The chips tasted a bit old, but they calmed her down a lot. After seeing the end of your planet it was the best food in the universe. When she closed her eyes and concentrated hard enough she could pretend that this was all just a dream. That she had just imagined the space station and all those aliens. She could even pretend the alien next to her, stealing her last chips, was just a good friend she met at the shop. The destruction of the Earth had shocked her, but Rose knew that this was nothing compared to what the Doctor must feel every single second.
"So, what do we do now?" He grinned at her, but she just shrugged weakly.
"I- I don't know."
She didn't even care at the moment. The image of the burning planet still haunted her. He looked at her as if he guessed her thoughts. For a moment she could almost see the sadness in his eyes, but then he quickly showed his disarming smile again.
"Okay, so I get to decide... Let's see, I know the perfect spot!"
He jumped up, took her hand, ignored her surprised shriek and pulled her all the way back to the TARDIS.
"Doctor, where are we?" The flight had been rough and the ship had shook more than before."Erm..." He looked at some of the screens.
"Same time as yours, but not excactly in the neighbourhood. Far out in the galaxy... Quite a bit off, indeed. Horsehead Nebula to be exact."
"And what's so great here?"
"To be honest, nothing. Just a shady bar."
He never stopped surprising her.
"So you take me to a shady bar in another part of the galaxy. There are plenty of those in London, you know?"
"Nah, we're not here for the bar, come on!"
He opened the door for her. Smoky air and alien music swam from the dark room beyond it.
"Ladies first... And don't talk to the big insects in there, they don't like mammals."
She shivered and stepped outside.
"Oi! Watch where you materialise next time, spilled my drink because of your bloody blue box!" The large green mantis waved frantically with his now empty glas, while the Octopus next to him turned red in silent anger. Shocked, Rose jumped back into the TARDIS. The Doc gave her a questioning look, stepped outside and ordered a round to apologise. He held his arm out for her.
"Come on, you'll love this!"
"You said that about the end of the world as well and I nearly got roasted, Doctor!"
But he didn't even notice her complaint and pulled her right past the now calmed aliens towards one of the small tables.
At it, two men – human-looking and rather shabbily dressed – were playing some sort of game. They were both staring at a bottle filled with a yellowish liquid which stood between them. While she was still asking herself what they were doing, the bottle began to shake and then poured some of the liquid into a glass in front of the taller guy with the short black hair. His opponent, a small man with red hair and freckles, yelled out in victory.
"Hello Ford." said the Doctor.
Red hair looked up, was apparently puzzled for a second or two and then gave the Time Lord a smile from ear to ear.
"Doctor!" He jumped up and slapped the glass out of the hand of his companion who was just about to drink the yellow stuff.
"Arthur! Don't drink that just yet, I want your brain functioning for this! Look who's here! The Doc's here!"
"Nice to meet you." Arthur said with a relieved handshake, and looked rather happy the drink was now corroding the table instead of his guts.
The Doctor pulled Rose next to him.
"This is Rose, she hitched a lift. Rose, this is Ford Prefect... And friend... Do I know you?"
"No, no. I'm Arthur, Arthur Dent. Ford here took me in when my planet blew up."
Rose should have known it. The Doctor only seemed to know people without a home left, hanging around in dark places with other weird aliens. Strange names and all. Must be a translating-error of the TARDIS. A guy with a name like a car? Perhaps his real name would cause her brain to explode or something.
"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that, Arthur."
"Don't be, it was rebuilt. But my girlfriend wanted to see the stars, so I'm out here again..."
"Well, she left him, so I'm with him most of the time now."
"Ford!"
"So, Doctor, what gives me the pleasure?"
"Well, I wanted to show Rose that special bar you know, but it's so hard to get a reservation there... After my last visit they employed a psychic, so my little psychic paper trick's not working anymore."
"Had one drink too many, eh?"
"More like 300."
The two of them grinned, which made Rose a little dizzy. One alien smile was disarming, two of them were just not right. Like staring too long into the sun.
"Are... are you two Time Lords as well?"
The two men just laughed. Arthur just shook his head.
"No, not really," said his red haired friend, owner of Alien Smile #2...
"Although we had our share of time travelling, eh Arthur? Remember the prehistoric ride we had?"
Arthur just shook his head.
"I try to forget those five years in a cave dressed in dead animals' skins, thanks for reminding me of it."
Ford just laughed again.
"Those were the days. No, you see, I'm from Betelgeuse 5, blew up in the Hrung disaster."
Rose got confused again.
"Hrung? What's that?"
Ford shrugged. "How should I know? And Arthur, well Arthur is from a little rock called Earth."
Rose's mouth opened and closed without any word making it out. The Doctor said what she was thinking.
"Fantastic! See, guess where I picked up Rose. Ford, you're just fantastic!"
He looked at Rose, misinterpreting her surprised silence for concern.
"The Earth didn't and is not going to blow up, I fixed that. Went to the past, changed the Vogon fleet's course. They blew up some uninhabited moon instead." The pride in his voice was obvious.
"You did!" Now Arthur was the surprised one. His tone got slightly desperate.
"So... so why am I still out here? If you fixed it, I should be home, none of this should have happened... I... I..."
Ford patted his shoulder.
"Sorry, Arthur. Fault of the Heart of Gold. The Improbability Drive in the ship made you immune to changes in history."
"Oh," was the only thing Arthur was able to say before he collapsed into one of the chairs.
"Mind if I get drunk now?"
"Go ahead."
Arthur didn't even pick the glass up, he drank straight from the bottle. He fainted after his first sip.
Ford grinned. "Still too much for him, that Gargle Blaster. So, you want to go to the Bar with her... Is there something I should know?"
The Doctor shot Rose a nervous look, but she hadn't heard them. She was too fascinated by the unconscious Arthur Dent. She poked him, but he didn't wake up.
"Made a mistake. Wanted to impress her and showed her the end of her world."
"Ahhh, first date went wrong... Explains why you chose the Bar and not the Restaurant... You always had a way with women..."
"Shut up, just say that you've got an invitation... You still owe me."
"Well, all right. Let's see..."
Ford sat down again and began rummaging through a big bag which stood next to their table.
"There, see?"
He produced a small circular piece of green plastic from the depths of the bag.
"If you could help me get Arthur to my ship we could all be off."
They took the Earthling between them and quietly left the bar for the parking lot outside. Ford grinned.
"You should leave as well. I didn't pay."
Rose followed them, still a bit dizzy from all the new impressions. Only now, when she saw the grey tarmac below and the stars above she realized where she was.
"Aliens have parking lots."
The Doctor looked at her, confused.
"Of course."
There were all sorts of ships parked under the transparent dome that stretched above them. She could see stars and a red nebula in the sky. She stumbled over a ship, no bigger than a frisbee. An alarm sounded and they hurried on.
"So, which of those is yours?"
She inspected a ship which looked oddly like a pile of giant dead jellyfish. Now Ford looked at her confusedly, too.
"You're standing right in front of it."
She looked up and once again could not find the words to express something like 'I travel the universe, see all kinds of aliens, and you're telling me your ship looks like an Italian bistro. I should sit down and start worrying if I've gone mad.'
Instead she just said, "what!"
The two aliens grinned.
"Bistromathics," they said, as if this had to mean something to her.
Ford shoved Arthur through the front door of the bistro, a bell rang, and she heard a woman with an Italian accent greet the new guest who now lay on the floor snoring.
Rose just accepted that the whole universe had gone totally crazy.
"All right, bye then. See you soon, eh Doc? You still owe me a rematch for that drinking contest."
Ford smiled.
"Bye Rose, have fun in the universe. The Doctor's the best to show it to you... well, except me perhaps."
Then he stepped into the bistro, too. She thought she heard him order a pizza hawaii and a bottle of red wine, but with a silent 'wop' the whole bistro disappeared.
So just one smiling alien in a leather jacket was left. Her eyes couldn't have taken much more of that stereo ear-to-ear grin anyway.
"Did you like him?"
"Ford? Who is he?"
The Doctor took her hand and led her back to the entrance of the bar.
"Old friend of mine. Saved his life once. He's a field researcher for the Guide."
"The Guide?" He apparently couldn't stop talking in riddles.
"He's a hitch hiker. Like you. But he earns money with that. Writes articles for the best book in the universe. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Should get you a copy."
"Oh," was the only comment she could think of.
Back in the TARDIS and once more travelling through space and time for all she knew, she remembered something.
"Doctor, what was that green thing you got from Ford?"
He was radiant with anticipation again.
"Wait and see..." He took out a hammer and hit some of the consoles with it.
"Now, get outside."
She was more careful this time.
"No giant insects again?"
"Nah, if we get lucky just a spider by the name of Bob."
She sighed. By now she knew that was not a joke.
She opened the door carefully. They were in another parking lot, but the sky was pitch black this time. She could see nothing except the strip of pavement the open TARDIS door lit. The Doctor stepped outside, looked around and smiled.
"Yep, haven't been here for some time, but I found it."
"Found what?"
Instead of an answer he took her hand and ran.
Now she could see where he was heading, a big building appeared in the middle of the darkness. It was not a shack like the bar they had just come from. It reminded her of a casino in Las Vegas. At least it looked like the ones she had seen on the telly. A thousand lights sparkled, outlining the name of the place. At first she could not make it out and thought it was written in some alien language. But then she saw that most of the letters looked familiar, just showed some more curves than she was used to.
"What's a Big Bang Bar then?"
Her mood sank. The building had made her happy for a few seconds, but now she remembered the end of the Earth and how a bunch of bored aliens had planned to watch it while the host served drinks.
"Are you showing me how the whole universe blows up now?"
She got angry. Even if he was alien he must have noticed how hard it had been for her to see her world die.
"Nah."
His good mood only made her angrier, but he still pulled her towards what appeared to be the entrance.
"I wouldn't have needed the invitation from Ford for The Restaurant at the End of The Universe, this is much better."
"So nothing's going blowing up?
"Exactly!"
He showed the round piece of plastic to the spider at the entrance and it led them through. Rose did not have time to admire the tuxedo it wore for the Doctor already pulled her past the red carpet to a tiny table at the other end of the room they had entered. They sat down f acing each other. The room was filled with humanoid and non-humanoid guests, all gathered on little tables, candles lighting their faces or antlers or tentacles. A band was playing on a small circular stage in the middle of the circular room.
"So, food's on me this time, order anything you like. I think they have something suited for your metabolism."
A very tall and thin blue something with too many eyes took their orders. Rose grew nervous. Not because of the fact that this felt much more like a date than the chips they had had before, but because she didn't know what was going to happen. She imagined horrible reasons why this place had such an explosive name.
"Doctor, what is this?"
He reached out and touched her hand. His voice was soft and his smile not as alien as before.
"To show you the end of the world on our first voyage was a mistake."
She wanted to deny that, but he did not let her.
"It was, don't argue. So, I took you here. Just relax and have fun."
"With what?"
His smile was so boyish now.
"Just wait."
The music faded as another tall, thin alien took the microphone.
"Ladies and gentlemen. You have come here tonight to witness the ultimate event, the thing that started it all. I welcome you, honoured guests, to the greatest entertainment in the whole galaxy. Welcome to the Big Bang, the birth of the universe! Now, enjoy your drinks, the show will start shortly."
Rose finally understood. And they both smiled happily while they waited for their drinks.
END