r***@aol.com
2006-06-24 20:23:23 UTC
"Immortal Beloved..." CXIII...
Summary: Another of my IB versions of what happened at and/or after the
last battle...Because, as the great Douglas once wrote, stress has
become a major problem in the Galaxy, for this one you should know that
one version of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" based on the
radio scripts ended with Arthur Dent stealing the Heart of Gold, the
famed Infinite Improbability Drive powered starship and heading off
with the archeologist Lintilla (played by Rula Lenska) and the paranoid
android Marvin, in an angry fit after learning that ex-part-time
Galatic President Zaphod Beeblebrox had been part of a conspiracy to
destroy the Earth to prevent the readout of the Ultimate Question to
Life, the Universe, and Everything...
Disclaimers: Not mine but thine O, Joss!....And Douglas...Who is not
like God but is God...Or should be...
Archived with the rest of the IB versions 1-113 at the
"Normal"verse page of the Buffy Rebecca verse,
http://www.angelfire.com/zine2/buffyrebecca/index Scroll down to
series...
Best of all, I can bring Arthur and co back in the "Buffy Effect"
series...
***
"Hello there..." a voice from all about them..."Them"
consisting of two figures, one standing with difficulty in what might
be taken for a sort of defensive mode, if a rather pathetic-looking
one, given the blonde-haired figure's wobbly stance and lack of
arms...As in one limb being totally gone and the other holding nothing
but the end of a metal pole...And the other figure, in rather worse
shape, collapsed in a heap not calculated to give much encouragement to
a belief in it as a living form...
An English-accented voice, William, the blond figure, noted wearily,
looking round...
"Angel?..." he gasped... A groan from the battered mass on the
rather shiny floor suggesting Angel was still to some extent with
him...
"You have just been rescued from annihilation at an improbability
factor of 2 x 10-37...
Normality, or what passes for it, will be restored
shortly...Uh...Please stand by..."
The owner of said voice now turned from the control console he sat
behind...
"At last...For once I'm the one who gets to do dole that sort of
thing out...And someone else has to try to figure what the bloody
hell's gone wrong with his lifestyle..." he sighed contentedly...
"Is that all it takes to satisfy you?..." the tall figure standing
near him, humanoid in configuration...The usual two upper and lower
limbs, one head of sorts, but clearly robotic in nature, sighed
morosely... "If you had a brain the size of a planet as I do that
wouldn't so much as fill the emptiness of one half of one of your
10exp55 nanomemory chips...Ah, but you don't..."
"Marvin..." the owner of the original English-accented voice which
William had heard, a tall thirty-something human of relatively
pleasant...If you happened to be a primate-descended human
being...Appearance...Wearing an old and rather worn bathrobe, a
pleasant if faded red in color on the outside ...Frowned at the
robot...
"Shut up..."
"Before or after I complete the meaningless chore you intend to send
me on?...You may as well just tell me to go in the corner and
rust...It'd be equally satisfying...But it would spare having to go
through the tedious muck of you canceling that last order and telling
me to go and fetch the hybrid Earthlings..."
"Oh, just...Hybrid Earthlings?...What do you mean, hybrid?..."
"Just what I said...Attempting to communicate with your limited
primate brain there's no point in trying to be subtle..."
"But hybrid, how?...You mean mixed parentage or something?...Well,
let me tell you, Marvin..." the tall human in bathrobe drew himself
up in his chair rather proudly... "On my Earth we'd conquered a lot
of that kind of thing in our natures...I had a lot of 'hybrid'
friends...And we didn't go round calling them..."
"That's not what I mean..." Marvin sighed... "They're not,
fortunate creatures, fully Earth human...But then, this isn't fully
Earth..."
"The devil you say?...Not fully human?...Are they, what?...Part
alien?...Some other hitchhiker's offspring...God..." the human
sighed...
"Don't tell me they're Zaphod's...I know he's been to Earth
before..."
"They don't possess any of any Zaphod Beeblebrox's genetic
material...If you mean alien as in the sense of coming from another
planet rather than from over the next hill, no..."
"Well, then...Ehew..." the man stared at the robot... "You mean
they're part dog or chimp or something?...My God, I know this isn't
my Earth but still...Standards and all that..."
"I thought you said your people had conquered a lot of that kind of
thing in your natures...It's recorded, to my utter boredom, in my
memory bank..."
"I meant among human beings..."
"Oh?...Well, what an achievement...No wonder your species had
progressed so far before the Vogons destroyed your Earth..." Marvin
said with heavy irony...
"Are you trying to be funny?..." the man glared...
"I wouldn't waste the time...Pointless...Like my existence..."
"Bother your pointless existence for once...What did you mean by
hybrid if they not part alien or animal or something?..."
"There were pan-dimensional gateways constantly opening on the planet
below...A number of what loosely pass for sentient species crossed over
from alternate Earths on a regular basis...Some of them chose to mate
or otherwise combine with the humans here...Some, infinitely wiser,
though none bearing a faction of my intellect, preferring just to hunt
and eat the humans here..."
"Well that's horrible...Was this the best alternate Earth you could
lead the ship to?...Surely there must be one more like my poor ole
Earth?..."
"There are an infinite number of alternate Earths and their
universes...This met most of the characteristics you said you
wanted...It was only because I have the brain the size of a planet much
larger than the miserably small world below that I was able to target
the Improbability Drive to get us here...If you want to give me
additional information we can try again...But you won't like it...And
the creatures are part something besides human..."
"Most of the characteristics I wanted?..." the man repeated,
frowning... "Marvin, I specifically asked for a safe Earth, free from
hitchhiking aliens, spaceships, and all that sort of..."
"Hard to avoid when we must come in a spaceship..." Marvin noted...
"But this Earth does meet that qualification best...It's shrouded
by the dimensional gateways from normal hyperspace in this
universe...We were only able to come because of the Improbability
Drive...Nobody ever visits except from other Earths...Why they bother,
I can't say...Awful-looking place...I..."
"Say?...You mean our guests...They're part pan-dimensional
beings?...Like the mice who had my Earth constructed?..."
"Yes...But these beings obviously weren't in mouse form..."
"Well, they're still part-alien to me...And I told you I didn't
want..."
"If I weren't so depressed I might try to point out this is their
home, not yours...But it's pointless...God, I'm so depressed..."
"Well...Lets have a look at them..." the man twisted a knob on the
control console...A viewscreen blinked on before him...
"Number One..." Captain Picard said resolutely, turning to his
second-in-command, both with phasers ready... "Lets proceed to the
bridge and see if we can meet our captors..."
"They look human enough..." the man eyed the pair...
Hmmn...Doesn't look like one of our transit rooms...
"Isn't Normality...Such as it is in this universe...Restored
yet?..." he turned to the robot...
"Yes..."
"Then why does the ship look so strange there?..." the man pointed
at the screen as the two figures now moving down a grim-looking
spaceship corridor...
Wait a bit...
"Marvin, is that Captain Picard of Star Trek?..."
"Yes...You're watching a television broadcast from the planet...The
viewscreen engages to the transit rooms with the buttons to the
right..." Marvin sighed...
Oh...Right...The man pressed the right button...
Hmmn...He eyed the two somewhat bedraggled-looking fellows...Definitely
not resolutely moving anywhere... "They seem human enough too, if not
so unwounded, clean, and resolute...But they must've been in quite a
barroom brawl...Or was it a football match riot we pulled them out
of?...By the way is that blonde fellow this Earth's Billy Idol?..."
"They were in an Apocalyptic struggle against several thousand of the
evil versions of the pan-dimensionals I told you about...No, he's
not..."
Though he does write this universe's worst poetry...Marvin noted...
"Apocalyptic struggle?...Against several thousand?...And you call
this a 'safe' Earth?...Or do you definite 'safe' in some
strange way at Sirius Cybernetics?..."
"They won...The enemies of what passes for Humanity have had to
retreat, forever, to their world...And Humanity here has other powerful
defenders...Why, God knows..."
"As so do I, having a brain the size of a planet...But..."
"Enough, Marvin..." the man cut him off...Pressing the next right
button to Transit Room #2...
Hmmn...No one...?
"Where's...?"
"Corridor seven, doorway five..." Marvin sighed..."The fourth
button on the right..."
The man in robe pressed the fourth button...A wary-looking, short, but
lovely blonde girl, in slightly disheveled but stylish-looking clothes,
holding something like a sharp stick in hand, carefully moving down a
corridor that did look reasonably like the "Heart of Gold"'s
corridors...
"Marvin?...What's that she's got in her hand...?"
"A wooden stick, sharpened...What a pleasure it is to serve you..."
the robot droned, a slight sarcastic tone...
"I know it's a wooden stick...What's she going to do with
it?..." (And is she seeing anyone, human or otherwise? being the
real question uppermost in his mind...)
"If I didn't know the limitations of your primate brain to the nth
root of infinity, I'd be touched by your faith in my ability to
predict the future...But since I do, I'm just depressed by your
inability to refrain from constantly asking senseless questions...And
no, no particular person since she killed her most recent date..."
"Killed?..."
"Evil, deserved it...Though she was in the city with the other two to
save the blonde one from his enemies..."
"Oh." the man gave a short, stilted one...
"Sorry...Life, let me tell you about life..."
"But how do you know...?"
"I can see the brainwave patterns in her primitive primate's brain
just as with yours, though hers is a bit more..."
"She's speaking...I can't make out the words..."
"Interdimensional Califorian...Difficult even for the standard Babel
fish brainwave translator...Better have the computer get you the
advanced fish adapted for transdimensional travel...Though she's not
saying anything worth your time...Just calling some names...Probably
the other two..."
"William!...Angel!!..." the woman on screen called...
"Computer?..." the man called...
"Hey, Art...This is Eddie, your shipboard computer, and really
enjoying this little spree in a parallel universe...What can I do you
for?..." a voice from a wall speaker returned...
"Arthur..." Arthur frowned... "In fact, "Mr. Dent" wouldn't
be bad..."
"Why not Grand Imperial Galatic Fleet Lord Poobah Arthur Dent while
you're at it?..." Marvin sighed...
"Ok, Misterdent it is..." the voice replied... "Did I mention we
have an intruder alert thing?...Corridor seven, doorway eight and
coming this way...The subject, the very attractive young human female
with a really astonishing metabolic rate we just brought aboard to
Transit Room #2, being armed with what seems to be..."
"Yes, yes, I know..." Arthur waved a hand... "I'm having
trouble understanding her language...Marvin says you have a more
advanced Babel fish?..."
"The best catch of the day, Misterdent...Step right up to my #3
extruder slot and I'll give your ear a reason worth living..."
"Oh, God I'm so depressed..." Marvin sighed...
***
Summary: Another of my IB versions of what happened at and/or after the
last battle...Because, as the great Douglas once wrote, stress has
become a major problem in the Galaxy, for this one you should know that
one version of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" based on the
radio scripts ended with Arthur Dent stealing the Heart of Gold, the
famed Infinite Improbability Drive powered starship and heading off
with the archeologist Lintilla (played by Rula Lenska) and the paranoid
android Marvin, in an angry fit after learning that ex-part-time
Galatic President Zaphod Beeblebrox had been part of a conspiracy to
destroy the Earth to prevent the readout of the Ultimate Question to
Life, the Universe, and Everything...
Disclaimers: Not mine but thine O, Joss!....And Douglas...Who is not
like God but is God...Or should be...
Archived with the rest of the IB versions 1-113 at the
"Normal"verse page of the Buffy Rebecca verse,
http://www.angelfire.com/zine2/buffyrebecca/index Scroll down to
series...
Best of all, I can bring Arthur and co back in the "Buffy Effect"
series...
***
"Hello there..." a voice from all about them..."Them"
consisting of two figures, one standing with difficulty in what might
be taken for a sort of defensive mode, if a rather pathetic-looking
one, given the blonde-haired figure's wobbly stance and lack of
arms...As in one limb being totally gone and the other holding nothing
but the end of a metal pole...And the other figure, in rather worse
shape, collapsed in a heap not calculated to give much encouragement to
a belief in it as a living form...
An English-accented voice, William, the blond figure, noted wearily,
looking round...
"Angel?..." he gasped... A groan from the battered mass on the
rather shiny floor suggesting Angel was still to some extent with
him...
"You have just been rescued from annihilation at an improbability
factor of 2 x 10-37...
Normality, or what passes for it, will be restored
shortly...Uh...Please stand by..."
The owner of said voice now turned from the control console he sat
behind...
"At last...For once I'm the one who gets to do dole that sort of
thing out...And someone else has to try to figure what the bloody
hell's gone wrong with his lifestyle..." he sighed contentedly...
"Is that all it takes to satisfy you?..." the tall figure standing
near him, humanoid in configuration...The usual two upper and lower
limbs, one head of sorts, but clearly robotic in nature, sighed
morosely... "If you had a brain the size of a planet as I do that
wouldn't so much as fill the emptiness of one half of one of your
10exp55 nanomemory chips...Ah, but you don't..."
"Marvin..." the owner of the original English-accented voice which
William had heard, a tall thirty-something human of relatively
pleasant...If you happened to be a primate-descended human
being...Appearance...Wearing an old and rather worn bathrobe, a
pleasant if faded red in color on the outside ...Frowned at the
robot...
"Shut up..."
"Before or after I complete the meaningless chore you intend to send
me on?...You may as well just tell me to go in the corner and
rust...It'd be equally satisfying...But it would spare having to go
through the tedious muck of you canceling that last order and telling
me to go and fetch the hybrid Earthlings..."
"Oh, just...Hybrid Earthlings?...What do you mean, hybrid?..."
"Just what I said...Attempting to communicate with your limited
primate brain there's no point in trying to be subtle..."
"But hybrid, how?...You mean mixed parentage or something?...Well,
let me tell you, Marvin..." the tall human in bathrobe drew himself
up in his chair rather proudly... "On my Earth we'd conquered a lot
of that kind of thing in our natures...I had a lot of 'hybrid'
friends...And we didn't go round calling them..."
"That's not what I mean..." Marvin sighed... "They're not,
fortunate creatures, fully Earth human...But then, this isn't fully
Earth..."
"The devil you say?...Not fully human?...Are they, what?...Part
alien?...Some other hitchhiker's offspring...God..." the human
sighed...
"Don't tell me they're Zaphod's...I know he's been to Earth
before..."
"They don't possess any of any Zaphod Beeblebrox's genetic
material...If you mean alien as in the sense of coming from another
planet rather than from over the next hill, no..."
"Well, then...Ehew..." the man stared at the robot... "You mean
they're part dog or chimp or something?...My God, I know this isn't
my Earth but still...Standards and all that..."
"I thought you said your people had conquered a lot of that kind of
thing in your natures...It's recorded, to my utter boredom, in my
memory bank..."
"I meant among human beings..."
"Oh?...Well, what an achievement...No wonder your species had
progressed so far before the Vogons destroyed your Earth..." Marvin
said with heavy irony...
"Are you trying to be funny?..." the man glared...
"I wouldn't waste the time...Pointless...Like my existence..."
"Bother your pointless existence for once...What did you mean by
hybrid if they not part alien or animal or something?..."
"There were pan-dimensional gateways constantly opening on the planet
below...A number of what loosely pass for sentient species crossed over
from alternate Earths on a regular basis...Some of them chose to mate
or otherwise combine with the humans here...Some, infinitely wiser,
though none bearing a faction of my intellect, preferring just to hunt
and eat the humans here..."
"Well that's horrible...Was this the best alternate Earth you could
lead the ship to?...Surely there must be one more like my poor ole
Earth?..."
"There are an infinite number of alternate Earths and their
universes...This met most of the characteristics you said you
wanted...It was only because I have the brain the size of a planet much
larger than the miserably small world below that I was able to target
the Improbability Drive to get us here...If you want to give me
additional information we can try again...But you won't like it...And
the creatures are part something besides human..."
"Most of the characteristics I wanted?..." the man repeated,
frowning... "Marvin, I specifically asked for a safe Earth, free from
hitchhiking aliens, spaceships, and all that sort of..."
"Hard to avoid when we must come in a spaceship..." Marvin noted...
"But this Earth does meet that qualification best...It's shrouded
by the dimensional gateways from normal hyperspace in this
universe...We were only able to come because of the Improbability
Drive...Nobody ever visits except from other Earths...Why they bother,
I can't say...Awful-looking place...I..."
"Say?...You mean our guests...They're part pan-dimensional
beings?...Like the mice who had my Earth constructed?..."
"Yes...But these beings obviously weren't in mouse form..."
"Well, they're still part-alien to me...And I told you I didn't
want..."
"If I weren't so depressed I might try to point out this is their
home, not yours...But it's pointless...God, I'm so depressed..."
"Well...Lets have a look at them..." the man twisted a knob on the
control console...A viewscreen blinked on before him...
"Number One..." Captain Picard said resolutely, turning to his
second-in-command, both with phasers ready... "Lets proceed to the
bridge and see if we can meet our captors..."
"They look human enough..." the man eyed the pair...
Hmmn...Doesn't look like one of our transit rooms...
"Isn't Normality...Such as it is in this universe...Restored
yet?..." he turned to the robot...
"Yes..."
"Then why does the ship look so strange there?..." the man pointed
at the screen as the two figures now moving down a grim-looking
spaceship corridor...
Wait a bit...
"Marvin, is that Captain Picard of Star Trek?..."
"Yes...You're watching a television broadcast from the planet...The
viewscreen engages to the transit rooms with the buttons to the
right..." Marvin sighed...
Oh...Right...The man pressed the right button...
Hmmn...He eyed the two somewhat bedraggled-looking fellows...Definitely
not resolutely moving anywhere... "They seem human enough too, if not
so unwounded, clean, and resolute...But they must've been in quite a
barroom brawl...Or was it a football match riot we pulled them out
of?...By the way is that blonde fellow this Earth's Billy Idol?..."
"They were in an Apocalyptic struggle against several thousand of the
evil versions of the pan-dimensionals I told you about...No, he's
not..."
Though he does write this universe's worst poetry...Marvin noted...
"Apocalyptic struggle?...Against several thousand?...And you call
this a 'safe' Earth?...Or do you definite 'safe' in some
strange way at Sirius Cybernetics?..."
"They won...The enemies of what passes for Humanity have had to
retreat, forever, to their world...And Humanity here has other powerful
defenders...Why, God knows..."
"As so do I, having a brain the size of a planet...But..."
"Enough, Marvin..." the man cut him off...Pressing the next right
button to Transit Room #2...
Hmmn...No one...?
"Where's...?"
"Corridor seven, doorway five..." Marvin sighed..."The fourth
button on the right..."
The man in robe pressed the fourth button...A wary-looking, short, but
lovely blonde girl, in slightly disheveled but stylish-looking clothes,
holding something like a sharp stick in hand, carefully moving down a
corridor that did look reasonably like the "Heart of Gold"'s
corridors...
"Marvin?...What's that she's got in her hand...?"
"A wooden stick, sharpened...What a pleasure it is to serve you..."
the robot droned, a slight sarcastic tone...
"I know it's a wooden stick...What's she going to do with
it?..." (And is she seeing anyone, human or otherwise? being the
real question uppermost in his mind...)
"If I didn't know the limitations of your primate brain to the nth
root of infinity, I'd be touched by your faith in my ability to
predict the future...But since I do, I'm just depressed by your
inability to refrain from constantly asking senseless questions...And
no, no particular person since she killed her most recent date..."
"Killed?..."
"Evil, deserved it...Though she was in the city with the other two to
save the blonde one from his enemies..."
"Oh." the man gave a short, stilted one...
"Sorry...Life, let me tell you about life..."
"But how do you know...?"
"I can see the brainwave patterns in her primitive primate's brain
just as with yours, though hers is a bit more..."
"She's speaking...I can't make out the words..."
"Interdimensional Califorian...Difficult even for the standard Babel
fish brainwave translator...Better have the computer get you the
advanced fish adapted for transdimensional travel...Though she's not
saying anything worth your time...Just calling some names...Probably
the other two..."
"William!...Angel!!..." the woman on screen called...
"Computer?..." the man called...
"Hey, Art...This is Eddie, your shipboard computer, and really
enjoying this little spree in a parallel universe...What can I do you
for?..." a voice from a wall speaker returned...
"Arthur..." Arthur frowned... "In fact, "Mr. Dent" wouldn't
be bad..."
"Why not Grand Imperial Galatic Fleet Lord Poobah Arthur Dent while
you're at it?..." Marvin sighed...
"Ok, Misterdent it is..." the voice replied... "Did I mention we
have an intruder alert thing?...Corridor seven, doorway eight and
coming this way...The subject, the very attractive young human female
with a really astonishing metabolic rate we just brought aboard to
Transit Room #2, being armed with what seems to be..."
"Yes, yes, I know..." Arthur waved a hand... "I'm having
trouble understanding her language...Marvin says you have a more
advanced Babel fish?..."
"The best catch of the day, Misterdent...Step right up to my #3
extruder slot and I'll give your ear a reason worth living..."
"Oh, God I'm so depressed..." Marvin sighed...
***