Futurama

More Than Us, Part 3
By Nasteve

The next day was a Saturday, and Fry had the weekend off. He was in the local 7-11 browsing around the candy section, when he was interrupted by a female voice over his left shoulder.

“Hello,” the voice said. Fry looked around and recognised the young blonde woman he’d given that package to at the door last night.

“Hi there,” Fry replied. “Hey, you’re the girl last night at Planet Express, you picked up a package?”

“Yeh. I was sure I recognised your face. I never got your name, though.”

“Me? It’s Fry, you’re…” Fry tried searching his memory for a name.

“Sian,” she reminded him, to save him from forgetting or giving the wrong name. “You live nearby?”

“Yeh, over at the Robot Arms.”

“You’re a robot?”

“No, I just room with one.”

“Oh, phew, heh heh,” Sian giggled.

Fry shared a smile with her. She had a great smile.

Sian picked up a magazine from a shelf nearby, it had the letters “AG” pronounced on the front and a picture of a sort of spaceship on the front.

“You into AG racing by chance?” Sian asked. [Authors note: AG stands for anti-gravity - If you ever played any of the Wipeout games on Playstation, think of it as just like that; If not, I guess you could say it’s kinda like Pod racing from star wars. Something fun and futuristic that Fry would be impressed by.]

“Um, what’s that?”

“It’s like racing spaceships, but with weapons and explosions and loops and cool stuff like that.”

“Wow. Sounds cool.”

“It’s great, I used to work on one of the biggest teams in the business as a test pilot.”

“Really?” Fry said.

“Uh huh. Say, would you like to go get a cup of coffee or something?” Sian said.

“Yeah, I’d love to,” Fry smiled.

Leela had just finished tidying her hair and sat down in front of her videophone. She was all set to phone Fry and ask him out. Not on a date, just out. That’s all. She took a small sip of wine before she courageously dialled the number of Fry’s apartment.

“Hey, foxy femme bot,” Bender suavely answered down the receiver.

“Bender, it’s me, Leela.”

“Whoa, Leela! Hey, get off the line, meatbag, I’m expecting an important call,” Bender said.

“I’ll bet. Is Fry there?”

“No, he’s out on a date with some girl he met,” Replied Bender.

“Oh. Right, um, okay, well, tell him I called. Actually, I’ll just see him later. Never mind.”

Leela hung up.

With the coming weeks, Fry’s relationship with Sian grew. They were dating regularly and both seemed very happy with each other. Fry had met an intelligent person, with a laid back attitude who he enjoyed being around. And Sian had met someone with a similarly relaxed attitude, but who wasn’t a jerk and who could make her laugh.

Leela, however, was badly troubled by Fry’s relationship with Sian. She felt uncomfortable. She wasn’t talking much anymore with Fry at work and she often looked terribly depressed. At least more so than usual.

Leela was lying in bed one night, in darkness, thinking to herself. She had her hands tucked behind her head as she lay looking towards the ceiling. She had been asked to go to a party that Hermes was having at his home to officially mark his birthday. (All participating in the party were expected to arrive promptly at 20:21 hours and 19 seconds, as that was technically the moment of his birth.)

Leela didn’t really want to go. “Fry and Sian will be there,” she mused. “But I don’t want them to think I’m not going because of them. Then they’ll suspect how I feel about Fry. But how am I ever gonna get him if I don’t go to social occasions like this? I can’t just sit and wait for him to break up with her, then move in. What if that never happens? I’ll be waiting forever.”

Leela’s optimistic side, as much as was left, tried to persuade her to go: “Look, just act sexy, act cool, go there, and show Fry exactly what he’s missing.”

Regular Leela: “Look at me,” Leela clutched her eye shut, “who’d ever think a freak like me was attractive?”

“Look at it sensibly, what have you got to lose?”

Leela sighed. Then tried not to think, she wanted to sleep.

At exactly 20:21 and 19 seconds the following day, Leela arrived at Hermes home in the New New York suburbs. She was dressed in her regular clothes and was wearing her green jacket.

“Hello, Leela," Hermes answered the door. "Everyone’s here already.” Hermes glanced at his watch. “Hey, you knew that I was kiddin’ when I said you had to be here at twenty-one past eight exactly, right?”

Whoops.

“Uh,” Leela paused, she could see Fry and Sian laughing past Hermes shoulder. “Of course! I’m just came when I was ready, is all!” Leela hurriedly answered with a forced smile. “I didn’t time it or anything! Ha ha hah!”

“Okay, Leela. Come in, let me take your jacket,” Hermes offered. “Help yourself to a drink.”

Leela walked as casually as her nerves would permit up to Fry and Sian.

“Hey, Leela!” Fry welcomed enthusiastically.

“Hi Fry,” Leela smiled back.

“Leela, you haven’t met Sian yet, have you?” Fry asked. Sian smiled at Leela, and squeezed Fry’s left arm.

“Not yet, sadly.”

“Hi. So you’re Fry’s captain? He’s told me so much about you,” Sian said.

“Really? Well, we’re good friends.”

“Yeah,” Fry agreed.

The three shared an awkward moment of smiling and standing before Leela excused herself. “Well, I think I’d better say 'hi' to everyone.”

“Okay, enjoy,” Sian agreed.

“See you later, Leela,” Fry said as Leela walked into the crowded front room.

“Hey, skintube,” Bender said as he approached Leela. He was drinking scotch straight from the bottle. “How about a drinking contest? Last one conscious wins fifty bucks?”

Leela looked back over at Fry. He and Sian were holding each other and staring into each others eyes. Leela felt so rotten. She asked herself why did she come? How would she ever be able to break those two up?

“Sure thing, Bender,” Leela agreed. She was feeling so depressed.

“Wow, great! That’s eight people so far at least who are gonna get plastered tonight. This should be an interesting evening!” Bender laughed as he walked away.

Leela headed towards the drinks table.

Now, it's somewhat unclear exactly how much Leela drank during the night. Leela happens to have (my Leela) a pretty large capacity for alcohol. She definitely didn’t start bingeing straight away, because she was sober for the gift-giving ceremony, but as the night passed on, and the opportunities to speak with Fry dried up (in proportion with the increased public holding, touching and kissing between Sian and Fry), and the number of men Leela tried to speak with (in an effort to grab Fry’s attention) slowed with every rejection, Leela was left with little choice but to turn to alcohol to drown her misery; a quite generous amount of alcohol. (Leela foolishly started to feel like it was a great idea to drink every different type of alcohol on offer.) And as a consequence, there are only fragments of the evening she actually remembers…

“Only in September, the rest of the time it’s just…”

“AG Racing? That’s just fascinating!”

“Who’d want to date a ginger?!”

“Well actually, for while I happened to…”

“I’ve never seen so many friends and so much food!”

“It’s a remarkable idea I tell you! You can smell things on the other side of…”

“Get outta here you filthy crab!”

“How you keeping up meatbag? That fifty is as good as…”

“G’uh! That’s what I told her…”

“Has she passed out? Oh I think she heard us…”

“The Beatles! nice, stick it on!”

“Who cares? They’re all great”

“We all live in a yellow submarine! Yellow submarine!”

“Ha ha ha ha ha”

“Fry, let’s go upstairs”

Leela by this point was feeling pretty low and decided, before she felt any worse, to leave. It was about 1am by now, and Leela simply collected her jacket and let herself out. She said ‘Buh-bye now’, but the few who heard her were too drunk to really care and simply smiled and waved her.

Outside it was raining pretty heavily. Normally, Leela would have ordered a taxi, but through a combination of depression or drink, or just that Leela simply thought it was a good idea, she decided to stagger slightly through the wet night for a while; the fresh air was starting to sober her up a little anyways. Leela decided to start off in a direction towards the city, but in truth, she was heading for the Orphanarium she was raised in. She wasn’t far from it and she felt like going.

The wet rain soaked her jacket as water dripped from her nose and hair and her boots splashed puddles on the sidewalk. She didn’t care though; she felt better than she did all night as a matter of fact.

Leela walked along the streets, and as she got nearer to her old Orphanarium, she gradually started to recognise old streets nearby. As she did, she started to think about her childhood. She took a look up towards the stars and remembered about all the time she used to just stand under the stars looking up and searching through the emptiness with her mind, thinking about all the planets that could be up there and believing, without doubt, that she was from a planet up there and that her parents were up there somewhere. So stupid now. Leela laughed.

When she arrived at the Orphanarium, it was still raining. The place was sealed up for the night and all the lights were out. Leela started walking around the perimeter in the rain, looking in through the gates and strumming her left hand across the bars as she passed. Her mind was filled with memories of her childhood. Leela tried to focus in on the happy memories, to take her mind off the party. “Double-soup Tuesday...” Leela whispered as she passed the cafeteria building.

Leela, about half-way around the perimeter, found an old wall which bordered a small garden separate from the main building. The orphans sometimes used to play in that garden in the summertime. The wall was flat, grey concrete, and only a foot tall at its lowest level, but regularly along the wall it would arch up another two feet or so and then back down, forming a sort of embrasure. Because of the shape of the wall, you could lie down on the wall with your back against the embrasure, as if you were in a chair with a slightly tilting back. Sometimes, Leela remembered, she used to like to sit on the wall, in her tilting chair, and pretend she was in a spaceship fighter. Leela smiled. “Way cooler than being an AG pilot.” Leela sat down in her pilot’s seat and folded her arms. It was still raining, but Leela felt like sleeping there. She really felt like just closing her eye, maybe waking up in a few hours before daylight; she’d be sober by then. She really felt like it.

She never did sleep there though, she got up after about 5 minutes, soaking wet, and got a taxi home.

End of part 3