This story starts in an alien territory, far removed from human realms of normality. (Although, by a strange coincidence, it appears to be at a position in space just half a mile from Guildford.) This, naturally, is just a freak twist in the fabric of space-time; Earth is in an altogether separate universe-
Get on with it!
Of course. Sorry. Now, this story begins, more specifically, with a very tall humanoid life form in a fairly large detached house. (The composition of which is, as yet, unimportant.)
This humanoid began his day as he would any other- he woke up. His dog began clamouring for food, and he distracted it with a Grieg record. The dog, at this point, picked up the newspaper, jumped on the sofa and turned to the Arts and Culture section. The humanoid with which we are concerned wasn't immediately surprised by this behaviour, being, as he was, intent on catching the toaster as it soared gracefully around the room. When it escaped through the open window, he gave it up as a lost cause and turned his attentions to the dog.
It should perhaps be explained at this point that the above events were not a common occurrence for our humanoid. We shall see how he deals with them now….
The first thing the humanoid did was to wrestle the sports section off of the dog. This was followed by a yelp as he discovered that Wigan had lost at home to Reading (and, presumably, kicked the dog). It was only when the dog uttered a cry of outrage and said, 'Do you mind?' in a thoroughly affronted tone, that the humanoid realised something was wrong. The dog snatched the football results back and went to the bedroom to find some peace and quiet, and the humanoid opened and shut his mouth a few times. When this achieved nothing, he ran outside, and discovered that his house was hovering several metres above the central reservation of a very busy-looking road.
A large green road sign obligingly informed the humanoid that he was half a mile from Guildford. He cursed it under his breath, and tried to climb inside the large mauve spaceship he suddenly seemed to be clinging to. He let go in alarm, and plummeted toward the A3.
The next thing our humanoid made a conscious effort to take in was the rather lumpy four-poster bed he was lying on.
"Er…excuse me?" he called out, on the off chance that there was an intelligent life-form other than his dog in the immediate vicinity. To his surprise, an elaborately dressed Spanish matador climbed in through the window, grinning inanely.
"¡Hola!" he called jovially, extending a hand. The humanoid regarded it with a mixture of fascination and disgust. The matador followed his gaze. "¿Qué? Oh, lo siento." He wiped the blood on his trouser leg and offered his hand again, with the kind of manic grin that gives people the disturbing impression that you're about to go for their neck.
"Who are you?" the humanoid consented to having his hand wrung.
"Lo siento. No hablo inglés," the matador turned his attention to the large rockery in the middle of the room and began to decorate it with what appeared to be gravy granules. The humanoid watched him.
"No speako Dago."
"¿Perdon?" the humanoid tried again, a little louder.
"No speako Dago!" the matador shrugged apologetically,
"NO SPEAKO DA-"
"We get the picture." A man stepped into the room. (Well, at that point, the humanoid assumed that he was a man. The reality is quite different.) This new arrival addressed the matador first. "¡NO HABLA ESPAÑOL!" when the matador looked suitably cowed, he relaxed. "Gracias. Adios." The matador bounced his head gently on the floor several times before backing out of the room. The 'man' then turned to the humanoid, who let rip with a barrage of questions,
"Where the hell am I? What's going on? Who are you? Why was the matador decorating the rockery with gravy granules? (There's a sentence I never thought I'd say.)" The 'man' sat sedately in the chintz armchair next to the bed.
"You will find out in due course."
"When?"
"When you let me get a word in edgeways. You are in a lumpy four poster bed in a mauve spaceship in orbit at a height of 400 miles around the planet of Demosad. My name is immaterial (well, it's Gavin, since you ask). And- did you say that the imbecile was putting gravy on the rockery?"
"Well, yeah…"
"That idiot! I said BISTROMATHICS, not BISTOMATHICS!"
"Yeah…er…I'm not sure I heard you correctly…"
"He was supposed to put pasta sauce on the rockery. Typical Spaniard: can't do anything right." Seeing the look on the humanoid's face, he elaborated, "This is the engine. It runs off of a Bistromathics power supply." The humanoid shook his head in disbelief.
"Please don't tell me any more."
So he didn't. At this stage, it may be a good idea to explain the basic concept of Bistromathics, for those who are not familiar with the term.
Bistromathics is a revolutionary new mode of interstellar travel, based on the principle that there are many small discrepancies between the law of numbers in the majority of the universe and the way in which numbers work on restaurant bills. It was discovered by the celebrated scientist Douglas Adams, when the waiter at his local restaurant gave him the bill for his Spaghetti Bolognese. He has since conducted extensive research into the fact that the numbers on a bill bear almost no correlation to the numbers on the menu, and pioneered the development of this extraordinary new concept. It is a far more efficient means of transport than the more conventional photon drive, for the simple reason that you just make it up as you go along. The downside is that most in-flight meals tend to be ridiculously overpriced.
And so we return to the drama unfolding in the engine room.
"Why am I here?" the humanoid wailed morosely.
"Um, no offence, but isn't it a bit late to start thinking about the
biggies like that? Besides, I've got a lot on my mind."
"I am sorry. And I meant 'why am I on this spaceship?'"
"Oh. That's what you meant. I'm a philosopher, you see."
"I guessed."
"My master brought you up here because we need some
assistance."
"Well, I can assure you that you have most definitely picked the wrong man for the job. I know absolutely nothing about space. Zilch, nada, zero..."
"Excellent. The most important mission in history and the Master picks an imbecile. The ship's crawling with them."
"…nil, naught…did I say nothing?" Gavin sighed wearily.
"Yes."
"Well…er…what do you want me to do?"
(In the radio and television forms of this story, there would ideally follow a short pause, during which the audience would be expected to laugh heartily at the irony of it all. However, this is not an ideal situation, so we will fill in the time while you compose yourself with some dots: ...)
Gavin stretched in preparation for what he clearly felt was going to be a long night.
"Right. The deal is this: we have to save the universe."
"What? This all sounds terribly clichéd. Am I on the set of Star Trek?"
"No, you moron. It's Battlestar Galactica."
"Eh?"
"Just my idea of a joke. The only thing is… it involves blowing up
your planet."
"Have you gone insane? Blowing up an entire planet?! How on Malagrea d'you expect to pull that one off?"
"You're supposed to help us plot the trajectory for the nuclear
warheads, so no-one notices (though fat lot of good you're going to be)."
"Thank you. That makes me feel so much better. Why this planet, of all the ones you could've chosen?"
"This is the planet they've got the particle accelerators on."
"Tell me what have particle accelerators got to do with it. No, don't." The humanoid, having turned rather an interesting shade of grey, rolled over, the conversation over. "Tell me in the morning."
As the ship coasted onward through the night, and Gavin tended the tomato plants under instruction from the Master, he became dimly aware of a significant sounding bleeping from the instrument panel. It stopped as he approached, and he thought little of it- this was a strenuous time in the development of the plants. But the Goliath of the alien world glided along behind them unheeded.
Presently, the Master felt it would be a good time to meet up with the 'help'. Being the Master, and all-powerful with it, there was little need to alert the humanoid to this imminent meeting. The humanoid felt very little as his brains were delicately wrenched out of his ears for procedural analysis. It was as the Master always said: 'he may be in need of some fine-tuning.'
As it was, it wasn't until the ship encountered some turbulence that the humanoid woke up. He was a little alarmed by the fact that a short, balding man in a penguin suit was sitting at the table playing Solitaire. His disorientation was increasing minute by minute, and he found himself almost overpowered by an inexplicable urge to write to Points Of View.
The man looked oddly familiar. The humanoid opened his mouth to say something, but desisted. He didn't like the idea of another long and intensely riveting conversation about the space-time continuum.
But the man looked up before he had the chance to abscond through the nearest window (which was fortunate, as there wasn't one). The humanoid glared at him. The man just smiled.
"Good morning. At least, I think it's a good morning. But whether it's morning or not is debatable, as is whether it's a good one. I, personally, am having a wonderful time. Solitaire never fails to excite me. Although it can get a bit boring if your telekinesis keeps getting in the way."
"Yeah…tell me about it," the humanoid could hear what grasp of the morning he had made so far pattering down the corridors away from him and hiding in a filing cabinet, "so…er…who are you?" at this, the man laughed.
"It seems to me that you are the one best equipped to answer that." The humanoid contemplated giving up now. He knew what he was thinking about this question, but thought better of speaking his mind.
"You're…an alien?" he ventured. The man made an irritating 'eurgh-eurgh' noise, rather like the grabbers at the seaside.
"Wrong, I'm afraid. You see, you think I'm an alien, because I come from a different planet to you. But the people from my own planet don't call me an alien. They call me Stephen."
"OK….Stephen-"
"Eurgh-eurgh. Are you an inhabitant of my planet?"
"No,"
"Then you must call me 'the Master'."
"Like some sort of a God?"
"Oh no, my child. The seventeen major deities were dispersed long ago. As such trivialities as names should have been. On to the mission. I trust Gavin gave you the details?"
"Well, yeah. I must say that I'm not happy with it."
"Why ever not?"
"Well…er…it's my planet, for a start."
"Yes."
"And…er…you can't have it." The humanoid finished lamely.
"There are many things you don't understand, so I will not go into any type of detail as to what this mission actually entails. Let it suffice to say that, when my people destroyed religion, they destroyed creation, and therefore destruction. With the universe about to die unless we act, would you really like to brand yourself the Ultimate Destroyer?" He grinned with satisfaction as the humanoid considered this, "I'll leave you to think about it."
The humanoid thought long and hard. Meanwhile, the Goliath that had been following them for the last million miles decided to make its presence known.
A very large bump rocked the ship as the humanoid made his decision. The sound of sirens filled the air. He climbed out of bed and up the corridors, which suddenly seemed to be 90 degrees too vertical for him to walk satisfactorily. He came across a vast room, filled with colossal black warheads. The Master and Gavin were weaving in and out of them as though drunk.
"Hey!" Gavin's eyes lit up as he saw the humanoid. You've decided
where you loyalties lie at last!" He climbed towards him in what was clearly meant to be a menacing way. A bowl of petunias bounced off the top of his head. The master watched them spring down the corridor with amusement.
"Strange property for a bowl of petunias to have," he mused quietly, "but then again, who am I to talk about strange?"
Gavin now possessed the strange grin employed by the Spanish imbecile. It remained manic right up until the moment it dropped off his face. It landed with an obliging squelch on the ceiling, along with the rest of his human inadequacies (the rest of his skin, intestinal tract etc.). What remained was far more disgusting than anything the humanoid had seen. A two foot long… something – grinned ominously at him.
It was at this point that the Master looked up from his contemplation.
"Why does Gavin appear to have mutated? Or maybe…maybe I just think that he's mutated…'cause of what my eyes are saying…?"
"These are the guerrilla outfits worn by my people!" He cried, in a voice not dissimilar to a Dalek's.
"That…er….oh! Guerrilla!" The Master looked nervous,
"Gavin, don't do anything silly. You…uh…you've got a safe place here-"
"And I must thank you for raising me here. You have provided a base for me to summon my powers and to rally the last of my troops. We are to destroy you and your people, in return for the blight you have put upon our galaxy. Without religion, what are we? All intelligent life forms are no more than diseased killing machines!"
"You know it was for the best. What happened to your people was an accident. But what are you? You are obsessed with it. It's the ultimate in racial cleansing, and how does it make you any better than these people?"
"Hang on," the humanoid shook his head, as if to clear it, "what, your people are just zealots?"
"That was going to be my next point. Your people- the Hockenese, I believe you're called? If you're so intent on ridding the universe of inferior killing machines, what are you doing? Are you really just a bunch of chauvinists?"
Gavin, who had been gibbering quietly up until this point, seemed to have prepared the Big Speech.
"Don't be stupid! How d'you expect us to conquer an entire universe?"
"So it's about power?"
"Shut it. No, it's not about power. It's about moral issues- right and wrong. We wouldn't slaughter the entire universe, 'cause that would make us killing machines, and by default, we would all spontaneously combust. We don't wish to do that-"
"Please!"(This was the Master) "You just want to hide the fact that you couldn't do that. Spontaneity was never your strong point."
"-Let me finish! So we are going to eliminate the source. Malagrea is sustaining this… this sacrilege. Your 'people' (in the loosest sense of the word) are the worst of the lot!" This last speech was directed at the humanoid. Before he could cut back, the Master intervened.
"Look. Your people are not being harmed in any way by this lack of faith. That you still understand the concept of religion has got to be saying something, hasn't it? So why don't you-"
"Oh, shut up, granddad!" A piercing green light split the room, and the Master fell to the floor.
The humanoid was alone.
"So…." Gavin tried his best to look nonchalant, "you going to join forces with me… with us?"
"I…"
"Your people are the true evil. Come on: you get the universe in return…" there was a definite note of urgency in his voice now.
"Who…who are those people…the ones that've just hijacked the ship?"
"My enemies. They still live under the ridiculous conception that religion is irrelevant. But you… you can help me change that! You and I!" The footsteps were getting louder by the second. They were close. They would help the humanoid. If he could just keep Gavin occupied for another minute or two…
"Hang on! Is that another bowl of petunias?" Gavin looked up (or whichever direction qualified as 'up').The robots surrounded them.
The next thing he knew, the humanoid was in a bed (A rather lumpy four-poster. This has been denounced as a freak coincidence, but many suspect there were superior forces at work). He called out to a passing robot,
"What happened?"
"What happened where? I'm only a steward. No-one tells me anything." The steward wandered off, muttering to himself. Another robot came over.
"I…uh... I know what happened. The chauvinist teleported off somewhere along with the spacecraft. We only just managed to save you."
"Right. Thanks."
"You're new to this lifestyle?"
"A little."
"If you don't mind my asking, what's your name?"
"It doesn't matter."
"Why not?"
"I can't pronounce it. The dialect died with my father. I'm trying to
choose another name. I want to be nice and inconspicuous, because I'll probably go hitchhiking now."
"Well, what's your shortlist?"
"Henry Ford, Ford Focus or Ford Prefect."
"Oh. Good luck with that."