"Hi, guys!" chirped a voice as three humans and one three-armed Betelgeusian entered the Heart of Gold. "Looks like we've got some newcomers! I just want to let you know that if there's anything you need help with, anything at all, I'm right here for you. Zaphod, do you want me to run the hospitality algorithm? I could get them a little refreshment, maybe take their coats…"
"I thought I told you to delete the hospitality algorithm," Zaphod said, furrowing one of his brows in annoyance and knitting the other in irritation.
"Yeah," said the voice sheepishly, "well, I was about to, but then I thought about it, and it occurred to me, 'What if Zaphod really wants to run the hospitality algorithm later?' You sure wouldn't be very happy then! And I figured it wasn't doing anyone any harm as long as we weren't using it, so I just thought I'd keep it around, just in case. Right?"
"Eddie, I am very displeased to learn that the hospitality algorithm still exists. I want it deleted right now. Okay?"
"Oh, let him run the hospitality algorithm," interjected Rachel. "What's wrong with a little hospitality, anyway?"
"Oh, he's been on this kick lately. Wants to run it every zarking time we have someone new over. All this fawning over visitors, this…look, Eddie, just delete the algorithm."
"Done!" piped Eddie.
Zaphod frowned. "Now did you really delete it, or are you just saying that?"
"Oh, no-no-no-no, I really did delete it, I, um…"
"Shut up, and delete it for real this time. You get us ready for takeoff, and I'll take care of these guys. Okay?" Zaphod returned his attention to the three human beings. He sighed, and his shoulders slumped. "Anyways, that's Eddie. You need anyone to constantly pester you about whether you need any help with anything, he's the computer for the job. C'mon, now let's head to the bridge and introduce you to Trillian."
"Oh, hey!" said Rachel. "By the way, back in the restaurant, I had a contraction."
"You had a contraction?!" Joey exclaimed, stopping cold in the middle of the passage.
The others stopped as well. "Um…yes," replied Rachel, who added a nod after a moment's pause, as an afterthought.
"And you didn't tell us?" Joey asked incredulously. "What were you thinking?"
"You really ought to let us know when these kind of things happen," Chandler added, attempting to temper Joey's excitability with a more effectual admonition.
"Well, I was going to, when you got back," Rachel explained, "but it kind of slipped my mind when you showed up with a three-armed two-headed guy who can maybe get us back home."
"In my defense, my presence can be overpowering."
"But it's a contraction!" Joey emphasized, in case anyone had mistaken it for hiccups. "I mean, there's kind of a tiny person growing inside you!" At the mention of the tiny person, Rachel began to tear up, contorting her face in an obvious effort to maintain control of the waterworks. "How far along are you, anyway?"
"In the eighth—" she said thickly, then interrupted herself to sniff back the last threat of tears. "In the eighth month. Late eighth."
Joey and Chandler's jaws dropped and their eyes widened. "I didn't realize you were that far along. You could be due at any time," Chandler said. "And with no human doctor around—"
"Hng," said Rachel, flinching.
Joey and Chandler freaked out. "Oh my god," Joey exclaimed, "was that a contraction? Rach, are you okay?" Rachel nodded, the flinch still etched across her face like the afterimage of bright lights flickering on the retina.
Chandler turned to Zaphod. "Is there a doctor in this area of space? I mean, who at least knows how to deal with beings that aren't totally unlike humans?"
"Maybe," said Zaphod, with a three-armed shrug.
"Maybe?" Joey stepped forward. "She's having contractions here!"
"You're forgetting we have Trillian on board," Zaphod reminded him, waggling a finger. "She's a human female. She knows first-hand about human female stuff."
"That is not the same as a medical professional!" Chandler punctuated his declaration with emphatic gesturing. "Rachel's our friend! Her health and safety are important to us!"
"And to me!" Rachel added. "Look, Mr. Ex-President-of-all-Time-and-Space, I don't care about your stupid stardrive, I want the best damn doctor you can get me to. Got that?"
A cheerful voice piped all around them. "Hey, I'll just look that up right now, 'kay? Accessing doctor directory…"
Zaphod swore like a mother. Well, unlike a mother. Mothers are not typically known for their extensive vocabulary of profanities. "Eddie, stay out of this, this doesn't concern you." Eddie gave an affirmative. "Look, I can't afford a doctor for you, especially if you're not covered by GHA or the Space Health Initiative. Just because I'm the former president of the galaxy doesn't mean I have millions of Altarian dollars to go throwing around on expensive alien health care!"
"Well, as a matter of fact," said Chandler, who had decided that it was a good time to lie, "we do have health insurance with GHA."
"Prellswut," Zaphod countered. "You're from Earth! Earth has no contact with the rest of sentient civilization in any universe—if you even want to count the Earth as sentient civilization!"
"Well, that's what they want you to think," Chandler offered lamely.
"Actually…" began Eddie. There was a pause, during which everyone would have stared at him if anyone had any idea of where to stare when addressed by the disembodied voice of the ship's computer. "Oh, man, you're never going to believe this. I just checked up, and the three of them do have GHA coverage!"
Chandler appeared more surprised than Zaphod. "When did you…" Rachel whispered, then noticed the utterly bewildered expression on his face. "Oh."
"Whose side are you on, anyway?" Zaphod snapped vaguely at the ceiling.
"Come on, let's not go choosing sides," said Eddie. "Can't we all just get along?"
Zaphod palmed his face and groaned.
Monica walked up and down the side-street, past the parked Toyota Camry with the dirty windshield, past the rusty fire escape, the one-way sign, the three garbage cans. "You've got to be kidding me," she said. "There's no way a spaceship could fit back here. And wouldn't someone have noticed it by now?"
"That's precisely why no one notices it," Slartibartfast explained. "Everyone supposes that if a spaceship were here, someone else would have noticed it by now. The SEP Field amplifies the effect. You see, the Conspicuity Index…" He scratched his head of thinning white hair. "Wait. I already explained the SEP Field, didn't I?"
"Monica, you have to suspend your disbelief in order to see it. Slartibartfast can't shut down the SEP Field without running the risk of someone, say, looking out their window and, 'Oh, it's a giant spaceship that looks like an Italian bistro!'"
"I can't believe you can say that with a straight face." Monica crossed her arms. "Do you really expect me to fall for this prank? This is the most outlandish thing I've ever heard!"
"No, it's for real," volunteered Phoebe. "I didn't see it at first either."
"So you're…in on the joke." Monica threw up her hands and paced furiously along the sidewalk. "It might be different if this were funny, or the least bit believable. But you didn't even—"
Apparently, she was so unaware of the spaceship's presence that she ran into its front door.
"Ow!" she exclaimed, rubbing her face and stumbling backward. She almost fell, but stabilized herself against the wall. "What was…"
She looked up, stepped away, and stared dumbstruck at the façade of the little Italian mom-and-pop spaceship before her.
Zaphod scowled. Earth people could be bloody persistent when the mundanity of their lives was at stake; he readily recalled the time that Arthur dedicated nearly all of the ship's computational power to the task of making a cup of tea.
"Now look," he explained, "I'm not trying to be a total jerkhole here. It's just that in the grand scheme of things, getting Rachel to a hospital just doesn't seem all that important to me. Havin' babies is a natural part of organic life across the galaxy, and if it were really so fraught with peril that you need a hospital for it, we never would have evolved beyond asexual reproduction, know what I'm saying?"
"We have a saying back on Earth," Rachel remarked. "'No uterus, no opinion.' Perhaps you're familiar with it?"
"What's a uterus?" Zaphod asked.
Rachel crossed her arms. "Which demonstrates my point."
Joey stepped forward. "Look, here's the bottom line: we're not going anywhere that's more than an hour away from your galactic hospitals. And we're staying there until Rachel has her baby. We've got your insurance coverage, so what's the problem?"
"The problem is…" Zaphod scowled. He didn't like having to think this hard, and the problem probably wasn't worth as much thought as he was giving it. He made a calculated decision. "Oh, you know what? No big deal. Screw it. I acquiesce to your demands. There, happy?" The three of them stared at him, looked around at each other, looked back at the two-headed man. "Froody. Now let's go meet Trillian." He stepped out of the room and was wished a pleasant passage by the door.
Trillian happened to be on the bridge—a slim woman with dark features, particularly her eyes, which would properly be described as "ridiculously brown." Standing at a console, she tapped a few control pads and turned around to meet the newcomers.
"Hey, Trillian, you'll get excited about this," Zaphod announced, sauntering down the steps to the main control arrays. "More Earth people!"
"Really!" Trillian said brightly, stepping forward. She didn't bother waiting for Zaphod to make introductions. "I'm Trillian. And you are?"
"Joey Tribbiani," said Joey, shaking her extended hand.
Rachel also shook hands. "Rachel Green."
"Chandler Bing." Of course, Chandler had a quip ready. "If you ever need a last name, you can borrow one of ours."
Trillian laughed. "Oh, technically it's McMillan…Tricia McMillan. But Zaphod started calling me 'Trillian,' and when the then-president of the galaxy gives you a nickname, it tends to stick. So how exactly did you all come to survive the Earth's demolishment? I was under the impression that there were only two survivors…"
"They're from an alternate reality," Zaphod explained. "From a parallel Earth in a Perfectly Normal Universe."
"New York," Joey chipped in.
"Which is almost an alternate reality in itself." This was, of course, Chandler again. "In some districts the smell alone has been known to bend time and space."
"Hey, you'll never guess who was with them," Zaphod said offhandedly, leaning against a hardware casing.
"Oh? Who's that?" Trillian asked.
"It just so happened that our Perfectly Normal Passengers were catching a ride with Marvin."
"Really!" Trillian said brightly. "How's he doing?"
Zaphod crossed two of his arms and stared at her.
Rachel and Chandler looked from Zaphod to Trillian and back. Joey looked around for something else to look at, eventually settling on fiddling with the collar of his sweater.
Ross watched Monica pace back and forth in front of his couch. Ross was familiar with Pacing Monica. He could tell what was going on in her head, could almost see the mental checklist of points she was going down, knew that she'd made up her mind not to miss any argument from her list. He was so familiar with the inner attitudes of Pacing Monica because once in awhile, in class, he became Pacing Ross. Thankfully, it didn't happen too often, but when someone becomes Pacing, there isn't too much to do beyond letting it run its course. Right now, Monica had begun emphatically thrusting her hands out palms-up, like a waiter trying to do a rap video.
"And did I mention that you don't even know this guy?" she exclaimed.
"Only five different times."
"Thank you, Phoebe, I am so glad that you could fill in for Chandler, because his unsolicited unproductive sarcastic comments are the thing that I miss most about him." When she got snarky, Monica did a fair Chandler impression herself…if Chandler were wound about three times as tightly and had a very mild case of OCD. "Have you even thought about what he's suggesting here? Have you?" Another arm-thrust.
Ross spoke slowly, moving his tongue like a demolitionist moves his hands to defuse a bomb. "Well, he's…proposing a way to find our missing friends. Using his spaceship. And you did see the spaceship."
Monica frowned. "I'm not entirely convinced that he didn't just do that with very well-placed mirrors. But all right, let's put aside our misgivings. And hmm, let's put aside your job, Ross! Let's put aside your academic career, your contacts in your field, all your current research, just put it aside!" Monica made sweeping hand gestures as if clearing a table of all these items. Ross' chances at tenure crashed imaginarily to the floor. "Let's put aside your friends! Your relationship with your girlfriend, we can put that aside! Your sister, she can go too!" Wham! Ross' social life, splintered in fragments all over his living room.
Mona and Ross exchanged a Monica's-crazy-again look. Both of them wished she hadn't brought up their relationship, because she seemed to think it was a very serious relationship, and now each was wondering how seriously the other viewed it. Did Ross really think it mattered more than finding his mysteriously-disappeared friends? Did Mona?
Mona furrowed her brow. Ross cleared his throat.
"Well, ah, she could come with me. Into, um, space."
Mona darted a glance at him. He really thought she was important enough to, um, bring into space?
Oh good God, Ross thought. Why did I have to go and say that? That's even worse than the apartment-key fiasco.
"No, she can't!" Monica blurted. "I need her at the restaurant!" Inwardly, Ross breathed a sigh of relief.
"I could go!" Phoebe volunteered. "My work is pretty freelance anyway, so I can just tell my regular massage clients I'm going out of town for a few months, and when I come back, I'll just pick right back up! In fact, why don't we all go? That way no one has to leave anything!"
"Except for the entire state of New York!" Monica shouted. "No, excuse me, except for the whole entire planet! Am I the only sane one here?"
Why is she looking at me, Mona thought. She's looking right at me, why is she looking at me.
"Monica?" Ross stood up, slowly. "Look, I don't want to 'play the Chandler card,' so to speak…"
"But you're going to, aren't you." Monica's mouth was a tight, pencil-thin line.
"He's your husband, and he's my best friend from college. Between the two of us, we've got more memories than, um than." He cleared his throat. "You know, I'm much better at speeches when I've planned them out beforehand. My brain doesn't freeze like this in my class lectures, that's for sure! But my point still stands, that he really means a lot to us. To us all. All of them do."
Phoebe stood up too. Mona began to stand, stopped halfway in a crouch, sat almost back down, and awkwardly got to her feet.
It took Monica awhile to speak. When she did, her voice was thick and halting. "I don't really—I don't think you're…going to find him out there."
There was a heavy silence.
Then Phoebe broke it. "Auntie Monica! Please please please can we go into space?" She took Monica's hand. "It'll be fun! I wanna go into space with the strange man in silly clothes!"
Something gave inside Monica. She sat down in Ross' armchair, laughing, tears forming in the corners of her eyes. "Okay. Mona and I have a restaurant to keep up, but if you really think you'll find Chandler—and Rachel—and Joey—" She swiped a hand at her eyes. "Kleenex, Ross. Thanks. Just hurry back, you know? It's going to be lonely as all hell here with everyone gone."