5
Anything can be real. Every imaginable thing is happening somewhere along the dimensional axis. These things happen a billion times over with exactly the same outcome and no one learns anything. Whatever a person can think, imagine, wish for or believe has already come to pass. Dreams come true all the time, just not for the dreamers.
Think of something crazy, or if that’s too taxing just throw random adjectives and nouns together.
Indignant seaweed? No problem: the Resentful Hijiki of Damogran. The Hijiki strands, acerbated by shoals of Triple Stripe Yellowheads casually nudging them aside to nibble on the tender coral polyps, banded together and wove themselves into an impenetrable barrier, separating the reef from the fish. The knock-on effect of this was that the reef became sterile and died. The Hijiki had tied themselves too tightly to disband and perished along with the hated Yellowheads.
How about murderous clowns? Too easy. Add in a vegetable obsession. Type that into your Hitchhiker’s Guide v-board and you will get over a million hits, the top one being the story of Bling & Blong of Circus Minimus, two tiny clowns who both fell in love with Gerda the Amazing Cucumber Lady. After months of feuding, Bling loaded a custard pie with acid and melted his little brother during the matinée. Gerda belonged to him, but so distracted was he by guilt that one evening he accidentally ate his fiancée and choked to death himself on the engagement ring.
How about this one? How about an ex-two-headed President of the Galaxy who bought a tiny tropical planet from the Magratheans at a knockdown price then sold it to rich Earthlings so they could live on in comfort after their planet had been destroyed?
How crazy would that be?
The Tanngrísnir
Arthur lay on his bunk looking up at the sky to where Fenchurch hovered on a cloud wearing the same dark jeans, high boots and sodden T-shirt that she wore when he had first seen her, passed out in the back of her arsehole brother’s car.
‘Does the T-shirt have to be wet?’ asked the computer.
‘What? Oh, God, no. Sorry, of course not. I am such an idiot.’
‘Just trying to be accurate, I expect. I can portray this Fenchurch person naked, if you’d like.’
‘No, no,’ said Arthur in what he would like to think of as an immediate fashion. ‘A dry T-shirt is fine. It was raining that night so I was wet too, if that gets me off the hook at all.’
‘No need to explain,’ said Fenchurch’s rendered head. ‘Guests often take advantage of my realistic representations. I have a celebrity catalogue if you would like to browse through it.’
‘Perhaps some other time,’ said Arthur. ‘Can you show me these Grebulons?’
‘Of course. Do you seek closure, Arthur Dent? If you step into the cubicle, I could laser the memories.’
‘No. I need to see them because of how I feel now.’
‘And how is that, would you say?’
Arthur’s smile was guilty as an orchard thief’s. ‘I don’t feel too bad, to be honest. Pretty happy, in fact, all things considered. I miss my beach, but you know, I thought losing Earth would hit me harder, but it hasn’t. Maybe if I can actually look into the faces of those responsible, I might feel a little worse.’
‘I’ve got hi-definition, honeycomb speaker systems, 3-D and super-deep perception wrapped up in a little remote camera no bigger than a human head,’ said the computer confidently. ‘Not to mention point’n’pitch and Wow-O-Wang warbler. Let’s see if I can’t make you feel like shit.’
‘What?’
‘Your words, not mine.’
Fenchurch disappeared and the blackness of space appeared on the ceiling. Arthur recognized the Solar System and the ten planets in elliptical orbit around Sol. The deep blue of Saturn, Jupiter like a giant malachite pebble. Continent-sized boulders spun and shuddered in the asteroid belt beyond Mars, huge thunderclaps shaking Arthur’s bunk as the rocks collided.
‘Was that the ship or the show?’ asked Arthur nervously.
‘I put the sound in,’ admitted Fenchurch. ‘Give me a little poetic license. All these speakers and space is a vacuum.’
Further out they flew, whizzing through the blue-black vastness of empty space, wisps of charged interstellar gas crackling across their vista. Past the dwarf planet Pluto they journeyed, to a slightly larger planet, a completely ice-bound body, shining smooth but for the pock-marks of palimpsests and the grey industrial pods of an alien spaceship anchored on its surface.
‘The Grebulons,’ whispered Fenchurch. ‘Looking for something else to monitor.’
The detail was incredible. Arthur could see every plate of armour, every twist of cable.
He reached out to touch the hull and the entire scene lurched and zoomed.
‘That’s the point’n’pitch,’ said Fenchurch. ‘Careful with that. People have been known to throw up.’
Arthur peered through a porthole, feeling like a Peeping Tom. He saw soft sofas and magazine racks. Amiable-looking humanoids ambled along the carpeted hallway, stopping to chat politely or exchange what appeared to be astronomy trading cards.
This was not the kind of behaviour a person expects from destroyers of worlds. Arthur looked, but not one of the Grebulons was laughing maniacally, nor did they appear to have misshapen minions.
‘They look so nice,’ said Arthur, a little disconcerted by how easy it would be to like these people.
Fenchurch’s snort was so spot-on that Arthur wanted to weep. ‘It’s always the nice ones. You look up the Sub-Etha the day after a planet gets blown to smithereens and it’s zigabytes of the neighbouring worlds saying how the rampaging mass murderers were always so polite on trade missions. How they always sent kittens at Cattybagmas, how they kept to themselves mostly.’
Arthur used the p’n’p to zoom in on a Grebulon woman with a clutch of admirers gathered around.
‘Would you like me to put a wet T-shirt on her?’ asked Fenchurch wickedly.
‘Look in their eyes, Fenchurch.’
The computer sent a dark energy beam through the porthole. ‘Not the brightest, are they? I can’t scan back further than five orbit cycles with these people.’
‘Why would they do it, then?’
‘M-a-a-a-a-a-ybe someone put them up to it.’
Arthur’s stomach lurched as his perspective was shifted at hyperspeed. They withdrew from the surface and past the inferior planet of Pluto, just in time to catch the rear end of a huge ship, blue rings of light spinning up to enter hyperspace. The ship was yellow and ungainly and would never feature on a froody Sub-Etha spaceship show where middle-aged ex-racing drivers threw it around a test track while making jolly, xenophobic remarks and claiming not to understand all the knobs and dials. This ship was clumsy in the way that comets are not.
‘Vogons,’ said Arthur, surprised not a jot. ‘Jerks every one of them. Complete arseholes.’
‘Ah. Your people.’
Arthur managed a spurt of indignance. ‘Not my people. That bunch killed all of my people.’
‘Well, not all of them.’
‘Nearly all. Three of us, that’s all that are left.’
‘Soon will be.’
‘Soon? What do you mean soon?’
‘Well, I had a little rummage in their computer. Apparently the Vogons are off to the Dark Nebula of Soulianis and Rahm to hunt down a colony of Earthlings.’
‘What? Earthlings? What the hell is a dark nebula? Shouldn’t you play ominous music when you say things like that? Can their computer give you any details?’
On the ceiling/screen the whirring blue circles suddenly froze, turned white and disappeared, along with the Vogon ship.
‘Too late,’ said Fenchurch. ‘Even my instruments cannot hack through hyperspace.’
Arthur tumbled from his bed, absently jamming the school cap on to his head.
‘We must warn them, surely? Should we warn them? Should we to go to this dark nebula place? Bom-bom-bohhhhm.’
‘Don’t you miss your beach, Arthur?’
And from Arthur’s mind the computer plucked a memory of his beach hut and plastered it on the ceiling.
‘I miss it terribly. Every day was the same. No exploding planets or people screaming at me or aliens invading my personal space. Why do people always feel it necessary to stand nose to nose for a simple conversation? Plus, on my beach, I could stray as far as I wanted off the subject and nobody tried to drag me back on course.’
‘So why would you follow the Vogons? They never fail. Why give yourself the heartache?’
‘I need to go because a large part of me doesn’t want to go. What kind of Earthling would I be if I didn’t want to save my species?’
‘An alive one. Not blown to atoms by Vogon thermonuclear warheads. A little archaic, but they do the job.’
‘We have to turn round, or power up a drive. Push the go-faster button. Something.’
‘Calm yourself, Arthur Dent. Wowbagger goes where his schedule takes him.’
‘He was going to Earth, wasn’t he? To insult Earthlings?’
‘True.’
‘Well, then. The last Earthling colony appears to somehow be in this dark nebula. Couldn’t Wowbagger insult the Earthlings there?’
‘It’s feasible. You state your case well, Arthur Dent.’
Guide Note: Throughout recorded history the ability to ‘state one’s case well’ has generally had about as much success as ‘talking things out reasonably’ or ‘putting aside our differences’. The people who use these tactics generally mean well and would make excellent motivational speakers or kindergarten teachers, but on no account should they be put in charge of situations where lives are at stake. Malapropos comments such as ‘I know we haven’t always seen eye to eye…’ tend to send negotiations spiralling towards disaster, especially if the other species’ representative suffers from globular organ envy or thinks you are being a patronizing git. Successful negotiations are invariably conducted from a position of power, or at least the perception of power. Strolling into a meeting wearing a comfortable robe and smelling of incense with a sincere desire to iron out difficulties is, perversely, a surefire way to get everyone killed. General Anyar Tsista, the acknowledged prince of negotiators, once claimed that while on the job he never used a sentence that did not include at least one zark, two shits and half a dozen asscracks. His final pronouncement contained only a single shit, and was uttered in the form of an authoritative command to his bowels, which had locked up as a result of too many hours seated around the negotiation tables. Unfortunately, because of their thin bowel walls, Golgafrinchans are prone to catastrophic bowel ruptures, so General Anyar Tsista’s final utterance was also what killed him.
‘You’re absolutely right,’ said Arthur. ‘I do state my case well. I ought to state it to Wowbagger immediately.’
‘Perhaps not so articulately,’ suggested Fenchurch’s image. ‘May I propose a zark and perhaps a couple of pormwranglers?’
Wowbagger sat in his favourite vibro-chair on the bridge, trying not to talk about himself. Outside the corona of the ship’s force field the destruction of the Earth had pulverized the moon, resulting in an elliptical dust ring that was heading for Venus.
‘Look, Trillian Astra. Another planet is about to die. Ask me about that, or something else. I have seen many wonders.’
Trillian was not in the mood to be distracted. An in-depth profile of Wowbagger would have Sub-Etha editors drooling into their non-fat lo-cal lacto-laxo sim-coffees.
‘The people want to know about you. Who is this green alien who travels the Universe insulting everyone in alphabetical order?’
‘Ah, you see, that’s not the way I do it any more. The whole alphabetical order thing was amusing for a while but then I became a slave to it. People were expecting my insults and began returning the favour.’
Random looked up from a page on which she was drawing a series of savage-looking flaybooz.
‘Saying stuff like: “You’re a pathetic loser”?’
‘To paraphrase, yes.’
‘Or: “I didn’t know lizards wore suits”?’
‘Once or twice. I’m trying to talk to your mother…’
‘Or: “Is that smell considered pleasant where you come from?” ’
Trillian wrapped her daughter in an embrace that looked suspiciously like a headlock.
‘I’m not leaving you, darling. Never again. So there’s no need for all this hostility.’
‘I wish you would leave,’ said Random, scowling. ‘Without you around I turned out pretty well.’
Trillian disguised gritted teeth as a loving smile and turned back to her interview. ‘So, you have abandoned your alphabetical trademark?’
‘Yes,’ said Wowbagger. ‘I do planets now. It’s much simpler and I don’t need to listen to every insult-slinger in town trying to take me on. I simply pull into orbit and drop a data bomb into the atmosphere. Everyone gets an email and a sound file. Believe me, if you press that play button then you are left in no doubt as to how I feel about sentient beings.’
‘And how do you feel about them?’
‘They’re mortal. I despise them.’
‘So underneath all this aloofness is a simple maledicent?’
‘What? You think I enjoy using foul language?’
‘Don’t you?’
‘Well, yes. Immensely. But it’s not just that…’
And then Wowbagger told Trillian something that he had never told anyone. Perhaps it was the almost hypnotic tone of her slightly husky voice; perhaps it was time to tell someone.
‘I want them to kill me. I want them to try.’
Oh God, thought Trillian. Recorder chip, don’t fail me now.
She glanced down at her wristwatch and was relieved to see the audio readout flickering.
‘That’s quite a statement.’
‘I s-suppose it is,’ said the green space traveller.
Guide Note: This was Wowbagger’s first stutter since visiting the Castor system where the swearword g-g-grunntivartads increases in potency with each added ‘g’.
‘I am amazed to hear myself saying that.’
‘As am I, Mr Wowbagger.’
‘I think it’s time you called me Bowerick.’
‘Bowerick?’
‘My first name. My father had a sense of humour. Bow Wowbagger?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Trillian, suddenly caring a little less about her recorder.
The Universe cannot suffer tender moments like this to last for very long and there were contenders for the honour of trampling roughshod over this one. First was Random Dent, who was taking a moment to compose a disgusted disparagement before she stalked from the bridge for the second time. But the winner was her father, Arthur Dent, whose comedic arrival nicely counterbalanced the saccharine nature of the moment, thus restoring order to the Universe.
‘Right, you zarkers!’ said Arthur, rushing on to the bridge. ‘We need to turn this turd bucket around and get our pormwrangling tails to the Dark Nebula of Soulianis and Rahm.’
‘Bom-bom-bohhhhm!’ trumpeted the computer, just trying to help.
And then, for one final cosmic laugh:
‘Was that a bit harsh? Sorry, everyone. What is a pormwrangler, anyway?’