Futurama

Stranger In A Strange Land, parts 1 & 2
By La Belle Leela

(Date, 06/02/2008, 10:00pm - Location, Orlando FL)

Prologue: "Main Introduction"

    Dave is a 30 year old single man who has worked hard all his life, and struggled equally as hard to achieve. From a young age, Dave idolized his father, A retired Naval Aviator, who had flown over 200 combat missions in Vietnam, and had been an instructor at the Navy's Fighter Weapons School, better known as "Top Gun". Sadly, Dave's myopic eyesight derailed his dreams of folowing in his father's footsteps when he was of 10. Still, Dave knew he wanted a life in the aviation industry, be it military, or civilian. After High School, Dave enlisted in the US Navy to become a mechanic. Dave showed above-average talent to the watchful eyes of his instructors, he had enjoyed several years in the USAF cadet program, learning everything he could about the armed forces, he even learned how to fly! Shortly before finishing his Advanced Individual Training class, Dave was involved in a serious training accident which left him with a broken back, and a wounded soul. After a lengthy recovery, he was discharged, and his short service career was over. Having lost the opportunity to serve his country, Dave went back home to Florida, and enrolled in a aviation maintenance trade school, to hopefully get a maintenance job with his favorite airline. with what little funds he had received from The Navy. Dave had always been an intelligent person, but he never could hande failure well. He worked for a few years loading cargo aircraft, and some commercial aircraft fueling, but the pressure, and stress from dealing with his past, and what seemed to him a bleak future further drove him into a depressed condition. The last few years had been to hardest Dave had ever faced. He was still having an arduous time coping with the death of his father, whom he loved dearly, and his mother had taken a new position with her company on the other side of the world in Australia. Dave had moved around, working on maintenance contracts around the United States, and even some Dept of Defense work in England. His last 3 jobs ended in termination, not entirely his fault, but nonetheless made him even more depressed. Now he was having to find ways to get by in his financial crisis as well. Jobs were scarce in his city, and he had gone back to working as an aircraft fueler, but he was determined to tough it out, for he did not want to leave Florida and it's beautiful climate.

Part 1: "A New Beginning"

It had been a rough day, "Geez, worst birthday ever!" exclaimed Dave, who had been working for nearly 3 months without a day off. It had rained hard all day, Dave's uniform was still damp when he clocked out after yet another 12 hour shift on the ramp at Orlando Int'l Airport. Dave sighed in disgust as he walked across the dimly lit parking lot towards one of the few things in life that made him happy, his truck. Dave's pride and joy was his 2003 Dodge Ram 1500 4x4 painted midnight blue with it's polished chrome grille, fenders, and nerf bars reflecting what little light that was shining on it. Dave exhaled exhaustedly as he climbed into his truck, then cursed in pain as he sat down. His back had been bothering him all week, and his lengthy work days only aggravated his old injuries. Dave sat in the parked truck, letting the engine warm, he cracked the throttle sharply twice, for he loved the sound of the Dodge's powerful hemispherical V8 engine roaring out of the tuned dual-exhaust. As he waited, he bowed his head in silent prayer, like he had done many nights before, asking God why he couldn't turn his life around, only this time his hands were shaking, his eyes were welling up, and a deep feeling of inner pain he had been repressing burned in his chest. At this point he lifted his head skyward, and begged for the strength to go on living, for a second chance at life! Dave tried not to think about his inner turmoil as he drove home through the muggy darkness, he tried to forget about life for a while and put his mind eslewhere as he inserted Dream Theater's Octavarium CD in the stereo, and cranked the volume knob. He thought quietly to himself as he drove down the mostly deserted highway 528, Dave glanced up a stupid theme park billboard, like he had probably done a million times before, but when he dropped his eyes back to the road, they were greeted with a brilliant explosion of blue light, brighter than lightning! Dave only had a split second to react, he instinctivly covered his face with his arms, and slammed on the brakes in a vain effort to prevent the big Dodge from hitting whatever the blue light was eminating from!

(Date, 06/02/3008, 10:00am - Location, New New York)

Part 2: "The Wormhole"

"Good news everyone" shouted Farnsworth! The rest of the Planet Express employees sat gathered at the conference table waiting to hear about what crackpot invention the Professor had cooked up this time. "I've come up with an invention that allows us to send cargo to our deep-space customers, uh, but without me having to waste money on extra spaceship fuel, life support supplies, and overtime pay!" "But you don't pay us hardly anything to begin with-BUUUURRRP!" shouted Bender as he poured yet another 40oz bottle of malt liquor in his mouth, and let loose a huge flaming burp. Leela spoke next, "Professor, what does this new device mean for us?" "Ohhhh nothing", replied Farnsworth. "All of you will still keep your jobs here, by that I mean I still haven't forgotten about those 12 deliveries that were delibratly dumped in the sewer, so you all could zoom out to Atlantic City & gamble your asses off! You all owe me bigtime!" Everyone got up from the large round table, and followed the Professor down to the hangar floor where a large canvas sheet was covering something.

Professor Farnsworth shouted "Everyone, I present my latest invention!" He proceeded to pull the sheet down revealing a 25 foot diameter circular, ring-like contraption, that suspiciously looked like a blatant rip-off of the Stargate. Everyone instantly gasped, Fry exclaimed "Whoa, it looks just like that Stargate thingy, y'know from that movie!" "Star-whaaa?" replied Farnsworth, looking at Fry like a confused puppy looks at a sporting event on TV. "It was this movie, back in the 20th Cen-oh what's the use, you wouldn't understand", said Fry. "Shaddup skintube! and fire that mutha up!" shouted Bender angrily. Professor Farnsworth walked over to the control console, pushed several buttons, entered delivery coordinates, and pulled several random levers, which made the center of ring shaped structure swirl to life with bright electric blue glow.

"All you have to do is enter the destination information on this panel here" said the Professor as he motioned to a control panel that looked suspiciously like the time circuit display panel in Doc Brown's Delorean time machine from Back To The Future. Farnsworth began to enter an address, and delivery co-ordinates into the machine's console. "There! I'm going to send this test package to myself, to be delivered 5 minutes from now." And with that, the blue light inside the ring's center glowed brighter, and emitted a high-pitched whine.

Farnsworth threw the small box he had been holding into the pulsating blue light, where it disappeared with a blinding flash. Sure enough, exactly five minutes later, the teleport's center began to glow brighter, and emit the high pitched whine, and a small cardboard box shot out from the ring's center, and struck Dr Zoidberg in the face, which sent him screaming in terror from the room, soaking anyone in his way with ink! "Now then, I don't want any of you morons touching this device, it isn't 100% accurate yet, I still have to fine tune the bugs out of it!" said the Professor as he dropped into his hover-recliner, and began to float away. "I have more important things to do today" before his setntence finished, Farnsworth slumped back asleep snoring loudly, still floating out of the room. "Ok you clods, show's over!" shouted Leela, "We've got deliveries to do, load the cargo, while I pre-flight the ship." Bender and Fry walked away doing their typical mockery of Leela being bossy, and started loading the day's cargo. Bender nudged Fry in the ribs while typically complaining about work "I dunno why we gotta load all this crap ourselves, we got that super-portal-thingy! Just sittin' over there gatherin' dust!" Fry retorted "c'mon Bender, we can screw with the Professor's new toy after we get done." But Bender had already ran over to the Teleport's control panel with a gleeful, mischevious look in his eyes. Bender started pulling levers, and typing in coordinates haphazardly, when Fry pushed him out of the way "Dude, you're gonna break it, it'll be worse than the time you blew up the boiler down in the basement!" shouted Fry.

Fry was too late, the Teleporter began to power up, but this time it did not look, or sound as it did before. The teleporter eerily flashed blue with green bolts of electricity dancing in the center of it's ring shaped port. Instead of the high-pitched whine, it was screaming, louder than any mechanical thing anyone at Planet Express had ever heard before. Suddenly, before anyone could react to Bender's mistake, an enormous explosion of bright blue & white light shot out of the teleporter, along with something very large moving extremely fast. Leela turned around in time to see the large metallic vehicle come hurtling out of the teleporter's ring. She pulled a fast backflip to get out of it's way, landing on Fry in the process. Leela, Fry, and Bender watched in stunned awe as the thing that came out of the portal landed on the hangar floor, still moving forward at a high rate of speed. The truck's brakes engaged, but it just didn't have enough room to stop, and with tires screeching, it collided with the hangar's back wall. The truck was covered in smoke, broken glass, chunks of cinder block, and fine lines of it's paint were blistered off all down the hood & sides, no doubt a side affect of it's trip through the space-time continuum!

While the dust settled, Dave saw that the truck had stopped, it's airbag had deployed, and with the seat belt, saved his life, but the impact had injured him, and he passed out almost immediatly from the pain. Before he lost conciousness, he heard a woman's voice ring out "Oh no, somebody's inside, get them out!" Several hours later, Dave began to regain conciousness. He saw that he was laid out on a couch, but his vision, severly blurred, since his glasses were destroyed in the crash, he could see people in the room around him, but couldn't see their faces. Professor Farnsworth was sitting closest to Dave, as he noticed him starting to stir. "Good News everyone! I think he's coming around!" Fry, Hermes, Amy, and Bender all gathered around the couch as Dave opened his eyes, and breathed a little faster, "Agrhhh! what the hell happened?, and who are you people?" "I was about to ask you the same thing." replied Farnsworth. Dave laid back down, still trying to remember what happened several hours earlier. "My glasses got smashed, I can't see anything." "Not to worry" said Farnsworth, and with that he pulled a small pistol-like device out of his lab coat, and simply aimed it at Dave's forehead. "What the hell-ZZZZT!" A bright red strobe-like flash went off, and Dave covered his face involuntarily. When the pain subsided, he dropped his hands, he noticed he could see just a clear, and sharp as if his glasses were back on his face. "Whoa, I dunno know what you did, but thank you! wow, hey, that thing better not give me cancer." The Professor just smiled his usual senile grin, and spoke. "Now then, who are you?" "uhh, well, it's, it's David, but everone just calls me Dave. Who are all you people?" "My name is Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth, this is my long-time Engineering intern Amy Wong, that handsome fellow over there is my Governement assigned Bureaucrat, Hermes Conrad. Next to him is my Delivery Boy, Phillip J. Fry "whattup!". "Annnnd I'm Professor's faaaaaaavorite employeeeee, Bender!" "QUIET YOU!" shouted Farnsworth. "Yes, that's Bender, he's a bending robot, and all-around jackass! huhwheee!" said Farnsworth, as he waved his hands in the air.

"So, is he awake yet?" came a voice from across the room. Dave sat up to get a better view. He recognized the woman's voice as the same he heard after the crash. The crowd parted to let Dave see who was speaking. Dave saw that her back was turned. He noticed she was tall, about six feet, wearing calf-high black boots, black sweatpants, and a plain white tanktop. He also saw she had beautiful long purple hair tied off in a ponytail, and her arms were muscular, and well toned. She turned around, walked over to the couch, and expected to hear the usual "What's with the eye?" question she always got from a stranger. Dave's eyes immediatly went to her face, her purple hair was pulled down in bangs to one side, as if to draw attention away from her single large eye. She knelt down beside the couch, smiled at Dave, "Hi, I'm Leela." She expected him to either freak out, or look away in disgust like so many people had done all her life when they first saw her. Dave did neither, he looked Leela right in her eye, smiled back, and said "Leela? what a beautiful name for an equally beautiful woman!"