AUTHOR'S NOTE -- Most
of the terminology and characters herein this fic belong to the late,
great Douglas Adams (may he hitch his way home safely). I found the story prompt (listed below) on a dated
messageboard while searching the vast internet for sources of
inspiration to rattle me out of my writers' block. I decided to give
this one a shot to see what would come of it and, to my surprise, I
actually managed to hash out quite a bit of writing.
I'll ask that you please be gentle with me as this is my first foray out of the land of Writer's Block in months, so I'm a bit rusty. Otherwise, I hope that you will enjoy it and not read too terribly much into it.
STORY PROMPT #5: The H.O.G. has just achieved normality after an abnormally-surreal trip. While the others seem to exhibit nothing outwardly-scarring from it, Marvin has been noticeably changed in some way that has somehow made him even MORE irritating (refrain from making him Marvin The Prozac Android, please, its far too obvious!). You may play it out from Marvin's POV, the POV of another character, or in good old regular third-person. No set genre for this one, folks, Angst, Humor, Slash, go nuts ;-)
2:1 Against
by: K.H. 2005
INTRODUCTION
The crew of the Heart of Gold had seen and experienced all manner of things, thanks to the Improbability Drive's penchant for the unexpected. And when one has experienced all manner of things, no matter how fleetingly, one develops a sort of immunity to surprise. That was why the four bipedal beings and one android had not found it entirely out of the ordinary when their latest jaunt had led to the cabin being inhabited by four rather awkward-looking androids and one decidedly-sullen humanoid who still hated everything just as much as he had before.
Arthur turned his metallic claws over in front of himself, wondering just how he was expected to hold a teacup with these dreadful things as Zaphod's optic sensors crawled over Trillian's streamlined body, wondering where it was her imput ports had gotten to as she bustled past him in a fit of whirring and clicking joints. Ford, meanwhile, seemed perfectly happy to disregard his mechanical form entirely as his visual screen zeroed in on the console hopefully.
The probability factor's odds fell...fell...and then settled. "We have normality!" A once-again fleshy Ford declared as everything around them seemed to flicker and reverted.
Except it was not normality. It tried to be, it nearly was, but there was one glaring thing about the scene that had not changed. While Zaphod, Arthur, Trillian, and Ford had all been relieved of their clunky metal appendages and phalanges, the one among them who should have regained his remained without them.
"Marvin...?" Arthur blinked, looking at their once-robotic companion as he stood sullenly nearby, shoulders hunched, gray eyes glazed. As a small mercy, the Improbability Drive had opted not to leave him entirely without dignity and had transformed the metal casing of his body into a suit of appropriately-drab color. It was extraordinary, really, as he was defying the very laws of physics by managing to have a mouth that drooped more than a bulldog's with the expression of infinite meloncholy that he wore.
"Don't tell me." the silver-haired man droned. "Its awful, isn't it?"
"Well, no...not awful, but--" Trillian began, attempting to offer some encouragement.
"Dreadful, then. Ghastly, abhorrant...I can continue until you find an adjective to your liking, but they're all the same to me." Marvin interrupted, bringing his flesh-and-blood hands out in front of himself to observe them with perfect disinterest. "Veins." he muttered. "How I hate them."
"This doesn't make sense," said Ford, drumming his fingers nervously on the control panel. "If all of us aren't normal again, then--"
"--normality wasn't quite restored." Trillian finished for him, pointing at the probability factor gauge that had stopped at 2:1 on its rapid decline. She frowned at it disapprovingly, but still it didn't change. The Improbability Drive had never malfunctioned before. The very idea was...well...improbable! And she didn't much like the two-to-one odds it had stopped at, either. With all that transpired on the Heart Of Gold, flip-of-a-coin probability was asking for trouble. Not just asking, but inviting it with large blinking neon letters.
"What about the rest of you? Anything?" she asked, looking to the others as they simultaneously began a quick and frantic display of patting and groping at their pockets and person to ensure everything was in-place and functioning.
"Nothing." Ford reported with a degree of relief when he'd finished his scrutiny.
"Nope." Zaphod said, shrugging as his third arm continued its search just in case.
Arthur remained silent.
"Arthur...?" Trillian pried as the man's face reddened.
"I...uhm..." he faltered, looking downward at his lower region in utter disbelief and terror. Silence hung in the air for a moment before he turned, abruptly making a hasty retreat from the cabin with a mutter of apology. His mind was not on courteousy at the moment so much as it was desperately trying to reassure him that certain parts of the anatomy didn't simply vanish into thin air...and as soon as he got to the privacy of his sleeping quarters, he would hopefully confirm this fact with himself.
"I could extend an apology now, as this will inevitably come down to somehow being my fault when you've run out of others to blame." Marvin put in, pausing a moment as he waited for his logic circuitry to calculate the odds and circumstances of such being true, only to realize he no longer possessed it. How typical. "But as I was not programmed with a sympathy module, I won't."
Zaphod sneered in the once-android's direction in irritation. Leave it to that bloody bucket of bolts to not only assume he was at fault when he wasn't but then to not even have the decency to take up responsibility for it when he DID want someone to blame. "So what this means, then," Mr. Beeblebrox concluded "is that until the Improbability Drive corrects itself, everything on board this craft has a fifty-fifty chance of being abnormal?"
"Yes, that's it exactly!" Trillian exclaimed, eyes lighting up. The days that Zaphod was coherant, let alone was actually able to make sense of a situation and come to an intelligent conclusion were few and far between. As being the one who'd chosen to settle with him, so to speak, Trillian savored these moments like some sort of rare and exotic confection.
"How abnormal are we talking? Lungs-outside-the-body abnormal or underwear-inside-out abnormal?"
And just like that, it was gone again. She heaved a sigh that seemed to fill every cavity of her chest, already not liking these odds if they meant falsely getting her hopes up.
"I don't imagine it would be anything fatal." she offered. She hated admitting that, honestly, she didn't know. There were so many odds for so many things that it was hard to tell for sure. For all she knew they may have just been exceedingly lucky up until that point that nothing terrible had befallen them. Her thoughts were interrupted by a decidedly Arthur-ish scream that made four heads turn in the direction of the hallway at once.
Nothing HORRIBLY terrible anyway.
"I'll be right back." Ford said, excusing himself from the cabin hastily to go and see what horror had befallen Arthur. If it was what he thought it was, it would take an olympic effort on his part not to break out in laughter. Marvin watched him go and then shook his head slowly and sadly.
"How dreary." the now-humanoid sighed with contempt. "Not only has my databank been stunted by this meager skull capacity, but now my own suffering is heaped on by everyone else's. I suppose you lesser beings refer to it as empathy."
"You aren't a machine anymore!" Zaphod snapped in irritation, deciding that dealing with a robotic Marvin had been quite bad enough, but having to deal with the same Marvin and NOT be able to blame it on his programming was intolerable. He refused to believe that there was a being in the universe, no matter how wretched, that thrived on being utterly depressing. "Not for the time, anyway, so why don't you ease up?"
"You make it sound so simple." Marvin drawled. "I regret to inform you that if you thought I had chosen to be this way, you would be wrong. Of course, even if I had, they would have built me as the complete opposite out of spite."
"Marvin..." Trillian cut in before Zaphod could formulate a reply. "Maybe you ought to go and see if Arthur needs help." The response was a great put-upon sigh as gray-toned male shuffled across the cabin toward the hallway in the direction Ford had gone a moment earlier.
"As though he's the only one with problems." Marvin grumbled. A moment later he was gone and Zaphod turned to Trillian.
"Idiot." he growled. "HE didn't suffer any. He got a zarking new body out of the deal!"
"If the four of us had been caught as androids when normality was restored, I doubt we'd be in much higher spirits." she offered, turning to the console to assure everything else was as it should be.
"Siding with the robot now, are you?" Zaphod snorted, making Trillian look up at him with a quirked brow. It was hard to tell sometimes when he was kidding or just being bloody moronic. She wasn't siding at all, she just wanted what anyone forced into the role of the voice of reason wanted. Quiet and order.
"No." she said simply, waiting to see if he would pursue it further as she didn't wish to argue a subject so ridiculous if she didn't have to. When Zaphod seemed content to let it drop as well, she dismissed the confrontation entirely from her mind. What had already happened or was currently happening was not her concern. A humanized android, a potentially-neutered Arthur, those were problems that were easily fixed if need be with the sorts of push-button technology available to them. She moreso worried herself with the millions upon millions of things that COULD still happen. Things that may not be fixable.
What was worse, she had no idea how to go about fixing something as complex as the Improbability Drive, and docking somewhere to look for someone who did on a stolen ship claimed by the President Of The Galaxy was just asking for trouble. Her finger hovered over the button for a fleeting moment before she withdrew it reluctantly. No, no. No sense in making it any worse, she supposed with a sigh.
Her eyes, once again, fixed on the ominous 2:1 on the display which blared happily as though it quite belonged there. No good could come of this.
