Chapter 1

It is a well known fact, that the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is the universes best selling book. It was had been adapted as the universes greatest centre of knowledge, beating the Encyclopaedia Galactica for two main reasons. The first being it was slightly cheaper. The second of course was that it had "Don't Panic" written in large, friendly letters on the cover.

But the Encyclopaedia Galactica would never be inclined to trust its rivals and came up with a reason on their own. It should be taken into the account this third reason was actually quite valid and respectable. It had taken the employees of the Encyclopaedia Galactica publishing headquarters many months locked in dark rooms with no food and water by the company management to come up with this third reason.

The Guide looked firmly down its huge nose at the Encyclopaedia. In fact, the Guide held what was considered the universes largest nose. They even had a legal document stating this stapled firmly to a shark somewhere on a planet called Lewop. There had been two trials to secure this document and both were considered great triumphs by the employees of the Guide.

The first trial had been against the Jov people of Joveck. The Jov people were new to the universe but had immediately worked out they could use their abnormally large noses to attract tourism. Their noses were so big they were forced to build support systems to stand upright. They managed to invent the wheel, tissue and Vaseline within their first year of existence (or so they claimed).

When the Jov people advertised themselves as owning the universes largest noses, the Guide immediately grabbed a lawyer and a family pack of fake noses. Unfortunately, the Jov people didn't know of the Guides influence and naively went to court to face them. Not a month after their discovery of the rest of the universe the Jov people were mysteriously wiped out by a large and unfriendly bio-engineered shark. The shark was then bought by the Guide and adopted as a sort of mascot. There was some sort of problem about the Guide already owning the shark but that mysteriously disappeared as well.

The second trial was against the followers of the Great Green Arkleseizure. They firmly believed the universe had in fact been sneezed out by their God and feared the Coming of the Great White Handkerchief. They started the trial with the main point being that the Great Green Arkleseizure must have the largest nose to be able to sneeze out the Guide's nose.

The trial consisted of two sections. After the first where the main points were outlined by the Guide's opponents, the employees left grumbling something about an all-you-can-eat buffet they had passed on the way to the trial. The second session started with the employees in a much better mood and they went on to claim that if the Great Green Arkleseizure sneezed out the universe, he couldn't possibly reside in it.

This was such a clever idea put forth by the Guide in such a small amount of time that these employees were sent to an asylum immediately. Luckily someone else very cleverly pointed out the Guide still owned a bio-engineered shark and seems as this was a much more likely argument the Guide would make, the case was closed. This was often regarded as unfair by the followers of the Great Green Arkleseizure but they had no say in the matter. Their noses were just not big enough to poke into the matter.

For the sharks latest success the Guide rewarded it by sending it to a planet made almost entirely of water inhabited by calm docile fish which couldn't swim away very fast as a retirement plan.

The Encyclopaedia differed from the guide in every possible way. The information it held was always correct and covered almost every scenario. The people who owned the company were quiet and hard working. The headquarters never travelled and kept as low a profile as possible. This lead to every manner of legal system falling down on their heads to see what they were hiding. But of course, being the opposite of the Guide, they had paid every bill and followed every law. The law enforcement agents often left whispering between themselves. What they whispered was this:

"What an utterly boring place."

This was very true. One day a law enforcement agent who had been sent there often as a practical joke by his superiors just couldn't stand it anymore and instead of quietly whispering it to his colleagues he screamed it loudly into a defenceless employees face and both of them broke down into tears.

But despite the shock that rattled the entire company the message was clear. This message formed the basis of the third reason they had come up with. Luckily for the employees of the Encyclopaedia a passing man gave them some wise advice before management could lock them in another dark room.

"Perhaps you should copy your rivals just this once. Won't that be exciting?" He told them.

So the employees did just that and came up with a mind boggling plan. Unfortunately this plan never came to pass. The third reason why the Guide was better then the Encyclopaedia which led to the formation of this plan was that the Guide was just more fun.

The employees believed they should lower themselves into the world of fast ships, dangerous alleys, lots of money and excitement slowly. Unfortunately this meant that to compete with the Guide they would be forced to do something drastic. All they could come up with was to implode a planet.

The head management was overcome by the fact that he had devised a plan by himself and sent three of their best and most radical to set the plan into motion. When he commissioned the destruction of a planet, being confined to just the one in his entire life, he only knew one which would be right for the job.

And so the three radical employees went up into space and imploded their home planet, the Encyclopaedias headquarters and the other one thousand nine hundred and ninety seven employees, not to mention the rest of the population.

After the destruction of the planet the three remaining employees looked at each other excitedly and smiled. When they had calmed down a bit they had a conversation.

"Well that was terribly exciting." The first whooped.

"Amazing. Can we do it again?" The second cheered.

"No." Whispered the third strangely grim. "We have the entire universe as our playground and the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy as our only rivals."

"Think of the possibilities." Added the first in an awed gasp.

All three thought for a second then cried with delight and shot off into the unknown. The chances of these three surviving for a month were about one to two million four hundred and sixty one. Coincidently, this was the exact coordinates the infinite improbability drive had last had inserted into it. The coordinates were for a small planet where shortly after landing, a man named Arthur Dent was being chased by some Unfriendly Purple Things from Garfle.