Origins of the Universe by Oolon Colluphid and John Chanaud

Chapter One

The universe is simply the result of a malfunctioning bomb used in a war in a parallel universe. It is well known that for every decision, the alternative decision is played out in a parallel universe. Therefore, a great deal of universes come into being because of bad decisions. Every decision is an act of ultimate creation. Every being making decisions is therefore a god.

To demonstrate; in a universe far removed from our own, two mighty races fought once a war. This war was not anything special as far as wars went. It was just like any other. Two slightly different groups of people decided they didn't really get along with their neighbor because of the color of their skin or the gods they worshipped or the fashions of their garments… It didn't really matter. They were at war and hoped to destroy another group of people entirely so that they might get back to whatever it was they were doing before noticing them and getting all worked up.

As it doesn't matter who precisely was involved, let's simply refer to them as the dummies and the idiots. The dummies were deeply bothered by the idiots' way of life, and so, at the earliest excuse, they declared war. The idiots used this declaration of war against them as an excuse of their own to get rid of the dummies, whom they had never really liked anyway. And so, the shooting started. And then the bombs began falling. And as their enemies refused to all die, the dummies made bigger and stronger bombs. Until one day, they dropped their biggest and most terrifying hydrogen bomb, a bomb they had been working on for over a decade. The bomb landed and ticked away, and then quietly clicked to itself… and lay dormant. It was a dud.

The dummies took a moment to realize what they had almost done, and called for a meeting with the idiots. The idiots, relieved that they weren't all dead, agreed to the meeting. And soon they realized that war was a lot more effort than peace had been after all, and a truce was declared. And the dummies and the idiots lived happily ever after.

That is, until they discovered the morons living on a distant island in their southern-most ocean. And so, they had no choice but to jointly declared war on them.

However, in a parallel universe, our universe, the alternative was played out: the bomb went off. And the resulting explosion wiped away all life and matter. As the hydrogen explosion itself created this universe, the blast spread out, keeping pace with the actual creation of this new universe. The explosion continued for millennia, until it eventually began to cool down and create residual life of its own in a universe of its own.

And thus, our universe was created.

To better understand the concept of parallel universes, it is best to show by example. One such universe came into being when the Daleks invaded the planet Earth, and weren't defeated immediately by a certain Time Lord. It was a Thursday. The invasion made a lot of people who lived there very angry, and was, at least on Earth, widely regarded as a bad move. The Daleks came in out of the sky and began exterminating everything indiscriminately. They never did have much discrimination, those Daleks.

And then one day, a perfectly ordinary Earthman named Arthur Dent, decided that he had simply had enough of this Dalek invasion. He objected most strongly to having his home and family and species almost entirely exterminated. His house was also destroyed. In fact, it had been destroyed so quickly that he didn't even have time to lie down in front of it as a means of protest. Of course, even if he had done this, it wouldn't have stopped the Daleks. In fact, it might have actually encouraged them.

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And so, having seen his house and his neighborhood destroyed, he tried to escape the carnage through the decimated streets of Cottington which was once his home. Familiar shops and houses were now no more than mere piles of smoldering rubble. Dead bodies littered the area like discarded candy wrappers. The smell was so foul, so horrible that it reminded Arthur of an incident in his childhood when his parents had taken him to a Chinese restaurant… an evening which had clearly scarred him for life. All in all, the invasion was a very depressing event in Arthur's life.

Arthur crept as quietly as he could through the rubble. Unfortunately, he was not very stealthy. He had simply had no training for it in his upbringing. As he tried to tiptoe around a corner in a manner he hoped had been quieter than a mouse, he heard a Dalek shout, "Halt!" So he halted. "You will be exterminated!" the Dalek went on, feeling a need to express himself further.

Arthur, however, had had just about all that he could take from these invaders. "Why?" he demanded. "Just tell me that! What gives you the right to come in here and exterminate us like we were a bunch of insects of some kind!?"

The Dalek had never been asked this question before. The obvious answer was, because you are not a Dalek. But even the Dalek was somehow embarrassed about how feeble a reason that would have been to actually say out loud. Ultimately, the Dalek did what most beings somewhere at the bottom of a chain of command do when faced with a dilemma: it passed the buck.

The Dalek took Arthur prisoner and escorted him aboard their flying saucer and then before the Emperor Dalek itself.

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Arthur felt small and insignificant standing there before the towering behemoth of hate. But at the same time, he felt that he had nothing left to lose. So he jolly well told this towering behemoth of hate exactly how he felt about their invasion and its consequences on his life! "So you're in charge, are you? Now look here," he inhaled bravely, still not quite knowing what he was going to say. So he simply began speaking in the hope that his brain would see the words coming, and then take a quick moment to organize them into a coherent and brilliant argument before letting them out of his mouth, "What gives you the right to exterminate my home and family and… and everything?"

In an uncharacteristic moment of candor, the Emperor Dalek boomed back at the tiny human standing before him, "IT IS CALLED RACISM! IT COMES FROM A DEEP-SEATED WORRY THAT WE DALEKS ARE PROBABLY INFERIOR! WE SEE YOU HUMANS WITH YOUR MUSIC AND ART AND FAST-FOOD RESTAURANTS, AND WE FEEL JEALOUS! SO ONCE YOU ARE EXTERMINATED, YOU WILL NO LONGER BE AROUND TO REMIND US OF WHAT WE ARE LACKING! WE WILL NOT FEEL SO BAD ABOUT OURSELVES! DOES THAT EXPLAIN THINGS, YOU PUNY HUMAN!?"

Arthur had to admit that this did in fact explain the Dalek motivation quite well. But it also confused him further that they would actually admit to it! He opened his mouth to say as much, but nothing came out. General confusion had gotten in the way.

The Emperor Dalek continued… "DO YOU HAVE ANY OTHER COMPLAINTS!?" Arthur could almost feel the giant Dalek's voice resonate his entire body, it was so loud.

He felt that he had a great deal to complain about. (Not the least of which was ending his thoughts with prepositions.) But now that he was put on the spot, nothing immediately came to mind. He was suddenly seven years old again and had forgotten what book he had read for his oral book report. He was simply drawing a blank! When the Daleks realized that he didn't have anything to say, a soldier Dalek began shoving him out of the royal presence with its sucker arm. But just before they arrived at the door, Arthur turned and shouted back, "Peter Rabbit!"

The Daleks were so stunned by this that, had Arthur been a bit quicker, he might have been able to dash out of the Dalek saucer quicker than Peter Rabbit himself wriggled away from Farmer McGregor's sieve! Unfortunately, the Daleks recovered quicker, and the soldier Dalek shoved Arthur out of the room, brought him down a corridor, and finally into the detention area to await extermination.

The door to the cell purred smoothly open, and the Dalek pushed Arthur roughly inside. Then the door slid closed again. Arthur looked around the small prison cell, and was startled to see someone else already standing in it. He was a man, about 40 years old, and wore a very nice and expensive white suit. "Hello," Arthur said politely.

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The man smiled a condescending smile, and said, "Hello," almost dismissively. Then he held out a hand, "Count Scarlioni."

"Dent. Arthur Dent."

They shook hands, and then, being British, they tried their very best to ignore one another.

After three and a half minutes, Count Scarlioni sighed, as though resigning himself to doing something he didn't want to do. "All right… how long have we known each other?"

"Five minutes. Maybe six. Most of it seemed to make some kind of sense," said Arthur, who wasn't very good at keeping time.

"And how would you react if I said I wasn't really a human, but was in fact Scaroth… last of the Jagaroth?" And he said it in such a way that it was clearly very significant to him and he might have been hoping to impress Arthur with the news.

Arthur thought for a moment. He reflected on the sort of day he had been having so far, all the death and destruction he had seen, about how his life as he had known it was now well and truly over, and then finally admitted to his cellmate with a sigh, "I'm afraid I really wouldn't care at this point."

Scarlioni nodded. And they went back to ignoring each other.

Arthur felt he might have been too dismissive. "An alien?" He tried to sound interested. And he nodded as though he was pleased to know this bit of information.

Scarlioni said, "I'll show you." He then reached up, grabbed hold of his own nose and forehead and pulled. And suddenly Arthur was face to face with a green alien creature with one single eye in the centre of his forehead. The skin was scraggly and scaley.

Arthur was simply tired of being surprised, and couldn't think of anything to say except, "So are you the good kind of alien or the bad kind?"

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Scaroth said gently, "Well, I'm the kind that wants to get out of this cell, certainly. And I might as well take you with me. Now listen to me and do what I say." He leaned in close to Arthur, put his arm on his shoulder conspiratorially and whispered, "I have a cunning plan. You pretend to be ill, and we'll clobber the guards when they come in to check on you."

"Clobber the Daleks?"

"Yes."

"Are you quite sure?"

"Yes!"

"Why don't you try it on your own?" Arthur asked.

"I did. But I don't think they believed me."

"You don't think maybe they'll think it a bit of a coincidence that I claim to be ill as well?"

"Do you have a better plan?"

A moment later, Arthur was by the door and calling out loudly enough for the Daleks outside the cell to hear him, "Excuse me. Is anyone there?" He tapped nervously on the cold metal door to get their attention. "It's just that I'm not feeling too well at the moment. I wonder if you could come in here and have a look at me?"

Scaroth rolled his single sarcastic eye. "No, really make it sound like you're ill. Make vomiting sounds! Like this, 'WWYAAAHH!'" he demonstrated. "Come on!"

Arthur let out a very feeble, "Urp."

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"No! Really give me some projectile vomiting sounds! Like this: BBLLLAAAAHHHHH! Come on, you're losing your breakfast, lunch and dinner here! BBLLLAAAAHHHH!" Soon both Arthur and Scaroth squatted by the door and made the most violent vomiting noises. But the Daleks showed not the slightest sympathy for a prisoner who wasn't feeling too well. Daleks were not very sympathetic creatures.

Eventually they found themselves exhausted from their efforts, and sat down on the cell floor, trying to get their breath back. "I haven't pretended to be sick that much since my school days," said Scaroth. He shook his head at the memory, "Gosh, I hated school."

And then, later that day, the Daleks found a window in their busy schedule of conquering the planet Earth, and decided to exterminate a few prisoners. Arthur and Scaroth were taken out of their cell, marched down a metallic corridor, and shown into a large control room, filled with flashing lights and with a thumping heartbeat-like sound permeating the air.

Several Daleks glided smoothly about the room, going about their evil plans. Arthur wondered briefly what it was like for the less significant Daleks. Did they have lives of their own? Did they ever get cross having to get up early before a full day's exterminating? Did they have financial problems? Retirement to worry about? Sex to look forward to on Saturday nights? Just how did Daleks reproduce, anyway? No, no. He probably didn't want an answer to that one. Some things were best left a mystery.

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Finally, a single Dalek with one gigantic weapon barrel glided up before them, interrupting Arthur's thoughts. They weren't allowed any last words. The Supreme Dalek, encased in its slick black armor, simply shouted the single word, "Exterminate!"