2
Ford Prefect explored the room of sky, breathing on the walls to see if the surface fogged, pulling horrible faces to check for a recoil factor and eventually touching it gingerly through his sleeve. When the material of his shirt did not have its electrons excited to a higher temperature, Ford deemed it safe to poke the wall with his finger. He did so and the wall rippled, sending images of flaybooz wedding ceremonies, beach huts and wild parties flitting across the room. When the ripples died, so did the residual memories and the wall was azure sky once more.
‘Do you mind?’ said a voice that seemed to come from everywhere. ‘My needles are on red as it is, to coin an archaic phrase. If you could just sit still I can hold this construct together a while longer.’
‘So, you’re saying that this whole room is a construct?’ said Ford, poking the wall again.
‘Would you… Didn’t I just say… Yes, yes, it’s a construct. This waiting lounge is all in your head. In all of your heads. It is a virtual room. Is there another way you would like me to impart this information?’
Ford scratched his chin and was disappointed to find that it was not as chiselled as it had been at Han Wavel. ‘How about a video?’
The sky walls disappeared altogether, replaced by several representations of a robotic bird, tapping a claw impatiently.
‘Ah,’ said Ford. ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Mk II. I thought as much. I haven’t seen you since…’ Ford flipped through his solidifying memories, ‘since you tried to get the Earth blasted to pieces.’
‘Not since then,’ said the bird. ‘Not since way back then. Imagine.’
‘You’ve upgraded your feathers to gold, I see.’
‘It’s a construct, Betelgeusean. I appear as I wish to appear. So did you, back at the resort. Remember the chin?’
Ford sighed wistfully. ‘I do. That was so froody. The shadows I could cast with that godlike chin.’
‘I’ve seen a few gods,’ remarked the bird. ‘Some of them are not so great in the chin department. Why do you think Loki cultivates that beard?’
Ford paced a little. ‘Back to my question. How about a video?’
H2G2-2 scowled, which is not easy with a beak. ‘Didn’t you hear me? The needles are on red. I can’t hold the waiting lounge together for much longer.’
‘Nothing fancy. Just some 2-D animation, old-school stuff. I know you can do it if you really want to.’
The bird rolled its eyes dramatically then disappeared from one of the walls. In its place a black screen opened and on the screen were four neon stick figures. One had rather outlandish boob circles and another hadn’t much in the way of chins.
‘Ha ha,’ called Ford to the sky. ‘Very humorous.’
A cartoon bird appeared on the screen and hovered above the four humanoids.
‘Welcome,’ said the bird, ‘to this video demonstration, which I like to call: Constructs for Idiots.’
Ford raised a finger. ‘Does that mean that the people in the constructs are idiots, or that you’re explaining it to idiots?’
The bird ignored him. ‘As a pan-dimensional, mega-advanced, omniscient travel guide, equipped with the very best Organ-O-Brain, capable of running over ten trillion simultaneous calculations…’
Ford rapped on the screen. ‘Could you keep it down and hurry it up? I feel pretty sure that there is bad news coming and it might be better if I get to grips with it first. Some people in this room don’t handle bad news so well. I’d like to have a chance to massage the truth a little before I present it.’
‘Well, if you’d stop wittering on…’
‘I am stopped. Go ahead, please…’
The bird cleared its throat in a wholly unnecessary manner. ‘As I was saying. As such an advanced bio-hybrid organism, it was a simple matter for me to poke a neuron beam into the dream centre at the back of each brain… yours was a little hard to find, by the way, Betelgeusean… and then link the neural networks through a central server, that is to say, myself.’
Ford frowned. ‘Show me some moving pictures,’ he said.
On-screen blue beams fanned from the bird’s wing-tips, entering the humanoids’ heads through one ear, then exiting through the other ear and converging on the H2G2-2’s forehead.
‘So you sent us to sleep and gave us a dream?’
‘I gave you life, for a long time.’
‘But it was virtual life, we didn’t go anywhere?’
‘Correct. Anywhere or anywhen.’
‘Which is not a word. Organ-O-Brain? Really?’
‘I was trying to be succinct.’
Ford poked the wall again, this time with two fingers, watching the memory ripples run around the walls and intermingle. ‘It’s all a dream then. And not just this room?’
‘No,’ said the voice coldly. ‘Not just this room.’
More poking. ‘How far back?’
‘Club Beta.’
‘Club Beta. That bongs a gong for some reason. Club dingly dangly Beta.’ Ford stopped pacing. ‘Holy shankwursters!’
‘I will thank you,’ said The Hitchhiker’s Guide Mk II, ‘to mind your language. I am fully programmed to take offence.’
‘Aren’t we all.’
Guide Note: This is literally true of the Cyphroles of Sesefras Magna, a gas giant in the Pleiades system. The Cyphroles are tiny invertebrate free-swimming gastrozoa who absorb the hostile energy emitted by their predators and use it to power their own systems. This makes the predators angry and so the Cyphroles swim faster through the gas ocean. Sesefras Magna gas dragons have learned to approach the Cyphroles casually, whistling a little tune or pretending to search for a few coins they have mislaid. The Cyphroles always fall for these tricks, as nature gave them large energy filters and tiny bullshit detectors.
Ford’s memory was still a little hazy. ‘Club Beta? In London? But that was… I have no idea long ago that was.’
‘It was then and it is now. My perception is unfiltered, so I see all points of my existence simultaneously.’
‘How about us impoverished beings with filtered perceptions?’ Ford didn’t like this bird much, and believed that he wouldn’t like it even with a few Gargle Blasters eating at his stomach lining.
‘You are still in the club. No time has passed.’
Ford grabbed clumps of his ginger hair. ‘Why? For zark’s sake, why?’
Mk II rolled its pixellated eyes. ‘You try to do someone a favour. Honestly.’
‘Favour?’ spluttered Ford, not giving a damn who heard. ‘If you wanted to do us a favour, you could have transported us away from the exploding planet.’
‘That would have been in direct contradiction with my program. I have prolonged your life by several decades.’
‘Who asked you to? Not me.’
‘Random Dent made the request. She is my secondary master. When the human minor realized that the entire planet was about to be destroyed, she expressed regret that she had not been allowed to live her life as she would have wished. Granting that wish did not conflict with my primary directive.’
‘What about the rest of us?’
‘Mistress Dent included her parents and their chinless, dim-witted friend in her thoughts.’
Ford was wounded. ‘Chinless? She thought that?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said the bird with obvious relish. ‘Several times.’
Something occurred to Ford. ‘Secondary master? Who is the primary?’
‘You are not entitled to interrogate me,’ snapped Mk II.
Ford borrowed a tactic from the Sesefras Magna gas dragons. ‘I know that. Of course a wondrous being like yourself doesn’t have to answer to a lowly Betelgeusean like myself. But it would be a lovely treat for me to understand the complexities of your plan.’
The bird cocked its head. ‘I know what you’re doing.’
‘Obviously.’
‘I experience every moment simultaneously.’
‘No point in arguing then, is there? You already know what you’re going to do.’
‘Good point. Very well. The Vogons created me so that I could cajole you back to Earth before the Grebulons destroyed it.’
‘Which is happening now.’
‘Now, as you know it. Yes.’
‘Will we be rescued?’
‘Probably not.’
‘So you gave us the lives we wanted?’
‘No. I gave you free will and a construct. You followed your own paths under my supervision.’
Ford winked at the bird. ‘I get it. I see now. You wanted to experience real time.’
Mk II dropped its beak slowly, crossing its wings across its breast. ‘I lived your lives with you, never knowing what was coming next. It was exhilaratingly… random.’
‘And now?’
‘Now? Now I know exactly what happens. A hundred years of maintaining four Universes has depleted my power source. I only lasted this long because I periodically combined two constructs for the past virtual twenty years. Perhaps I should have thought of that sooner, but linear time is so immediate. In five virtual minutes this room will disappear, and you will be left on Earth facing the planet-killer beams of the Grebulons.’
Ford’s throat was suddenly too dry and his thoughts too cohesive. How he missed cocktail hour.
‘Five minutes?’
‘And counting,’ said Mk II, fading from view. In the places where the bird had been there appeared several digital readouts, which said 4.57, then 4.56. You get the picture.
‘Humans think digital watches are pretty neat,’ murmured Ford absently, then turned to face the three humans who were busy doing their utmost to avoid being the least bit civil to each other.
*
The old man wasn’t as ancient as he had been barely a moment before. He could tell this by the tautness of the skin on his hands and the renewed sharpness of his hearing.
I can hear every word these two women shriek at me. Oh joy.
‘Arthur!’ yelled the elder of the two, actually yelled. He hadn’t been yelled at in… decades. ‘Are you even listening to me?’
Trying not to, thought Arthur, keeping his head down.
‘I hate her,’ screamed the teenager. ‘She abandoned me and now she wants to control me. How does that make sense?’
‘Arthur?’
‘Daddy?
‘I am speaking to you, Arthur Dent.’
Arthur Dent. It fit him. It was him.
‘Arthur Dent,’ mumbled Arthur Dent, and he wasn’t happy to hear it.
‘Is that all you have to say? After all these years.’
‘I’m an old man,’ said Arthur hopefully. ‘Leave me alone.’
‘Old?’ said the woman. ‘What are you talking about, old? You look exactly the same as you did the last time I saw you. Exactly. How did you do that?’
It was as Arthur feared. All those years alone on his beach and now he was back in the Universe with people shouting at him and no idea what was going on.
‘How did I do what?’
‘Stay so young. I’m younger than you and I look like a silicon implant after a night in the toaster. Oh, why did I bother with all these refits. I should have retired. Or brought Random along with me. Other parents do it.’
Arthur resigned himself to the fact that there was no wishing himself back to the beach and made eye contact. He saw a slim, darkish, young woman, with shoulder-length curling black hair and chocolate eyes, wearing a dark, shimmering trouser suit.
Memories poked through to his consciousness.
‘Trillian. You look beautiful.’
The brown eyes blinked. ‘Screw you, Arthur. I didn’t come here to be patronized.’
‘Sorry. You look beautiful, Miss.’
‘Arthur. I chose Zaphod at the party, so live with it and drop that torch you’re carrying. You need to see me as I am. My foot buzzes, for heaven’s sake.’
‘Does it really? I didn’t notice, and I would notice, because my hearing has become pretty sharp just recently.’
Trillian placed two fingers on her left tibia, searching for the vibration that generally thrummed along her shinbone, keeping her awake at night.
‘No buzzing.’
‘Mother,’ said Random behind her. ‘Mum.’
Trillian noticed her fingernails were all her own. No acrylic falsies.
I am young. Young-ish. How can this be? Time is running backwards.
‘Mum!’
‘Just a minute, Random. Tickle your bloody yo-yo or something.’
‘Fertle is gone, Mum. I’m no one again.’
Trillian realized the enormity of what had happened and rushed to comfort her daughter.
‘It’s okay, darling. We have our lives to live over.’
Random clenched her fingers into tiny fists. ‘I don’t want this life. I want to be President of the Galaxy. Is that too much to ask?’
The President was gone, and in her place a tearful teenage Goth.
Guide Note: The ‘Goth’ phenomena is not confined to the planet Earth. Many species choose to define their adolescent periods with sustained truculent silences and the heartfelt belief that their parents took the wrong baby home from the hospital because their natural parents could not possibly be so mind-warpingly dense and b-o-o-o-ring. While the adolescents of Earth advertise their feelings of isolation by wearing black clothing and listening to rock bands with names like Blood-shock and Sputum, the Hooloovoo (a super-intelligent shade of blue) demonstrate their dissatisfaction with the Universe by holding their breath until they turn deep purple, while the Tubular Zingatularians (deep-sea crustaceans) drive their parents demented by literally talking out of their arses.
Trillian realized that her daughter was a child once more and she hugged the girl with something close to ferocity.
‘We have each other again. Daddy’s here too.’ Trillian’s rush of enthusiasm was enough to make her dizzy. ‘All the things we can do together. Camping and getting earrings and stuff. So many protests to march in. You’ll love those. Down with international conglomerates and all that. The future is yours. You will be Galactic President again. I promise.’
Ford Prefect stepped into the conversation, waving his towel like a peace flag.
‘I hate to be the one leaving a bag of Sooflinian poo on your dream doorstep, but there may not be time to mount an election campaign for this particular planet. There might not even be time to secure the party nomination.’
Trillian asked Ford a question she had historically posed at least once per conversation. ‘What the hell are you talking about, Ford?’
Ford raised his hands high, like a preacher. ‘All of this, it’s a construct.’
Guide Note: Throughout recorded history people have used constructs to avoid reality. The cheapest way to escape despair is to take refuge in one’s imagination. During the day, a person might be forced to work in a quimp slattery, but in the evening that same person can be transformed by sheer force of will and imagination into a rumper of feltsparks.
Of course, billions of people have no imaginations and for these people there are Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters. After two of those babies, the dullest, most by-the-book Vogon will be up on the bar in stilettos, yodelling mountain shankies and swearing he’s the king of the Grey Binding Fiefdoms of Saxaquine.
Unfortunately this method of escape from reality only lasts for a couple of weekends, by which time the escapee will be quite dead, cause of death usually being a rebellious liver packing its bag and exiting the host torso via the nearest viable exit.
Because liver desertion is not a nice way to go, most species have invented some form of construct to escape their daily lives. The most primitive constructs are cave paintings, unless you are a gilled creature, then it is difficult to get the paint to stick; and if you try it on dry land, then the paint will be sticky but so will your gills. Cave paintings lead to more sophisticated works, lead to books, first with pictures, then without. Back to pictures with television. Onwards to 3-D experiences and finally interactive, multi-sensory, holographic constructs. Better than the real thing. In the case of the Flargathon Gas Swamps, much better than the real thing.
The Gaseans of Flargathon were so peeved by their name and by the constant stink of spirogyra invading their nostrils that they hired the hyper-intelligent Magratheans to build an idyllic construct that would be permanently occupied by every Gasean, except for a rotating staff awakened to service the virtual reality and keep the gas mines pumping. The construct was designed by the Magrathean A-team of Doctors Brewtlewine, Zestyfang and LaSane, who had won a Golden Lobe for their work on New Asgard. After fifteen years the construct was ready to be plugged in and was named DB-DZ-DLS in the team’s honour.
For years things were rosy, all happy snores and money in the bank, until the computer happened to randomly wake up five people who did not have the population’s best interests at heart. These people, let’s call them a*sholes, realized that while the cats were indulging themselves in their favourite virtual fantasies, the mice could strip the planet bare and live like les grands fromages in the real Universe.
It took them ten years, but the a*sholes managed to gut the old planet while the Magratheans were simultaneously building them a brand new one. A nice, Neptune-sized, terrestrial world (hold the swamps), slingshot into orbit in the Alpha Centauri system. They named the planet Incognitus and immediately enforced a worldwide ‘no extradition’ rule. Five years later the Gaseans awoke to find their suspended animation diaper bags overflowing and their planet smelling worse than ever.
And the moral of the story is? There are a few actually: some people are bastards and should never be left in charge. And, a Magrathean will always take the money, no questions asked. Finally, always fit composting diaper bags just in case. Because you really never know. No one really ever knows.
‘Four minutes, Ford,’ said Arthur Dent seconds later, feeling confusion and powerlessness appear at his shoulders like two mates from secondary school who were great fun at the time but now refused to move on like everyone else and still thought fart cushions were hilarious. ‘That is so bloody typical of this Galaxy. I finally get my daughter back and now you tell me we’re all about to be blown to pieces in four minutes.’
Ford punched his shoulder jovially. ‘No, no, we go back to reality in four minutes. It will take the Grebulons at least thirty minutes to carve up the whole planet with death beams. It would be a lot quicker and more cost effective with nukes. Ask the Vogons – you wouldn’t catch them using death beams.’
‘You are wrong, Ford,’ said Trillian, pale with worry and anger. ‘I remember Club Beta. We survived that. Our Babel fish transported us to Milliways. I remember it clearly.’
‘Clearly? Do you really?’
‘Maybe not clearly,’ admitted Trillian. ‘It was a long time ago.’
‘No,’ blurted Random. ‘It wasn’t Babel fish, it was unicorns.’
‘Unicorns,’ breathed Arthur and he knew then that Ford was right, the Guide Mk II had let them supply their own method of escape. His own had involved uniting all of the Earth’s superpowers. Clearly impossible.
‘Yes, Arthur. A squadron of space unicorn rangers came to save us. I remember Sparkle Gem True Hoof, we were pen pals.’
Arthur hurriedly changed the subject before anyone could get started on the unicorn theory.
‘In four minutes this room will disappear, Ford, we’ll be left facing Grebulon death beams and you thought it would be a great idea to waste half of that time with your election campaign imagery?’
‘I didn’t think it was a great idea,’ said Ford, who didn’t get sarcasm unless he really concentrated, which he only did about once a year, usually when he had one last chance to press the correct button or the ship exploded. ‘I thought it was an okay idea. On a scale of one to ten, maybe four point five.’
‘Ford!’
‘Yes, Arthur, old mate?’
‘You’re doing it again. Wasting time. Shouldn’t we be coming up with a plan?’
Random wiped her tears on a sleeve. She would swallow down the world of hurt and bear up, just as she had always done as President. Hadn’t she persevered when the celebrity chefs of Earth had downed spatulas because of the influx of cheap and flashy Dentrassis labour?
Guide Note: Dentrassis chefs are extremely foul-mouthed and launch into long tirades even when things are going right, and so make excellent TV chefs. Also, because of their time-hop pods, they do not have to ‘prepare one earlier’ until the end of the show.
Had she not forged ahead when the Blagulon Kappans had parachuted twelve million cows into mainland Europe in an attempt to increase the methane content of the atmosphere?
Luckily there were not many vegetarians on that continent and the cows did not last long, especially since they were Ameglian Major cows who literally begged to be eaten. Most of them didn’t have to ask twice. Many of them never got to ask once. And quite a few were being flambéed before their parachutes hit the ground.
I will take control, thought Random, with a determination that actually was beyond her years.
She shrugged her mother off.
‘Listen to me, everyone. I’ve been in tighter spots than this. What we need to do is hook your Hitchhiker’s Guide up to the Grebulon communications system and I will negotiate with them, as future President of the Galaxy.’
Ford patted Random on the head. ‘Hush now, dearie. Grown-ups talking.’
‘You pormwrangler!’ swore Random, most un-presidentially.
‘Thank you very much,’ said a touched Ford, who had always been proud of his skill at the pormwrangling pits of Bhaboom Lane. ‘But let’s do compliments later.’
‘Later?’ said Arthur. ‘What later? We don’t have a later, thanks to your Mk II.’
‘It’s not mine,’ objected the Betelgeusean.
‘You stole it, Ford. You posted it to yourself, care of me. I think that makes it yours.’
‘Ah, you see, I stole it. Therefore it’s not mine. You’re winning my argument for me.’
2.37 said the digital readout.
2.36
then
0.10…… 0.09…
‘Hmm,’ said Ford, scratching the plane in space where his chin was obstinately refusing to be. ‘That’s a little strange.’
‘I know,’ agreed Arthur. ‘Surely the numerical system hasn’t changed? We’ve only been away a couple of seconds.’
‘Well, if the numerical system’s been changed, they might not even be seconds.’
The bird reappeared, its image striated with lines of interference. ‘Sorry. All this arguing is draining my battery. Negative energy.’
And Mk II disappeared, taking with it the tranquil room of sky. Arthur, Trillian, Random and Ford found themselves deposited on the men’s room stairs in Stravro Meuller’s swanky (until very recently) Club Beta, their memories of virtual lives dissipating like mist in the sunlight.
This is real life, Arthur realized. How could I ever have been duped by that beach? How could it have been real when no one was trying to kill me?
The air was alive with screaming, the cacophonous wrenching sounds of civilization collapsing, the thrum and buzz of Grebulon death rays and the chittering of a million rats fleeing the city, which the four arrivees could understand thanks to the Babel fish universal translators in their ear holes.
‘I saw it in those dog intestines,’ squeaked one lady rat named Audrey. ‘I foretold the end for the two-footers by a big green space light. No one would bloody listen. Nobody.’
‘Come on, Mum,’ scoffed her eighteenth son, Cornelius. ‘You said a dark stranger would cross our path.’
‘Them’re dark strangers, firing them death beams. What would you call ’em?’
Cornelius twitched a whisker, the rat equivalent of rolled eyeballs. ‘That’s one interpretation. You need to be more specific, Mum. People are laughing.’
‘Cheeky beggar,’ said Audrey and scampered off down a drain.
The rest of the rats said things like:
‘Oh, no!’
‘Oh, Muroideam!’ (Father of the rat gods.)
‘Aaaargh! Dark stranger, my arse!’
Arthur Dent sat on the stairs in the midst of the whole imbroglio feeling strangely peaceful. There was nothing to do but be happy for having loved someone once and having been loved in return. It was big, dying. BIG. But not as big as it had once seemed.
At the foot of the stairs, a sobbing Random was being comforted by both Trillian and Tricia McMillan.
Stupid bloody Plural zone, thought Arthur. You leave one Earth and come back to another. The Earth I left was destroyed and the one I returned to has a Tricia McMillan who never travelled through space with Zaphod Beeblebrox. Ah, the infinite multitudinous possibilities of my home planet. The things I might have seen on another Earth, just down the probability axis. I might have made myself a nice cup of tea.
‘Regrets,’ he sang absently, ‘I’ve had a few. Like all those days, spent in detention.’
Frankie Martin Jnr. What a crooner.
The green rays scythed closer now. Arthur could feel their heat burning one side of his face.
That’s going to peel, he thought.
‘Hey, look,’ said Ford brightly. ‘My blue suede shoes. Froody.’