A Japanese Futurama

[Tetsuwan Penguin]

A Thousand Years from now .......

Planet Express Office – New New York City
“Good news everyone!” Professor Farnsworth exclaimed as he walked into the employee lounge.

“Oh CRAP, another dangerous mission!” Bender muttered. “Well if you expect me to help you, can kiss my shinny metal ass!”

“You know Bender,” Leela said “You're the laziest and the most useless robot I've ever run into.”

“Hey, don't bad mouth my best friend!” Fry butted in. “He means well.”

“Actually, this trip will be a milk run!” The Professor said. “You're going to Japan to deliver some of Mom's robot oil to the Japanese Ministry of Science. They've run out, and all of their robots are starting to squeak and break down. You know the Japanese are really dependent on their robots.”

Bender's eyes suddenly lit up. “You mean the Japanese treat robots with respect? Hey that sounds like the kind of place where I could feel wanted and appreciated.” He said. “I'm going on this one!”

Leela supervised the loading of the 27 long tons of robot oil into the Planet Express ship. She was amazed to find Bender actually paying attention to his work, instead of doing his usual careless sloppy labor. He even yelled at Fry for not neatly stacking the crates of cargo, and personally saw that everything was properly tied down in the ship's cargo hold.

“You amaze me Bender.” Leela ribbed him, “You're treating this shipment of robot oil like it was precious cargo.”

“Well it IS!” Bender yelled. “Oil is the life blood of a robot. I want to make sure my family in Japan is treated well.”

“He's got a point you know.” Zoidberg said picking up a loose can that fell out of a dented crate. “Hmm, I wonder how this stuff tastes?”

Bender grabbed the can from the crustacean physician and carefully repacked it. “This stuff isn't for drinking, at least not by a quack crab!” He yelled . “It's only for us robots!”

“Jeez will you guys stop arguing?” Amy Wong complained as she took her seat. “Let's get going already, Farnsworth just told me there would be a bonus if we make delivery before midnight, New Tokyo time.”

“A bonus?” Fry said. “Wow!”

“Well, we ain't leaving until I triple check the cargo bay.” Bender said curtly.

About ten minutes later, the Planet Express ship took off bound for Japan. Leela made a max performance takeoff, pulling about 4 Gee's.

“Hey, not so violent!” Bender yelled, “You don't want to damage the cargo!”

“Hey, I thought you had it secured well back there in the cargo hold.” Leela snapped back at the mechanical man. “You sure took long enough.”

“Yeah, it's secured alright.” Bender said. “But you don't want to shake that stuff up too much. Otherwise, you could get a reaction like you do if you shake a can of beer and pop it!”

“BEEEEP! BEEEEP!” The ship's weather radar started beeping and a red light lit up on the control panel.

“Looks like there is a typhoon ahead of us!” Leela exclaimed. “I guess I'm going to have to go hypersonic suborbital and get above it!”

She kicked the ship into hyper drive and they quickly snapped into a hyperbolic suborbital arc. The Planet Express ship reached maximum altitude and started to dive back to Earth.

“ETA New Tokyo Japan in ten minutes!” Leela said looking at the ship's computer readout. “That will be 11:28 PM local time, so it looks like our bonus is in the bag.” she added.

[Tetsuwan Penguin]

Science Ministry - New Tokyo, Japan
Leela made a perfect three point landing just outside the main service entrance to the Science Ministry's main building. Bender immediately started to supervise the unloading of the cargo. Amy Wong, and Philip Fry used exoskeleton lifting machines to unload the ship and pile crates of the robot oil onto an antigravity fork lift. Bender insisted on operating the lift himself, and drove the loader through the large overhead doors of the Ministry's loading bay. As they entered the building, they were greeted by a young man dressed in a white lab coat. Bender couldn't help but notice the man's large nose.

“Thank you for coming so quickly!” he exclaimed, introducing himself. “My name is Ochanomizu, Osamu. My family has been running this place for the last thousand years.”

“Wow, that's dedication.” Bender said, handing Osamu a clipboard. “Please sign here and I'll bring in the remaining 666 cases of oil.”

Ochanomizu took the clipboard from Bender and quickly scratched his name at the bottom of the manifest form.
Bender noticed the long hallway beyond the stock room that they were now in. “Quite some place you have here Mr. Ochanomizu.”

“It's Ochanomizu Hakase.” the young man said. “Besides running the Institute I also serve as one of the instructors in the associated college.”

“Can I get a tour of this place?” Bender asked. “I'm quite interested in what kind of robots you guys have here in Japan.”

“Sure, I'd be glad to show you around.” Osamu smiled.

Bender turned to Philip Fry and Amy Wong who had just entered the building with the second antigravity loader. “Why don't you guys bring in the rest of the cargo. The professor here with the big nose is going to show me my Japanese robot cousins.”

Professor Ochanomizu led Bender through the hallway and into an elevator. They rode up to the second floor. “This is the museum level. There is a lot of history in here.” Ochanomizu told Bender. “In this first room you will meet the scientists that built some of our first robots, back in the days when we were building robots that looked exactly like human beings. Today, robots look more like, well robots. People can accept them as they are and don't need them to look like people.”

They entered a narrow room with a row of shelves on each long wall. On each shelf were jars containing heads inside of a nutrient and preservative fluid.

“Oh crap, don't tell me you guys keep your ancestor's heads heads on display like they do in New New York!” Bender moaned.

“Of course we do!” Ochanomizu said. “The technology of bringing back the minds of the long dead has been in use world wide, I'd thought you'd have know that.”

“Yeah, I'd heard that, but it's kinda creepy.” Bender sighed.

Up on the wall a head with black hair, a distinctive roman nose and a prominent puff of beard looked down at them. His jar had a name tag reading 'Dr. Umataro Tenma'. “Hello robot!” Dr. Tenma called down from his jar.

Bender looked up and replied, “Hi Doc. How long you've been up there?”

“Nearly a thousand years or so.” Dr. Tenma said. “You look look like a fine specimen of robot, I'm glad to meet you.”

“My name is Bender.” Bender yelled up to Dr. Tenma. “Pleased to meet you too!”

In a jar next to the one containing Dr. Tenma, was the head of an older man with a large nose and a bald head, save two puffs of white hair over each ear. “That's my great, great, great, etc, Grandfather.” Osmau told Bender. “He ran this place after Dr. Tenma stepped down.”

“You mean, after Tenma went nuts and almost burned the place down!” the older Ochanomizu yelled down from his jar. “It's embarrassing to have him in this museum, not to mention right next to me!”

“Please don't fight, you two!” Osmau yelled up. “We have a guests from New New York today.”

“Very well, I'll behave.” the older Ochanomizu replied from the shelf.

“Why don't you take Bender into the robot museum?” Dr. Tenma suggested.

“Yes, I was getting to that.” Osmau agreed.

Bender and his host left the head room and walked down the hallway into a large display area. There was a long isle in front of a row of thick glass display cases. Inside of each one was a deactivated robot from centuries ago. As they traversed the length of the hallway, the exhibits grew older, at the far end of the hallway were robots from ten centuries in the past.

“You can see that the more recent examples of robot construction more closely resembles what we are building today. The most recent exhibits are probably very similar to yourself, Bender, though not nearly as well constructed and designed.” Ochanomizu said.

“Flattery will get you nowhere.” Bender said. “But I thank you for it!”

“Here at the far end of the hallway are some of the very first robots that were build here at the Ministry of Science.” Osmau said. “These were constructed when the first fully sentient AI was first developed. We used to call that Kokoro back then, because it was believed that these robots had hearts. Notice that they also look very human like. People back then were afraid of the very first robots because they looked alien, so they started to make robots that looked more like humans. Today we've gotten used to robots as being their own race, and we are no longer bigots about that.”

In the last two display cases were four humanoid robots that looked so human like, even Bender was taken back. “If you didn't tell me these were robots, I'd have thought they were mummies.” He said. “At second glance I can tell the difference, but I don't understand why someone would want to create such ugly robots.”

Two of the robots were almost identical twins, though one was a bit taller than the other. Both looked like human children in their late pre-teenage years. Both were dressed only in dark briefs with a distinctive wide green waist band, and a pair of tall red boots. The shorter one had brown eyes, the taller one's eyes were a haunting cobalt blue. Each had two star like hair cowlicks, the taller one's being thinner and more like spikes.

In the last display case was a female robot child, dressed in a beautiful pink dress. She was holding an infant robot child in her arms, the baby robot was dressed in a pair of PJ's that looked like a swaddling cloth.

“I've been told there was something very special about these robots.” Ochanomizu told Bender. “The shorter of the two boys particularly so. Unfortunately the technology that created them has been long lost, and their blueprints are missing. I'd love to try to bring them back to life, can you imagine what they could tell me?”

Bender stared at the four robots and felt some sort of connection. His devious 6502 microprocessor brain started to hatch one of his usual larcenous schemes.

[diehard67]

isn't the 6502 the cpu for the original NES?????????

[Tetsuwan Penguin]

isn't the 6502 the cpu for the original NES?????????

The 6502 was used in a lot of places. (including the Apple II). In one episode of Futurama an F-ray of Bender's head revealed he was powered by that cpu.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/processors/the-truth-about-benders-brain

[Windswept Cloak]

Osamu Ochanomizu - is that supposed to be Dr. Ochanomizu and Tezuka combined?

[Tetsuwan Penguin]

Osmau is a common enough Japanese given name so I used it for a future descendant of professor Ochanomizu. But yes, it also pays respect to Tezuka.

[Tetsuwan Penguin]

Leela was operating the anti-grav forklift when Bender returned to the ship. Philip Fry and Amy Wong were putting the last of the crates of robot oil onto the loader. One can of oil was left lying on the floor of the cargo hold and Zoidberg bent and picked it up. He was about to use his sharp claws to open the can for a taste when Bender caught him red handed and slapped him silly.

“I told you this stuff is for robots ONLY!” Bender yelled.

“Zee zee zee” Zoidberg shuffled away sideways out of the cargo hold.

Bender looked around and noticed the stack of empty crates that had been brought back to the ship after they had been unloaded at the Ministry. He grabbed two of the largest and tallest ones and headed out of the ship.
“What are you going to do with those?” Leela asked.
“None of your bee's wax!” Bender said curtly.
“He's probably going back to steal something.” Amy said.

Bender returned to the museum and looked around. He walked past the row of heads and noticed Dr. Tenma winking at him. The head of Professor Ochanomizu was asleep. Bender put down the two cargo crates and tiptoed into the robot display area. He noticed two security cameras that might be problematic to his intentions, so he opened his chest door, extracted a can of black spray paint, and sprayed the camera lenses with a thick coating from the aerosol can. Bender then walked toward the back of the display hall. As he reached the final two display cases Bender removed a diamond glass cutter from his chest cavity and carefully cut an opening in each of them. He lifted the shorter of the two boy robots from the first display, and the girl robot from the second. He slung each one over his shoulder and carried them out of the display area. Once he reached the rear of the hall of heads, Bender put the robots into the packing crates that he had left on the floor.

Dr. Tenma's head motioned toward the other room. “Yeah, I'll go get the other two” Bender whispered. He returned for the other two robots and packed them into the crates, and then sealed the lids closed. Bender picked both of the now heavy packing crates up and carried them, one on each shoulder out of the museum area.

Dr. Tenma's head looked down from his jar up on the shelf and smiled. Professor Ochanomizu, who had woken up just in time to see Bender closing up the packing crates, looked at his neighbor with anger.

“Aren't you going to do something?” Ochanomizu asked. “That robot from NNY is vandalizing the museum!”

“What do you expect me to do, spit at him?” Umataro asked. “Besides, he's not a vandal, technically he might be a thief, but I suspect his intentions are quite different, and I approve of them.”

“He's stealing Atomu and the others!” the Professor yelled.

“Do you really care?” Umataro asked. “My Tobio has been in that frozen state for 900 years years now. It's about time he woke up and took his rightful place as king of all robots.”

“Oh good grief, are you still on that kick?” Ochanomizu asked.


Leela was preparing for their return trip back to New New York as Bender tied down his two packing crates in the cargo hold.

“Hey Bender, what did you steal now?” Leela asked.

“I'm rescuing some of my ancestors.” Bender said. “Can you believe that they were being held captive in a museum to be gawked at.”

“I just hope we don't get in trouble over your shenanigans.” Leela said. She looked around to check if the rest of the crew was all present and accounted for. Philip Fry and Amy Wong were on board and in their seats. Zoidberg had found some oil stains from a leaky can and was licking at the floor to get a taste.

“OK, guys.” Leela announced. “I'm starting the preflight check. We're leaving in ten minutes!”


Planet Express Hangar, New New York City
The ship landed and the most of the crew left for home. Bender waited till the hangar was empty before removing his two packing crates from the cargo hold, and dragged them into the Professor's laboratory in the back of the Planet Express warehouse. He carefully removed the four robots from the crates and set them down onto four work bench tables. He pried open the chest panel of the shorter boy robot and began to examine his inner workings. Bender scratched his head as he tried to figure out how to bring bring the robot back to life.

While Bender was busy absorbed in examining his booty, Professor Farnsworth walked silently into the lab wearing his bunny slippers.
“Leela warned me that you had helped yourself to something while you were in the Japanese Ministry of Science.” Farnsworth said. “Let's see what it is you've stolen this time!”

Bender quickly turned to face his employer.
“I didn't steal anything.” He replied. “I've brought my ancestors back here to their freedom!”

“Well obviously you don't know very much about repairing robots.” Farnsworth said.

“How hard can it be?” Bender asked. “They obviously need fuel, that's all.” Bender picked up a large jar of Alcohol. “I just need to figure out where it goes!”

The professor walked up to the work bench and leaned over to look into the robot's chest cavity.
“Oh, my!” he said. “This is certainly an old robot. Must be nearly 1000 years old. He doesn't run on Alcohol, Bender. He needs something with a little more kick to it.”

“Oh, well I think I have some nitro-methane in my closet.” Bender said.

“Not even that.” Farnsworth laughed. “He runs on deuterium.”

“You got any of that?” Bender asked.

“I think so.” Farnsworth said. “I used to keep some around for cold starting the dark mater engines on the ship.” He walked into a storage closet and soon returned wheeling a large canister on a hand truck.
“Maybe this will do.”

Bender hooked a hose up to the container and brought it over to the robot's open chest cavity. He looked around inside but had no idea where to stick the refill hose.

“Let me work on him.” The professor asked. “I've read about these old Japanese robots a long time ago when I was in college.”

“That figures.” Bender said. "You old fart."

[Tetsuwan Penguin]

Professor Farnsworth rummaged through his tool bin and came out with an adapter fitting that matched the robot's fueling port with the end of the hose on the tank of deuterium. He opened the valve on the tank and
watched the flow meter.

“Oh my!” he exclaimed “He seems to be a bottomless pit, I've drained this tank of deuterium and I don't think I've quite filled him up. No matter, he has more than enough to power him up.”

The professor reached into the tool bin and extracted a pair of very heavy rubber gloves, and a dark welder's helmet. He put these on, along with a heavy rubber apron which he slipped over his head.
“I'm going to need these because of the high voltage.” he told Bender.

The professor walked over to a control panel on the wall and operated a switch. A high voltage generator slowly lowered from its storage position high above the room hidden in the tall ceiling. Farnsworth reached up and grabbed two heavy cables from the device and connected the ends of the cables into two points inside of the robot.
“Now please activate that large knife switch on the wall if you will Bender, and then shield your eyes!”

Bender did as he was instructed. The huge Van de Graaff generator started up. Lightning bolts flew between the two metal spheres of a Tesla coil. The high voltage output made the heavy cables in the professor's hands glow with a brilliant blue saint Elmo's fire.

“Holly Frankenstein!” Bender yelled.
The boy robot's body began to glow with an eerie green light and the room was filled with a loud 50 cycle hum. Bender clamped his hands over his ears as the noise ramped up in intensity.

“He's almost fully charged!” the professor said, his hands shaking from the vibration of the power flow through the heavy cables in his gloved hands. “OK, now turn off the juice!”

Bender grabbed the huge knife switch and yanked it into the off position. There was a tremendous arc as the switch opened, and then he could hear the sound of the generator winding down.
As the noise subsided Professor Farnsworth removed the two heavy cables from where he had been holding them inside of the robot.
“Come on, wake up!” he said.

Slowly, the robot opened its eyes. He raised his head and looked around.
“Where am I?” he asked.

“Welcome back!” the Professor said. “You're in New New York City in the year 3014. My name is Professor Farnsworth, and this robot over hear is Bender. He brought you back here from New Tokyo Japan.”

“What's you name kid?” Bender asked.

The boy robot slowly steadied himself on the workbench and sat up. He swung his legs over the side of the table.

“My name is Tetsuwan Atom, although people also used to call me Astro Boy, or just Astro.” He said. “I guess you can just call me Astro.”

“Very well, Astro.” Farnsworth said. “What is the last thing that you
remember?”

“I remember running out of energy and shutting down.” Astro said. “Most of Japan was flooded from the rising sea, and people were being evacuated to the tops of mountains. Most of the world's major cities were going under water. The Ministry of science was doing everything they could to try and reverse the problems of global warming but it seemed impossible. I had helped to move as much of the archives and equipment as possible to safe locations. We were running out of energy because most of the power plants were now under water and shutting down.”

Astro sighed and went on, “Finally, Professor Ochanomizu invented a reverse carbon cycle bomb that he hoped would scrub the atmosphere of green house gases. It had to be detonated high up above the stratosphere in order to work. I used the last of my energy to lift it up and detonate it. The last thing I remember was just barely making it back to the Ministry before my energy ran out. Cobalt, Uran, and Chi-tan were already sealed into air tight containers after the last of their energy had been siphoned into me so I could complete my mission. The professor then put me into airtight storage and I went to sleep. I never knew if the bomb worked.”

“You'll be happy to know that your efforts were successful.” the professor told Astro. “Several years after the reverse cycle bomb was exploded over the Pacific ocean CO2 and Methane levels in the atmosphere began to drop. It took a few hundred years before the effects accumulated enough to lower global temperatures and for the sea levels to drop back to what they had been. The coastal cities that had been underwater for centuries were rebuilt on top of the ruins of the originals. Along the east coast of the US we now have New Boston, New New York City, New Philadelphia, New New Orleans, New Miami, New Fort Lauderdale, and Washington A.C.”

“Are Cobalt, Uran and Chi-tan the other three robots over there?” Bender asked.

Astro turned to look where Bender was pointing.
“Yes! Yes they are.” He cried out. “Are they all right?”

“We haven't yet looked at them.” Farnsworth said. “In any event, I'm going to have to get some more deuterium. I used up my supply of it getting you powered up,”

Astro opened his chest panel and looked at the gauges on the door.
“I'm about half full.” He said. “That will hold me for a few days, but then I'll need more.”

“Wow, you're a real gas guzzler!” Bender laughed.

“That's because I have 100,000 horse power!” Astro told him.

“Well, that's no problem.” the professor said. “I will need some dark matter to fuel my deuterium extractor. Once I make some more we can wake up your brothers and sister.”

“I'll go and get some of Nibbler's poop!” Bender said as he went to look for Leela's pet that craped dark matter.

Ministry of Science, New Tokyo Japan
Ochanomizu, Osmau glared up at the heads of Dr. Tenma and his great, great, great, etc, Grandfather. “What the hell happened!” he demanded. “Didn't you guys notice the break in back there?”

“I was half asleep when that obnoxious robot from the US was plundering the robot museum.” the head of Professor Ochanomizu the first said. “Dr. Tenma was wide awake. I think he planted the idea for the theft into the robot's head.”

“Guilty as charged!” Dr. Tenma said.

“What!” Osmau yelled up at the head of Tenma. “Why the hell would you do that?”

“Because for nearly 1000 years nobody has ever tried to bring those robots back to life.” Tenma said. “Tobio gave his all to save the world many times, and then he was just sealed up in suspended animation and forgotten.”

“His name was Atom!” the senior Ochanomizu yelled at Tenma.

“Whatever.” Tenma said. “At this moment, I suspect that Bender and Professor Farnsworth are working on restoring him back to the land of the living. Atom will soon take his rightful place as king of all robots.”

[Windswept Cloak]

Pretty interesting so far (like always!), is this supposed to be a cross-over?

[Tetsuwan Penguin]

Pretty interesting so far (like always!), is this supposed to be a cross-over?

Yes, with the TV show Futurama. You can find clips and maybe entire episodes of it on Youtube. Google for some background on it.