A/N: 'nother chapter up! Woot! And you're in luck, all you Marvin fans, because we've finally got the Paranoid Android into the story. He's been absent from this fic for way too long. Anyway, hope you enjoy, and in your reviews, feel free to offer constructive criticism: I'm always open to ways to improve my writing.

Chapter 8: Bistromathics 101

Parked in the wide metallic expanse of the docking bay, the trio of earthlings found themselves staring at what appeared to be the storefront of a downtown Italian restaurant, complete with overhanging red-and-green-and-white canopy. A sign above the entry hatch/front door read "Luigi's Italian Pizzeria."

"This is your starship?" Joey boggled.

"Yes," said Lorz, thrusting his chest out with just a touch of pride. "The Luigi's Italian Pizzeria, one of the first commercially available Bistromathic-Drive models."

"Sounds like my kind of starship!" Things in the parallel dimension were looking up, at least for Joey.

"And this unwieldy-looking vessel really flies through space?" Rachel asked. "Wow."

"Yep, it's a structural necessity for the drive computations." Lorz walked around to the side, hit a series of buttons on a keypad, clipped off a bit of his hair and stuck it in the DNA-sample verification slot, then stepped back as the entry ramp slid out. "Come on in."

Following Lorz into the corridors of the ship, which (as any science fiction aficionado would see coming a mile away) seemed to occupy much more space than that encompassed by the outside of the ship, the three passed through numerous doors and received thanks for making a simple door happy. However, one door sighed a satisfied "mmmm," adding, "Oh, that was good. Please, walk through me again."

"Ignore it," said Lorz tersely.

But Joey stepped back through it. "Aahhh…that feels so good! Yess!"

"What's it saying?" Rachel asked.

Joey grinned self-assuredly. "Looks like this door really, really likes being walked through. Even doors go for the Tribbiani charm!"

He walked through a third time, back on the side of the others. "Ohhh…oh, yeah!" exclaimed the door. "That's it! Ohhh!"

"Yes, it's really something that you can arouse inanimate objects," Chandler deadpanned. "Are you done fooling around?"

"Okay, sure," Joey assented. "When are we gonna get some food?"

"Ohhh," moaned the door, "don't walk away! Come back and pass through me again! Use me as an entrance…an exit! Anything!"

Rachel shuddered. "That is really creepy."

"See, I told you just to ignore it," Lorz said. "I really need to get that door fixed. Oh, hi, Marvin."

An unexpected movement revealed part of the ship's hardware to actually be an android, whose bulk had concealed the humanoid shape of its body. It possessed a pair of triangular red eyes and an inscrutably sad expression.

"It's you," it stated in leaden tones. "I was just standing in the corner, staring at the wall."

"Great. I've got a couple of people I ran into that I'd like you to meet. This is Chandler" —Chandler extended a hand to shake, but was left hanging— "and Joey, and Rachel."

Chandler withdrew his hand.

Marvin looked them over, during the uncomfortable silence of meeting someone who really doesn't want to meet you. Rachel was about to break it, but Marvin cut in. "They wouldn't happen to be earth people, would they?"

"Actually, yeah. They come from an alternate reality."

The android sighed. In a mechanical, metal-coated being, this pretty much takes the form of a synthesized exhalation from the speakers and a raising and slumping of the shoulders, but it gets the point across. "I'm an earthling magnet."

"See," Lorz explained, "I just so happened to remember that Marvin here once did a stint aboard the Heart of Gold. He's able to locate the ship anywhere in the universe."

"I have a brain the size of a planet," Marvin lamented, by way of elaboration.

"Wow, that's pretty impressive," Joey said.

"Actually, owing to time travel—" But Marvin abruptly halted, shoulders slumped. "No, you would not believe me."

"What? Wouldn't believe what?"

"You can't just leave us in suspense like that," Chandler added. "It's like buying a box of Oreos and finding out that Nabisco stopped filling them with cream. What wouldn't we believe?"

"You would not believe my age in relation to the whole of the universe," explained Marvin.

"Oh yeah?" Joey crossed his arms. "Try us."

"I have a brain the size of a planet. I have calculated from physiological analysis that you are utterly incapable of believing me on this point. Unless I lie."

"Come on, give it a go," they urged.

Marvin let out another long, depressed sigh and conceded. "I am three thousand times the as old as the universe."

"Whoa," Joey pronounced, in a fair impersonation of Keanu Reeves. "Really?"

Marvin shook his mechanical head. "No. I lied. The actual number is thirty-seven."

"I don't believe it," Joey said.

"Impossible," Chandler echoed.

Marvin sighed.

Rachel briefly considered telling him that she believed him, but he would probably see through such an obvious lie anyway.

There was another awkward silence, but then Joey jumped in. "So what about the food? I'm not getting any more…um, un-hungry…here!"

Lorz looked up from a control panel. "I was just getting clearance for departure right now. I'll start the lift-off procedure—computer, begin liftoff sequence and prepare for dining."

"Affirmative," replied the ship's computer.

"Now," said Lorz, "just follow me, and we'll get our table."

"Prepare for dining?" Rachel asked. "You mean the outside of this place isn't just cosmetic?"

"Nope. It may be a starship, but it wouldn't be the Luigi's Italian Pizzeria if it were not, in fact, a pizzeria."

"Great," Rachel said, appearing satisfied. (Joey appeared more along the lines of died-and-gone-to-heaven.) "Marvin, want to join us?"

"No," said Marvin, "robots can't eat. But I could come along anyway if it would help perpetuate the illusion of camaraderie."

Rachel mentally relocated Marvin from the category "people I've only just met" to "people I barely tolerate."

At around 11 PM that night, while she was brushing her teeth, Phoebe heard a knock on her door. She took a swig of water, shouted "Coming!", and realized that she'd gotten the order wrong as she spewed toothpaste-in-solution all over the bathroom floor.

It turned out to be Monica at the door, holding a basket of cleaning supplies.

"Hey, Mon," Phoebe greeted her. "What's up?"

"Me. I can't sleep. Is it okay if I come in?"

"Sure." Phoebe stepped aside and went into the living room after Monica, who dropped into a chair, talking with a kind of breathless anxiety.

"I cleaned my whole apartment. Top to bottom. I dusted and vacuumed and washed the windows and swept the landing while the laundry was—" She stopped. "And everything. I'm just so worried. I have no idea where Chandler is. I haven't heard from him since this afternoon, and do you know what my last words to him were? 'Don't look in my closet!'"

"Chandler is okay," Phoebe reassured her. "He must be."

"Right. We'll go to the precinct and file a missing persons report for all of them in the morning."

"No sign of Rachel and Joey?"

Monica shook her head smartly.

"God, you look tense. You need to get some sleep."

"But I can't sleep," she pointed out.

"You want me to give you a shoulder rub? Fix you some tea? Would that help?"

Without turning from her spot in the chair, Monica spoke. "Actually, um, I came over here to ask if your apartment needed cleaning?"

One of the ship's corridors led back to a lobby just between the restaurant and the outside of the ship. The actual restaurant inside was dimly lit, with recorded accordion music providing some sort of ambience. The décor, Chandler noted, looked as if someone had mistakenly assumed that "Italian" meant "red and white, in a checkerboard pattern wherever possible."

"Good afternoon," said the headwaitress from her podium-y thing with the seating charts and all. "Do you have a reservation?"

"Five for Bavglew at five-thirty," Lorz said, surreptitiously slipping her a seven-Altairian-dollar bill.

"Ah, right, Mr. Bavglew! Right this way."

"I never could get the hang of that," Chandler quietly observed to no one at all.

The party of five (the author snickered at his own cleverness) followed the headwaitress and were seated at their table. In a few moments, they were approached by another waitress, wearing an apron with a pad tucked into the pocket. "Good evening!" she greeted them. "How is everyone doing today?"

"Oh, fine, thanks," Rachel replied, and before she knew what she was doing, she asked, "What can I get for you?"

She covered her mouth with her hands as the party stared at her.

"I'll have the fettuccini alfredo, and my friend here will die of embarrassment," Chandler told the waitress.

"I can't believe I just did that," Rachel exclaimed, after the waitress had taken everyone's orders and left. "It was like completely reflex! You know, from when I was waitressing at Central Perk."

"Not a problem," Lorz said. "I'm pretty sure I can offset the calculations by applying a Mendelevian shift of a few cents to the tip. Right, Marvin?"

"Huh?" Rachel asked.

"What calculations?" Chandler asked.

"The calculations for the ship's Bistromathic Drive. See, it's all based on the behavior of numbers in restaurants. Everything going on in here is part of the parascientific computations of the ship's drive. There's this number called a recipriversexcluson that's anything except what it actually is, and you just shift into hyperspace with a simple linguini modulus and then you don't have to fiddle with Improbability Fields at all."

He was met with blank stares.

But after a moment, something suddenly clicked. "So we get where we want to go by having dinner?" Joey exclaimed. "Dude, I could really get to like this place."

A few tables down, a small simulated child complained that he didn't like pizza. His virtual parents expressed their incredulity.

"Well, if what we do here affects the flight path of the ship, we'd better be on our best behavior," Chandler noted. And then it sunk in. "Oh no! What am I doing here? I'll doom us all!"

"No, no, it's cool," Lorz reassured him, tapping the table with one finger. "Between me and Marvin, we'll be able to compensate for anything you might do in how we tip and divide up the bill, and balance all the equations that way. And the instrumentation isn't as sensitive as you might think."

"Pretty impressive, how you're capable of calculating all of these nuances and mentally adjusting his math for unforeseen factors," Chandler observed.

"Oh, no, you mostly just wing it and it works out halfway okay in the end. Like a lot of life."

In the background, a guy tried to communicate to a friend, via napkin drawings, how the universe was actually made of thought, vibrating backward through time in a conceptual bubble that refracts light back on itself at a single focal point in the center of all reality.

"Hey Lorz," Joey interjected, "did you know that Rachel's havin' a baby?"

"Oh, come on, as if it's not obvious—" Rachel began, but Lorz cut her off.

"No, really?" he asked, suddenly intrigued. "Do you know how many genders it has yet?"

The three friends looked at Lorz as if he had just sprouted wings from his head. "Um," Rachel said after a moment, "well, earth people only have babies with one sex. Male or female. And we definitely know it's a little girl growing inside me!"

"Have you and Ross thought of any names yet?" Chandler asked.

"Oh, we've thought of plenty of names. We just haven't agreed on any of them." She sighed. "Can you believe he wants to name our baby 'Ruth?'"

"I don't see what's wrong with…" Chandler said. He trailed off as Rachel glared at him. "I mean Ruth sucks. So what do you want to name the baby?"

"Something French like Thérèse or Sandrine…" Lorz looked blankly at her. "Oh, right, France. France is a country we have back on Earth, where they have really pretty names. But I don't think Ross would go for it.

"Maybe Lily," she added. "Or Sarah. I know it's kind of ordinary, but Ross doesn't seem to like all the original names."

"How about Jayden?" Chandler supplied. Rachel and Joey stared incredulously at him. "Or how about not. How about if I just don't have any more opinions on baby names ever. Monica can name all our kids."

"Well, my vote's for Lily," Joey said. "I think it's a pretty name."

"Thanks," Rachel said appreciatively.

There was a lull in the conversation.

"So," Marvin sadly asked Chandler, "does consuming the food cause biochemical reactions in the pleasure centers of your brain?"

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy notes a number of experiments conducted by MISPWOSO (the Maximegalon Institute of Slowly and Painfully Working Out the Surprisingly Obvious) to derive a mathematical formula for pleasure based on biochemistry, in order to maximize the physiological sensation of happiness. However, the scientific rigor involved proved so arduously dull that half the scientists involved became chronically depressed, and the project was cancelled. Much as counting calories diminishes the enjoyment of eating in inverse proportion to the number of calories eaten, putting so much effort into having a good time actually proved counterproductive.

The "gay science." The quantification of pleasure. You figure it out.