A / N: Like Beyonce, I've returned with a surprise new fic drop.

Real talk though - I know, this is only a surprise because everyone gave up hope it was ever coming. I wish I had a fun story to explain what took so long (some of you know for a fact I started this chapter during the summer) but all I can offer is: work, bills, blah. Life is inconvenient. If I could devote all my time to writing, I would.

For the newbies: this is a sequel. There's a fair amount of first chapter exposition, and the whole fic loosely follows the structure of the Hunger Games trilogy, but if you want to make life easier on yourself, you should go read Know Your Quarry.

For the old faithfuls: Did someone say Bender? ;)


The cryogenics building comes down on a sweltering July day. No-one is really surprised. The building has stood in the same spot for more than a millennium, after all, and it's been centuries since basic maintenance was carried out on the foundations. Cryogenics fell out of fashion years ago.

The worst thing about the building collapse is that the city halts traffic for a full day. New New Yorkers complain but eventually find alternate routes to work or take the day off entirely, because the collapse coincides with one of the hottest summers on record and nobody wants to be on the street unless they have to be. Temperatures soar past what the human body can comfortably stand, so entrepreneur Carol Smother offers her latest-model robots to help with the clean-up.

No-one ever considers that she might have hidden motives for doing so. No-one ever considers that the collapse might have been caused by explosives hidden in the foundations of the building and remote-detonated that morning. Why would they? To suspect Smother would be to suspect one of President Nixon's inner circle – maybe even Nixon himself. And what reason could Nixon possibly have for wanting to wipe out this building full of frozen sleepers? Some of them are from his own era. Some of them were famous politicians, sporting superstars, national heroes. The support of any one of them would boost Nixon's public image, should they decide to give it to him.

Assuming they ever wake up, of course, and assuming they like what Earth President Nixon has done to their planet.

President Nixon doesn't deal in uncertainties. The safest way to fight potential detractors, he has always felt, is to silence them before they speak. And so he calls a meeting with Carol Smother. The meeting isn't recorded. It's held in the dark, in the dead of night, and neither party says much out loud. But it ends with a nod from both sides, and a perfect understanding.


The sun is high in the sky. There is an ambulance parked at the curbside, and a lone EMT sits in the cab, chewing on a wad of gum. Sweat is soaking into the collar of her shirt. Every once in a while a robot lugs over a stiff, dust-encrusted corpse, or a bag of unidentified body parts. The EMT – Ruiz - hops out of the shade, briefly examines these findings, then shakes out another body bag. It's been like this all morning. One body after another, and no-one for company but those creepy walking talking trash cans Smothercorp sent over.

There is one approaching her now. The finish on it is a functional, fog hat gray. It can extend its arms a full twenty feet, and lift girders that would crush a man, but it's not a machine. There is something almost human in its baleful yellow eyes. It looks at her and Ruiz swears she sees resentment. These things aren't built to serve, like Smothercorp says. They're built to be.

And this one – she sits up straight, shielding her eyes from the glare of sunlight on glass.

Holy cow.

It's carrying a child.


The robot named Bender Rodriguez is knee-deep in rubble, bending girders to get at the cryo-pods trapped beneath them. He's humming to himself, because the work is boring and some human music is alright. Especially the kind with banjos.

His name isn't really Rodriguez. He was named Bender in accordance with his primary function, but when he got off the assembly line and spent some time around humans, he realized they all had two names. So he stole one from a Latino movie star, and the first time a human laughed at it, he punched the guy and knocked out all his teeth. (They recalled him after that and spent a day reprogramming him so it wouldn't happen again. Now he can't hurt humans unless ordered to do so by someone in authority, and some days he gets so frustrated he swears he can feel the cogs grinding their teeth smooth inside him.)

Bender pries open a battered cryo-pod and watches the man inside begin to thaw.

Cryo-pod serial number ZGJ29359. X-Ray Mode: initiate jaw scan / access dental records - - - create pathway / identify – IDENTITY CONFIRMED. {Jack Charles Burlington. Age 42. Frozen 2056.}

The man's eyelids begin to twitch. Bender ignores him.

CROSS-REFERENCE / alpha one - KILL LIST. Input: Burlington, J. C.

Directive: Dispose.

Bender snaps off a section of girder. The man blinks up at him, befuddled – but the girder is already whistling its way down. It impacts his skull and he stills immediately.

Some days Bender wonders about his programming. Some of the tasks Mom has programmed him for lately bend the definition of "bending". It's not as if he can violate a directive – they're embedded too deep in his code – but at heart he's a bending unit, and lately it feels like he's doing the work of a kill-bot. Not that he feels guilty or anything. Guilt is for chumps. But still. He's a bending unit.

He tugs out the next cryo-pod. This one is only half a pod, and it swings open at his touch. There's a pair of human legs in there, and a diamond-topped cane. Bender pockets the diamond, because his directives don't explicitly forbid looting, and it's not like Stumpy here will use it anyway.

The cane identifies Stumpy as a 23rd Century billionaire and Republican Party benefactor. He is one of the few people not scheduled to meet Mr Girder . . . but too bad for him, he didn't take his cryo-nap in a reinforced titanium pod.

The next pod is dented but intact. It hisses, steam-white nitrogen pouring into the summer air, and the door cranks open.

At first Bender thinks he got half a human again.

But it's not. It's a mini human, half the regular size and drowning in an oversized camo jacket. Its hair is orange and girlishly long, but the scan says male, so Bender guesses it's a male after all. He scans for dental records.

Nothing.

Maybe the kid couldn't afford a dentist.

Bender abandons this mode of identification and scans the code on the lid of the cryo-pod instead, to cross-reference with patient records.

Nothing.

At a loss, Bender does something he's never had any reason to do before – he runs the search again.

Nothing. Nada. For all intents and purposes, this kid doesn't exist.

He stares down at the boy, and fights a growing sense of unease. This isn't how it's supposed to go. There's a list, and the list tells him who to dispose of. If this kid isn't on the list, then . . . then . . . then Bender has to decide what to do with him.

The thought makes him feel dizzy, like someone just unscrewed the top of his head.

The kid is starting to wake up. He rubs at his eyes, then blinks sleepily up at Bender. His jaw goes slack. His eyes go wide.

"Holy moly," he breathes. "You're a robot!"

Bender sighs, and begins the preprogrammed speech.

"I am a bending unit designated to this task by senior officials at Smothercorp Industries," he drones. "I was created for the betterment of humanity and am programmed not to harm you -"

In the current circumstances, the last part is a lie, but the kid isn't listening anyway. Rather than edging away and looking creeped-out (as most humans do) he's leaning forward, entranced.

"You're a real life robot!" And then he reaches out, opens Bender's chest compartment, and sticks his head inside. "There's not a person in here or anything!" he exclaims, impressed. "This is so cool!"

His voice bounces around inside Bender's chest. Bender grabs the kid by the scruff of his neck and hauls him out. It doesn't seem to bother the kid. He wriggles happily, feet kicking at empty air.

"I'm being threatened by a robot! This is so cool! What's a bending unit? What's a Smothercorp? Do you have a name? Like . . . Galaxmatron! Or – or -"

"My name is Bender, nerd," Bender interrupts. He gives the kid a little shake.

It just smiles at him.

"Bender," it says. "Cool! I'm Philip. Phil." When this gets no reply, Philip swings his feet idly and adds more. "I was named after a screwdriver. I'm ten. How'd you get to be a robot?"

Bender gives him another little shake.

"Shut up. I'm processing."

"Does that mean you're thinking?"

The kid is as irrepressible as a puppy.

Maybe Bender should put him in a sack and toss him in the river, the way humans do with unwanted puppies. Mom would almost certainly tell him to do that, if the kid has no strategic value. By now it's pretty obvious he doesn't, so why is Bender keeping him alive?

Maybe he's just sick of killing things. He's not a kill-bot, after all. And the human thinks he's cool. Humans never think he's cool. They never look at him with their faces all lit up like that.

Humans keep puppies around sometimes, don't they? What do they call it? Oh, yeah. Pets.

The kid is still yapping.

"Can you shoot lasers out of your eyes? I saw a robot once on TV that could shoot lasers out of its eyes. Where did you come from? Ooh! Ooh! Are you part of a top-secret project for the military? My dad says the Japanese are working on killer robots. He says we better watch out, because if they can make toilets talk there's nothing they can't do." He stops talking suddenly and frowns. "I'm all dusty. Why am I all dusty?"

He tears his eyes away from Bender and looks around for the first time. He takes in the piles of rubble and twisted metal, the dust that coats everything around them. The hover-ambulance suspended next to the sidewalk and the clear perspex travel tubes snaking between skyscrapers, with humans zipping past inside them. The Bachelor Chow advertizing blimp bobbing above their heads, and the ice still rimed onto the rim of his open cryo-pod.

He looks dizzy. When Bender puts him down he topples over like a sunk skittle, and the robot has to prop him up again. His teeth are chattering.

"Where am I?"

"New New York."

"I don't get it." His gaze is caught by something on the ground, and the color drains from his face. "Um. B-Bender? Mr Robot? There's an arm over there. And – and it doesn't have a body."

He's right. Bender casually tosses the appendage into the nearest body bag.

"What do you know? Sharp eyes, kid."

This pet thing might work out after all.

The thought makes Bender feel strange, like something is tickling him from the inside. Like he can still feel the kid's voice echoing in his empty chest compartment. He's decided to let the kid live. He did that. All by himself, without any orders or programming. It's like having free will.

It is free will.

When the kid starts swaying on his feet, Bender does something else he's never done before – he pulls out a bottle of liquor and hands it over.

The kid looks weak. He probably needs sustenance.

"Drink up, short stack," Bender advises. He examines the cryo-pod again. "No wonder you're scrawny. You've been on ice for a thousand years." He whistles.

Fry chokes. It's probably shock, but the coughing fit that follows – and the way his eyes are streaming – makes it hard to tell. Maybe it's the proof? Bender checks the label, but nope – Mom drinks this stuff all time, so it must be fine for humans. He passes the bottle back, shrugging. Must be shock.

The kid takes another obedient swallow, embarks on another coughing fit.

"This is the future? Bu – bu -"

"Welcome to the world of tomorrow, loser."

The kid's face crumples.

"I wanna go home. I want my mom."

"You have no home," Bender reminds him. "Your mom's been dead for a thousand years."

He's only pointing out the truth, but the kid flinches like he's been slapped. It's not like Bender cares or anything, but . . . crap. The kid's lower lip is wobbling dangerously now. Bender tips the bottle back toward his mouth.

"Don't worry," he says quickly. "You can come live with me. You don't need much space, right? I have a cardboard box I could fit you in. Maybe. Do you fold up any smaller than this?"

"Uh-huh . . ."

The alcohol is having a weird effect on Fry. It's loosened him out but it hasn't stopped him swaying. His eyes are out of focus and his tongue sounds like it's suddenly too thick for his mouth, so all his words come out slurred. He's also looking kinda green for a human . . .

"I c'n roll up like an armadillo," he says.

Then he cracks up, laughing so hard that . . . yeah, here comes the puke.

"I feel funny," he mumbles.

And he falls over.


Okay, so he shouldn't have given the kid alcohol.

But what Bender really ends up thinking, when it's all over, is that he shouldn't have brought the kid to that snotty EMT. Because that's when it all goes wrong.

She yells at him for giving Fry alcohol, and then she yells at him for telling the kid he's been frozen, and then she demands his serial number and threatens to report him to Mom. Bender yells back, but it doesn't do any good. Human trumps robot, it always does.

Bender is dragged away to be reprogrammed (again), and the last thing he sees is Ruiz putting a tube down his little human's throat. The kid convulses, still unconscious . . . and then the ambulance doors slam and the techs power Bender down for transit, and he's gone.


It's Farnsworth this time.

Last time they sent Bender to be reprogrammed, they had Wernstrom do it. Wernstrom is Mom's husband, and the father of her two snot-faced sons. He has sandy hair like Larry, but it's retreating fast into a widow's peak, and his rheumy green eyes water when he squints too hard. Bender doesn't like Wernstrom, though it's easy to see why Mom does. He shares her ruthlessness, her need for efficiency. He also shares her total lack of creativity, which is probably why she sleeps with Farnsworth on the side.

Farnsworth has a mind like a live wire. Ideas spark off in every direction, uncontrollable. Wernstrom is an improver – a builder on other people's prototypes – and Mom is an exploiter, but Farnsworth is the brains of the operation. Without him there wouldn't be any robots. But he's vague and easily distracted, and he has too many morals for Mom's taste. As far as Bender can tell, Mom can only tolerate Farnsworth in small doses, and Farnsworth can only live with himself if he breaks off their affair a minimum of three times a year. But they always go back to each other. Humans can be funny like that.

Farnsworth is alright, for a human. Mostly he only has eyes for Mom and assorted lengths of wire, but he has a scientific appreciation of robots. His pride in his creation isn't the same as Fry's wide-eyed sense of wonder, but it's better than the mistrust and indifference Bender gets from everyone else. And Farnsworth talks to him, even when he's literally tightening the screws in his head. Wernstrom and the other techs don't bother.

That's why it feels like a betrayal, when Mom drops in with her message from the Central Bureaucracy. When she tells Farnsworth they dug up an orphan at the cryogenics building, and Hubert is his only living relative.

It's his human – it's Fry – and Bender sees it all unfold, the instant he hears this news. He can't help it, his system runs the projection too fast. Fry will come and live with Farnsworth, but Farnsworth will forget about him, order him out from under his feet . . . and Bender will adopt the little human, like a pet. Fry will be amazed at everything he does, and Bender will feel important again, the way he did when he was first made.

But the projection is derailed by Mom. She snaps that the boy would be a distraction, insists that Smothercorp is on the brink of greatness and she needs Hubert's full attention. Farnsworth protests weakly, but then Mom leans in and lowers her voice, adding emphasis on certain words. And Farnsworth does what he always does. He runs a hand through his graying red hair, fiddles with his glasses, shifts uncomfortably in his chair. His breathing becomes uneven and his eyes rake over Mom – the dark hair piled up on her head, the jumpsuit that clings to every curve, the sharp eyes that hold him in thrall.

And then he does what he always does.

He agrees.


Bender develops a strange glitch in the weeks that follow. Every time he sees Mom or Farnsworth, the pistons in his hand fire unexpectedly, metal fingers contracting into a fist, and he can't loosen them. He has to hide the fist instead, and pry the fingers apart with his other hand, long after the two humans have left the room.

Standard procedure is to report any glitches and submit for repairs, but it's not an order. It's never had to be, because what robot wants to walk around malfunctioning?

Bender uncurls another fist, weeks after he first noticed the problem, and wonders why he does.


A year passes.

Smothercorp expands and spawns hundreds of thousands of robots – robots with shiny, titanium alloy bodies and dull metal minds. They're not like Bender. They give him the creeps, actually. These new robots follow orders without question. They use their serial numbers instead of names and power down completely when the humans don't need them, and when they develop faults, they blithely submit themselves for repairs, and get broken down for parts.

Some days Bender wonders if he's living on borrowed time. He's outmoded and he knows it; he can't keep pace with the blank, soulless automaton that is now the robotic ideal. He's got too much personality to suppress. He steals little mementos on mission (unless expressly ordered not to), and he watches human telenovelas and swears in Spanish, and he can't be programmed for politeness, no matter how hard Mom's techs try. He doesn't belong in this brave new world of robots. It's only a matter of time before Mom has him melted down.


He's in New New York, sitting behind a falafel cart and watching the traffic. The cart is a cover – he's really here to spy on some senator in the bar across the street – but the humans around him don't know that, and they keep stopping to buy his inexpertly-assembled, undercooked falafels. Bender doesn't care. He's playing back the surveillance footage he caught earlier on his internal monitors, cleaning up the audio and sharpening the resolution so Mom can recreate every word and glance of the senator's covert conversation.

It's tedious work, even for a robot, and his attention has just started to wander when -

It's him. It's his human.

The little human is walking up the street with a whole bunch of other little humans, in varying sizes and degrees of weediness. Fry is last in line. He looks a lot like he did a year ago. A head taller, maybe, but just as scrawny. His orange hair is sticking up through a hole in his hat. The hat is green wool and shapeless, riddled with holes, but it's the warmest thing on the kid. It's January and the city is sunk in snow, but not one of these kids has a coat, Bender realizes. And humans are frail, so they're probably freezing. Fry is wearing a faded brown sweater, and a pair of blue jeans with a hole like an open tin can flapping at the knee. His canvas sneakers are soaked through with sludge, and he's shivering. There's some kind of green gunk running out of his nose, and he keeps wiping it on his sleeve.

Bender stares at him.

Every mechanism in his body has seized up. He can't move.

It's his human. It's really him.

Wild simulations run through his mind – he sees himself snatching the kid, running away, seeking out some backstreet hacker for reprogramming – but it's over before he can act on it. Fry moves past him, unseeing, and then another kid blocks him from view and the whole group is gone. They move away down the street and the stupid senator stays in his stupid bar, and Bender stays stuck behind his fake falafel cart – unobtrusive, unnoticed, undercover – recording the man eating pork rinds. Because he can't do anything else.


He sees Fry twice more in the years that follow.

The first time Fry is maybe twelve (it's hard to tell with humans). His hair is getting long again, brushing his shoulders, and he looks skinnier than ever. It's summertime and he must've wandered away from the group or something, because he's standing among the tables in a street cafe. The rest of the kids are some way away, laughing as their leader – an adult female in a navy pantsuit as severe as her expression – berates his little meatbag. She's calling him a thief, and she slaps him hard enough to leave a stinging pink mark on his cheek. Then she drags him back to the group by his hair. He mumbles apologies and trudges away with his head down, but Bender is watching him in high resolution zoom, and when the woman turns away he sees Fry tuck a half-eaten bread roll into his pocket, and grin lightning fast.

The next time is winter, two or three years later. The sidewalks are glistening with black ice and the city is deserted, save for criminals and unwanted children, who come out like stray dogs, whatever the weather. Fry has cut his hair at last, but he's a lot taller now - enough to make Bender wonder how fast humans grow, exactly. He's still skinny though, his clothes flopping off him, and his cheeks are chafed with cold. He's with another two humans – a finnicky blonde boy with a high-pitched voice, and a girl with wavy yellow-brown hair and freckles, who keeps stealing his hat. The three of them have duct-taped the knives from an old dinner service to their shoes and they're skating in the street, laughing as they duck hover-cars and passers-by.

Fry is hungry and cold, but he looks happy. Bender has never seen a human who looked like he was having this much fun just being alive. And he knows humans who are rich and powerful and have sex all the time, which is basically everything humans aspire to. Fry is stealing people's leftover food. He doesn't even have real skates. And he keeps trying to get his hat back, even though Bender has seen hobos with better hats.

Bender stays in the shadows, stuck in his obedient frozen body, but he stares at the intersection at the top of the street, long after Fry has skidded away.


Crap hits the fan not long after that. Mom's covert whisperings with Leo Wong are uncovered by Nixon, and the crackpot dictator takes action. Wong and his family are wiped out in a hovercar "accident". The factories building Mom's robot army are torched, and her mansion is blown sky-high. Wernstrom is the only fatality, but Mom and her sons are assumed dead. Farnsworth too. If Mom hadn't been screwing Farnsworth on board his prototype stealth ship at the time, they all would be.

The ship becomes a kind of prison. Cloaked 24/7, in permanent orbit around Earth, they float for months; the only survivors of Mom's former empire. Bender is one of only two robots to escape the purge. Dumb luck saves him too – he was supposed to be back on Earth, but Farnsworth finally noticed the glitch in his hand and ordered him to submit for tests. The only other surviving robot is a goody-two-shoes named Flexo, who was watching Mom's snot-nosed sons in the ship's rec room at the time.

The months that follow are weird. Losing her husband, her power, and her life's work doesn't make Mom as angry as Bender expected. Sure, she yells and stomps about, but her rage is just an impotent display. She's going through the motions, no fire behind it, like a tiger Bender once saw in a cage. The other humans are scared to approach her, but they're all as freaked out as Bender is about her lack of a plan.

Even belittling her sons doesn't amuse her the way it used to. She laughs just once in all those months – when Bender tells her she's getting fat. Her eyes bug out of her head and for a moment he thinks she's going to have him decommissioned. She starts laughing like crazy, so hard she nearly chokes on her cigarette. "Son of a bitch," she says. But then she waves him off. It occurs to Bender that there might be some benefits to being one of only two robots left in existence.

Eventually a baby appears, and even though 80 per cent of his features can be cross-referenced with Farnsworth's, Mom says he's Wernstrom's. Farnsworth either can't see it or doesn't care, because he accepts this version of reality without complaint. Maybe he just doesn't want to claim Igner. Bender wouldn't blame him – the kid bawls non-stop, and his eyes have pointed in two different directions ever since Bender dropped him that first week. (It wasn't his fault. The kid was a squirmer.) It falls to Flexo to look after baby Igner. Mom certainly doesn't care enough to.

It's the Games that fix her. Bender is bored enough to hijack a signal from the tv satellite one day, and Mom catches him. It's the second time he fears decommission, and the second time it doesn't happen. Because the Citizenship Games are on, and -

"That's the Wong girl," Mom hisses.

Amy Wong is some fat kid Mom met once at Leo Wong's ranch. She's his daughter. It looks like she survived the car wreck that killed her parents, and Nixon rewarded by forcing her into the Games. Bender is expecting her to snuff it by the end of day one, but she surprises them all by surviving. She plays the other tributes, she plays the human sponsors – even Mom has to admit her manipulation is masterful. And with every day Mom watches this girl outwit Nixon, she comes back to herself. As Amy becomes stronger, Mom becomes stronger. Her gaze becomes greedier, her insults become razor sharp – with every passing day she becomes more powerful, more Mom.

By the time Wong wins (ambushing her fellow tributes in their sleep and slitting their throats) Mom is back in action. She orders Bender to hijack the news channels too, and orders Farnsworth to get his weapons workshop up and running again. Bender rendez-vous with trusted contacts on the ground, sets up a covert network of spies on Mom's command, and sources sites on distant planets for Mom's future factories. She's starting again, rebuilding her empire from scratch. The old Mom is back, ruthless and vengeful, and prepared to steamroll over any objections.

When Farnsworth argues that his blueprints were lost when the factories burned down, Mom simply fixes him with a cold clear gaze, and tells him he has everything he needs to recreate his work.

"One working machine," she says, gesturing at Bender. "And one to take apart." She waves off-handedly at Flexo. "What more do you need?"


Bender develops a new glitch in the months after that. It happens when he's powered down. Then he replays the memory of this moment in his head, every detail exact – only this time Mom points at Flexo first and him second. This time dumb luck doesn't save him, and he is the robot lying dissembled in Farnsworth's workshop. The human pries his components apart, squinting at him through those thick milk-bottle glasses, and as he works Bender feels himself breaking up, losing himself, becoming smaller and smaller until there's nothing left.

Then he powers on again and screams.

He tells no-one about this new glitch, and makes sure to mute himself when he powers down.


The next two years are spent planning and working. Mom's new killbots are ugly and crude. They're made from scavenged and stolen components, and the design is one Farnsworth rushed through, not a labor of love. But their numbers are growing, and as Nixon pushes the people of Earth further, so is support for Mom's revolution. Bender is busy again, ferrying messages and supplies into the heart of Nixon's territories, and killing when he's told to. Preparing for the day when Mom will set Nixon's empire on fire. It's coming soon, she says.

Soon.

Mom builds more robots and makes more plans, and time passes in the steady, monotonous way it does when Bender has nothing to hold his interest. He wishes the good stuff would start already – all that chaos and fire and revenge the humans keep promising. It sounds like fun. But it takes time for Mom to put all the pieces into place.

A year passes. Then two. Bender feels himself sliding into apathy, like he's stuck in a programming loop. It's the same day over and over again, and no-one pays him any attention, and he's bored.

And then it happens, and it's like being rebooted; like being electrocuted, like booting up for the first time the day he was made.

Maybe some version of this is what Mom felt, when she saw little Amy Wong on that screen two years ago and seemed to wake up again. Bender sees his human on a tiny TV screen, and it shocks him to the core.

The kid is a foot taller than he should be, and a lot cleaner than Bender remembers. Someone cut his hair, and he's all gussied up in fancy clothes. But it's him. It's definitely him, sitting on a plush leather couch and interviewing for the Citizenship Games. Exposing humanity's dirty little secrets.

His tiny human is in a televised death contest.

His tiny human is going to die.

Bender has no illusions about this. He nearly killed the little meatbag once with a strong drink. Fry won't win the Games. It's impossible.

It's improbable.

The thought worms its way into Bender's head somehow. Fry's odds are catastrophically low, sure. But what were the odds of some Brooklyn kid falling into a cryo-tube and going unnoticed for a thousand years? What were the odds of that same kid surviving the collapse of the cryogenics building? What were the odds of Bender seeing him three times in the years after that? What were the odds of him being related to Bender's own creator?

His little meatbag is special. (And not just because he thinks Bender is great.) If any human could overcome the odds, it's this one.

It has to be this one.


Bender watches this year's Games obsessively. It's easy to do, because Fry's disastrous interview got Mom's attention. She revels in anything that makes Nixon look foolish, and seems to think Fry's comments were some kind of tipping point, that his presence in the Games has the potential to destabilize Nixon's favorite propaganda machine. Or something. Bender doesn't pretend to understand how the humans think.

He only cares about one of them, after all.

Fry survives the first day of the Games because he's smart enough to flee the Cornucopia before the bloodshed really gets going. It's a good move, and it gives Bender hope. But then he teams up with some Omicronian kid who obviously wants to eat him, and doesn't even seem to notice he's being lined up as lunch. Igner would have more self-preservation than that.

His human is not that smart, Bender realizes. And his priorities are all out of whack. He's in a fight to the death, but instead of evaluating the weaknesses of the other tributes or trying to get the jump on them, the way Bender would, he hides and wastes his CPU, dwelling on topics like Jrr's family, or that mutant girl who's freaking out a half-mile away. (Not that he knows that. As far as Bender can tell, he's never even talked to Mutant Girl. But he won't shut up about her.)

He's doomed, Bender thinks. Doomed.

And yet, improbably, he survives.

Bender watches, mystified, as mutts attack and Jrr not only fights them off, but passes up a perfectly good opportunity to chow down on Fry while the kid is knocked out and bleeding. He saves Fry, because Fry talked to him. Fry listened to him blather on about his hand-painted model of the solar system and his hardass dad, and Jrr repays him for that by saving his life. Like the two things are the same. Like he owes him somehow.

It's confusing, but maybe the little meatbag is onto something. When he gets it in his head to go save Mutant Girl, Jrr doesn't even argue with him. Sure, he looks uneasy about it, but he still follows Fry and does everything he says. Even Mutant Girl isn't as weirded out by this alliance as she should be. Instead of snapping Fry's neck and stealing his supplies, she freezes up and lets him hug her. And then she says he has some kind of human infection, and tries to make him better.

Mutant Girl makes Bender uncomfortable. Part of him likes her, because she looks at Fry like he's crazy when he says something obviously crazy, and because she doesn't know how to react when he shows interest in her. She reminds Bender of a robot trying to figure out the human world. And she protects Fry, so there's that.

But there's something between her and Fry Bender doesn't understand. It's not the undercurrent that runs between them like electricity when they get too close – he's been around Mom and Farnsworth long enough to know what that is. But with Fry and Mutant Girl, there's something else. When they talk, it's like there's an encrypted layer of code hidden under the surface. Something no-one else can crack. Bender watches and rewatches their conversations, and can't ever make any sense of them. Mutant Girl - Leela - looks at Fry the way Bender thinks of him. Like he's her human. And Fry looks at her like he could look at her forever. (Bender gets bored if he looks at her for more than thirty seconds, so he can't see what the appeal is. He would suspect some kind of hypnotism, only it doesn't seem to affect anyone else. Just Fry.)

The mentor interviews don't make it any clearer. Doubledeal and the blonde human, Linda, speculate on what the truth of their relationship might be, and try to draw Amy into the debate, but she won't them give a straight answer - which Mom says is a sure sign this little love story wasn't in her playbook. It doesn't seem to matter if it's the real deal or a big sham though. The human audience is lapping it up either way. All it takes is some gooey talk in the firelight and one PG-13 kiss and suddenly love's young dream is all anyone at home cares about. Even Mom is taken aback by the popularity of their romance. Humans who can barely afford to eat are banding together to sponsor Fry and Leela. Rich kids are making videos of them set to sad music, and every bookie on every planet sees a surge in betting. They hit every demographic. Old, young, rich, poor, human, alien. Everyone loves them. Fry is the star at first – sweet, sensitive, and human, he ticks all the boxes – but Leela's popularity skyrockets when she shanks the Omicronian kid and then refuses to leave Fry's side, even though he's bleeding to death and she has a real shot at winning without him. Her suicidal loyalty wins her fans out the wazoo.

She's dumber than she looks if she thinks Fry'll live another day, but she really seems to believe it for a while there. Even when the little meatbag outright tells her he's dying, she tries to argue. Bender likes that. She's not a quitter. She even says she wants him to win the Games. (If she dies, which Bender considers a reasonable caveat.)When they go to sleep, she holds on so tight she leaves marks on his skin. She's stubborn, but -

"I think I love you," Fry says, and the fight goes out of her. This – love, this thing that can't be proved or measured – is what brings her back to reality. Fry is going to die. She finally gets it.

It's a logical conclusion Bender reached hours before she did, but when he looks at her face, all angry and hopeless, he feels like he's realizing it all over again. He's not a kill-bot, but he thinks he could kill every human on Earth in that moment, if it would save Fry. And Leela would help.

If Leela was his creator, she'd give him the order.


They win.

They both win.

It's not a possibility Bender ever considered. There is no precedent for a joint victory, and no time to stop Fry bleeding out. Leela is battered from her fight with Celgnar, but all the humans say her wounds aren't life-threatening. She's on the brink of victory, but she crawls back to Fry on her hands and knees and plays Nixon at his own game. Her crazy suicide gambit spooks the Gamemakers so badly they crown her and Fry without thinking. Two victors.

Mom whoops the moment it happens.

"Gotcha, you bastard!" she cackles. "Ohohoho! You're going down."

She pours herself a drink, still cackling.

"This is bad for Nixon, right?"

Bender doesn't often ask questions (it's not a good survival strategy) but this time he has to know.

Mom takes a drag of her cigarette, then exhales long and slow through her teeth.

"Wait and see," she says. "Just you wait and see."


It takes time for Bender to see what she means.

Fry and Leela spend two weeks recuperating under heavy guard in a hospital facility. Mom's spies report that Amy Wong stays by Fry's side the entire time, and posts another former tribute, Kif Kroker, to stand guard over Leela. It's clear she thinks Nixon might still try and off one of her tributes before they're presented to the world. But they pull through, the double victor thing a done deal, and it seems as if Fry and Leela got lucky. Nixon sends one of his goons to knock Amy around, but it's not the first time he's done that, and she's smart enough that she knows how to play the game by now. She dresses her tributes up like matching dolls and sings the story of their mad teenage love affair to anyone who'll listen, and for a while it seems like they might actually get away with it.

Only humans aren't dolls, and Fry and Leela keep playing their parts wrong. They're supposed to come together onscreen and cry or embrace or . . . something. Their reunion is supposed to be some sappy tender scene. A real Kodak moment. Even Bender knows that.

But Leela tears Fry's shirt half off the instant she sees him, looking for injuries like they're still in the arena. Like she doesn't trust that the fancy human hospital didn't mess with him somehow. Then the ditzy blonde interviewer suggests they kiss, and Leela glares daggers at her. Sure, she plasters on a fake smile and gives the people what they want, but not fast enough to hide her initial reaction. Oh, and she freaks out during the highlight reel - freezes up like she's having some kind of seizure 'til Fry brings her back.

Not that Fry plays it any smarter. He doesn't keep their kiss PG-13 enough for the audience, he's stupid enough to look sad when Jrr comes onscreen, and then he makes history by passing out during his own highlight reel. It's a disaster.

For Nixon, of course. For Mom, it's sweet, sweet music.

Fry and Leela are all anyone can talk about, and everyone has a different take on what makes them so fascinating. Some believe the love story, some don't, but the end result is the same. Fry and Leela inspire people. And that's dangerous.

On the buggalo ranches on Mars, Mom's spies report a rebellion in ferment. The people talk about the look on Leela's face when she walked away from Fry that first time. They say that look was hatred, and they say that hatred was directed at the Gamemakers. She wanted to burn Nixon to the ground. That's what they say. In whispers in dark rooms, they say they want the same thing.

In the poorer human communities on Earth, those same whispers have been whirling since Fry's interview. The faces of dissenters who were taken to Haley's Comet are printed on flyers, with the words "WORKED TO DEATH FOR SPEAKING OUT" and "THEY DIED FOR DEMOCRACY" scrawled under them.

Down in the sewers the first mutant Victor sparks hope in a community that had become passive and fearful. Graffiti depicting warrior mutants and idealized surface scenes appears everywhere, and a booming underground poetry industry takes root. Sewage overseers report record damage to pipes, and begin to suspect sabotage.

In Neptune three peacekeepers are beaten to death. The suspects refuse to talk when captured, but all four bear crude arrow brandings. The arrow, Mom's spies report, is a symbol of rebellion inspired by the poison darts Leela and Fry threatened to use on themselves in the arena.

On the rubber plantations of the Amphibios cluster, they murmur about the abhorrent cruelty of forcing a person to fight their smismar. The Amphibiosans are so invested in Fry and Leela's love story they don't even hold Fry's kill against him. Nixon was always considered a monster in the cluster, but now he acquires a new name among Amphibiosan elders. Loosely translated, it means "the man with no soul".

The same stories play out on every planet under Earthican control. An undercurrent of dissatisfaction is swelling beneath the surface, erupting like acne. Even Bender can identify the patterns. Subversive artworks, attacks on Peacekeepers, reported sabotage on works carried out for the benefit of Earth. It's starting, just like Mom said it would.

Rebellion. An uprising.

And in the center of it all, oblivious to the storm swirling above his head . . . his little meatbag.