Even Death's Polite, sometimes.
By Tay Bartlett.
Arthur Dent, a normal, average, every day Earth man with ninety nine thousand problems, didn't ever think that being about to asphyxiate in deep space was going to become one of them. He hadn't thought that he would ever leave his peaceful home town, let alone end up stranded on a Vogon scout ship in deep space, many millions of miles away from Earth. It was simply too much to comprehend in one sitting.
However, he was in the process of comprehending it anyway, as at this point in time, he had no choice. He was in a very small, very claustrophobic air lock with very little to look at, so naturally, his mind was spinning into overdrive. He was used to this, used to going on a long mental ramble from which only worrying thoughts came. It was just the nature of these thoughts that were causing him disquiet. He was the last remaining human from the blue green planet of Earth. He was shortly going to space being the owner of that bleak little title, and as if that wasn't bad enough, he was about to take his friend, an alien, down with him. Ah yes, if his impending death wasn't baffling enough, then the fact that his close friend Ford Prefect was an alien quite clearly was. His head was beginning to ache with the effort of thinking. This life was not for him. But why was he complaining? He would shortly relinquish his slender grip on that life, and he was going to try and enjoy his final moments as much as he could.
"We're trapped now aren't we?" he asked Ford, who was slumped on the floor by his side, hardly bothering to look up when he spoke.
Ford gave an almost invisible nodding of his head as he returned his attention to the ominous air lock door that was still mercifully closed. "Yes," he said, in a tone that was almost bored, "we're trapped."
Arthur, despite thinking that he could not feel any more anger or astonishment at a time like this, did indeed feel a stab of annoyance creeping sneakily into his jumbled mind. "Well," he snapped, taking even himself by surprise, "didn't you think of something?"
"Oh yes," Ford replied, once again sounding as if this was a day at the beach for him, "I thought of something."
"Well what?"
Ford sat up and ran a hand through his wiry ginger hair, face unreadable as usual. "Unfortunately," he said lazily, "it rather involved being on the other side of the airtight hatch way that they have just sealed behind us."
What hope that had flared briefly in Arthur's chest, was extinguished as if a candle had been blown out in his mind. He sighed heavily. "Terrific," he grumbled, "simply terrific."
They lapsed into thoughtful, brooding silence. There hasn't ever been much to say when one is trapped in an air lock and faced with certain death. It was not often a subject from which lively debate could arise, and both men knew this only too well. What could you say?
"Good evening."
The low and raspy voice did well to stir Ford and Arthur out of their gloomy contemplation of their fate. In fact, to say that this voice did well is possibly a bit misleading as the reaction from Arthur and Ford was considerably greater than a mere stir. It would be fair to call it a reaction of panic and confusion.
Arthur leapt to his feet, with a yell of "holy mother of God," a highly unacceptable term for any human to use, but in times of great stress, it must be forgiven.
Ford's reaction was not to leap up, but merely to stand up with a surprised glance back at the figure that had just materialised, for want of a better term, right in front of them.
This unearthly figure was tall, dressed entirely in black, and carried a long scythe in his hand. Again, to use the word black to describe this man's clothing would not be considered adequate, because his robes were not black because black was their colour, but black, because they spoke of emptiness, an abyss from which nothing could survive. The figure's face, though quite obviously that of a skeleton, wore an abstract, almost kindly smile that Arthur found unnerving.
Ford, to whom oddness was a familiar concept, was the first to break the awkward silence that had followed this strange apparitions' arrival. "Not meaning to be rude," he said calmly, "but who the bloody hell are you?"
Arthur did not need to listen to the figure's unearthly response. Thirty odd years of living on Earth had meant that he had grown up reading the fairy tales that every child learns, and so he knew exactly who this man was. The weighty knowledge of this simple truth, for in essence it was a simple one, frightened him more than any Vogon guard ever had and ever could.
"You're Death," he said in a hollow, almost monotone voice that held a determined lack of emotion.
The figure shrouded in black, nodded. "That is right," he said in his low cadence, looking first at Arthur, then at Ford. "I have come to collect thee Arthur Philip Dent, and also thee, Ford Prefect."
Both living men looked at each other with varying degrees of shock.
"Collect us?" Arthur said in a voice that was quavering slightly on the boarders of real fear. "What exactly does that mean?"
Death smiled. It was a surprising smile, in that it did not quite chill the blood. "You are close to Death, are you not?" he asked, as if he was enquiring about the time of day. "Are you ready?"
"Can you for the moment, assume that we are not?" Ford asked politely.
Death nodded patiently. "It can take a bit of getting used to, the whole death thing," he said calmly, "but don't worry. Death isn't a punishment."
Ford nodded, accepting the truth of this, his eyes darting from the closed hatchway to the air lock door. "But to be honest, I'd rather avoid that if it's at all possible mate," he said calmly, in a brave attempt at airy good humour. Even for Ford, it was hard work.
Death grew impatient. Why were mortals always so damned uncooperative whenever he came to visit them? Anyone would think death was a bad thing. He wasn't a bad guy, he was only doing his job.
He gave a dismissive shake of his head and looked Ford full in the face. "Well isn't that just tough," Death told the Betelgeusean simply. "I mean I have to meet my weekly deadline or I'll be fired from my job. It's not all fun and games for me you know." He sighed heavily. "I mean it's not like I'm asking much."
This train of thought astonished Arthur, and he found himself, once again, growing quite annoyed. "Oh really," he said, voice rising, "well ain't that just a bit of a bloody pity that we're not coming with you then."
Death, understanding that the situation was slipping out of his hands, tried a different tactic. "Oh come on lads," he wheedled, "I mean you're going to die anyway. In five seconds that air lock door will open, and you'll float off into space and asphyxiate in about thirty seconds. There ain't an awful lot you can do about that."
Ford glanced at Death, surprisingly shocked by the man's rudeness. "That was a tad blunt wasn't it?" Ford asked, aghast.
Death was unperturbed, and said, "I'm only doing my job, got to make a living after all. Now would you be so kind as to cooperate?"
Arthur was stubbornly obverse to this kind of psychological manipulation. "No," he replied coldly, "we're not going."
"Oh come on."
"No."
"It won't hurt a bit."
"No!"
Arthur, losing his tiny mind completely, ran at the ceiled hatchway and attempted to force it open using the loudest and most aggressive means he could. The hatchway stayed stubbornly closed, as if the forces of the universe itself had all decided to gang up and conspire against him. This was indeed the way Arthur was thinking as he kicked and slammed ineffectual fists at the hatchway, screaming utter bollocks at the top of his lungs.
"Don't bother," Death murmured, as if he could have prevented Arthur's doomed attempts to escape, "there isn't time. There's only three seconds left."
Arthur refused to heed the words of Death, as he pummelled and beat at the immoveable hatchway with his fists and feet.
Ford was standing in the middle of the small air lock, arms dangling uselessly by his sides, head bowed like a man who grieves for what he cannot get back. He wasn't trying to find a way out of this mess. He had known, from the minute that the hatchway had closed behind them, that it was, as humans so correctly put it, a no go.
"Oh well," said the all too accepting voice in his head, "you're about to die then. Ha, that's ironic."
Indeed, it was ironic. Ford Prefect, who had hitch hiked the length and breadth of the known galaxy, and had even ventured into some of the lesser known ones, only with the help of his towel, was about to end his days gasping for breath in outer space. All this time spent slumming it on strange worlds with zero money in his bank account, all that hassle, and for what? Sod all.
Ford Prefect, who had made a rather decent life for himself, roughing it, slumming it, sleeping beneath the stars and surviving against impossible odds, was now to become a number on the spread sheet of Death, just so the guy could get a pay check at the end of the week. What a bloody come down.
A whirring, from the depths of the great ship, and the air lock doors slid open, revealing the inky blackness and the totally empty vacuum of space. Cold nothing slid into the air lock compartment, sucking Ford and Arthur, and even Death, into the solid mass of nothing at all.
Ford and Arthur, thrashed around in the void for thirty seconds, unable to bring air into their rapidly emptying lungs. They struggled feebly and kicked wildly, as their bodies drained automatically of oxygen, the ironic poison that human beings could no longer live without.
Death watched this display passively for a while, preparing to take their souls with him, ready to receive his long awaited pay check from the boss. It was about time he thought. I mean, a guy's got to earn a living of sorts, hasn't he?
Death turned away to consider the empty void of nothing at all for a moment, marvelling at how far this void stretched. You could travel the length and breadth of the universe, collecting souls for the rest of your eternal life, and still, the sheer size of space could still surprise you. If Death had been equipped with emotion, he would have found the sight strangely beautiful, but emotions were things he did not need, and so he did not have them.
When Death turned back to the dying men, to check whether or not they were ready for being taken to the afterlife, he found a strange absence of oxygen deprived human bodies waiting for him. Where in the name of the Universe had they gone? They couldn't have simply ceased to be? Could they?
Death watched silently, as a white ship tore across the skies, heading to who knew where. It was a flashy looking space ship, more than a boy racer's toy anyway. It was a mind boggling thing, was that ship, tear drop shaped, pure white in colour and unfathomable in its origin.
But even as he watched the ship receding across the inky void of blackness, he knew what must have happened. The ship had picked the two guys up and taken them to safety. Against all reasonable probability, those wastes of space had been rescued from the clutches of Death. That had never before happened, and Death was both confused and very very dejected. Now he would have to tour the damned galaxy to find another pair of souls to make up his weekly amount.
"Oh well," Death thought to himself as he disappeared out of all visible realities, "here we go again."
A N: I do not own the Hitch Hiker's Guide or Death from the Disc World. I do hope this gave you joy and did justice to both great authors.