If one were to look up the term "humiliation" in the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, they would not find more than a cursory nod of the word's existance and the suggestion that the searcher perhaps try connecting to a dictionary database or one of many offered depots devoted to specific bedroom behaviors to better have their needs met. Regardless, if The Guide DID have an entry devoted to the word, it would most assuredly display Marvin's picture alongside it at the present moment.

For most of the morning and well into the afternoon, Trillian had used the organism replicator to summon all manner of simulated lifeforms into the cargo hold in an attempt to find one that Marvin might have any success whatsoever with relating with or even having some sort of reaction to. He had not flinched when a tarantula appeared on his knee to scuttle up his thigh, he'd barely blinked when an emperor penguin stood before him, studying him with its beady black eyes, and he'd not so much as acknowledged the phantom water moccasin that had coiled about his shoulders, hissing and spitting.

Trillian was not intentionally summoning such disagreeable creatures, the odds simply weren't much in her favor. The water moccasin was intended to be a simple rabbit and the tarantula, she'd meant to be a wooly bear caterpillar. The penguin, however, had been quite intentional. As had a banana slug that she was somehow unsurprised that Marvin had attempted to engage in conversation, only to discover the mollusk ignoring him and concluded that it hated him.

It was, of course, a little-known fact that slugs were one of the most intelligent beings that the universe has to offer, second only to mice, androids, and petunias. It is unknown how they came by such knowledge, but assumed that they had collectively decided that they needed -some- sort of redeeming quality among them. As such vessels of intelligence, it stands to reason that they can and will be extremely finicky of the company they keep, so in this case Marvin's feeling of being snubbed was not wholley unwarrented.

At present, the ex-android currently found himself strewn with a mess of mewling holographic kittens as Trillian looked on, amused. Many would find themselves helpless in the presense of such adorability, but Marvin was not many. He was, in fact, rather irked when one of the beasts began to bat at his nose. Its paw, of course, passed through harmlessly with each bat, but it was the principle of the matter and this was, in no way, a situation from which dignity could be salvaged.

He endured the embarrassment in silence for several moments until Trillian relented and made the kittens vanish to observe the results of the experiment. "Well?" she prompted. "Anything at all?"

"A noted drop in self-respect...as though it could get much lower." he droned, making her sigh. The kittens had been her last resort. She'd gotten nothing from him...no happiness, no fear, no crack in his usual demeanor whatsoever. He was so...sodding...STUBBORN! "Marvin..." she groaned, putting a hand to her forehead and setting the device aside. "...I'm not doing this for my health, you know."

"That makes two of us." She made an aggravated noise. "Perhaps you ought to go before you waste any more time on me." he suggested, his eyes trailing down to regard the replicator sullenly, wondering just how much longer she planned to fire the blasted thing at him. The number of creatures she had yet to summon in this dreadful little room was depressingly large and he suspected that he'd relate to each and every one of them much the same as he'd related to the ones that had appeared already. Which was not at all.

"I refuse to believe there isn't a single being in this entire universe that you don't find terrible."

"Not everything is terrible." he corrected her, making her regard him curiously with a dim hope that was quickly killed as he continued. "There are some who are less dreadful and some that are more awful, but not all of them are terrible."

"Zaphod was right." she said tersely, setting aside the Organism Replicator and looking away in disgust. "I don't know how you managed it, but you're driving me crazy!"

"I haven't changed, if that's what you're wondering." he drawled in his usual monotone. "You, on the other hand..."

"What?" she demanded to know, turning to look at him once more as he cocked his head at a perfect twenty degree angle to the right.

"Not that it gives me any satisfaction having every word I say go unheard, but it seems you all found me much more tolerable when you were ignoring me. Its simply an observation, of course. By all means, go back to it if you think it might help, it isn't like I'm not used to it."

Trillian's mouth dropped a bit. "You..." there were any number of sentences she could have made out of such a marvelous start and her mind sifted through the options in a millionth of a second before selecting one, stamping it with approval, and passing it along to her mouth for recital. "...really think that the entire ship has changed just because of you?" He said nothing and her eyes narrowed, this latest development being just the can of gas the embers of her annoyance needed to ignite. "I expect that sort of self-focus from Zaphod, but you?"

"Its true." he said muleishly. "Not that I hold it against you. You're only doing what's sadly expected of organic beings, small-minded creatures that you are."

Trillian opened her mouth to retort, then closed it again. Then opened it. Then set her jaw and narrowed her eyes as she grabbed up the device once more. "In that case, I'll go be small-minded elsewhere." Marvin nearly flinched as he awaited further onslaught from her and her holographic animals, but there was none. Instead, she put it back where she'd gotten it when they arrived, moved the box back into place, and stalked toward the door which, oblivious to her anger, slid open with a happy twitter.

She stopped in mid-exit and whirled on her heel to fix Marvin with a glare that, had the line of her vision been a javelin, would have struck him dead. Which likely wouldn't have bothered Marvin much at all, but that's beside the point. "There IS one thing that makes you happy." she added as a parting shot. "It makes you happy--no, it ELATES you, when you can feel victimized." She left on that note, not giving him a chance to answer.

He wouldn't have answered anyway as he had nothing to say on the matter. Frankly, he was disappointed in her conclusion. No one in their right mind liked knowing that everything they did would ultimately end in disaster. He didn't LIKE being how he was, it wasn't fun for him by any stretch of the term. The fact that she, of all people, could concieve such a notion only reinforced his abyssmal opinion of humans.

It ELATES you, when you can feel victimized his mind parroted at him in perfect imitation of Trillian's voice again and again, despite the fact he'd asked it reasonably to stop. As an android, it was a remark that he would have taken at face value and stored away in one of his memory banks' many clusters to be lost in the many others like it. However, not being an android at present, that was not quite an option.

His now-human brain ping-ponged the remark about, examining it from every angle. Forward, backward, inverted from the middle...he didn't find it any more likeable from any of the new perspectives. In fact, he hated it. He would go so far as to say he loathed it.

And thus Marvin discovered that he -was- capable of experiencing other emotions minus his programming as he found himself in the simmering beginnings of a rage. It was odd how, after years of neglect and torment, eight words arranged in one specific way with emphasis on one in particular were what it finally took to jump-start his ire.

He didn't need any of them, he concluded. Or their ship. Or their incessant demanding and endless tasks for him. Or their assumptions. Or their idea that he should have to lower himself to their level at all times if he expected to be understood. Or their facade of condescending friendship. Or their self-righteous conclusions that were made with minimal effort and very much god damned haste...!

Marvin blinked forcibly, snapping himself out of it before whatever "it" was could carry that line of thinking much further. Anger, REAL anger anyway, was not something he was accustomed to and he found that it left him feeling impotently-upset with the stirrings of a headache threatening to set in. Putting a hand to his forehead, he groaned in almost exactly the same way Trillian had a few moments before storming out, the last of his rage ebbing away as quickly as it had risen. No wonder fleshy beings were so irrational if this was something they put up with on a regular basis.

Giving the dingy cargo hold a final look-around, he concluded that what he really needed at the moment was to be nowhere near it. Perhaps, in fact, what he needed even more was to explore the option of having a drink now that it was available to him. As much as he hated the idea that he was humoring the primative biology he'd been settled with, if intoxication really was as much of a cure-all as everyone on this ship seemed to think it was, he would give it a try at this point.


"What've we got here?" Zaphod inquired, grinning as he shambled into the galley an hour or so later where Marvin, in the process of rummaging through one of the cabinets, looked up at him flatly. He didn't need to say anything as the bottle of Arrellian Phooblex he clutched in his left hand spoke volumes as it was. Phooblex was no one's first choice in liquor as its better-known nickname, Amnesia Juice, was not false advertising by any means. It was a wonderful concoction if your aim was to spend an evening doing something (or someone) rather embarrassing and then awaken the following morning wondering where your gargantuan headache came from. However, for anything but that, it was dreadful stuff both in taste and in appearance. "Did Trill talk to you?"

More silence, but the silver-haired humanoid's eyes dodged to the left. Zaphod chuckled ruefully. "Yeah, she makes me wanna drink too after one of those." In one fluid motion, he moved forward and rudely grabbed the bottle out of Marvin's clutches. "Not that, though. Stuff's for girls." He shoved past Marvin and rummaged around in the cupboard himself, coming up several moments later with a half-empty bottle of Belzant Nerp. "Ha!" he declared, holding it up as though it was a long-sought treasure. "And here I thought Ford had finished it off by now!"

He hopped to his feet and gave Marvin a mighty slap on the back as he went. "C'mon kiddo." he ordered. In Zaphod's mind, even if Marvin was still being outwardly sullen, if he was in a drinking mood, he couldn't be all bad anymore. It was one step closer to being tolerable. The once-android sighed, but obediently followed after the president of the galaxy as he fetched a pair of glasses off of the counter and, with the practiced skill of a magician, uncapped the bottle one-handed to fill both.

"Soooo...howzit working out for you?" Zaphod said when he'd taken a seat at the table, setting down the bottle and other drink as he took a sip of his own.

"How is what working out for me, exactly?" Marvin murmured as he sat across from the Betelgeusian, regarding the glass of liquid uncertainly.

"You know. The whole...thing." he said, putting it eloquently as always. Marvin pondered his answer to this a split second before taking up the glass and downing half of its contents.

"I'm adjusting." he said blandly. A split second after that, he dissolved into a sudden fit of coughing as the drink burned his throat. Zaphod, ever helpful, burst into laughter at the same time.

"You're adjusting, all right." he said between hitches and snorts. "Didn't program you for -that-, did they?"

No, they hadn't. Robots weren't designed with alcohol ingestion in mind which, somehow, Marvin was grateful for. Showing off at this point, Zaphod drained his glass in two swallows and grabbed the bottle up for a second. The contents this time smelled suspiciously like cough syrup. "Its like I've been telling you." Zaphod continued, not waiting for Marvin to reply as he filled his glass. "If you'd stop being such a downer, maybe everybody wouldn't hate you."

Ah, it was like talking to Trillian all over again. If she were male, of course. And two-headed. Not to mention without tact.

"It must be dreadful for you, having five brains collectively on board this ship and still only being able to come up with one argument once your neuron gets firing."

Zaphod fixed him with a look that didn't know whether to be annoyed or not before giving him the benefit of the doubt and chortling. "Y'see? That's what I'm talking about. Now you take me for example." he said, grinning and jerking a thumb at himself. "There's no way I could've gotten where I am just by being the sexiest bastard alive. You gotta have something to go with it, you know? You gotta know how to--"

God, don't say it... Marvin thought.

"--relate to people."

Down went the rest of Marvin's drink and more choking ensued. "You'll get used to it." Zaphod said, distractedly refilling his glass before downing his own and wincing at the taste before refilling that as well. "Anyway, back to me. Yeah, if you don't know how to relate to people, you're screwed. I figured that out a long time ago and now look at me. President of the galaxy. Call it a talent." He dropped one eyelid on each head in a conspirator's wink across the table at Marvin who dutifully ignored it.

"And then?" the gray-haired humanoid prompted.

"And then what?" Zaphod asked, pausing in mid-sip.

"Exactly." The liquor was already shining in his eyes, betraying a rather pathetic tolerance of it. Even Arthur could hold his own better than that. Having a brain the size of a planet apparantly didn't make him superior in all regards.

"Know what your problem is? You think too much." the blonde-haired man said, his third arm pointing a finger accusingly at Marvin.

"I have hundreds of problems. None of them involve thinking too much." he snapped, not fighting the growing muddled feeling in his head. It was about as close as he could come to shutting himself off, so why not?

The two of them drank and bickered back and forth for a span of minutes, Zaphod dominating the conversation as Marvin occasionally interjected with his own downtrodden ideas and views, each more slurred than the last. Three-quarters of the way through his fourth glass, Marvin decided that the most opportune time had arisen to introduce his forehead to the table top, and the two of them met and mingled intimately.

"Brain the size of a planet...hoopy!" Zaphod snickered at the inebriated figure across from him as he polished off his own drink and checked the time. Oh Zark...he was supposed to have been to bed almost an hour ago. Meh...Trillian would forgive him. She always did. He was lucky to have a girl like her. Someone who didn't get offended over stupid things or hold the little stuff against him. Those were hard to come by, even when you had the entire galaxy to look for them.

Leaving things where they were, he swaggered out of the galley, the lights clicking off behind him and leaving Marvin in the darkness. It was nothing personal, they'd just grown accustomed to Marvin's ramblings and had learned that it was easiest to simply operate as though he wasn't there.


Trillian laid awake. Well, she HADN'T been awake a few moments ago, but all the same, this had become a familiar scenario to her. Zaphod would drop hints and flirt all day, telling her to be in bed early, and then, inevitably, would become distracted by some shiny object and leave her to fall asleep waiting for him. She hadn't been surprised to find him sprawled beside her, snoring contentedly and dead to the world...she supposed she was happy he'd remembered to come to bed at all.

Oh well, things could be worse, she told herself. For one thing, he could show no interest in her at all. That would be much worse because travelling the universe was not exactly when one wanted to suffer a breakup It would be impossible to avoid one another on such a tiny ship, for one thing, and for another, who would she have turned to for solace? Arthur? Ford? Horror of horrors, Marvin? No. That wouldn't do at all.

She laid there for several moments, staring at the ceiling pensively before shifting and moving to get up, making Zaphod groan in his sleep and grab at her with one arm.

"Mine." he muttered. She smirked in spite of herself and detached his fingers from her arm, making him groan again and begin to stir.

"I'll be back." she assured him, reaching down to pat the cheek of his left head. The left head seemed content with this and passed it along to the right head who was likewise agreeable. A moment later, he was sleeping soundly once more as she found her bathrobe and wrapped herself in it to go fetch herself a glass of water from the kitchen.

The galley's lights came on agreeably as she made her entrance, and she stopped short at the huddled figure at the table. Her first impulse was that it was Arthur, but realized it was too wirey in build and too tall. Marvin...? MARVIN, of all people, had been drinking? The choice of liquor and the presense of the second glass led her immediately to believe it had been her boyfriend's doing as she sighed and ventured toward the table.

"Marvin...?" she asked, giving his shoulder a jostle. He grunted something unintelligible. "Marvin, come on. Get up." There was a piteous moan and something that sounded like "My head..." She braced herself. Oh god, as though he didn't complain enough as it was. She could barely even begin to comprehend what he'd sound like with a hangover. A pair of slightly-rhuemy gray eyes fluttered open and immediately squinted shut again.

"Ouch..." he whined.

"Is it just a headache, or are you going to be sick?" she inquired as he made what looked to be a hero's effort at sitting up, propping his head up with both hands.

"M'fine..." came the garbled answer.

"Are you?"

He meant to tell her that, yes, he was fine. Yes he was sure of it. And to, for heaven's sake, please not talk again until he could make the room stop spinning for a moment. He said none of that, however, as his stomach turned a sour flip within him and its contents became rather disagreeable. Trillian watched as he went a sickly sort of green and then grabbed him by the shoulders, leading him toward the garbage bin before things could get much further. Being with Zaphod had made coaching people through the worst of a hangover almost second nature to her anymore.

However, unlike Zaphod, Marvin wasn't taking it in-stride well at all. He nearly collapsed when the first bout of sickness hit as Trillian stood a polite distance away, pretending both for his benefit and her own that she could see and hear nothing. When it seemed to have passed, she moved to the small sink, fetching up a handcloth and twisting on the faucet. At first, nothing came out, and then, much to her annoyance, a stream of orange snaked out with a wet squelching noise. Processed cheese...wonderful.

She turned off the faucet with disgust and dropped the soiled cloth. This...was not working. Granted, the probability glitch had made things interesting in their otherwise-stagnant schedule, but she was getting tired of not being able to rely on anything being functional when she needed it to be, Arthur would find himself in the middle of an identify crisis if he wasn't fixed soon, and Marvin was clearly having a bad time of this entire human business.

"Better?" she asked, placing an arm around his shoulders to steady him as he righted himself on watery legs.

"Never again." he croaked, shoulders stiffening at her touch but allowing it all the same. A laugh escaped her before she could stop herself. It was a very nice laugh, granted, but not well-timed at all. "I'm glad my pain amuses one of us, because I certainly don't find it funny." he grumbled as she led him back to the table and sat him down where he promptly folded his arms and laid his head on them.

"You'll be all right." she assured him. "Some rest and a bit of seltzer and you'll be back to normal in no time."

"If you call this 'normal'. 'Cos I don't." A pair of incredibly pathetic-looking gray eyes peered up at her through a forest of stringy bangs of the same color. The response she'd been prepared to give died somewhere between her brain and mouth. For one brief moment, it was as though Marvin's eyes had become a portal into his being through which she was peering. This was not just an act...this was not simply something he did out of rebellion or in a plea for attention. He really HAD known nothing except eternal pessimism and misery. And there was plenty more where that came from, the eyes promised.

Marvin blinked, breaking the spell, and relocated his gaze elsewhere.

"I'm sorry."

"Pardon?" the gray eyes were instantly back on her and this time she was the one who looked away, not wanting to see it again.

"I--nevermind." she corrected herself when she realized that she had no idea what she was apologizing for.

"I thought not." he said, disappointed. She moved behind him and placed a hand on either of his shoulders, giving them a simple affectionate squeeze that made him tense with dislike. He didn't care for being touched much as a robot, he cared for it even less now.

"You'll be fine." she reiterated.

"Perhaps if you say it enough, it might happen. Though I doubt it." his words trailed off as he dropped back off to sleep just as she'd found him. Briefly, she considered getting him up to relocate him somewhere more comfortable, but decided that it was best to let sleeping dogs lie, so to speak. Forgetting completely about her water, she left the galley to return to bed.

Tomorrow, whether Zaphod approved or not, they WERE docking to fix things.