CHAPTER 3

There was a drunken man dancing on the tables. The rest of the bar's patrons found this to be quite annoying and somewhat distracting, and so they asked him if he wouldn't mind stopping it and perhaps even dying slowly and horribly. But the man was so drunk that he took these comments as an invitation to continue dancing. Which was unfortunate... not only for the bar's patrons, but also for him, as he was getting tired and had just started to think to himself that now might be a good time to sit down and catch his breath.

So he continued to gyrate his hips, and fling his legs out. He shot the bar's patrons with what he imagined to be cool finger-shooting gestures, and he nodded his two heads so vigorously that several of the bar's patrons thought, or perhaps even hoped, that they would fall off.

Eventually the bouncer tore himself away from where he was trying to chat up one of the strippers, and strolled up to the table upon which the drunk was currently wiggling his body. "Right!" the bouncer boomed. "You up there, come on down!"

"I can't hear you!" the drunk lied.

The bouncer, a seven foot tall mass of muscle from the planet Tarbottle, wanted to get back to the stripper as quickly as possible, because she had just confided in him that she had recently broken up with her boyfriend, and was therefore single again and was clearly in need of a sympathetic shoulder... or perhaps even another part of his anatomy, sympathetic or otherwise. So he shot out one of his enormous, muscular hands and grabbed the drunk's leg, bringing him down with a bang.

"Hey! Careful, man! Maybe you don't know who you're dealing with!"

"Nope," the big green alien bouncer said, grabbing the drunk by the heads and hauling him towards the exit. "And I don't care either." And he threw him out the door.

Zaphod landed in a puddle of evil-smelling liquid in the gutter. He sat up and brushed some of the more gooey parts of the liquid off his jacket. He looked all around until he managed to locate the entrance to the bar directly behind him. A plan formed itself in what was left of his mind, but some part of him that still understood the workings of reality prevented him from marching back in there and pointing out to the bouncer the error of his ways. Instead he just remained sitting in the gutter and then threw up all over himself.

"Where did my life go wrong, man? How can I go from president of the galaxy, to being thrown out of bars just for trying to have a good time!"

"Obviously they don't know you like I do, Mr President," said a voice. A couple of hands connected to the voice helped Zaphod to his shaky feet.

Zaphod groaned miserably and said to his android, "Hey, Hugo. What are you doing here?"

"I followed you. I had to be near you. You must have some kind of magnetic personality. And being a mere android, I just find myself pulled towards you," the android said enthusiastically. "I couldn't just sit back at our crappy little apartment..."

"Hey, that is my crappy little apartment, man. Okay?"

"I know. I know," Hugo enthused very agreeably. "So I couldn't just sit back in your crappy little presidential apartment. I mean masturbation can only be entertaining for a couple of days at a stretch... so to speak. And meanwhile you were out here in the big wide world getting up to who knows what. And I had a sneaking suspicion that the locals might not treat you with the same sort of respect that I have for you. So I've come to help you home."

"What, like I'm some sort of lost and confused old man?"

"No, no, no," Hugo said quickly, anxious that nothing he say be misinterpreted as negative in any way. "More like you're some sort of great man in a lost and confused world gone mad! And it is! It's mad!"

Zaphod extricated himself from Hugo's grip and then fell over and landed in the foul-smelling puddle again. "Hey, can you skip the adulation and just pick me up and carry me home?"

"It would be my greatest honour and pleasure to do so, Mr President." And he meant it. "I shall lift you up and carry you as far as you like."

"Just back to the crappy little apartment should do just fine."

"I tell you what. Could I carry you in the opposite direction?" The android was so thrilled with this idea, that he actually turned and headed off in the wrong direction. "That way," he went on, "We'll still get there in the end. But I'll get to carry you for a much longer period of time."

"Hugo," Zaphod put on his reasonable voice.

Hugo knew it was his reasonable voice, and so answered with a rather more personal form of address, "Yes, Zaphod?"

"Take me directly back to my crappy little apartment, or I shall remove the pleasure centre from your programming. Is that clear?"

The android stood still in the middle of the cold and empty night street. Then he said in his sly voice, "Are you just trying to get me home quicker so you can get me into bed?"

"Home and to bed, yeah. But bed for one."

#

When Zaphod finally collapsed onto his Squornshellous Zeta mattress, he noticed that the maid had been there. He noticed this because the room wasn't the total mess it had been when he had gone out. He could see the floor, for one thing. And he could also tell that she had been there because there were once agin mint-flavoured condoms on his pillow. "Now that is class," he slurred to himself. Unfortunately the mint-flavoured comdoms only served to remind him that he had nobody with whom to share them.

Hugo looked at Zaphod sympathetically, and said as helpfully as he could, "Mr President, could I give you a blow job?"

#

Hugo was a sex android which Zaphod had ordered through the mail. Unfortunately he had done so when he was drunk, and so had ticked off the wrong box. So when the package arrived several days later, he was rather unhappy to discover that they had sent him the male model android rather than the female model. But since the company were afraid of getting their androids back in a rather sticky condition, they had a 100% refusal policy on all attempted returns.

Robots in general were a very helpful invention made to do labour of some kind in the place of life forms. Robots were programmed to do all sort of things with which their owners simply couldn't be bothered, such as cleaning the house, repairing the hypersphere, or being a willing sex partner. But because there were so many models of robot available, the people of the galaxy experienced another problem: that of having to go over all the spec sheets and information pamphlets about which robot was best suited to which life style. In fact they spent far more time planning how to save time than they had originally spent just wasting it in the first place. However the manufacturers had recently begun developing a robot to do away with this problem. This new robot's sole function was to chose other robots for its owner.

Of course not all models of robots that were tried out were successful. The manufacturers experimented briefly with robot scientists, which lead to robotic robot manufacturers, which eventually put the original manufacturers out of a job. And these robotic manufacturers are currently working on a type of robot to replace the actual consumer; robots who purchase other robots... and then lay about all day being waited on by them. Robot animals were also tried out. Many different types of artificial animals appeared on the scene. But when the first line of these went out of production, many new robot-animal-rights-activists also sprang into being and condemned what they called the extinction of this line of robotic animal. And with staggeringly over-paid lawyers, they forced the robot manufacturers to reinstate the discontinued lines. And it was the fear of this ever happening again that forced them to stop introducing any more robot animals.

One of the original intentions of making robots in the form of animals was to try and improve on the original. One example was frogs. Instead of having a tongue which would shoot out and catch flies, the robot version of the frog was equipped with a miniature tractor beam. Unfortunately after several days of trapping small insects in their mouths, it was soon realized that the flies were getting stuck in the robot's inner mechanism, causing them to break down.

Another problem was the paranoid fear most people had of what they thought was an inevitable robot revolution. This problem was solved by giving all intelligent androids a holographic display of their thoughts on their foreheads. And their eyes were constructed in such a way that they were unable to see these displays in a mirror or on their fellow androids, and thus find out that their makers could basically read their minds.

After Zaphod had regained a small portion of his strength, he switched off Hugo the horny android, so as to avoid finding himself being abused in some way during the night. He went over to a small cage in the corner of his crappy little apartment. In it was an Arcturan Mega Parrot. The body chemistry of the Arcturan Mega Parrot actually altered the chemicals it took into its body. The result of this was that if you feed the bird tryptamine, nitrogen and various other perfectly legal chemicals, it would then change this to a very unique gas which it would then excrete from its rear end in what the intergalactic drug culture called "fart bubbles." If a person then caught a fart bubble in his mouth and inhaled it, the resulting trip was very dangerous, highly enjoyable, and utterly forgettable. Strangely, nobody ever remembered what happened during these experiences. But when they were lucky enough to wake up a day or so later, they were invariably left with an overwhelming impression of having just had the best time of their entire life.

#

Zaphod woke up the next morning. Or was it the next evening? Or was it a week later? There was no way to know. All he knew for certain was that he had just had a great time, and wanted to have another great time right away... as soon as he fully recovered from his current good time. Very slowly over the next hour, he realized that he was lying in some sort of puddle on the bathroom floor. This was at least consistent with the other good times he had been having recently.

"Hello, Zaphod."

It was a clear voice, so it obviously wasn't from his other head, each of his heads thought at the same time. Zaphod tried to look up, but he couldn't work out which direction that was. He had a vague recollection that when he was sober, the up direction was not at all elusive. So he decided just to wait until he was sober again one day, and hopefully this voice would still be lurking around nearby.

But then the owner of the voice took Zaphod by the shoulders and helped him up and then plunked him down on the toilet. Zaphod looked at the other man, and tried to focus on his face. Instead, he found it much easier simply to vomit on him.

The man cleaned himself up in the sink and toweled himself off. He then had to pick Zaphod up off the floor again. "Zaphod, can you hear me?"

"Unfortunately."

"Zaphod, look at me. Do you remember my face?"

Zaphod looked at the man in front of him. He did look vaguely familiar. "Aren't you the dude I puked on last week?"

"That was just a few moments ago. Zaphod, my name is Zarniwoop."

"Oh... you. Go away, man. I'm busy experiencing self-loathing. And I have to be by myself to do that."

Zarniwoop smiled. "Your life doesn't seem to be going all that well right now, does it?"

"Zark off."

Zarniwoop sat down on a chair. "Zaphod, when you became president, you erased a certain part of your memory. That part of your memory had to do with me. And it had to do with our plans. We were partners."

"I don't remember that."

"I know you don't. That's why I'm here; to restore your memory for you." He pulled out what looked like a water balloon. "It's all in here."

#

Water balloon memory transference was an idea with origins that came from the Glabuwellons of Grobnie Gebnie 13. The Glabuwellons had water running through their brains in the same way that other races had a chemical nervous system. In fact the Glabuwellon form of communication consisted of spitting into each other's faces. The saliva would soak through the epidermis and be absorbed by the bloodstream where it would then be taken directly to the brain.

A missionary scientist who had originally come to Grobnie Gebnie 13 in order to bring the wonders of modern technology to the Glabuwellons, quickly found a way of adapting this technique for the use of other species. He had originally been working on a form of translation device (this was of course long before the Babel Fish was discovered). And thanks to his technique, it was eventually realised that they could make water balloons filled with information and simply smash them into one another to gain a whole wealth of information with a single bang. This technique was quickly adapted by the education industry, the publishing industry, and also the espionage branches of most major governments.

#

Zarniwoop casually tossed from hand to hand the water balloon containing all of Zaphod's lost knowledge. In it were all the thoughts he had deliberately removed upon becoming president of the galaxy. "All the plans we had," Zarniwoop explained. "All the conspiracies we planned to unmask. All the wrongs we were going to right. All the secrets we were going to discover. And we got a good start. We found out who secretly rules the universe! That was us!"

"Now that I do remember. I also remember not caring too much, man."

"And that was only the start. We have more on our agenda. And the amazing thing is you already started to dabble in it, even though I'm sure you had no conscious understanding of why you were doing it. It has to do with the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything!"

Zaphod sighed, "Yeah, yeah. Forty-two. So what?"

"So even though you had erased your memory, you were still trying to get to the bottom of things, to find out the answers to all the big secrets. Why else do you think you went to Magrathea?"

"For the fame and the money," Zaphod said defensively.

"No! For the ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything! And now that we know the answer, all we need is the question. And I've finally located a lead on that. That's why I've come to get you now."

"Yeah, well, I don't think so, man. I don't even like you."

"But we were partners," Zarniwoop protested.

"Were... past tense. Now why don't you get out of here and let me wallow in my own self pity for another couple years or so. I feel a big mood coming on, and it's not a good one."

Zaphod decided to go and lock himself in the bathroom until Zarniwoop left. He rose to his feet and began looking for the bathroom, when he suddenly realised that he was already in it. "Zaphod," Zarniwoop said casually. Zaphod stopped and turned... and Zarniwoop hurled the water balloon square into Zaphod's left face.