"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, https://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...
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"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 at 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...
***
