"Good news, everyone..." the Professor said, "or bad news, depending on how you look at it. As Hermes can testify, we've been running in the red for quite some time, and we've come to the point where drastic measures have had to be taken."
      The Planet Express crew sat quietly, not noticing that a stranger was sitting in the shadows of the room.
      "When you say drastic measures," Leela queried, "what exactly do you mean?"
      "Well," he continued, "Planet Express will now be outsourced to a large corporation."
      "Oh crap," asked Bender, "you didn't sell us out to Mom again?"
      "Oh, good heavens no...we now belong to the huge multi-planet corporation of Dexoso."
      "Who?" asked Amy.
      "I would like to introduce you to a representative of the Dexoso Corporation, Mr. Polo Cornell." The mysterious stranger stepped out of the shadows where he'd been sitting, and joined Farnsworth near the conference table.
      "I know just how you folks must feel," Polo said, "because I felt the same way you do just ten years ago. I was a crewmember aboard a starship when we were bought out by Dexoso. I didn't know what to do. But as time went on, I became a company man. Look at me now...I'm just as happy as a clam at high tide. I've even brought a video to show you folks..."
      Cornell pulled out a little mechanical box, and fumbled with the switches. A 3-dimensional video appeared out of the top of it. In the video could be seen lots of happy people with happy faces. The video kept cutting back to the fabulous Dexoso headquarters in New Jersey. The building was truly beautiful, and crowds of people were having a cookout in front of in on a nice summer day. Heavenly harp music played in the backround of the video.
      "So, what is this changeover going to involve?" Leela asked in a skeptical voice.
      "Well, I'm afraid that you will find your pay greatly decreased, and almost all of your benefits gone. But Dr. Zoidberg here will still be your company physician. You will also be issued a new uniform and Vulcan Saturn 5 slip-resistant shoes. You also must have a tracking chip inserted into your necks to monitor your movements at all times."
      "And what did you say the benefits to this outsource were?" Leela bore into him with a mean looking eye.
      "You're going to be a part of the Dexoso team! Look at the happy people on the video...we recently took over the entire Fishy Joe's franchise – you saw how happy they were." Cornell tried to get the crowd to be enthusiastic, but they all looked like they were attending a funeral. All except for Fry, who was contemplating his new shoes and uniform.
      "Do we get to pick out the uniform color?" asked Fry
      "Of course you do...of course you do."

      The Planet Express crew weren't very happy, and spent the rest of the afternoon grumbling. After much discussion it was decided that the gang would take their remaining sick days and use them before they were taken away. Several ideas came up for what to do with this time, and Bender begged the rest of them to go to the Roboworld theme park near Albany, New York. Reluctantly, the others agreed. Bender was like an enthusiastic child...the place was loaded with beer stands and cigar bars. Fry wasn't with the others; he was busy showing Polo Cornell around the Planet Express building. When they finally got to the Professor's lab, his eyes opened as wide as saucers. He began to run his hand lovingly along the top of Farnsworth's dimensional traveler.
      "What does this machine do?"
      "Oh, that? The Professor uses it to open gateways into other dimensions."
      "Oh, really?"
      "Well, he hasn't used it lately...it seems to get him into more trouble than it's worth."
      Cornell got a wide smile on his face, and put his hand on Fry's shoulder. "Fry, how would you like to move up in this company?"
      "You mean be someone important? More than just a delivery boy?"
      "Phillip Fry, I can make you a Team Leader. I really see potential in you. Now, tell me more about this machine of the Professor's..."

      On the way back from Roboworld, which Leela thought was a total waste of money, the grumbling about the work situation started again. Leela was the ringleader of the unrest.
      "I want to see this Dexoso headquarters building," said Leela, "I've got way too many questions about what happened to us."
      "Shmeesh, Leela," Amy shot back, "why cause us even more trouble? With your temper they might just fire us."
      By this time it was too late...Leela had already put in a course for the Dexoso building in New Jersey. The shiny complex soon loomed in the windscreen of the PE ship.
      "Oh boy," Bender chortled, "Big Boots is gonna stir up some hell today."
      The green ship circled the complex, and made a landing in front of the main entrance. Leela, Amy, Bender and Zoidberg walked down the steps to the building.
      "We're finally here," said Zoidberg, "Hooray! Maybe they have a nice cafeteria."
      "There's no one here," said Leela. "Look around you. There's not a soul here.
      Now she was mad. She tried the door handle, only to find it locked. She jiggled it, and then in anger, kicked the door. She began to vent her rage against the door, kicking and pounding on it. Suddenly, they heard a funny noise, sort of a creaking sound. The Planet Express crew watched in utter amazement as the Dexoso building fell over. It started off slowly at first, but within seconds the entire building fell away from them and collapsed to the ground. Leela stepped on top of the building, which now only stood two feet from the ground.
      "It's Styrofoam..." she said, "the whole damn thing is just some sort of plastic."
      "Does this mean I don't get a meal?" asked Zoidberg.
      Leela bored her eye into Zoidy's face, and then looked at the others. "Guys, we've been had." She motioned toward the ship. "Let's get going."

      Fry stood in a makeshift office that Cornell had fashioned for him; in reality, it was a janitorial closet that Scruffy wasn't using. The others didn't yet know that Scruffy had been given his walking papers by Cornell that morning. Fry was already wearing his new uniform shirt and cargo pants. He finally was starting to move up the company ladder. He proudly stood in the doorway as the PE crew got off the ship. He felt like the promotion would make Leela proud of him.
      "Hey Leela," he asked, "how do you like the new uniform?"
      "Where is he?" she shoved Fry aside...he could tell that she was furious about something. "Where is that Arcturian slime worm?"
      The other three went in to Hermes' office to tell him what had happened. Fry came tagging in behind, anxious to find out what was going on.
      "Great leech of Kokomo Beach!" Hermes blurted out. "That Cornell was as tricky as a viper in a rum distillery. We've been bamboozled."
      "We've got to let the Professor know," commented Amy.
      "Can't do that, mon – the Professor has already left for a trip to a health spa in South Dakota...he's at the airbus station now."
      "Well, we've got to go upstairs and stop Leela," Fry added, "if she finds Cornell, she'll kill him."

      Leela found the prey she was looking for upstairs in the Professor's lab. He had managed to dismantle large parts of Farnsworth's dimensional traveler, and pieces of it were scattered everywhere.
      "You muck leech!" Leela got ready to pounce, like a lion eyeballing a gazelle at a watering hole. "What the hell are you doing up here?"
      "Oh, this – uh, I needed to make sure that this machine came up to our, uh, corporate standards." Cornell started to sweat, as she took him by surprise. "We have to make sure that it's not a hazard in the workplace..."
      "You phony bastard," Leela coldly said, "we've been to your corporate headquarters, or should I say, what's left of it."
      "Oh, you've been there already...how unfortunate. I really thought I could make use of you, but now you've shoved my plans ahead of schedule." He picked up a device that looked frighteningly like a laser cannon, which had been cobbled together from the Professor's machine. "You see, I've got a little confession to make...this machine of the Professor's is the only reason I'm here – I could care less about the rest of you idiots, but Farnsworth's little machine here had the parts I needed for my machine. He's a clever little git...I may keep him around for a while."
      "You're going to have to kill us to stop us..."
      "Kill you?" Cornell chuckled. "I don't need to kill you at all...I'll just strand you guys in other dimensions. You'll never be heard from again. Ta ta my little one-eyed freak..."
      Before Leela could run, he blasted her squarely in the chest with the beam weapon. She started to scream, but she never blacked out. She did end up on the ground, on a concrete sidewalk somewhere...but where? She was no longer in the Planet Express building, of that she was certain. She gazed up along a brick wall and spotted a poster with a familiar face – it was Amy Wong painted in some sort of propaganda picture, and she was standing with a family looking at a sunset. All of them had happy smiles on their faces. Underneath the painting read, "The future is so totally bright and beautiful – Guh!".
      "Citizen!" said a voice from behind Leela. "You took a nasty spill there. Are you okay?"
      "I think so..." Leela looked down at her chest, surprised to see that the beam did no damage to her body. All it did was to transport her to here...but where was here?
      "You're simply a mess...just look at you. Where in the world is your sweatsuit?"
      "My sweatsuit?"
Leela noticed that the young man was wearing a blue sweatsuit. As a matter of fact, everyone on the street was wearing one; the males wore blue, and the females wore pink. She also noticed that everyone's hair was similar to the hack job that she'd always seen on Amy.
      "I'll get you some aid, citizen...we have an Amy-fication Center just around the corner.  They'll fix you right up. By golly, you're even missing your number badge. What happened to you?"

      Fry, Bender and Zoidberg were the next ones to get hit with the beam – they had just stepped into the lab, and Cornell was waiting for them. Amy let out a scream and ran down the hall, certain that they had been dematerialized. He had to chase her downstairs and out through the lobby to catch her. He blasted her as she stepped out the front door. She screamed, but something odd happened -  she vanished in a flash of light, but then reappeared. She was no longer a human being when she returned, but a fancy pink sports car with a folded down convertible top. Cornell's jaw dropped and he started to swear loudly.
      "Nuts!"  he shouted, "it's not a transport, but a transfer! I've had a dang misfire!"
      Cornell started to tinker with the settings on his machine, but the Amy-car squealed it's tires and sped off before he could shoot again. The car went tearing down the street screaming in Amy's human voice. People turned to see what the shouting was about. Cornell then started hunting down Hermes, but he had already left to pick up the Professor at the airbus station.

      Fry, Zoidberg and Bender, like Leela, were pleasantly surprised to be in one piece. They now found themselves walking around the streets of New New York, but things looked very different. The first thing that struck them as odd was that they saw lots of robots and hardly any humans around. Most of the businesses on the street were geared to robots – robot porn, robot repair, robot lubrication, and lug nut stores. They then spotted a huge billboard sign for Mom's robot oil; the only problem was that Mom was a robot herself on the sign. Fry and Zoidy decided to get to the Planet Express building and see if they could find a familiar face, while Bender insisted on checking out a robot porn shop first.
      Instead of the building they knew, this one was made of metal. Everything inside and out was either made of metal or a metal-plastic compound. Even the chairs in the lobby were hard, cold metal. Zoidberg peaked into his medical clinic, only to find that it was a robot repair station. They went up to their old employee lounge, and settled into the uncomfortable metal chairs there. They soon heard a familiar voice come in through the entryway.
      "Hey guys! Come see the meat bags that wandered in here!" the voice belonged to a human male about Fry's age. "And you – what are you? Anyway, I'm glad to see you guys."
       He started pumping Fry's hand. "What's your name, anyway?"
      "Fry...Philip Fry."
      The man's jaw dropped and his eyes got large.
      "Uh...what's yours?"
      "Fry, don't you know me? I'm Bender!"

      Leela emerged from the large brick building as mad as a hornet. Her clothing was taken away from her, and she was now wearing the standard set of pink Amy sweats. She felt odd with her bare belly sticking out. She nearly started a brawl when they took her scrunchie away from her, but quick thinking security police hit her with electric tap-sticks (they then quickly apologized for their actions, and wished her a beautiful day). Her long hair was hacked off into an Amy cut, and she was given a book of collected Amy Wong sayings...she did glance through it, only to find lots of "Guhs ", "Sluhs, and "Spluhs" in the text. To cap it all off, she was given a new career chip for a new job...she was now going to be cutting hair at a local beauty college. She had to somehow escape this mad, mad world, but how?

      Poor Kiff was really hoping to meet with Amy at the Planet Express building, but no one was there. He walked back out into the street with his flowers that he brought over. He wasn't but a few steps away from the building when he suddenly heard a car blowing it's horn. A pink sports car sped up to him and slammed it's brakes. Kiff's jaw dropped.
      "Kiffy! Jump in!"
      Kiff was more than a little confused. He could hear his beloved Amy's voice, but no one was in the car.
      "Kiffy! It's me! Amy..."
      By this time he was looking around at the nearby buildings, but the voice definitely came from the car. He looked at the sleek little vehicle, contentedly chugging away.
      "Amy," he sheepishly asked, "are you in the trunk?"        
      "No, silly...hop in."
      He carefully slid into the posh pink driver's seat, still looking around for Amy. He then got a suspicious look on his face. "Amy, is this a joke?"
      "No joke, sweetie...this is serious business. We'll talk and drive."
      Kiff practically jumped out of his skin when the door shut by itself, and the car drove off.
      "Amy, this isn't funny anymore...stop the car." He figured that the car must be remote controlled, but he never really knew Amy to be a practical joker.
      "I've got a lot of ground to cover, so listen carefully...your friends are in gobs of trouble."
      The pink Amymobile tore down the road, and the song "Life Is So Strange" by Missing Persons could be heard as it zoomed away. Now Kiff was beginning to really panic.

      When Hermes walked up to the Professor in the airbus station, he noticed that he was chatting with a man and a woman in unusual looking suits. The man quickly introduced himself to Hermes.
      "I am First Lieutenant Varth of the Inter-dimensional Police Force, and this is my partner Vaet. I understand that you've encountered this man..." He held up a photo.
      "Yeah, that's Polo Cornell, that nasty green snake...he's been causin' all kinds of trouble in our building."
      "He's actually named Dasco Saberhanger, and he's a fairly dangerous criminal. I'm afraid he used your crew to gain access to Professor Farnsworth's dimensional traveler. We're just starting to put the pieces together, but we're getting closer to arresting this character. We need to help you people sort out the mess that he's made before any further damage is done across the dimensional-"
      Before he could finish, a pink sports car flew up to the entrance of the building, squealing it's tires and blowing it's horn. A seasick-looking Kiff stumbled out of the car, and sat down on the sidewalk.
      "This is more involved than I thought," said officer Vaet. "We have to get moving quickly."
      "If you don't mind," said Kiff in a weak, woozy voice, "I'll just walk from here."

      Leela wandered the streets in a daze. Everywhere she looked was the face of Amy Wong...on statues, on propaganda posters, and even on little plastic figurines. Here she was known as the "Dear Leader", and people hung on her every word. At the edge of the city stood a statue of Amy, nearly the size of the Statue of Liberty – at it's base was the ubiquitous catchphrase that she saw everywhere, "Be beautiful to each other." She was doomed to live in a sugary-sweet version of hell, run by a person that irritated her the most back home. Maybe she was wrong anyway...maybe she should just give up and be happy with the rest of these sheep. It was hard to think that any kind of rescue was forthcoming.
      "Citizen...it's good to see that you're up and about." Leela turned to see the same guy that came to her aid earlier. "You've got your number badge back...325 – that's a good number!"
      She wanted to punch him, but wondered if she could at least pull some information from him. She squinted her eye at his number badge, and mustered a corny fake accent.
      "Perhaps you could help me with something, uh, mister, uh...815."
      "Certainly, citizen!" he said in a perky voice. "What can I help you with?"
      "Do you think I could speak with Amy...I mean, the Dear Leader?"
      "But she's so busy...spluh!" He chuckled. "But she is having a party meeting this afternoon at the plaza...that would be a good opportunity to hear her speak."
      "Wow...for the party line?"
      "Naw...she'd having a real party...she has them all the time. I've actually got tickets to this one. We can go tonight!"

      When Bender finally decided to leave the porn parlor and join the others, he was stunned by what he saw. AmyBot and LeelaBot had joined them by this time, and Fry was telling the whole tale of what had happened to them. Bender found it most interesting talking with his human counterpart, who quickly offered him a cold beer from the fridge. Suddenly the two officers from the inter-dimensional police force came walking in to the lounge, and introduced themselves. As Fry and Zoidy got ready to leave and return to their own universe, the two Benders realized that they had a quandary on their hands – they realized that they would fit in better in each other's universes.
      "I'd better go with these meatbags," Bender told his counterpart, "they'd be lost without me."
      "Yeah, I know...I need to keep these guys running – they'd fall apart without me."
      The two Benders shook hands, and Human Bender gave his metal friend a few choice cigars for the road. LeelaBot gave Fry a quick hug before they stepped back into their dimension hole.

      Leela made it in to the big party, and soon spotted Amy. She had no idea if she would be able to speak with her at all, but she knew she needed to try.  As soon as Amy got near Leela, she turned as white as a ghost. Her jaw dropped, and she began to shake.
      "Leela?"
      Amy motioned Leela to an office off of the main hall. She was still shaking.
      "Leela," she said in a shaky voice, "you were killed in that fire in the beauty shop...and here you are alive!"
      Leela explained everything to her...about Polo, about his device, everything. For what it was worth, she threw in a bit about how people need their individuality to shine through. Amy promised that she would help with this. In the middle of their conversation, the two officers showed up and introduced themselves. As Leela left with the two officers, her buddy 815 showed up to meet her.
      "You actually got to meet with the Dear Leader...and talk with her - what was it like?"
      Leela smiled at him and said, "It was really, really beautiful."

      In the car universe, Amy said goodbye to her automobile counterpart. She also took some time to say goodbye to a long black sedan that had driven her around for the time that she was there. She walked up to Kiff, who was waiting with the two officers.
      "Kiff, he was just a friend...he meant nothing to me.
      Kiff just smiled at her. "Let's go home, Amy...and if you don't mind, we'll drive."
      The pink sports car beeped it's horn as it drove off.

      The two officers had a hunch that they'd find Saberhanger back in the Professor's lab, and they were right...Farnsworth turned on some sort of device that made his parts of Saberhanger's machine inoperative, so he couldn't send them into another dimension again. He tried to flee the lab, but Bender tripped him and he landed on the floor. He was then quickly arrested by the officers, and led from the building. It was now late at night when the Planet Express crew got back home. They were all tired, but they were all glad to be back in their own universe. Leela turned to Fry, who was still wearing his new Dexoso uniform. Her facial expression turned to anger.
      "Why are you still wearing that?" She poked him in the chest.
      "But, Leela...you've got to admit that it's a snappy looking uniform."
      "Fry," Leela asked sweetly, "can I make a uniform correction?"
      "Why, sure..."
      Leela put her hand on Fry's shirt collar. She put her fingers down his shirt, and pulled violently downward. The front of the shirt came off Fry with a terrible ripping sound. After she'd torn his shirt off, she tossed it on the floor and stomped it with her boot.

      "Thanks," Leela said, as she walked out of the room. Amy snorted with laughter.