A Moment's Peace
(So Called)
AN: There are not enough fics out there that feature Trillian in any great detail. So I wrote one. It's totally random. Seriousely. Completely. I'm sick and have nothing better to do except read my old Hitchhiker's Guide books. Anyway, enjoy!
Disclaimer: I own nothing!
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
The problem with finding a moment's peace on board The Heart of Gold is that it is literally impossible to find a moment's peace on board The Heart of Gold. Well, it's not impossible, it's just highly improbably. Probably the most improbable thing that can happen on that particular ship (and that's saying something). No one knows quite how improbable, however, because finding out would involve asking the ship's computer, which is not something anybody wants to do if they can possibly avoid it.
The point being, finding a moment's peace on board The Heart of Gold, is a long and lengthy task which may turn into a crusade of epic proportions liable to take years to conclude. Therefore, the inhabitants of such a ship tend to stick their heads in books, cups of tea, their own misery, pan galactic gargleblasters, chloroform-soaked towels, etc, and pretend it's not happening, as an alternative to finding that most precious commodity which is tranquillity.
So we join our intrepid explorers, on board The Heart of Gold, in the middle of what is almost, but not completely, entirely unlike a moment's peace.
Arthur was laboriously making tea. It had taken him the best part of nine hours to get to the current stage of seeking out milk to put in the cup first, though he had the tea itself nicely brewed in a tea pot. His one concern now was managing to find milk before the tea got cold.
With this in mind, he hurried onto the bridge of The Heart of Gold, clutching his tea pot and cup, looking worried.
"Has anyone seen the milk?"
No one paid him the slightest bit of attention.
No one could ever be quite sure why they all ended up on the bridge on days like this. Ford, with nothing better to do, had tracked down Marvin (on the Bridge) and was now attempting to teach the robot how to play chess. Marvin, of course, already knew how to play chess, and could probably have beaten the universe's inter-galactic chess champion in less than six moves, if he'd had the motivation. Which he didn't, considering, as he did, the entire exercise yet another insult to his planet-sized brain.
So Ford had resorted to slicing green mould off a lump of cheese he had discovered behind a computer console.
Zaphod liked being on the bridge anyway, since he considered it the best place to look suave in. These days, anything he did was done on the bridge. So it's hardly surprising he was attempting to clean his ears there, is it?
That leaves us with Trillian, who, personally, hadn't the faintest clue what she was doing on the Bridge. Or what she was doing on the ship, for that matter. Being stuck there with three men and a depressed Android for the past few months was beginning to become… uninspiring. She didn't even have her mice to talk to anymore.
Arthur continued on his quest for milk (and, therefore, tea). He hunted all over the bridge, but found very little of any help.
"Has anyone seen any milk?" He asked again, a little louder.
"You could try cheese," Ford suggested, holding up the lump of cheese for all to see.
Trillian, curled up on a sofa that had, inexplicably, turned up on the bridge a few days previously, made a face, "I wouldn't try it. At least, not with that particular lump of cheese."
Arthur made an even worse face, "you can't use cheese as a substitute for milk!"
"Why not?" Ford looked confused, "it's all dairy products, isn't it?"
"But it's cheese!" Arthur cried, exasperated.
Ford clearly couldn't see the problem.
Trillian reached across and patted the man's arm in a comforting fashion, "it's an Earth thing. Don't worry about it."
Arthur checked the temperature of his tea, "it's getting cold! Oh, God, where the hell is that milk!"
Zaphod, who found this constant flapping about milk somewhat irritating, waved his spare arm at the Arthur. "Whow, whow, slow down there, monkey-man! You're throwing off my vibe!"
"I don't care about your vibe!" Arthur cried, petulantly, "it's taken me nine hours to get this far, and I'll be damned if my tea's going cold now!"
"Why?" This was Marvin, who had, in a feet of unimaginable proportions, managed to summon enough will power to speak up, "accept the inevitable. I would. The tea will be cold. Disappointment will ensue. We'll all die eventually anyway. Except me. I'll never die. I'll just rust slowly in my eternal misery. But don't worry about me. Just continue on your petty little lives safe in the knowledge it will all end horribly with or without your intervention."
"Thank you, Marvin," Trillian sighed and rolled onto her back to stare at the ceiling. For once, she found herself beginning to agree with the manically depressed robot.
Someone, at this point, should probably have had the decency to get a tad worried about Trillian. Unfortunately, Ford had gone back to his cheese, Zaphod had just discovered something particularly unpleasant living in his left-most ear, and Arthur was still frantically attempting to track down something remotely milk-like, preferably not cheese. So no one paid Trillian any attention, and she continued feeling distinctly uninspired.
Marvin, at this point, decided, for no particular reason, to vocalise his depression.
He hadn't done this in some time, and it was fortunate (or not, depending on your perspective) that he did so now, instead of waiting a few extra milliseconds, where upon he would almost certainly have lost any form of motivation and lapsed, or rather stayed, in deeply depressed silence.
"Ohhhhhhhhh…" he moaned, without really caring whether anyone heard him or not. Then, slightly louder, "Ohhhhhhhhh…."
"Oh, Zarquod, someone shut that thing up!" Zaphod cried.
"Don't mind me," Marvin sighed, (an interesting thing to witness, since robot's don't breathe, thus making sighing something of a physical impossibility), "I'm just existentially manifesting my ultimate feeling of despair at the utter pointlessness of the universe. Ohhhhhhhhh…"
"Well don't!" Zaphod shouted at him, while continually picking the rather unpleasant something out of his left-most ear. "The wrest of us still have the will to live, and we'd like to keep it that way!" He looked about for support, "Right Trillian?"
Trillian was not the best person to have asked at that point.
She was still feeling distinctly uninspired.
"Trillian?" Zaphod prompted.
Trillian suddenly appeared as she sat up on the sofa, a look of grim enlightenment on her features. "I should have been a lesbian," she decided, firmly, and lay back down again.
Zaphod, needless to say, could think of no suitable reply to this statement, so went back to excavating his ear canals.
Ford, using a plastic knife, carefully sliced his lump of cheese into fine shavings. He paused briefly to stare at Trillian, then assigned her proclamation to the growing list of things he didn't understand about women, and went back to his cheese.
Arthur didn't hear her. He was too busy panicking because he still couldn't find the milk and his tea was seconds away from going lukewarm.
Seconds later, his tea went cold.
His howl's joined Marvin's as some of the most desolate sounds ever to grace the universe.
Zaphod, having finally hauled out the rather disgusting thing living in his ear realised he could suddenly hear much better, and that he did not like what he was hearing at all. He shoved the thing back in and banged his heads together as hard as he could in an attempt to knock himself out.
Trillian closed her eyes, clamped her hands over her ears and buried her head in the sofa pillows. Should have been a lesbian, she decided, again, clearer. She would never have gotten into this mess. She wouldn't have been vaguely interested in that sort of sweet but clearly socially inept local-radio man calling himself Arthur, and she certainly wouldn't have looked twice at the flamboyant weirdo claiming to be from another planet, and, a few months later, puff! She would have been vaporised with the wrest of humanity and been perfectly happy as a few subatomic particles floating around the universe for the wrest of eternity.
Ford stuck his head over the back of the sofa, "cheese, Trillian?"
Trillian, too busy berating herself for being stupid enough to be heterosexual, didn't hear him. Ford shrugged and started eating his cheese.
Arthur, still devastated, collapsed on the flight deck and moaned loudly.