Hi there!
Towel Day falls on 25th May every year. It's a day on which you're supposed to have your towel with you, or at least know where it is.
And so, to commemorate this day in advance, I'm posting a bunch of froody extracts from Part Two of the novelisation.
H2G2 is being released 2nd June over here. I'll be going to watch it after my exams. I think. I hope.
Douglas Adams was born on the 11th of March (incidentally the same day as Neo) 1952 and died aged 49 years and 2 months on the 11th of May 2001. He was six feet over... now he's six feet under.
May he rest in peace. This chapter is for him. ;P
Random fact: The critical angle of glass is 42 degrees. This comes in really useful during Physics exams... and now I've become this crazy person in class who knows the critical angle of glass by heart.
Star Wars 3 is out... I'll go watch it. Soon.
THE EXTRACTS
Meanwhile, unnoticed by everyone else, two visitors had suddenly appeared in this white room where Neo, Frank and Marty had been just moments before. They were Arthur Philip Dent, the supposed sole human survivor of the destroyed planet Earth, and Ford Prefect, an alien researcher for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. They had arrived in this dimension by virtue of the Improbability Drive - possibly the only way such a thing could have happened considering that the chances of the both of them spontaneously ending up in a dimension in which they were fictional were one zillion, two quadrillion, seven billion, three million, five hundred thousand and six to one against.
"Where are we?" Arthur asked, blinking blearily at his surroundings.
"Good question," Ford replied, walking towards the door and opening it as the ripple of coloured light over their heads faded away.
"How did we get here?" Arthur asked.
"The Improbability Drive, I suppose." Ford looked out at the corridor. No one there.
"You don't sound very worried."
"We'll get back, don't worry. It's just a matter of time." Ford glanced back at his friend. "Come on. We might just as well find out where we are."
Uncertainly, Arthur followed Ford out the door.
They took the lift down to the ground floor of the hotel and went outside. From what Arthur could see of his surroundings, the place looked a lot like Earth. Perhaps slightly different that what he remembered, but still almost definitely Earth.
Arthur was now feeling very confused, and the feeling was growing with each passing second. Hadn't Earth been blown up by the Vogons to make way for an interstellar bypass? If so, then where were they?
"I think we're somewhere on Earth," Ford commented casually. "It looks like Los Angeles to me."
"What?" Arthur yelled. Yelling made him feel more in control and less confused. "I thought Earth was destroyed! You said so yourself!"
Several passers-by gave Arthur strange looks. It wasn't every day that they got to see a British guy wearing a mud-caked night robe and standing in the middle of the street exclaiming that he thought Earth had been destroyed.
"Stop panicking, Arthur," Ford said calmly. "There's nothing wrong." He paused. "I think."
"You think?" Arthur asked. "Sorry, but that's just not very comforting at the moment." Arthur spotted a McDonald's across the street. He remembered feeling a great sense of despair some years ago upon realising that he'd never get to eat another McDonald's burger again, but the fast food restaurant was plainly in his sights now. "Look, and there's a McDonald's there too," he added lamely.
"Right then, we can go there first if you want. Are you hungry? "
Arthur mumbled something about wanting a cup of nice, hot tea because it might make everything make more sense.
The two inter-dimensional hitchhiker's set off across the road, where Arthur then realised that he had no money to pay for his tea after standing in line for two minutes. Apologising, he told the person behind the counter that she would have to take it back.
"Oh, and by the way," he asked, "what planet is this?"
The McDonald's girl, Jessica, arched an eyebrow. "Earth," she said, wondering who this weirdo was who had just ordered tea he didn't have money to pay for and was now asking a question no person in their right mind would ask.
"Ah. Thanks."
"Are you one of those Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy nuts or something?" Jessica asked as she took back the cup of tea.
Arthur blinked. She knew about the Guide? He was getting more and more confused by the second. "What?"
"Going around in a night robe like that and asking for tea... who d'you think you are, Arthur Dent? I suppose you carry a towel everywhere too, huh?"
"Um..."
"Well, whatever it is, if you're not ordering anything, can you please move aside? You're holding up the line."
Completely befuddled, Arthur left the counter and returned to the table where Ford was sitting and fiddling with his electronic thumb as he tried to flag down a passing spaceship. For some reason, there didn't seem to be any around.
"You think the Improbability Drive brought us here?" Arthur asked.
"Most likely."
"But... what are the chances that it would dump us on an exact replica of the Earth - which, by the way, happens to have been destroyed - where a McDonald's worker knows my name and the Guide and asks me about towels? It's impossible!"
"Not impossible. Improbable." Ford wondered why there didn't seem to be any spaceships around the area, then decided that it didn't matter because even if there was one, there was no need to board it. If the Improbability Drive had brought them here, it could very well bring them back. "Maybe all this is just an illusion that the Improbability Drive created. Or maybe," he added as an afterthought, "it just sent us back in time again."
Arthur thought that was a possibility, though if it were up to him to say so, what little of this place he had seen so far seemed to be more like the future than the past to him. Then again, if Ford was right, this was America and things were strange in America.
Arthur went to stand in line again. When Jessica saw him again, she sighed. "How may I help you?"
"Excuse me... what year is this?"
The first thing that Neo noticed when Keith shut him into his five-star prison was the glaring absence of a computer. Looking dismally around the room, he realised that Keith had probably known better than to put a computer hacker like him into a room with Internet access.
Just how much does Keith know about me anyway? Neo wondered, discomfited. Keith hadn't told him anything at all apart from the fact that he happened to be some fictional movie character, which Neo still found a little hard to believe. He admitted that his life was strange, but even then...
That was Marty McFly next door. The-guy-from-Back-to-the-Future. Neo had watched that trilogy, back in his life plugged into the Matrix... Marty McFly wasn't supposed to exist; yet there he was. Neo bet that the teen didn't think he was fictional either. None of the three of them did. Why would they? They had each grown up in their own world, each convinced that he was real, with no reason to suspect otherwise.
How did they even know that this world was the real one? Was there any definitive 'real world' in the first place? Or just a whole series of parallel universes, the inhabitants of each filled with the selfish notion that their world was the real one, the only one that mattered...
In some other parallel universe out there, Neo might just as well happen to be a purple-spotted fish with radioactive fins and a penchant for shiny things. The possibilities were endless.
And in this universe he just so happened to be fictional. But in that case, couldn't Keith have at least told him the title of the movie he was supposedly from? Or the name of the person who'd acted as him? With his luck, the latter was probably some weird guy with some foreign name that no one could pronounce. He probably couldn't act either. Not that Neo would be able to see if that was truly the case, for the simple fact that THERE WAS NO COMPUTER.
Feeling faintly annoyed, Neo walked towards the windows in the room and pushed aside a curtain. Night had fallen outside. A backwards glance at the digital clock on the bedside table showed the time to be 11:42 pm.
The ground wasn't far down, which was good if Neo somehow managed to overcome his fear of heights and decide to escape that way. Although what Keith had told the other two was true: if he escaped, where would he go? He'd be no better off anywhere out there than here.
Releasing his hold of the curtain and letting it fall back into place, Neo sat down on one of the two beds and buried his face in his hands.
He thought about the rest of the crew on board the Nebuchadnezzar. What would they do when the discovered he had suddenly vanished? Or did they even exist in the first place, outside his memories? And Trinity... did she exist, either?
"Trin..."
Neo lifted his head from his hands to stare dispiritedly at his reflection in the mirror opposite.
And not for the first time, but ever more so now, he wondered who he was.
The Preston Residence
San Dimas, California
"Bugs Bunny with a banana in the swimming pool," Bill guessed.
Ted reached out and flipped over the three facedown cards in their modified game of Cluedo.
"Sorry, dude," the teen said, looking at the cards. "It was Donald Duck with a loaf of bread in the broom cupboard."
Bill sighed. "Bogus."
Returning his card to the deck, he cleared the board and looked at his friend. "Want another game, dude?"
"Okay," Ted said, when the telephone rang in the hallway. "I'll get it," he offered, hopping off his chair.
"Thanks."
Entering the hallway, Ted suddenly thought he saw a ripple of coloured light zip through the air. He looked again, but it had gone... and he was prevented from wondering about it any longer by the ringing telephone. Picking up the receiver, the teen put it to his ear. "Hello?"
"Hi, Prosser's Pizzeria? Ah, I'd like to order two extra large pepperoni cheese pizzas with extra pepperoni, cheese and crust... um, make that three pizzas. Yeah, and two..."
Ted blinked.
"...with a roll of garlic bread on the side, and..." The voice grew temporarily fainter as the speaker called out to someone else in the room. "Hey, Marge, want any ice cream?"
"Sure!" came the faint reply. "Ask if they have raspberry."
"..." Ted said.
The caller came back to the phone. "Yeah, uh, do you have any raspberry ice cream available today? I'd like two..."
Ted finally found his voice. "Um, I think you've got the wrong number," he said.
There was a pause.
"This isn't Prosser's Pizzeria on 4077 Potato Avenue?"
"Uh, no..."
The caller swore. "Then why didn't you say so earlier, kid?"
Muttering obscenities, the man hung up, leaving Ted dumbly holding the receiver at the other end.
He was about to put down the phone when another ripple of light flashed past his eyes. Ted Logan stared... and an instant later, he was yanked out of his world.
Getting off his seat, Bill walked out of the room. "Ted?"
There was no reply.
"Ted? Dude, where are you?"
Bill entered the hallway, but all he saw was the telephone dangling off the hook and his friend nowhere in sight.
"2004?" Arthur Dent mumbled dazedly as he put the newspaper back down. Jessica hadn't been too helpful when he'd asked about the year, so he and Ford had had to find it out for themselves. "How can we be in the future?"
"Why not?" Ford replied. "It's as good a time as any."
"And how do you propose we get back?"
Ford thought for a moment. "The same way we got here, I suppose. The Improbability Drive."
"Nothing's happening," Arthur remarked dryly.
"Maybe that's because it's too probable that we might just get whisked back home while we're standing here." Ford paused. "Do something improbable," he suggested.
"What?"
"Climb up that lamppost and sing nursery rhymes backwards out of tune. In your underwear," he added as an afterthought.
"What?"
"Think about it. What are the chances that doing that would get us back home?"
"Not much."
"Precisely."
Arthur just couldn't argue with that kind of logic.
Arthur Dent had no idea as to why he was actually doing what Ford had suggested. He had no idea if Ford was even being serious. All he knew was that he had stripped down to his underwear, and was now climbing up a lamppost singing 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' backwards and out of tune.
Frankly speaking, the out of tune part was not a problem at all, considering that Arthur had never been a very musical person and did not know the tune of the song in reverse. As a matter of fact, not many people do.
"Snow... as... white... was... fleece," Arthur sang pathetically, as his alien friend stood at the bottom of the lamppost guarding his clothes.
"Lamb... little... lamb little, lamb little..."
People were starting to stare. Ford waved at them and smiled.
Halfway up the lamppost, Arthur was starting to feel cold.
"Lamb little... a... had... Mary," he sang, finishing the song. He waited for several seconds, then turned to look down at Ford. "I don't think it's working!" Arthur yelled, before noticing the crowd surrounding them. He gave a sheepish smile.
A man pulled out his phone and called the police.
"Try another song!" Ford shouted up.
Arthur had begun to shiver from the cold and was contemplating getting back down and asking Ford to do it instead. What difference did it make, anyway? However, Arthur had by then reached the stage where he didn't really care any more. There was a wild sense of release to it - here he was, up a lamppost in nothing but his underwear, singing nursery rhymes back-to-front...
"After... tumbling... came... Jill," he started, with a little more enthusiasm than before.
END
Random off-topic rant: I KNOW THE FULL NAMES OF 42 CELEBRITIES BY HEART! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA... I made a list that day to see how many I knew. If you're bored, here's it is:
1. Michael Andrew Fox; 2. Christopher Allen Lloyd; 3. Lea Katherine Thompson; 4. Crispin Hellion Glover; 5. Thomas Frederick Wilson; 6. Elijah Jordan Wood; 7.Wendie Jo Spencer (played Linda McFly); 8. Todd Cameron Brown (played Jules Brown)
Non-BTTF:
9. Alan Sidney Patrick Rickman; 10. Samuel Leroy Jackson; 11. Ewan Gordon McGregor; 12. Jacob Christopher Lloyd (aka Jake Lloyd); 13. Hugo Wallace Weaving; 14. Keanu Charles Reeves; 15. Willard Christopher Smith Jr. (aka Will Smith); 16. Tobias Vincent Maguire (aka Tobey Maguire); 17. James Eugene Carrey (aka Jim Carrey); 18. JOHN TOWNER WILLIAMS!; 19. Howard Davis Shore (this one I'm not too sure); 20. Thomas Cruise Maphother IV (aka Tom Cruise); 21. Thomas Sean Connery (aka Sean Connery); 22. Matthew Paige Damon (aka Matt Damon); 23. Benjamin Geza Affleck (aka Ben Affleck); 24. Robin McLaurim Williams; 25. Brendan James Fraser; 26. Julie Fiona Roberts; 27. Margaret Mary Emily Anne Hyra (aka Meg Ryan... um.); 28. Sandra Annette Bullock; 29. George Walton Lucas Jr.; 30. Edwin Rodman Serling (aka Rod Serling); 31. Edward Regan Murphy (aka Eddie Murphy); 32. Sylvester Enzio Stallone; 33. Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio; 34. David Jude Law; 35. John Ron?ald Reuel Tolkien; 36. Joanne Kathleen Rowling; 37. William Bradley Pitt (aka Brad Pitt); 38. Angelina Jolie Voight; 39. Shaun Mark Bean (aka Sean Bean); 40. Nicholas Kim Coppola (aka Nicholas Cage); 41. Elvis Aaron Presley; 42. Douglas Noel Adams.
I got most of them off this book which was this hoopy compilation of Hollywood A-C listers; MJF was at number 188 or 181 or something, which is sad. I saw the book once at the library long ago, then I saw it again that day and thought I'd read through the whole thing and see how many people's full names I could remember... I'd got to around number 30+ when we had to go home.
I have selective photographic memory. I can remember stuff like this and the fact that there were 97 tiles on the floor of the kitchen of this person I visited once, but when it comes to useful things like being able to recite the Periodic Table or maths formulas from memory, I can't do it.
HyperCaz: Heheh. Why wasn't anyone else wearing a towel? From the threads at IMDB, it seemed like everyone was going to... A lot of people seemed to think the song was the best part. What's Journey of the Soceror? Tea is good. Madagascar? What's that got to do with anything? ;P
Anonymous-cat: When I next get hold of the school computers I'm going to hang around Matrix fansites and leech information from them. Hopefully it might help. It might also make things worse... Yeah, they could contact the Nebuchadnezzar, but the main problem is that I don't know how far away from Zion the Neb is. My brother said several months, but I don't believe him... then again, I can't be sure. THEY CAN'T HOLD STEVE'S TEA HOSTAGE! IT'S THE ONLY THING HE HAS LEFT IN LIFE! ;P Thanks for reviewing!
Stoko: Ah. So the British version is green bottles after all... That means I'll have to change the version in this fic, considering that the singers are all American... A hundred beer bottles, hanging on the wall. :blinks: It's not the same, somehow. Thanks for your review!
flux capacitor...fluxing: YEAH! LLAMAS:D
Gijinka Renamon: H2G2 'looks' funny? Uh... okay. Yep, MJF's middle name is Andrew. But he didn't want people referring to him as 'Michael, A Fox'.
Eternal Density: Pizza delivery... um. There seems to be a lot of pizza going around... The green bottle gag hasn't been played out to its fullest yet. It will. Heh. Thanks for reviewing!
Grim Reaper: Oops. Sorry, must have missed it... happens sometimes, because I have to minimise the Internet windows whenever I type review replies and if I scroll too fast I end up skipping reviews. Um, please don't send a long 'continue' review to 'So Long, and Thanks for All the Phish'. I don't know when my friends and I are going to continue it, considering that: 1) We just finished exams. At least they have. I've got an O Level exam 30th May; 2) School vacation is coming, and we won't be able to see each other much; 3) We haven't decided on the next chapter yet. We'll continue it when we do.
Back to Front: 'Shiny'? Strange adjective for a chapter... ;P You have serious issues. Do you know people can get sued for same actor slash? Uh, mice? What mice?
ladyvella42: Okay then, continue reading!