship held its course and hurtled through the stunned squad, and entered the atmosphere a few moments later.  The ship’s clock read 5:36.

The towers of New New York came suddenly into view as the ship broke through a patchy layer of thunderheads.  The city was still there!  The brainspawn were everywhere.  A group of them gathered over one of the taller skyscrapers.  The building began to glow softly green and then all at once erupted in a pillar of flame.   Horrified and furious, Leela altered course to intercept the brains that were gathering about the giant torch.  She fired her other torpedo and caught the mob off guard.  The fireball engulfed a dozen of them and the shrapnel took care of the rest.  Down on the ground their was the sound of cheers, but Leela couldn’t hear them through the hull.

 The brains had been too distracted with their rampage to pay much attention to one harmless-looking spaceship, but now Leela had their full attention.  At least a hundred brains broke off to engage the Planet Express ship.  Normally Leela would have taken them on, but there wasn’t any time.  Rolling over and putting her ship into a backward summersault, Leela took off toward Planet Express.  The brains chased her through the tangled maze of metal and concrete.  Bender had been bugging Leela to let him take the ship on a joyride through the streets of New Manhattan for ages.  Now Leela remembered why she had always said no.

Finally, with one last gut-wrenching maneuver, Leela sent the ship rolling sideways through a gap between two close buildings and across the water to Planet Express.  It was still intact!  That meant Fry was still alive!  One of the brains’ greenish rays passed close by to port.  Leela pushed the nose downward and held course for a split second more.  Hoping to catch her pursuers off guard, she suddenly threw the engines into reverse, suddenly stopping the ship in midair.  The brains went streaming by on all sides, not having had time to react.  They’d be back soon enough.  Leela extended the landing gear and cut the engines entirely.  The ship dropped the couple of meters to the ground and landed in the middle of an empty street with a jarring thud.  Having come to the decision that she didn’t want the brains to get their grubby feelers on her time-amajig while she was gone, Leela grabbed it and rushed off the bridge.  The ship’s clock read 5:42.

It was only a short run to the Planet Express building.  God it was good to see it in one piece again. The sound of laser fire from somewhere inside the structure woke Leela from her momentary reverie.  She stepped forward cautiously, waiting for the automatic door to sense her presence.  The door swished open, and Leela rolled through the sudden opening.  She took shelter for a moment behind an overturned table and waited for any sign that she had been spotted.  Sure enough, a single brainspawn came floating boldly into the hall.  It stopped a meter or so from her position and stopped, as if listening.  Leela grew impatient; there wasn’t enough time for stealth damnit!  She jumped from her hiding place and leveled her pistol at the giant hovering space-nerd.  Unbelievably, it started to laugh at her.

<Hahaha…  Foolish human, did you really think you were hidden from me behind that pitiful piece of furniture?  I saw you the moment you entered the building.  I also see the time travel device that you are holding behind your back.  You will now hand it over to me or I will reduce you to a babbling moron.>

Leela’s eye narrowed.  “I don’t think so bub.  If you’re vision is so good then you also see the laser I have pointed at your squishy head, err, face, err whatever you call that wrinkly mess.  Now shut up and tell me, where is Fry?”

<The crazy idiot with the spiky red hair?  I killed him.  His screams were most amusing.>

“Liar!”  Leela fired her weapon, blowing a chunk out of the wall not six inches from the brain.  “Now listen very carefully.  I am not in the mood for mind games with some giant hackeysack.  If you try and lie to me again I swear I’ll shoot you full of holes and then beat you until you look like a wad of used chewing gum, understand?  Now let’s try this again.  Where is Fry?”

Now there was some uncertainty in the brainspawn’s voice.  <N-now let’s not be hasty.  I wasn’t serious.  I don’t even know who you’re talking about.  Who’s Fry?  The Mighty One?  Never heard of him…>

Leela’s finger started to depress the trigger.

<Alright, alright!  He’s barricaded himself in one of the rooms in the tower, but it doesn’t matter.  The Big Brain just sent word; its got something special planned for him.  Just wait a few minutes and Fry will be easy to find.  He’ll be everywhere!>  The brain started to laugh hysterically.

It was too much for the PE captain.  She screamed and fired, sending the abruptly silent brain plopping to the floor.  Panic stricken, Leela ran through the halls without regard to her own safety.   Fry was in the tower!  She had to get there before it was too late!

A pair of brains spotted Leela as she ran through the building.  They gave chase.  Leela dodged them until she reached the turbolift. Two quick shots from the cover of the closing turbolift car dropped one brain, and then the other. There was the senstation of movement as the lift bore her upward.  A few moments later the doors swished open again.
_____________________________ _____________________________ ____________________

The brains floated one after the other through the smashed windows.  Fry stood with his back against the iron bulk of the chimney cover, blasting away at whatever had the misfortune to blunder into his sights.  The rest of the crew sat in a group at his feet.  It was all Fry could do to convince his stupefied friends to keep still while he attempted to save their asses.  “What a day for Leela to mysteriously vanish,” he thought as he dodged a stray shot.  The brains had quickly given up trying to use their dumbifying fields.  Now they were using some kind of concentrated mental beam.  From the smoking holes in the walls the delivery boy had deduced that it wouldn’t be a good idea to get hit by one.

Fry saw the brain that had just tried to, well, fry him.  It was still a long way off, coming in over the water.  Closing one eye, the delivery boy steadied himself and took aim, slowly depressing the trigger.  “Careful…  Careful…” he whispered to himself.  The brain floated into his crosshairs.  “Almost…”  The elevator door swished open. 

Fry’s body whirled around to meet this new threat.  His finger squeezed the trigger instinctively as Leela came rushing into the room.  The beam of yellow light cut through the air and buried itself in a barrel; a barrel marked: “Danger, antimatter!  Do not store near epic battle.”

Fry and Leela stared at each other, then the barrel, and then once more at each other.  Then the world exploded.
_____________________________ ____________________

btw: this story isn't even CLOSE to over 

[Reply #467 on:]

 

Originally posted by soylentOrange:
I wonder, is anyone else still reading this or does PEEL usually slow down over the summer?

<whiny voice> But I read it too!</whiny voice>   

Your stories are one of the reasons I still come here I'll have you know.

 

Originally posted by soylentOrange:
Fry saw the brain that had just tried to, well, fry him.

Oh the pun!   

 

Originally posted by soylentOrange:
“Danger, antimatter! Do not store near epic battle.”

Ah.. important and useful warning labels. So who is to blame for not removing it from harms way? Fry?   
That's what I like with your writing the small but oh so funny details. And that your stories are great too.   

Evil to leave us with a cliffhanger.. EVIL!!   


------------------
"You don't know what quiet is until you lose all power on a space station."

David A. Wolf

[Reply #468 on:]

Yay! We get to see Fry again! But oh no! They're gonna die!
You know, I was worried that Fry would shoot Leela when she came in. Or, you know, shoot at her. 

Aw, man... What a place to leave us hangin'!
I'm sure it'll be worth it, though, when the next update finally emerges.

Well, until then... 

[Reply #469 on:]

Part 1: Amy's Cargo
Chapter 1

It was another normal morning, or at least, as normal a morning as a man that lives in a robot’s closet ever sees. Cloud Strife awoke with a start to the sound of loud, off-key singing. He looked at the clock on his wall and groaned. “4am. That stupid Fry is singing at 4am.” Cloud flopped back down on the bed with thoughts of Amy in his head, Yellow smashing up against his face. The young man tossed and turned in the hope that he could somehow block out the noise and eventually get back to sleep. It wasn’t working.

Finally Cloud gave up on getting any more sleep and struggled to extricate himself from the blankets, which had a death grip on his legs. Tripping over some unknown article of food left over from who knows when, he worked his way over to the light switch which, in a shower of sparks, informed him that the owls had gotten into the building’s wiring again. They tended to do that during the winter. Cloud thought it had something to do with them hunting out warm roosting places.

When Cloud had woken up in the year 3000 from his millenium-long cryogenic sleep, he had expected a cliché futuristic utopia, only to find that technology was just as unreliable as ever. That had been quite a day, the still-groggy redhead thought to himself. Cloud was originally from the 20th century, but in a freak accident he had fallen into a cryogenic freezer tube in the very first moments of the new millennium. The next time he took a breath was 1000 years in the future. For most people such an occurrence would have been a nightmare, but Fry soon realized that it was his one big chance to get a fresh start; to make something of himself.

“And I did make something of myself” Cloud thought to himself. “I’ve got a low paying job as an interplanetary delivery boy. I rent my own room from a crazed, egotistical bending robot. I even have a rich sexy girlfriend” Being Cloud, the irony of everything he had just said passed approximately forty-six feet over his head.

Having by this point found his clothes, and having properly put most of them on, the delivery boy worked his way to the door. The loud singing coming from the adjacent room had stopped a few moments before, so when Cloud opened the door he was not surprised to see that Bender was no longer there. There was still four and a half hours or so until the start of work. “Good old Bender,” Cloud thought to himself, “not even 5am and already out on the town to sleep with amy for awhile.


 

[Reply #470 on:]

umm huh-wha?  Why did you copy the first part of my Talora fic and replace the word 'Fry' with 'Cloud'?  It's no big deal or anything, but I'm curious.

[Reply #471 on:]

I think he might be a spammer.  Or perhaps just a bit thick.

Anyway...

OH MY GOD WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!

You evil, evil, evil thing, you!  It BETTER not be over!

(Composes self)

Ahem.  Very sneaky, and very well done. Can't wait for more.   

[Reply #472 on:]

@Corvus:  That pun got in there by accident and then I realised it was there while I was editing.  It was so great I had to keep it    Oh, and I'm sure it was the professor that left that barrel hanging around.  After all, crew that might get caught in an explosion are replaceable.   Valueable time wasted hauling heavy barrels around is not 

@Arkan: It kinda is an evil place to leave the story hanging isn't it?  Oh well, it's not like I'm going to have two six-hour plane flights to work on it...  Oh, wait...  But seriously, I want to work on it, but I'm going through some bad personal stuff right now  (I just had two pets die on the same day).  I don't trust myself to write anything that anyone would want to read.

@Shiny: lol no it's not over.  Not even by half.    When this thing is over it's gonna be longer than the first one I wrote.

[Reply #473 on:]

 

Originally posted by soylentOrange:
@Corvus:  That pun got in there by accident and then I realised it was there while I was editing.  It was so great I had to keep it     Oh, and I'm sure it was the professor that left that barrel hanging around.  After all, crew that might get caught in an explosion are replaceable.   Valueable time wasted hauling heavy barrels around is not   

Ah.. this better to waste a crew than valueable time. Time better spent building doomesday devices or atomic super men? 

 

Originally posted by soylentOrange:But seriously, I want to work on it, but I'm going through some bad personal stuff right now (I just had two pets die on the same day). I don't trust myself to write anything that anyone would want to read.

I'm sorry to hear that. I know how it is to lose a pet. But two? Aww man.

[Reply #474 on:]

Oh, man, S.O., I'm so sorry!  That is truly awful.  Will you accept a virtual comfort hug?  *Hugs S.O.*

Take all the time you need.  As CS Lewis said, pets may not be human, but they are always loved as if they were human (and, I'm sure, they love us as if we were animals, which I think we should all feel deeply honored by).  The pain of losing them is like the pain of losing family...so take care of yourself, and don't worry about the story for now.  As much as we love your fic, YOU are more important by far, so take however long you need. 

What were their names and species, if you don't mind me asking?  And If it helps any, I think that the spirits of our pets "return" to us after a while, maybe not in the form of our very next pet, but eventually.  Maybe it's just wishy-washy new age sentiment, but I've seen too many people find new pets that bear a startling resemblence (in personality) to one they lost years before.

And don't be afraid that getting another pet is disrepectful to their memory - there are so many creatures that need homes, and we have homes to give them - another pet will never replace the ones we lose, but it does create another connection, and new connections are what we need when we lose ones we've had for a long time. 

Again, I'm very sorry - it's a terrible thing to happen to you.  Take care.

[Reply #475 on:]

Amy:here's some work done by me
Part 1
Chapter 2

Unlike Cloud, Leela was used to getting a full night’s sleep, and this last night had been no exception. At exactly 8:07 the alarm clock robot next to her bed activated. The sudden noise invariably startled the sleeping woman, resulting in a savage blow aimed at the poor mechanical thing. This new alarmbot was a tad smarter than its unfortunate predecessors however. As soon as it sent out its alarm pulse it hurtled itself under the bed, with only milliseconds to spare.

Leela had been Fry&Cloud's second friend, and first enemy. During the hapless defrostee’s first few hours of life in the 31st century it had been Leela’s job to implant him with his career chip, a process that included a needle the size of a large ice-cream cone. Needless to say, the idea hadn’t gone over that well with Cloud. In fact, Leela spent a good deal of her New Year’s Eve afternoon chasing Cloud through the streets of New New York. When she finally did catch up to him, she had suddenly realized that she couldn’t go through with the process. Turanga Leela’s life had changed irrevocably at that moment. In a sudden epiphany she had seen the injustice of the chip system. Instead of installing Cloud's chip, she removed her own, a crime punishable by death. Jobless and penniless, Leela, Cloud and Bender (the robot ha become fast friends with Cloud while the redhead was being chased through New Manhattan), had played the one card they had: Fry’s one living relative, Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth.

The professor had taken them in and given them jobs as the crew for his interplanetary delivery business. This had promoted Leela from the belittling job of cryogenics councilor to pilot of an intergalactic spaceship. It had also made her financially well off enough to buy her own apartment, not to mention an endless supply of replacement alarmbots.

The first thing Leela saw this particular morning was her pet Nibbler flying at her face at what seemed like a significant fraction of the speed of light. He had gotten off the bed at some point during the night, and having sensed his companion stirring, wanted back up. Now, Nibbler could not actually fly, although he was a rather good jumper. Neither was he particularly close to Leela’s face. Leela had never been very good with depth perception for a blatantly obvious reason. The first thing anyone ever noticed about Leela was her face, or more accurately, her eye. Where you would usually expect two see two eyes separated by the bridge of a nose was one large elliptical orb. It wasn’t at all unattractive mind you, but also definitely not normal. It was also very sensitive, and Leela started to hold up her arms in protection, only to find Nibbler inexplicably 3 feet away at the end of her bed. Leela had been abandoned at an orphanage as a baby, and had grown up with the assumption that she was an alien. It had not been until just recently that she had discovered her true heritage.

The purple haired cyclops was actually a human mutant, a class of beings that were not tolerated well by society. Leela had to be very careful to hide her nature from the public

She sighed. Her eye was a constant source of anxiety for her. Everyone she happened across either stared at it or pointedly ignored it, which was just as bad. “In fact”, her mind silently said to itself, “The only person I’ve ever met who doesn’t mind my eye is Cloud.” Ever since their first meeting Fry and Leela had been good friends. No, friends isn’t quite the right word, thought the cyclops. She knew that Fry had vastly deep feelings for her. “Love?” she wondered idly to herself as she slid out of bed. Unfortunately, Fry’s feelings for her were the only aspect of the delivery boy’s mind that could be described as ‘vast’. Most of the time Fry was dull, and sometimes he was a down right idiot. “And he’s so childlike. I love his boyish charm, but I cant stand his childishness.” “Oh well“, she sighed. “It’s too early to be thinking about this.”

The cyclops pushed her thoughts down and away from herself. It only took five minutes to get ready for the day. She took a quick shower and forced her violet hair into its customary ponytail. Nibbler was familiar with the morning routine and waited patiently by the door for the ‘its time to go out’ signal. As soon as Leela shoved a foot into one of her large black boots however, the fuzzy 3-eyed creature went into a frenzy. “I’m coming Nibbler, sit still for a minute will you?” said Leela. Cute little gibberish noises were the only answer she got. Boots on, Leela walked briskly over to the door, snatched up the leash that was hanging from the brass doorknob, and smiled down at her furry black and white friend. “Who wants a walk?” she asked. Nibbler made it pretty obvious what the answer to that question was. In one fluid motion, oddly accurate for a woman who couldn’t judge a foot from a furlong, Leela had the leash attached to the fuzzy creature’s collar. Warbling with glee, Nibbler waited for his moment, and when Leela had the door open sufficiently, he went barreling off down the hallway. Or at least, he tried to go barreling off down the hallway. The leash stopped him after the first couple of feet. Laughing at her pet Leela bent down and cooed: “Aww poor schnoockums hurt himself on his mean leash. I’ll tell you what, you adorable thing, on the way to work we’ll stop by the ham stall and…” The rest of Leela’s statement died in her throat as she was forcibly dragged out the door by her ecstatic pet, who had understood the word ‘ham’ and would not stop running until he had eaten one.

“Stupid humans, what do they make these things for anyway?” Bender B. Rodriquez had not been having a very good day so far. In fact, it down right blew. “All I wanted was to loot a business or two, and maybe mug a few orphans before work. Is that really too much to ask?” Sitting next to a human toilet, as he was doing at the moment, flushing hundreds of dollars in merchandise was definitely not in his plan for the day. He had woken up to his meat-bag roommate Fry snoring. Fry was his best friend true, but the snoring thing really got under the bending robot’s nerves. Well, technically robots don’t have nerves, but still, if Bender had had nerves snoring would have gotten under them. With his sleep simulator deactivated, Bender decided to go out for an early morning walk, by which he meant pulling a heist. The robot got his burglar’s kit in order while singing quietly to himself.

“Who’s great? B-e-n-der!”
“Who’s awesome? B-e-n-der!”
“Who’s better than you? B-e-n-d-e-r!”
“oh! Yeah! Bender!!”

He had gotten about halfway down &#960;th street before he found a target. It was a small two storey brick building. The darkened sign read “Qzork’s Friendly Appliance co.” It sold your standard ware: televisions, microwaves, carbon nanotube circuitry for various computerized gadgets. More importantly however was what it didn’t have, a good security system..

It was easy enough to get in. Then again, Bender was an expert at such things. The door was obviously a Ronco, which any amateur knew was prone to resonant oscillations. Grabbing the doorknob with both hands the robot started to vibrate at a frequency of 359 megahertz.. One of many things within a quarter mile to fall apart was the shop’s locked door. Stage one complete, Bender walked through the door and began to whistle calmly to himself. He strutted through the store to the beat of the little tune, pilfering as he went. Then suddenly things took a turn for the worse.

Bender was too distracted by his own greatness to notice the brown form meander out from between two shelves. A small mewing noise alerted the self absorbed manbot “Huh?” he muttered as he looked down toward the source of the noise. A shaggy tabby cat was staring quizzically up into the glass cylinders that served as Bender’s eyes. “Aww how cute”, said Bender, as he reached down to touch the cat. The adorable little creature purred and leaned toward the robot’s outstretched hand. Then it bit him. HARD. More startled than injured Bender let out a loud girlish squeal and started to flail about the room. “Get offa me you stupid mammal! Get offa me!” He wailed as his arm sailed through the air, pulling the cat around with it. Things crashed to the ground as he careened around the dark room desperate to get this thing off of him. Eventually Bender happened to crash into the checkout counter, sending bits of wood, plastic, and cash register flying amidst curses and unhappy cat noises. At this point the tabby decided this just plain wasn’t worth his trouble and let go with a hiss. Before the disoriented manbot could recover his dignity, his assailant was gone.

Meanwhile, the janitor in the adjacent building was calling the cops. Sal had been a janitor at this particular place for only a week, but he knew enough to realize that the noises he was hearing through the wall should not be coming from a closed appliance store at 5:30 in the morning.

Bender got up and brushed himself off. “Stupid jerk” he complained at the long-vanished cat. “If I caught him robbing my owner’s store in the middle of the night, I wouldn’t have bit him on the hand.” Bender was too distracted by his unjust treatment to notice the sirens that had been steadily getting closer, and so he was completely oblivious of officers URL and Smitty of the NNYPD who were walking from their hover squad car to the hole that had once been a shop window. “Freeze Baby, Oh yeah”, Ordered URL.

Bender’s arms pin wheeled in alarm. Smitty eased himself over the window pane laser at the ready. “Alright punk, turn around. We don’t want any trouble.” The grey robot turned obligingly, but instead of putting his hands and surrendering, bender made a break for it. He pushed Smitty out of his way and ran through the open doorway. URL was too surprised to remember the laser pistol holstered to his waist. For the next hour and a half Smitty and URL chased Bender through the city. At first Bender had hoped to get away but that had proven impossible. A different tactic was in order. The robot ducked into a bakery that had just opened for business. After barreling past the startled shopkeeper, Bender made straight for the bathroom. Unlike humans, robots do not all look differently. If he could get rid of the few items he had managed to swipe before his bout with the deranged tabby, Bender could simply walk away from this heist-gone-wrong. The cops would have no way to prove he was the robot they’d found at the scene.

Muttering to himself about the unfairness of it all, the manbot opened his chest cavity and pulled out the swag. One by one he flushed high-priced electronic gizmos down the toilet. “I don’t have any idea what this toilet thing is for, but that hole is too small to flush anything I can think of. Good thing I didn’t have time to swipe that tv.”

Finally the last of the loot was down the crapper. Done with his task, the robot swaggered haughtily out of the bakery, leaving behind a very confused baker to wonder what a bending robot would possibly be doing in a bathroom.

[Reply #476 on:]

Jesus H. Zombie Christ, have you NO shame at all than to make stupid, meaningless posts to hassle someone suffering RL distress?! 

Get bent and get lost, not necessarily in that order!

[Reply #477 on:]

Fry stole you're work whonananana 

[Reply #478 on:]

Shiny: I've hit the Alert. I think it's Kagome.

[Reply #479 on:]

@ SO:

Being the guardian of two cats currently and always had pets of some type, I understand the loss of a pet.

In some ways, my pets have been closer to me than most of my friends. 

If you're religious, then there's the rainbow bridge - that's a bridge between earth and heaven where your pets wait on you and enter heaven with you when your time on earth is done.