Reprinted with permission from www.survivingcollege.com

It’s Flomuary and March of 3013 near Planet Z-7, and there’s a strange sound traveling through outer space. By Arbor Day, it has reached Planet Earth. Hermes calls his friend Shazam to figure out the name of the song (which, SPOILER ALERT AND/OR CAPTAIN OBVIOUS is from Close Encounters of the Third Kind). Professor Farnsworth decides to track Fry’s brainwaves to figure out what part of his brain is triggered by the sound to narrow down the tune.  He isolated a memory from Dec 31st, 1999, the day Fry fell in the freezer tube. Because the memory still exists in Fry’s unconscious mind, Farnsworth induces a dream state to recreate the moment he hears the music.

Fry’s old apartment, his old turtle, his old burrito, his old girlfriend….and his old breakdancing crew. Their funky fresh beats were not what Fry was looking for, but maybe the neighborhood strip club will be helpful. Unfortunately it’s blank since he never went in there. He wakes up screaming to the tune of an ice cream truck that almost ran him over. Fry has been asleep for nearly two weeks, which is when the alien ship is expected to arrive on Earth.

Fry gets back into his dream and is greeted by his dog, Seymour. He sees his family and greets his mother who is preparing Cap’n Crunch casserole. Farnsworth is worried because Fry is wasting time with his loved ones instead of searching for he source of the music. Fry doesn’t want to go to work because he knows that he’ll fall into the cryogenic freezer and never see his family again, but his brother reminds him that if he gets fired from his job, he’ll never pay off his debt to the Columbia House Record Club. Leela arrives to keep things moving along. Nobody seems surprised to see her because it’s a dream. She gives him a little more time, but asks him to hurry because the world is ending and “your dream pants need changing.” The rest of the gang barges in, including Agnew and Nixon’s head. Fry’s father kicks the commie head out of his house.

Fry tries to burst back into his house, but it’s blank because he was never in his house past 10 p.m. on December 31, 1999. Fry takes everyone to the “stupid pizzeria where I worked that night” so that they can locate the tones. While making a delivery to I.C. Weiner at Applied Cryogenics, Nibbler confesses that he was there the whole time to make sure that Fry fell into the freezer tube.

Then, Nibbler tosses Fry into the freezer tube again, sending him and everyone else forward to the present. Fry heard the tone, plus two extra notes. They all go to Mount Shushmore to play the extra notes to the aliens. The ship lands and it’s adorably tiny. Inside is Digby, Nibbler’s associate. He explains that as Lord Nibbler’s personal chauffeur, the two went out for drinks, got blotto, lost the keys to the ship down the drain, and they had to take a cab back to their base. Since that time, he has had to go from planet-to-planet looking for the ship. The music is the tune fro the key fob. Fry shows Digby the ship out back behind Applied Cryogenics.

That night, Fry visits his mother in his mother’s dream. They hug, and it’s a sweet little moment.