What Probably Didn't Happen Next

AN: Warning: may be crap. Carries on directly from Only the Good, and crosses over with Hitchhiker's Guide. Will probably be long, confusing, and in all probability not very good. I had to write it anyway. Please give me your opinion.

PS: Discworld fans may notice something familiar about the way Death talks. I just had to put it in.

PalletShade aka Spooky Cactus (and I have about fifteen other screen names too)


Inside a neat, silver, top-of-the-range, built-to-last spaceship, a figure sat in a chair. Head on backrest, eyes closed. It seemed almost asleep. It was a curious creature with greeny-grey skin and an expensive complexion. Everything about it, or, for sake of a better pronoun, him, was distinctly alien, from his large bald head and bulbous eyes to the design on his collar.

Most people would be startled if the anthropoid incarnation of Death appeared from a shadowy gateway behind them, but not this figure.

Death meant nothing to Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged.

"GOOD EVENING." said Death, in tones as cold and heavy as wrought iron gates to a graveyard.

Wowbagger sat up and slowly swivelled around on his chair. "Do you really think so?" he asked in a tired voice.

"PERHAPS IT IS, FOR SOMEONE."

"Probably. Probably I should find that person and insult them really badly."

"HOW'S THAT GOING, BY THE WAY?"

"What? Oh, the insult thing. I stopped."

"WHY?"

It was not for Death to support or otherwise the actions of mortals or even accidental-immortals, but he had always thought what Wowbagger was doing was commendable. The sheer pointlessness and impossibility of it all just added weight to this demonstration of the Immortal's dedication. Perhaps that was why, when he wished for companionship other than the other Horsemen, who could be very annoying, especially when drunk, he came here. As far as Death can feel, he felt a real empathy with Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged. Their missions, he thought, were similar - both would visit every life form in the Universe, and neither would be welcome on arrival. Wowbagger's self-imposed purpose in his immortal life had been to insult the universe. Individually, one by one, and (this was the bit he really had to grit his teeth over) in alphabetical order.

"Have you heard of Arthur Dent?" asked Wowbagger.

"I KNOW ALL."

"He's the reason I stopped. Somehow that swutting son of a starbeast managed to get on my list twice."

"I SEE."

"Messed up the whole thing."

There was a paused. The Immortal and the allegorical figure regarded each other for a moment.

"YOU WOULDN'T CONSIDER DOING ME A FAVOUR, WOULD YOU?"

"Depends what it entails."

"I WANT YOU TO INSULT SOMEONE."

"Oh, I'm good at that. Who?"

"HIS NAME IS ARNOLD JUDAS RIMMER. HE WAS VERY RUDE. VERY IRREVERENT. VERY PAINFUL." Death adjusted his posture painfully.

"Mortals."

"YEAH."

"So, species, sector of origin?"

"HUMAN, ZZ10 Z PLURAL Z ALPHA."

Wowbagger typed the relevant information into the computer. "Can you do a trace on that?" he asked it.

"Computing." said the computer in its flat, vaguely-female voice. "Found. Two matches present in this universe."

"Two?"

Two images came up on a monitor. One was of a guy in a uniform with bad hair, and the other was of a handsome, action-movie-hero kind of guy in a shiny flight jacket and a floppy blond wig.

"HIM." Death said, pointing with a skeletal finger, "THE ONE THAT LOOKS LIKE A WEASEL. NOT THE BLOND ONE - HE LOOKS LIKE A GREAT PERSON. WHAT A GUY."

Wowbagger nodded his agreement to the above statement, and plotted course for the one who looked like a weasel.

"GIVE 'IM HELL." Said Death, and vanished into the Realm of Shadows, or possibly went down to Asda for some waffles.

Wowbagger sighed. "How long will it take to find this Rimmer guy?"

"Computing." A tiny pause. "Two weeks, three days, four hours and seventeen seconds."

The thing Wowbagger liked best about his special custom personality-free computer was that it didn't try to make conversation.

"Any movies that I haven't seen five thousand times already?"

"Well, 'Dude, Where's My Hyperspace-Traversing GPP-Enabled Inter-Planetary Space-car?' you've only seen four thousand nine hundred and twenty-seven times. And there's a new one.

"New?"

"I picked it up on that last planetoid, the one where you told that squirrel that she had the wit and sophistication of the Bugblatter-drool- covered remains of a Vogon's grandmother. It's called 'The Best Bang Since the Big One', and it's Eccentrica Gallumbits' personal biography of Zaphod Beeblebrox, as a movie."

"I'll go with 'Dude Where's my.. etcetera."

"Wise choice."

The sleek silver ship hurtled on into space, towards a certain Arnold Judas Rimmer...


It can be a little disconcerting when you're almost definitely about to die on a burning, virus-ridden ship to suddenly find yourself on a different, intact, familiar ship where something is distinctly odd. It disconcerted Rimmer like hell.

Rimmer, the one who looked like a weasel, was in Starbug. Or at least he thought he was. But if he was in Starbug, then there was something very funny going on. Like the way the sea stayed steady as a rock and the buildings kept washing up and down. That was pretty odd, but it was even stranger when thought of in conjunction with the fact that JMC landing vessels didn't normally contain either buildings or seas.

Another odd thing, or rather things, were the other occupants of the ship. These included a gorilla with dreadlocks, and a ham sandwich which could talk, and used its gift of speech to state repeatedly in broken Norwegian that it was not a ham sandwich, it was an overweight purple rabbit who served as assistant dog-catcher in a nondescript village on the small island of Belgium in the Dutch East-Indies.

There was also a cat. Not a vain, semi-intelligent humanoid, but an actual small furry animal with whiskers and a liking for fish and leaving dead birds on the living room carpet. It was a Siamese, and its distinguishing features included a slightly darker grey front-left paw and a total absence of body from the waist down. This didn't seem to hinder the cat at all, it moved exactly the way it would have had its body been there. The cat help up a hand mirror in the hand which it obviously didn't have, and Rimmer got to have a look at himself.

He was a sausage.

Well that was just great.

Not just a sausage, but a sausage with sunglasses. And a bowler hat.

Things, he decided, were getting extremely weird.

A voice sounded through the ship. It sounded like quite a sensible voice, but all it said was, "Ten to the power of forty-eight million, four thousand and two to one against, and falling."


Please tell me what you think...