Before I head off to Amy, I decide to check my stats and see how my cyberware had affected them. I should have done this after the operation but I didn't think about it, my system isn't really intrusive like all the systems I had read about in my Past life.
Philip j fry
Title: Man out of time.
(note, 10 is the average limit of humans. Mental and Metaphysical stats pulled from life)
Strength: 200
Dexterity:200 (300)
Durability:150
intelligence:19
Charisma: 15
Available points: 5
Wow I was not expecting that sure I built these things to go toe to toe with the biggest baldest and strongest things in the universe but my physical stats are ridiculous and my intelligence jumped 1 point from my cyberdeck. I assume the 300 is for when I activate my sandy with a smile, I allocate my leftover points, though it irks me how few points I got for that mission that nearly killed me.
Title: Man out of time.
(note, 10 is the average limit of humans. Mental and Metaphysical stats pulled from life)
Strength: 200
Dexterity:200 (300)
Durability:150
intelligence:19
Charisma: 20
Available points: 0
With a terrified smile I open the door to the rec room and see Amy still beating up a punching bag but something about her is different, I can see small creases on her arms, and legs due to the tank top and shorts she's wearing, she also has a neural port on her neck, and the nape of her neck looks shiny with metal.
She got cyberware installed. In a bad mental state at that. I'll have to keep an eye out for any signs of cyber psychosis. The cyberware is designed not to cause it, but if someone is mentally unstable already chipping in has a 5% chance of causing cyber psychosis. I was working on stopping that problem before I ever had Amy chip in if she even wanted to. and from the looks of it she didn't get the office worker package. I walk over to the bench and wait for her to finish I'm not going to interrupt her workout that just means shell have more energy to kick my ass with.
Soon she finishes and she looks over to me. I stand up and prepare to take my beating like a man. I close my eyes and wait for the pain, but it never comes all that comes is a tight grip on my neck and a wet spot on my shoulder. I open my eyes and Amy is hugging me and crying.
"I'm sorry." I choke out as I rub soothing circles on her back. Then she pounds both of her hands into my shoulders. Not hard, thank God with her new strength she could tear my shoulder joint off, but enough for me to feel some pain.
"you idiot! Do you know how worried I was. When they brought you off the ship in a stretcher, I thought you were dead. You didn't have a pulse; your heart had completely stopped! They had to redline the ships engines to get you back in time to save you, the ships emergency resuscitation kept your brain alive, but you were dead!" she screamed still with her head on my shoulder I could feel her screaming in my ears, but I knew I deserved it. I am going to have to talk to Cahill about what is relevant information for me to know. I feel like me being clinically dead for an hour is important information.
"I'm sorry, bender was about to be destroyed and I just acted without thinking."
"Well, I need you to start thinking. You're my boyfriend, my best friend, and one of the few people I can actually be myself around! I can't lose you!" she yelled at me and I just continued rubbing circles in her back. Usually when a situation gets to tense, I make a joke but she would probably finish the job a drop from orbit didn't. so, I did the wisest thing, and shut the hell up. "You know I was planning on slapping you. hard enough to break your pretty boy face!" then she hugged me tighter. "But when I saw you all my anger went away, and I just couldn't do anything more than cry and hug you." She says and she sounds kind of bummed about the whole thing
"well my pretty boy face appreciates not getting slapped." I said with some mirth in my voice then I hug her tight "I'm sorry I made you worry."
"You better be, you're a genius you should have a better plan beyond jumping out of a spaceship at 800 miles in the sky." She said I can tell she's still a bit annoyed at me.
"I love you, Amy." I said softly into her ear.
"I love you to fry." Suddenly a ding goes off on my phone. Amy lets to so I can check the message.
" it's seems an experiment I started a few weeks ago has finally finished." I said with a low voice.
"oh yeah what experiment was that?" she asks curious.
"Well first let me ask you, let's say you were born on a planet where people with your skin tone were hated and reviled forced to live in squalor and salvage to survive, but you had a child who through a genetic mutation is completely has the desired skin tone, but because of being born from you, they would be labeled the same as you. what would you do?" I ask and instantly recognition comes to her eyes
"I would do whatever it took to ensure they got to live a life I never had. Probably by dropping them off at an orphanage when no one was looking."
"Now let's say that baby had a deformity, something that wouldn't immediately give them away but would cause some questions. What would you do then."
"I'd make it look like they were an alien…oh my God Leela's a mutant. How long have you suspected?" she asks in a hushed tone this can't get out or Leela would be dragged to the sewers kicking and screaming, and knowing Leela there would be a lot of kicking.
"I've known since I found out mutants existed, I mean think about it, an alien race of cyclops's no one knew about despite them having the tech to travel the universe? If you believe that I have some swampland to sell you for only five bucks. Problem was I couldn't just tell Leela without proof. If I'm going to upend her life I need evidence. Luckily due to the mutant registration act passed when Leela was 14, so they didn't even think to check for human parents for her, we had all living mutants DNA on file so I cross referenced for a match and found Tarunga Morris and Munda." I sent their pictures to Amys operating system.
"Oh my God, they look exactly like her! Leela going to be thrilled." Amy gave a bright smile. Over the last 3 months Amy and Leela have gotten pretty close.
"Want to be there when I tell her?" I ask and she nods. We both head off to the flagship employee lounge.
We walk into the employee lounge and Leela is sitting on the couch with Bender sulking after our argument. She looks at me then looks away with an annoyed face.
"Leela, I know your angry at me, but I have something very important to tell you." I said and with an explosive sigh she looked at me.
"What, Fry?" She asked in a huffy tone of voice. Clearly trying to make sure I understood her displeasure.
"I found your parents." I said fully ignoring the angry look she was giving me. It took a moment, the anger on her face morphed into shock. The room went so quiet that you could hear a pin drop.
"What do you mean you found my parents?" she asked in a soft voice almost not believing me, but desperately wanting to.
"I got your DNA from the employee DNA storage, and did a cross check for all known races, and I found a match." a lie I only checked one.
"Impossible my DNA was already checked against every known race in the universe, nothing turner up." She said looking disappointed.
"Every known race but one, human." I said slowly and calmy trying not to overwhelm her. When Leela is overwhelmed, she tends to kick people.
Bender chooses this moment to chime in. "Umm, not to ruin your ahah moment but I think the giant hulking eye in the middle of her face, shows pretty plainly that she isn't human."
"No, it shows that she isn't an unaltered human." I said and a look of realization and shock shows up on Leela's face I instantly start walking towards her.
"No, they're just a myth! I can't be a mu-" I immediately put my hand in her mouth. One because she's being really loud right now, and 2 because if someone around us hear her, they might report her to the authorities.
"it's true Leela, and they aren't a myth, most of the New York government knows about them, and there are laws that keep them in the sewer. Your parents likely placed you at the orphanage because while you can't pass for an unaltered human, you can definitely pass for an alien. Noone can know you're a mutant or you'll be dragged kicking and screaming to the sewers." I take out a tablet with the DNA results and pictures of Morris and Munda, then I hand it to Leela. "These are your parents." I say it quietly with a smile, and Leela starts looking at the pictures and starts to cry.
"Mom, Dad. I finally know where I come from." Bender, Amy, and I all leave the breakroom and give Leela some time to process everything she's been told.
Despite now having some money, I don't have nearly enough, or the political clout to change the mutant's situation. I just now made it to 5 billion with all my patents, 700 million dollars was easy enough to get. I'm rich, no doubt about that, but I still don't have any political power. Despite the prestige I got with earth military by increasing our fighting forces effectiveness, I burnt up most of that capital by forcefully deposing the rightful leaders of Chapek 9. Sure, earth invades planets for the most minor of slights, but this wasn't a bunch of old people deciding to declare war with the full backing of the military. This was me as a civilian forcefully toppling a regime that earth had no stake in. Keeping me out of D.O.O.P's prison cells is probably seen by them as a huge favor.
I could try to appeal to someone with greater political power than myself, say Mrs. Astor for instance, but honestly, there's no way she would go for it without seeing her husband as a mutant and as much as Leela is my friend, and as much as I care for her, I'm not going to try and fish him out if the radioactive lake down there, not with the risks associated with being mutated. My best bet is to wait for the mayor's reelection, and then sponsor him. Then I'll have a bit of power over him and can use that to force him to repeal the anti-mutant laws, after all New York is the only place with anti-mutant laws due to it being the only place where mutants exist, since mutants only came about because of a severe toxic waste spill that annihilated old New York. After that spill the ones that were affected were quarantined for years until someone got the bright idea to sink the city into the sewers and build over it. Leaving the Affected to scavenge and scrape to survive. The original number of mutants was only 200 now there's well over 5000. their numbers likely would have been even larger, had there been enough resources to support a larger population. As it is now, they barely get by. I had thought of approaching the situation from a scientific standpoint and finding a way to fix mutants restoring their genetic code, but unfortunately due to it having been centuries since the first exposure, there's nothing to fix. They are basically a completely different species. Trying to restructure their genetics to the point they look normal is impossible. Any attempt at a "cure" would kill them.
Still in the meantime there is something I can do. I have a call to make.