I am Gollum, precious. We were looking for the ring and chasing Hobbitses when we found ourselves far from home. Now we wants to go back to Middle Earth . . .
. . . but first we wants more wicked strength lager!
Oh do smeg off! Anyway, it looks like we're finally about to get this whole reality mess untangled, and not a minute
too soon if you ask me.
Indeed, Mr. Rimmer. All this dimension-jumping and time-swapping was really beginning to put a strain on my logic circuits!
"I really didn't need to hear that," Slartibartfast said to the inventor as he made some adjustments to the safety controls. "Now we'll have to put in an extra fuel rod for more power."
"And where are we supposed to get one?"
"There's a town twenty miles over the hill . . ." suggested the assistant.
"Hill?"
There hadn't been a hill there a moment ago.
Without hesitation or thought, Slartibartfast raced to get the fuel cells . . . and suddenly found himself standing at the door of the strangest boutique he'd ever seen.
The door opened. "Can I help you, sir?"
"Er . . ." After a short pause, Slartibartfast asked him, "Do you have any fuel rods?"
"Why? Your car broken down?"
"They're for a friend. His dimensional body swapper
needs more power." Slartibartfast explained.
"His what?"
"Dimensional body swapper."
"'S what I thought you said." The shopkeeper motioned
Slartibartfast inside . . .
The shop was packed floor to ceiling with just about everything one could possibly want to buy or sell, except land. There were car parts in one aisle, Pan-Galactic Gargle Glaster mixes in another, pencils in a third . . . and one seemed to contain nothing but pink stuffed animals. There was even an aisle for Elven hair-care products, which would have come in handy in Middle-Earth—always washing their hair, those Elves were . . .
"Ah! Here we go . . . fuel rods, aisle twelve, shelf C."
"How do you ever find anything in here?"
"The signs, mostly." Slartibartfast's companion explained. "What size did you say you needed?"
Slartibartfast held his hands about half a foot apart. "This size ought to just about do it."
"Ah, the XT34. We have several of those in stock."
It was a good thing he found them when he did, because at that moment, something seriously strange happened to . . .
Kryten on board Red Dwarf.
He turned female.
Or at least as female as a Mechanoid can get.
"Smeggin' 'ell!" Lister erupted when he noticed the transformation.
"Oh, dear me," Krytina said. "Where did my groinal
attachment socket go?"
Cat took the quickest of looks. "It's still there, bud, but it's more of a
plug-in now."
Back at Gasforth police headquarters, Sgt.Dawkins found she'd grown an extra foot . . . literally.
How am I going to buy socks now? They don't sell them in threes!
Aboard the Heart of Gold, several of the Fellowship appeared to have changed species. Not to mention genders.
Legolas did not look good as a female dwarf. Nor, for that matter, did Frodo seem particularly attractive as a human female.
"My precious is confused." Gollum groaned.
He was still male . . . more or less . . . as was Gandalf.
But . . . um . . . oh, I can't! It's too horrible!
(You're the narrator! You can't wimp out!)
But I can't tell them what they turned into!
(You want your paycheck or not?)
Oh, all right.
They were Orcs. And rather ugly Orcs at that.
Yes, I can see you out there, shuddering at that mental
image. But don't turn away! There's still a lot more story left!
Well, okay, not a lot more . . .
I am getting on with it!
Anyway . . .
Slartibartfast and the inventor were in a race against time . . . and time was leading by two lengths going into the far turn.
If they didn't fix this soon . . . all reality, everywhere, would fall apart. Causing no end of problems for all parties concerned.
"Where does this thingie go?"
"That's not a thingie!" The inventor rolled his eyes.
"Oh, right."
The assistant had no grasp of technical language. Everything was a "thingie" or a "doohickey" or a "whachacallit".
Finally, however, by a cosmic miracle they managed to get the fuel rods in place . . .
And the stupid thing still wouldn't work.
"This is not good." Slartibartfast said.
"Oh, wait. I put the battery in backwards!"
The necessary adjustment was made . . . and the machine was finally working.
"How long will it take," Slartibartfast asked, "before the timelines sort themselves out?"
The inventor looked at his watch. "Not long at--"
"--all."
"Thank God." Lister said as Krytina prepared to activate the Red Dwarf crew's improvised dimensional
body swapper.
"I'm not spendin' another minute like this!" Cat declared emphatically, staring at his newly acquired tentacles.
"Not to worry, sirs . . . er, as the case may be," said Krytina. "Everything will be sorted out in due time."
In Gasforth, Goody found his hair had turned a strange shade
of pink.
He tried to cover it with his hat . . . but that only made it more conspicuous.
Then in a flash, it was back to its normal color.
However, in the meantime, Gladstone had shrunk eight inches in height. And Habib had turned purple, which did not make her happy.
Aboard the Heart of Gold, Gollum had started to grow hair.
"My precious iss not liking this!"
"Neither are the rest of us." Sam chimed in . . . and then the ship turned upside-down.
"Gods preserve us." Gandalf groaned.
But things weren't much better in Middle-Earth . . . even the Orcs knew something was out of whack.
"What do we do?" asked Arwen of her father.
"I'm not sure what--"
"Awfully sorry to interrupt," Arthur said at that moment, "but where did I acquire an extra eye from?"
"Probably the same place I got the extra arms," Ford said.
"Interesting." said Arthur. "Reminds me of the Improbability Field on the Heart of Gold . . ."
Interestingly enough, aboard the Heart of Gold itself at the moment, the Improbability Field was fluctuating like a pop star's waistline.
All kinds of improbable things, like sudden rains of frogs and the appearance of a line of chorus dancers, started happening . . . in some cases, simultaneously.
The terrified Hobbits were hiding under what dimly resembled a pool table.
Had there been one there before? They couldn't remember now.
And it didn't matter anyway, because it suddenly vanished
again . . .
only to be replaced by the scanner table which was supposed to be there.
At last the timelines were shifting back to something somewhat resembling
normal.
Inspector Raymond Fowler blinked . . .
. . . and found himself standing back in Gasforth, next to a big green thing .
. . which then disappeared.
The big green thing, of course, was the Vogon captain, who turned up back on his own ship . . .
. . . while Trillian was the first to return to the Heart of Gold.
"Helloooo?"
"Who's that?" said Eddie.
"It's me,Trillian."
"Thank God." sighed Arthur, who was picking himself up off the floor
with help from Ford and Marvin.
"And where have you been?"
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
"Try me."
So he did.
The only part he left out was Zaphod hitting on Arwen. For
obvious reasons.
Gandalf and the Fellowship reappeared where they had been before all this madness began . . . back in Middle Earth.
In the snow.
Not that they were going to complain about a little, given all that had happened to them recently . . .
"And how long," Slartibartfast asked, "till their memories adjust?"
"Oh, shouldn't be long now . . ."
Not that Vogons remember much anyway. The others took a bit longer.
When it was all over, there was nothing left to clean up but a wrecked Parrot's Cafe.
A few weeks after this particular temporal and dimensional
knot had been untangled, however, another one cropped up in the vicinity of a
certain couple's lovely home near London.One of the residents of this home, one
Hyacinth Bucket, had been going out to her garden when she noticed a rather
inconvenient empty space where her husband had been standing just a minute
before. Right after this, she noticed a Series 4000 mechanoid parked
higgledy-piggledy on her front lawn.
She immediately said the first thing that sprang to mind:
"Oh, smeg . . ."
THE END
To be continued in KEEPING UP DISAPPEARANCES
(Hyacinth is the property of Roy Clarke and the BBC.)