Futurama

About Time
By Enhas

Author's Note: I don't own Futurama or anything to do with it, and this is strictly a non-profit only thing.

My second Futurama story, which has nothing to do at all with The Way it Ends. Unlike that story, this one really is a short and pretty pointless one-shot.. think of it as like a pseudo-opening for the new season of Futurama.

The sharp, piercing cry of an infant filled the air.

An adult entered, quickly taking a few moments to examine his surroundings. Baby blue walls lined the room, with the paintings of golden crescent moons and stars dotting them. A white and wooden crib stood several feet away, on the other side of the room.. still emitting the wailing sounds of a baby. On the floor were a few stuffed animals and a rubber duck which clearly had teeth marks on its beak. Reaching down to grab the yellow chew toy, the man then stopped to stand over the crib.. looking downwards to the child inside.

The red-haired and two-eyed boy stared back into the man's eyes and stopped his tirade of tears. He giggled and reached a small arm up towards his favorite plaything, which was quickly given to him. Almost instantaneously he placed it into his mouth and began yet another attempt to successfully eat rubber. Within a minute, he grew bored and spit it out.. taking some more time to glance at the figure hovering over him.

"Aww.. isn't he cute, Leela?" Fry said, grinning from ear to ear. "He looks just like I did as a baby, too!"

"Fry.. you do know that is you, right?"

(The screen zooms out to show Fry and Leela sitting together on the couch at Planet Express, watching a video. The child onscreen continues to laugh and play with his fingers, as the duo continue to watch.)

"Yeah, I know.. but it doesn't hurt to dream.." Fry replied, sighing at the end of his sentence. He turned the video off and was just about to grab another can of Slurm when the Professor entered the room to greet them.

"Good news, everyone! I've successfully cloned myself a new heart!"

"Uh, that's great!" Leela replied, forcing a smile on to her face.

"Now.. to explain this in a way even you two complete and utter morons can understand!" Professor Farnsworth said, holding up a copy of a book titled Advances in Medical Science: For Complete and Utter Morons. An image of Fry at his failed opera graced the cover, with his head hung low in shame. The real Fry was about to do the same, before Leela placed a gentle hand on his shoulder and smiled at him. He immediately glanced to the cyclops, and brightened up in an instant. The Professor was rambling on about the effects of delta radiation on the coronary artery, but Fry wasn't listening to his words.

Leela's touch and smile is enough for me..

After a few moments of bliss, Fry remembered what he was going to ask his nephew in the first place. "Professor.. how did you get that video of me? Back when I was a baby.. in like 1974 or 75?"

"Wha?"

"The one you gave us like five minutes ago, that we were just watching!" Leela yelled, her annoyance of the Professor showing.

"Oh, my.. that. Last night I went back in time for special heart tissue that can only be harvested from a six month, five day old infant so I could use them to clone my new heart! It works better with a relative."

"That explains why I always used to have nightmares of some creepy old man poking me with needles and glowing sticks.. no offense, Professor! But I used to have them until I was eighteen.. and sometimes I still do today!"

Leela sighed, rubbing her left hand against her forehead. But.. I suppose that's really no worse than some of my nightmares..

Leela's thoughts drifted back to that horrible time in what seemed to be a lifetime ago, in which she was in a coma and thought Fry had died. Though nowhere near as often, that nightmare still plagued her occasionally and she had awoken drenched in sweat more than once during the night. She had never told anyone the entire contents of it.. not even Fry.

Maybe someday I should tell him..

"Now, if you don't mind.. I'm off to continue my experiments and thingamajigs. Off I go!" the Professor said, slowly shuffling away in his slippers to his destination. Fry called out to the extremely old and senile man for one last question.

"Professor.. why did you make this video of me anyway, if you were only there to take stuff out of me?"

"I made a video? What are you talking about, Fry?"

"Never mind.." sighed Fry, as Professor Farnsworth wandered away. "Leela, wanna go grab something to eat? I'm a bit hungry."

"Me too.. sure, Fry. But maybe we should wait for Bender.. where is he, anyway?"

(Scene changes to Bender outside Planet Express placing a small package into a tube, which quickly sucks it in and shoots away at high speed as Bender whistles to himself.)

"Professor.. this is gonna be the easiest thousand bucks I ever made! Ha ha ha ha ha!"

Racing through the tubes, the two-minute journey of the package came to an end as it was deposited into the correct building. It landed onto a roughly ten feet high pile of other packages of many shapes and sizes, as a nearby worker took notice and count.

"Another one?" another worker asked, holding a clipboard.

"Yeah.. that brings the amount to sixteen thousand, five hundred and twenty."

Taking a moment to write a few notes, check a few boxes and apply several stamps.. the clipboard worker snickered to his nearby colleague, who was still looking over the massive package mountain.

"Who would have thought we'd get this many entries for this year's Galaxy's Best Puking Baby contest?"

There you go.. very short but sweet. I've had an idea like this (the fake "Fry and Leela's baby" scene) for a while now, and decided to write it out. The title "About Time" is a bit misleading.. but I meant for it to be that way, heh.