1 Oh no, not again...
The sixth in the increasingly
inaccurately named Hitchhiker's Trilogy by Douglas Adams
For the Illustrious Mr. Adams: wherever you are right now, keep your towel close and your fish closer
Chapter 1
"It's not that I'm afraid of dying,
I just don't wanna be there when it happens"- Woody Allen
For many of the so-called sentient life forms of the universe, the problem with life is death: it is an ever-ominous presence that looms above them like a giant floating rhinoceros with severe gastro-intestinal problems, and sooner or later it will fall and they will be engulfed by the malodorous folds of eternity. Theirs is a life of running and waiting, and of getting extremely inebriated in the in-between. Of course there are some organisms that usher in death and in some cases herald it as a blessing. The Poidriff Consortium-perhaps some of the most intelligent, and insignificant beings in existence- spend their entire life on the outskirts of an inflamed hemorrhoid on the bottom side of a space port janitor named Tuckey Bergenfert. They lend copious amounts of time to solving all the universe's problems and cursing the day they ever came into existence, and when a member of the populous dies-usually from severe heat exhaustion- they all hold a tremendous rave, and the phrase, "If you weren't dead, I'd kill you," is uttered a copious amount of times in his honor. Yet there are always those select few who have accepted death in their lifetime and welcome it with open pseudopodia and a peace that cannot be described...literally.
It just so happened that this is exactly what Arthur Dent was experiencing beneath the flashing disco lights of Stavro Mueller's Club Beta seconds before the entire earth was demolished on all planes of existence throughout the perpetual downward spiral of the space time continuum. For Arthur, it was the ultimate proof that everything, as he knew it, had finally come to an all-round anti-climatic end and that after this there would be no after this. Unfortunately for Arthur, being wrong had become the premier staple of his existence, so much so, that the All-Knowing Huicken of Yillish had deemed him one of the top twenty-five insensible beings in the universe, ranking just below the Gusheldorf, a blue-green ogre creature with cowlicks, whose entire day consisted of trying to eat his own hand and whistle at the same time. At present, however, the big G's body hadn't just been dispersed into a million irrelevant particles and scattered across a vast waste of space. So he had that going for him.
Millions of miles above the writhing black hole that had just been punched into the wall of the universe where the earth had been, the sleek golden Vogon ship began to stir in preparation for its jump to light-speed. Within the grime-encrusted bowels of the vessel, Prostetnic Vogon Geltz floated in his jarringly uncomfortable chair with a feeling of utter appeasement. It was a good day when all the hates he had kind of balanced themselves out into one big "Screw you!" to the galaxy; he felt a muscle twinge in his face, recognized it as the onset of a smile, and was glad he caught it early enough to avert a full-fledged grin. His mood-depressing efforts were quickly broken by a shrill sounding communications klaxon, which he found to be particularly upsetting because his grandmother had said she might call him later that day to complain. "Why doesn't she take a one-way ticket to Traal..." he mumbled under his breath, which for a Vogon is extremely hard to do since their breath is extremely heavy and it is very hard to get anything under it at all. He punched a button on his chair consul.
"I REALLY DON'T LIKE WHOEVER THIS IS!"
"Geltz, you sack of rotten salad, how are you?" The voice on the other end of the line obviously didn't give a rat's behind about what it had just asked.
To the armed guard surrounding him, Geltz actually seemed to be startled, but this would never be repeated outside the room, on penalty of a poetry reading.
He waited a moment in silence, cleared his throat, and got to the point. "The plan has worked succinctly sir: the offending planet and persons have been removed from all plains of probable existence-" "Not quite Geltz, not quite, not quite, not quite..." The grouchy-sounding man trailed off for a moment, then heaved an exasperated "That will be all Geltz" into the crackling static and was gone.
Geltz seemed to heave an inaudible sigh of relief. Another klaxon awoke him from his stupor. "YES SIR? SOMETHING ELSE?" he demanded, very fluhurged.
"SIR? DON'T YOU SIR ME, IT'S JUST ONE INGROWN WHISKER!" his grandmother bellowed.