After I finish pre lift off prep by making sure the engines were calibrated, prepping the weapons systems in case of space pirates. A legitimate if annoying hazard of the job, and getting the cargo bay ready for the animals we need, I headed up to the bridge to take my seat, bender soon joined us after he finished off his vodka.
Since the ship handles most of the navigation and internal functions other than the quick checks that I have to do before we leave. My console is mostly for browsing listed media since space believe it or not can actually get pretty boring after a while. Or at least that's what the old fry would have done. What I'm doing is logging onto my campus portal and finishing a shit ton of my coursework.
"No body bother me I've got a lot of course work to get done and a very short time to do it."
"What classes are you even taking fry?" Leela asks with a genuine interest showing on her face.
"Well, technically im taking over 100 classes, but they're all for different doctorates I'm aiming for, I'm aiming for my doctorate in microbiology, neurobiology, robotics, electrical engineering, medicine, and mechanical engineering, along with a few bachelors that would cover the needed information to round out my knowledge and let me apply it practically. I have to take a ton of tests at mars university when I finish my coursework though." I say and Leela looks at me like I'm the craziest man she's ever met and bender looks at me confused.
"Uhm you sure your up for all that fry? I mean, I'm not doubting your intelligence" Leela starts.
"I am you were an idiot on the first day you came to the future!" bender yelps. Obviously confused why I'm not as dumb as I was when we meet.
"The truth is I'm not dumb…. just incredibly lazy, and that was mostly from growing up in a time where my dreams were impossible and no one needed a dreamer. They needed a cog and I sucked at being one so I was just thrown away. The future is still kind of like that, but I have enough money to ignore it now."
Bender and Leela look confused obviously not understanding but not saying anything else. For the next 5 hours I do my assignments up to where other students would take about 4 months i took 5 hours. I was about to continue when I felt the ship stop, we were at vergon 6, and I was fucking confused. incredibly so since we were supposed to be stopped by zap brannigan, but I still had a job to do, and so me and bender exited the ships ramp and started capturing 2 of each animal on the endangered species list the professor gave us. It took us about 3 hours to round them all up, and Leela found nibbler.
"Huh this one isn't on the endangered species list that the professor gave us, so mars university likely won't accept it."
"You mean we can cook it!" bender says pulling out his chef's apron and displaying the bar b q grill in his compartment.
"No…I'm going to keep him" she says stroking nibbler and I give the Fuzzler a side eye. its still weird he allowed himself to be used as a pet just to survive, and then hid longer than he really needed to. Leela goes to store him inside the corrals, but I stop her.
"Leela, we have no idea what that thing eats don't store it with the other animals!" Deciding to take my advice, she just holds on to nibbler as me and bender finish getting all the animals in their corrals. With a smile I close the cargo bay door, and head up to the ramp to the bridge. Leela is sitting there cuddling with her new pet, while bender and I were taking our seats. Leela luckily remembered to top of the engine so we were off the planet well before it collapsed. On the way back I couldn't help but think how we missed captain zap brannigan I knew it was going to be a problem later, but just as I though this Leela got a message on her console.
"We're picking up a distress signal from a doop ship. They're under attack by a fleet of space pirates! Were responding!" I sigh and move myself to the weapons console priming the torpedoes, while bender moves to the gunnery station, Leela brings the ship up to beyond relativistic speed. Something the ship can technically handle, giving its engines move space around it rather than move it through space, but even still entering a fight at those speeds is likely to set us up with a disadvantage since were going to have to hit a full stop the moment we get there, there's a huge risk of overshooting it when moving space at these speeds. Luckily, we hit the point. I Instantly locked onto the main pirate ship and sent torpedo 1 crashing into its gunnery station taking the main ship out of combat, unfortunately I couldn't fire the killing blow before Leela had to take evasive maneuvers when a smaller fighter class pirate ship tried the same tactic on our thrusters. The little ship docks up with the main ship, and turns itself into a makeshift gunnery station we finally get ourselves a look at the Doop ship we're trying to rescue and from the make its zap brannigans ship. How that monstrosity was barely limping in space was beyond me considering the main pirate ship is several orders of magnitude smaller. I take my time and center another torpedo to hit the newly formed gunnery station. A few moments of watching it drift through space before the thruster lights up and slams full speed into their main ship eliminating the possibility of multi-vector assault tactics, and crippling the main pirate ship in one blow. Now we only have the main ship to deal with, Leela does a fly by, and while they're unable to fire this gives bender a chance to use the laser guns to do severe damage to their aft side, causing multiple hull breaches spacing thirteen pirates. The upgrades to the gun were my idea and ill be damned if they weren't making me proud right now. While the pirate's torpedoes barely scuff the new ablative shielding me and the professor installed. This stuff is what is on D.O.O.P heavy cruisers, painted to look like the ship always looks like, vomit green. Realizing they're outgunned the pirates quickly accelerate to relativistic speeds, and I wonder if leela will chase them, but quickly she turns the ship and starts heading for the D.O.O.P vessel, after a few moments we're hailed and it's the idiot zap brannigan.
"Unidentified vessel, why are you attempting to breach the security cordon of vergon 6" I roll my eyes, we've already breached it you idiot. Leela on the other hand still start struck replies.
"We were on a mission approved by the democratic order of planets, to rescue the endangered animals, and establish a breeding program with mars universities biology department. we were just leaving when we got your distress signal."
"Distress signal?" he questions looking to Kiff. Who dear god man, that thing is ugly.
"Sir the ship sends out an automatic distress signal when the engines shut down." Kiff says obviously not the first time reminding him.
"Ahh well I thank you. They got the jump on us while the crew was enjoying their morning mimosa's" zap brannigan replies. And I just groan that's just what I would expect from this idiot.
"Is there anything we can do for you?" Leela being the fangirl she is asks.
"No, but id like to invite you to a feast aboard my ship in your honor." He says and Leela smiles so I guess were doing this feast. After docking with his ship, I decide to head down to the engine bay to try to help get the ships engines back on line while bender and Leela join zap in the captains dining room for a feast with zap.
After a bit of time bender came into the engine room while I was busy using a micro resonator to realign the ships fuel regulation chip. Its about the size of a pencil tip, and holds about 20 times more information than any harddrive from my era. Its responsible for surprise surprise regulating the fuel mixture, you see dark matter wasn't originally explosive so on older model ships energy dense matter like tritium was mixed with antimatter to generate enough energy to create both a white and black hole that would move the ship in a sort of quantum bubble it was a functioning Alcubierre drive. This was used to bypass the speed of light, moving the ship through space rather than the way dark matter engines move space around the ship. Most combat vessels still use the old system because it was more precise in combat, I could barely stop myself from geeking out since I was working on a functional warp drive, and I actually knew what most of the parts did. There was still some parts I didn't understand that had to be handled by the actual engineers, and with bender there to do the heavy lifting rather than a hover dolly, we were able to finish up fixing the engines far easier. After about 2 hour's a shame face Leela joined us and told us we needed to get back to the ship., looks like she ended up sleeping with the idiot. Well, I wasn't about to let her ruin my fun.
"Just give us a few minutes to get the engines back on line and then well take off." I say Leela looked annoyed but acquiesced. And true to my word after we starting the antimatter mixing process the engines lit up and the ships lights brightened coming off emergency power. There was a lot of whooping and hollering as everyone congratulated each other. Several crewmen thanked me and bender for our assistance and just like that it was all over the rest of the repairs would be done on official D.O.O.P space docks. We left and got onto the ship and after doing the pre lift off checks. We were ready to go. Leela was sitting with nibbler in her lap, while I was back at my chair on my console continuing to do my college work, after all I had another 5 hours to burn, and the empty void has lost some of its appeal. At least until I can talk Leela to taking us to the pillars of creation which is a five-day trip. With everything ready we took off into the void. Bender however wasn't letting things go like I was.
"So Leela… Why were you so eager to get out of there." Bender says acting confused but i knew he was faking it. If anyone could pin zap for a playboy it would be another playboy.
"Nothing... I just wanted to go home." Leela says.
"Well, what happened when I left between you and zap."
"Nothing! We just talked." Leela said and at this point I couldn't hold it in and started laughing Leela's face turned crimson red.
"Its okay Leela." I said through gasps. "Plenty of people fall for zap brannigans act." I laugh out.
"Alright can we just let it go!" Leela said annoyed rubbing nibbler behind his ears.
I finally stopped laughing two minutes later after getting the stink eye from Leela and went back to my work. If I keep going at the pace I'm setting, I should be able to finish all my coursework in a month. Dear god I might have taken on too much at once…but no I need to do this. At least a lot of the fluff has been taken out so that you can complete most of your work through the internet rather than listening to endless lectures. Halfway home I ended up getting locked out of my portal, with a popup notification that warned me that using ai to complete your classes will get you kicked out of the program, and I now need to go and take proficiency tests as mars u to prove I'm not cheating.
"Fuck!" I yelped angrily. Smacking my console. This is going to be a massive pain in the ass.
"Leela we need to stop at mars u." I said angrily.
"Were already going there, but why?" she asks.
"I've been locked out of my portal because they think I was using an ai to do my work because of how fast I'm moving through my classes." I said bitterly. This is something I was worried about but just ignored since the average I.Q is higher in the future. Leela rolls her eye, but agreed that we could take a bit longer at the university than planned, and 2 hours later we land in the mars u parking lot. I got up out of my seat and headed straight to the administration office. Behind the desk as a rather pretty Asian woman with a dazzling smile wearing a two-piece pant suite colored burgundy.
"Hello how can I help you?" she asks with a smile.
"Hi, I was recently locked out of my student portal for my online classes because the system thinks that I'm using an ai." I say, her face immediately goes pensive.
"Alright well we can't override that until you take some proficiency tests, and they have to be dead tree as well so you can't use technology to help you."
"That's fine how long would it take to set up tests for all of my classes I'm taking over 100."
"It shouldn't take too long we just have to print them off and you can go to the exam room. You'll be monitored by a professor and you aren't allowed to take in any technology.
"Great." I sigh. Well carpal tunnel, my old friend, we meet again.