Ford Joins a Group of Rebel Scientists

"Ford," said Arthur, who was cleaning out his bathrobe pockets, "What are you doing to my wall?"

"Nothing," said Ford. He had put grease in his hair and was wearing black leather pants and a long white lab coat.

"Yes you are," said Arthur, "You're spray painting on my wall."

"Well if you knew, why did you ask?" said Ford, sounding annoyed. Arthur thought about a plausible answer and pulled a toothbrush out of his pocket, followed by a large amount of fluff.

"What I really meant was 'why'," he said finally.

"Why what?"

"Why are you spray painting my wall?" said Arthur, exasperated.

"Because," said Ford, "The galaxy needs to know!"

"Know what!" said Arthur. Ford shook his head sadly at him, and left. Arthur looked at Ford's handiwork. The wall now said "SULPHUR" in large, electric blue letters.

"I don't suppose it washes off…" said Arthur. He went back to his pockets and found the thing that his aunt gave him that he didn't know what it was. He spent a minute trying to figure it out, and failed.

Half an hour later, Ford came back into the room.

"By the way, I've changed my name."

"To what?" said Arthur, "Mitsubishi Guts?"

"No, actually," said Ford. Arthur shrugged and continued to sort his loose change.

"My name," said Ford dramatically, "Is now Phord." Arthur squinted at him.

"Ppphhhhord," said Ford pointedly.

"That's what your name is now," said Arthur, speaking slowly as if Ford was a very small child, "If you go through the trouble of changing your name, you should at least change it to something different. If I were going to change my name, which I'm not, I would change it to Dennis, which is a completely different name from Arthur. There's no point in changing your name to the same thing."

"You're not listening to me," said Ford.

"Yes I am," said Arthur, "You said: 'I've changed my name' and I said: 'To what?' and you said: 'To Ford. Ffffffffford.'"

"Not to Ford," said Ford, "to Phord." He wrote "PHORD" on the wall with charcoal.

"Stop writing on my wall!" said Arthur agitatedly. Ford left again.

"Ford," said Andema, "What are you doing with that enormous block of potassium?"

"I can't tell you," said Ford, "Besides, I have a new girlphriend now. Her name is Phoebe."

"Excuse me!" said Andema, "You're just going to dump me?"

"I'm a rebel scientist now," said Ford, "and you aren't liphty enough to sass me."

"Ohhhh, you're gonna get it," said Andema and went off to find Clap. Ford went off to find Phoebe.

"Do you know what's the hip new thing?" said Zaphod, pushing his hair forward around his faces in what he thought was a rakish manner. And he was right. Zaphod was always right in instances of coolness. Except for the one time when he had misanalysed a situation, and had shown up for his galactic presidential duties in a green and beige striped umbrella hat. It had ended up in all the newspapers. President Beeblebrox Wears Something Not Totally Cool! This, luckily, had been before Zaphod met Trillian, and he spent every day making sure she didn't find out.

"No, tell me!" burbled Eddie in response to Zaphod's question. He knew the answer, of course, being a computer, but his cheerful pre-programmed nature evaluated all popular reactions and decided that Zaphod was asking a rhetorical question and would prefer to be asked than answered. This complicated function took an incredible amount of power from the ship at one time. All of Arthur's lights went out and he walked into a wall, as anyone even slightly clumsy automatically does when the lights go out. This was highly skilled on his part, as he was sitting down. A door shut on Trillian's arm, making her drop her favourite glass. Zaphod, however, noticed none of this.

"Shoving graham crackers up your nose," he said, "We need to go somewhere we can get them."

"Righty-o!" said Eddie elatedly. A sudden, huge explosion rocked the ship. A jet of flame shot through the door and scorched Zaphod's jacket.

"Agh!" said Zaphod, "My Froomian Sploo!"

Trillian, very carefully, managed to extract her arm from the door, just as the power went back on and the door opened. She angrily picked up the remains of her favourite cup. Arthur had walked directly into the still-drying paint and now had a large, electric blue 9 on his forehead.

"Clap," said Andema, "I need you to help me take revenge on Ford."

"Torture," said Clap promptly.

"No!" said Andema, "Don't you have anything that's just humiliating?"

"Yes, I know," she said before Clap could speak again, "'Pain is scary'. I just…grah!" Clap nodded, understanding perfectly and ran off.

"Hoopy," said Ford, looking at the still flaming potassium remains on the other side of the large room.

"Hydratic!" said one of the members of his gang. He was rather tall, with brown hair and glasses. He went by the name of Phelix.

"Wanna go break the Law of Conservation of Matter?" Phoebe asked, clinging to Ford's shoulder and flipping back her shocking green hair.

"Or of gravity!" said Phred eagerly. He was the youngest member of the group: somewhere in his late teens. He was not Betelguesian, unlike Phelix, Ford and Phoebe. He was a Scordan, which meant that he was covered with a fine layer of purple fur with darker purple for his eyebrows and shoulder length hair.

"That's SO untubed," said Phoebe dismissively. Phonebooth, the female Jubanese member of the group, bit her tongue in confusion. As a Juban, she was the ideal alien, skinny and tall with a proportionately larger head. Her eyes were large and a glowing green, and her skin was a smooth greenish grey. Even humans knew the Jubanese, although not by name, because they were as a race, slender, and therefore, ideal for modelling purposes. They were also, however, Earth's natural enemies, because of their unusual language. It was, in fact, English used in an entirely different way. The most harmless and usual sentences in English translated into the most shocking and horrendous statements in Jubanese, and vice versa. This was the reason so many Earth people are abducted by aliens: they somehow insulted the Juban.

"Three angry mole rats bought a house?" said Phonebooth. ENGLISH: Untubed? Phonebooth could understand some English but preferred to speak in Jubanese. This caused a large amount of confusion for everyone except Ford, who knew how to speak Jubanese.

"What a stupid question," said Ford. ENGLISH: It means uncool.

"Why, what'd she say?" said Phred. Phoebe cuffed him. Phred rolled himself into a small purple ball and sulked.

"So, are we going to break the Law of Conservation of Matter?" said Phelix.

"Yes," said Ford and turned a pickle he was holding into a rose. He gave it to Phoebe.

"Oh, how sweet!" said Phoebe. She sniffed it.

"It still smells like a pickle."

"Want to go explode some more things?" segued Ford. Phonebooth bit her tongue in confusion. She did this quite a lot, because it was a real struggle for her to understand English. For her, the last conversation had looked like this.

Phonebooth: Untubed?

Ford: It means uncool.

Phred: 'Whoops' went the eggs for no apparent reason as they were separated?

Phelix: By the egg separator?

Ford: Jelly babies.

Phoebe: What erasers these fish be. Why do the cats attack the lined sheets.

Ford: Who is eating my pumpkin blimp?

Phonebooth tried very hard to understand.

"Wahha!" said Clap, and swung into the room on the cord of an eggbeater. With a large black marker, she drew an "F" on Ford's forehead, then swung away.

"I'm SO embarrassed," said Ford.

"You can't play with me any more," said Phoebe and ran away crying.

"Wow," said Phred, uncurling, "That had double meanings." Phoebe ran in and hit him with a sponge.

"Stop doing that!" said Phred, and went all spiky.

"You look like a plastic hedgehog," said Phelix.

"Only…not," said Ford.

"Eddie…" said Zaphod.

"Yes?" said Eddie.

"Why aren't we getting graham crackers yet?"

"We're going right now!" Eddie enthused.

In Arthur's room, several sacks of graham crackers fell into the room from nowhere. Arthur glanced at them, opened one sack and began to eat.

"Give me that!" shouted Malea, running after Reginald Stubbins.

"Never!" shouted Reginald Stubbins, hugging the globe to his chest.

Andema walked up to Ford and pointed at him.

"HA!" she said, then walked away.

"I'm SO embarrassed," Ford repeated.

"Fishstick," said Phonebooth sympathetically.

THE END

I think it's terribly ironic how I keep ending these stories with THE END. All right. Pretend, for the sake of really bad clichés that I ended this story with THE BEGINNING. Ner.

Oh man, I can't keep a straight face for that.

Okay, so, this one has a very blatant tribute to the Hitchhiker's Guide text computer game. It's so wacky. I can't beat it. It's really hard, and I've never been very good with text-based adventure games because I can never find the right commands. But it's still awesome.

The entire inspiration for this story came from the discovery that a bunch of scientists decided that the proper way to spell sulphur was actually 'sulfur' and that everyone should spell it like that. Then, whilst talking with my friends, we decided that there was a small group of rebel scientists, who fought the power by continuing to spell sulphur with a 'ph'. And they'd go around, you know, breaking scientific laws and pouring water on blocks of potassium. Man, I've ALWAYS wanted to do that. Make a huge, fiery explosion. That would be so fun.

Oh, I forgot. The Jubanese belong entirely to Penny. Great invention, Penny. It's practically a license to be weird and incoherent. And, I took a stab at the singular form of Jubanese, and came up with Juban, so if I'm wrong, tell me.

Mitsubishi Guts is an actual car name. Oh, those wacky Japanese. Or, you know, wherever Mitsubishi is from. Ford Prefect is such a wacky name for a car. But I still want one. That would be so awesome, it's not even funny. Except that it is. Oh well.

Also, I put a quote in, but I'm not going to bother to say what it is, or where it's from. See if you can figure it out. And, of course, anyone I actually know is exempt from this contesty-type-thing.

Saith Rayse: This one is longer… You can always tell which ones I had writer's block on. They're generally quite short. And…wait. Heaven's Hell? I was of the opinion it was only Hell's Hell. And, because I never intend to sequel my Math story, I might as well say it here. You CAN'T convert 3X + 15Y + 34 into a pair of binomials. At least, not in grade 10 math. The X would need to be squared, at least. And the Y can't exist unless you square it as well and add an X&Y to the 34. Which, by the way, is a rather brilliant Coldplay album. However, in Grade 11 math, I'm sure you can do it, using square roots a lot. I just don't feel like it right now. Oh, the blasted imaginary numbers. How you haunt me. Hmmm… Maybe I should do another one with THEM…

Jimmy the Gothic Egg: Random is good. And yes, I am Canadian. Woo, Canada!

nasamuffin: Well I didn't burninate it. Blame Trogdor.

Lily Knotwise: How would Satan spawn math? It's unsubstantial. And it acts as a foundation to many factors of life, so he certainly couldn't have created it. But, yes. The pigs were awesome. And so are you.

Guardian Demon: I don't know what they're called either. And the literary magazine? I missed the deadline. Neh. I'll be ready by the next one, and if I'm not, it doesn't matter. I can just make my story into a screenplay for Playwriting.

MaidM: Yeah, okay. If I, you know, LOSE MY FRICKIN' WRITER'S BLOCK! ARGH! That said, I hope I'm not grounded for your kareoke party OH so much. SO much!

Cap'n Scoff: Woo, groupie! Awesome! Feel free.

BeatlesLover: Yes! Captain Jack Sparrow! Himself! And, you'd think requesting another Penny story would be easy, as we go to the same school, but she, like myself, is also having a horrendous bout with writer's block. I promise, if she writes anything more, I'll bug her until she posts it. Zaphod will want to steal all these socks you've been rocking in.

LandUnderWave: No. Dude, I'm glad you read my stories, but you missed the boat. You didn't read the instructions well enough, and I'm not reneging on my threat. So, no, sorry, I'm not putting you in. Erm…but…is your name from Terry Pratchett's Tiffany books? Wee Free Men?

hacknslash: Okay.

Kyre-JMK-Storm Dragon: But of course. Just credit me with coming up with it, okay? Right-ho.

So, there. A bunch of new characters. Huzzah!