Amazing Adventures of Nana Croft and Q Gamma

1. PROLOGUE'S PROLOGUE

It was just a normal early October morning in a small town somewhere in the Great Green North. A place where trees still grew free in the untouched forests and eagles soared in the sky looking for hunt. Although in this land the usage of cellular phones was so massive that due to the influence of irritation, the most sensitive eagles and trees had voluntarily fled to the neighborhood state, so that they would not need to listen to the nauseous ringtones and stupid people blabbering about stupid pointless things round the clock to their handies. It was a sad thing to perceive that every time when a middle-aged fat lady called to her middle-aged fat female friend with a mobile phone and consumed five minutes by telling how she had bought cheap margarine from the nearby superstore with the price of less than one Euro, either a tree or an eagle caught a panic attack and escaped beyond the border. Some of them went even further; they put a branch or a wing up to form the intergalactic hitchhike sign. Human beings usually used their thumb for this, but due to various creational reasons, eagles and trees did not possess such things. This sign however usually was noticed by a past-flying UFO. The aliens frequently gave lifts to such creatures as eagles and trees and penguins; however the green little men from various outside solar systems did not want to be in touch with the low-browed slobbering human beings. Most people on Earth had none kind of idea that extraterrestrial life even existed; there was only a handful of selected individuals around the globe who were aware. And of course the international organization of Men in Black, the black-uniformed agents who took care that the alien world did not interfere with the normal average jacks or fat middle-aged ladies in too-small jog suits carrying cheap margarine packages in their plastic bags.

But, let us peek at our main day again. It was just a normal early October morning in a small town somewhere in the Southern Finland. It seemed so normal, that even the word 'normal' was too normal to describe it. Children dragged their schoolbags on the streets and en passant gave a new look for random walls by spraying a quick graffiti on them. Their caring, lovable parents sat in traffic jams and friendlily flipped their middle fingers or shook their fists to the car drivers in front. In the bushes the earthy folk groaned holding their heads; perhaps the last pint yesterday had been too much. And the fat middle-aged ladies in their too-small jog suits were queuing outside the supermarket; with good luck they could grab their own package of that cheap margarine before the lady next door.

So… everything seemed so normal. Seemed. But beware of what the eye cannot behold…

In a tiny student's bedsit -tinier than the tiniest-, near the city's campus, Q Gamma groaned in her sleep.

Yes, her name was Q Gamma. What a ridiculously stupid cliché. But it was not her fault. Her parents, a bunch of cuckoo mathematicians, had thought it very witty to name their only daughter after a famous mathematical function. The Q-analog of the Gamma Function was this couple's absolutely favorite function, they loved it so deeply that they devoted even the most romantic night hours to discuss about its brilliantly glorious existence. Thus it seemed also logical that their only dear daughter would carry a part of this marvelous mathematical phenomenon the rest of her life.

Nonetheless, these early awakenings before 11 am were not Q's best event. Once again, the previous night had been consumed with pathetic nerd business: surfing on the Internet until the dawn had brightened, looking for the Question of Life, Universe, and Everything. The Answer to the Question of Life, Universe, and Everything, which she had known for a good amount of years already, was of course 42. This sole digit enveloped the grand harmony of this cosmos into itself. Only if someone had known the question to it… Q of course had a good theorem that the question was 'What is The Matrix?', but the search still continued… even last night.

Q's 18-square-meter-sized bacheloress flat was in its perfect state as usual. The dishes were unwashed from beyond three weeks, there was an old sock hanging over the computer screen, and the room's air was so dank that someone coming from the freshness of outdoor would have died to suffocation. Nevertheless, her huge DVD collection was arranged to alphabetical order, her 1200 CD's were without a scratch, and her antiperspirant bottle was neatly set on the nightstand (which was actually the CPU box of her computer but tremendously handy as a nightstand) right beside a half-eaten sandwich which had obviously resided there already a few days since the cheese on it had grown fur.

"Groaaarmmm… Rrrauurrhhh…" she yawned deep, stretching under the bedsheets. That sensually feminine roar was one of the funky effects her very deep and hoarse voice could provide. Besides that she was skilled to imitate Darth Vader and laugh like The Green Goblin from the infamous Spiderman movie.

Her bare feet touched the floor beside the bed. The sheets were tossed aside. Out crawled a girl around twenty-two, slim, pale, with the great height of five feet four inches. Q seemingly had forgotten to tie her hair before going to sleep; now the mass of copper red locks was in a big tangled heap above her head. Normally the girl's tidy braid would hang in the back and reach the line of her poples. She had no clue at what point her hair had grown that long. Perhaps it had something to do with the skipped hairdresser visits. Why bother to go to cut your hair when with that money could be done something far much more intriguing? Like to buy a new pinnacle chip, or a new Star Wars action figure to stand on the desk…

Crack. Something went broken under her sole. Q had just taken the first step to reach the reality.

"Darn", she snorted and picked up her glasses from the floor. Their frames resembled now rather much those artistic creations some bored-up personalities constructed from paper clips during boring lessons. This was not the first time, however, that they went broken by being stepped over. Q was absent-minded. She often placed her glasses on the floor before going to sleep. And last night… the search of the Question to the Ultimate Answer of Life, Universe, and Everything had been so exhausting, that at the moment she feebly fell in the arms of the bed around 5 am, she could have half-sleeping flushed the glasses down the toilet. Which would have been a disaster, since those glasses were her most important possession. As having -9 dioptres of myopia plus astigmatism plus suppressed strabismus, she hardly saw anything that was beyond her nosetip.

As distressing and terrible and atrocious and orcish as the situation seemed with the broken goggles, it was not all that distressing and terrible and atrocious and orcish after all. Right on the desk, beside an Obi-Van Kenobi action figure, which was beside a bread crumb, which was beside a used AA battery, which was beside a coffee-daubed handout, which was beside a broken piggybank, which was beside an empty CD-R, which was beside a lego house, which was beside a Jar Jar Binks action figure, which was beside the Obi-Van Kenobi action figure, was an electronic quick-repairer for broken glasses. Unfortunately the conception of adjacency is very undefined on this desk, so we cannot actually conclude beside which item the machine of question actually was. Skilled professors could have built up fine theorems about this desk; it could be said that the whole famous chaos theorem was in action on this desk. But hardly any professor could have succeeded to study this desk. Since: right before the miraculous discovery of such scientifically remarkable desk, he or she would have choked dead due to the amazingly dank air of this very room.

Q slouched the short path to the desk, navigating with the aid of blurry shapes and her arms. After crashing down two pyramids of schoolbooks, and getting her toe smashed against a leg of a chair, she made it. The dangerous journey to the scientific desk. She tossed her glasses inside the repairer, and pushed a large red button. In a second, the glasses had received their old nice shape again. They were ready to be set on the top of Q's nose. As well as the curtains of the room's only window were ready to be drawn aside.

Ah, how the world got brighter! Only that there was the trouble that Q liked darkness. Sunlight irritated her, that's why the curtains were always drawn tight shut. However, now the gentle yellow sunlight touched her milk-white cheeks and goldened the shaggy mass of her still uncombed hair. Angrily she was about to toss the shields back to hide that jester gas ball, but a horrible view made her froze on her spot.

The pigeons had come back.

Indeed. There, behind the window, on the branches of those leafless alders, were sitting those pigeons again. Fat, ridiculously cute pigeons whose mere presence generally made no sense. The tree branches wobbled under their weight. When had they come back? It had been weeks since they had left, and Q had lulled herself to the hope of never seeing them again. But now… that they had come back?

But, what so scary or ominous was there just in a bunch of pigeons? They were not the most ominous and scary creatures on Earth, were they?

Actually, the pigeons have a lot darker history than any of those grannies in parks stuffing them with bread crumbs could ever have expected…