Really Wild Things
by Nigel Mitchell

(c) copyright 2007

This is a work of fiction. Some characters and settings in this work are based on the property of Douglas Adams. This work cannot be sold or distributed for profit and cannot be altered or changed in content or format without the express permission of the author.



For Douglas



Author's Note



	Those who have read the novel _Mostly Harmless_ might be alarmed to find several of the characters who ended up dying there quite alive in this story. To those, we offer the suggestion that the following events occurred prior to the events of _Mostly Harmless_, but after the events in the novel _So Long and Thanks For All The Fish_. At what exact point those events occurred is best left up to the reader. Those uncomfortable with that suggestion can safely assume this story takes place in a parallel universe where the events of _Mostly Harmless_ did not occur.
	Those who have never read the novel _Mostly Harmless_ can safely pretend this note never existed, and have instead wasted precious seconds in their lives by reading it.



Prologue



	_The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ is a wholly remarkable book containing information that is often enlightening, entertaining, and occasionally even accurate. However, another remarkable book that is not as well known is _The Employee Handbook of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation_. It is not well known for the very good reason that only employees of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation are supposed to know about it. In fact, when the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation found out that a member of a tour guide wandering through the company offices happened to glance at one of the pages of the _Handbook_, the Corporation not only launched a fleet of Aggressive Sales Representatives to locate and destroy the tour member, but it destroyed the tour group, the tour ship, and the home planets of everyone involved as well.
	Needless to say, the tour company was none too pleased about the extinction of its clients and the bad publicity that followed, but the Sirius Corporation gave it a nice fat contract to conduct company tours for the next hundred years, which ended the controversy. The fact that the home planet of the tour company was destroyed a week later by Sirius Cybernetics Corporation warships only led to a decision by the Galactic Better Business Bureau to leave well enough alone.
	The _Employee Handbook_ is immense, almost three times larger than the _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_, requiring that it be distributed in an electronic form as well. It covers every aspect of a Sirius Cybernetics Corporation employee's life from how to brush one's teeth to how to polish one's shoes. It tells how to fill out Form GX-92B (which is the requisition form for a new chair), and how to sit in the chair to extend its life and keep from needing to order a new chair in the first place. It tells how to find customers, how to keep customers happy, how to reason with customers who try to lodge a complaint with the Galactic Better Business Bureau, and how to dispose of the bodies of customers who won't be reasoned with.
	The _Handbook_ even mentions the _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_, but only in the vaguest possible terms to prevent copyright issues. It states that a certain book claims that the most massively useful item a hitchhiker can have is a towel. The _Handbook_ states that this is incorrect. The most massively useful item anyone can have is a paper clip.
	The paper clip, says the _Handbook_, can be used to tighten the tiny screws on the Genuine People Personality circuits of a Sirius Cybernetics robot, straightened to form a needle for sewing up torn clothing before going into very important business meetings, waved in the air to make a point at particularly dull meetings, flicked at members of those dull meetings to wake them up, or even hold together pieces of paper if it still seems to be straight enough.
	It is for this reason that the very first line on the very first page of the _Employee Handbook_ reads: "All employees of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation must carry a paper clip on their person at all times." The _Handbook_ does not say exactly what would happen to someone who was caught breaking this rule, but the word round the office is that it is extremely nasty.
	There is a legend round the office as to how this rule came into existence in the first place. The legend is told to new employees around the Nutrimatic Drinks Synthesizer while they wait for it to dispense something that doesn't taste filthy, which never happens, hence the reason for wasting time around the Nutrimatic Drinks Synthesizer. The story usually goes something like this:
	Far back in the mists of time, before the Third Great Economic Blunder, when life in the Galaxy was good and free, there was a man called Sirius Nottqytt. Nottqytt worked for a company that manufactured artificial cheese for artificial crackers, a very profitable trade in those days when demand for artificial crackers was at an all-time high. In those days, you couldn't get someone to eat real crackers. No, they would push away a tray of real crackers and pound the table forcefully until they got their artificial crackers. And with those artificial crackers, they would want artificial cheese to go with it. Hence, the demand for artificial cheese.
	But Sirius Nottqytt was not one of those who profited from artificial cheese. He only worked there. He was a Secondary Assistant Associate to the Third Co-Manager of the Little Bits of Pepper Division. His job was so insignificant that there is no record that exists anywhere in the Universe as to what he did, and there is speculation that even Nottqytt himself didn't know at the time. But the job involved a lot of paper. Hence, the job required a lot of paper clips as well.
	Nottqytt used to spend much of his time at the company searching for paper clips to hold together his paperwork. In fact, versions of the story claim that eighty percent of his job involved searching for paper clips, another ten percent involved attaching paper clips to his paperwork, and the remaining ten percent involved reviewing the paperwork to figure out why it was so bloody important that it need to be clipped together so badly.
	The job was good until the day came when he could not find a single paper clip. He searched the office all day until he discovered that a freak accident with a quantum corkscrew, a candy bar, and a Static Photon Distribution Vector had caused every single paper clip in the company to disintegrate overnight. 
	The news spread quickly, as did the paperwork on everyone's desks. Within hours, the offices of the company were strewn with loose papers. Reports that had been painstakingly constructed and carefully clipped now lay in piles everywhere. All exits became blocked with paper. Paper cuts became more and more frequent. Panic set in among the employees, which led to fights, then open combat. By evening, the company had collapsed into chaos that only ended when someone set the Artificial Olive Shredder to overload and blew the entire building to smithereens.
	The only survivor of the disaster was Sirius Nottqytt. He had managed to salvage one single paper clip that had been accidentally wedged into the cushions of his chair (which he been sitting in proper to prevent unnecessary wear). With that paper clip, Nottqytt clipped together two documents containing the top secret artificial cheese recipes, then used the paper clip to unscrew the cover of a ventilation shaft and make his escape.
	With his former employer gone, there was a huge opening for artificial cheese, and Nottqytt started his own company using the stolen recipes. Nottqytt became extremely wealthy for a change, which led him to start a new company to manufacture robots that he called the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. This company, Nottqytt said, would make life easier for all life forms in the Universe by manufacturing assistants, servants, and workers of all shapes and sizes. They would be neat, efficient, not too expensive, and easily repaired using only the average paper clip. And the employees would always have enough paper clips. 
	Just to be sure, Nottqytt founded the Sirius Paper Clip Corporation, which flooded the Galaxy with so many paper clips that it triggered the Third Great Economic Blunder. The Blunder wiped out all the artificial cracker factories, triggering the collapse of the artificial cheese factories including Nottqytt's. Fortunately, by that time, the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation had become so profitable that the artificial cheese branch of the company was no longer necessary. Nottqytt went on to become extraordinarily rich and the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation became extraordinarily large and powerful.
	Some have gone as far as to suggest that Nottqytt's experience with paper clips had driven him a bit mad. Those who suggest this are partially correct. They would be fully correct if they omitted the unnecessary phrase "a bit." But since no one has seen or heard from Nottqytt in over five hundred years, his eccentricities are no longer considered a problem for the Corporation.
	Thus, ends the tellers of the legend, is the origin of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation and the insistence on having paper clips. Usually, at this point, new employees undergo a full body cavity search to ensure that they do indeed have a paper clip on their person. Those who do not are dragged away to the manager's offices, never to be seen again.
	Having been told this story, many new employees (who have a paper clip and hence are still round to say it) point out the odd twist in the middle. Why, they invariably ask, would a man go from manufacturing artificial cheese to manufacturing robots? Where is the connection? And what does that have to do with paper clips? And why are the current models of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation robots not easily repaired with paper clips as Nottqytt intended, but require a frightfully large collection of tools hauled in three interstellar megatankers for service calls?
	The answer to the latter question has always been that the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation repair department is the most profitable arm of the company, second in size only to its complaints department. The answer to the former was always written off as eccentricity.
	This assumption was entirely and unequivocally wrong.
	In fact, the real answer has been unknown for hundreds of years, but the time for its revelation has come at last. This, then, is the story of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, the real purpose for its existence, and what it all has to do with paper clips.
	The story begins with a party.



1



	Ford Prefect was at a party, which was not unusual. For Ford, being at a party was like a lion being in a jungle - it was his natural habitat. Ford Prefect was not in fact invited to the party, which was not unusual either. Ford rarely let things like invitations get between him and a party. In fact, Ford preferred to go to parties where he wasn't invited. That way, if something went wrong, no one could identify him later. Only two things made this party unusual for Ford Prefect. 
	We shall see the second thing in a moment.
	The first thing was across the ballroom, laughing and chatting with guests. The thing was known as Eccentrica Gallumbits, the triple-breasted whore of Eroticon Six. Eccentrica had gained a large following not only for her three breasts (which were astoundingly large even judged by the standards of Eroticon women), but for her best-selling book _The Big Bang Theory - A Personal View_. It was, in fact, her party, being thrown to celebrate Eccentrica's one millionth customer, the Premier Vice-King of Muundo Nine. 
	Eccentrica Gallumbits had consumed almost all of Ford Prefect's attention since he had snuck into the party. Ford, in turn, had consumed a third of the planet's liquor supply. Eccentrica had made the mistake of having an open bar at the party.
	But the alcohol was only part of the reason that Ford Prefect was at the party. Ford was a field researcher for the _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_, and had been for many years. He had come to do an interview with Eccentrica Gallumbits for the _Guide_. Or at least, that was the excuse he had given. If, during the process, Ford ended up going to bed with Eccentrica, then so much the better. He had already figured out a way to write the experience off as a business expense.
	Ford was almost hypnotised by Eccentrica. He had seen holograms of Eccentrica, of course. Quite a lot of them, in fact. Yet to see her in person was something else. Her light green skin was the colour of the grassy plains of Atepp. Her three breasts shimmered in the light under an outfit that could only qualify as clothing by two inches. It was no wonder _Plaything_ had voted her the Universe's Most Beautiful Being for twenty years straight.
	Unfortunately, in three hours, Ford hadn't been able to get near her. Eccentrica had three enormous bodyguards round her at all times. Their sole purpose seemed to be keeping people like Ford away from people like Eccentrica. The bodyguards were Puxalli, known for their dense muscle mass as well as their psychic abilities. They could not only withstand a blast from a Kill-O-Zap pistol at ten feet, but could read the minds of anyone within fifteen paces. Anyone who even thought of approaching Eccentrica without her permission ended up on the floor with only a vague memory of fists and searing pain to let them know what had happened. Ford had seen the bodyguards at work several times, and had no interest in being their next target.
	Ford had finally come up with a plan to get past the bodyguards. The plan involved getting extremely drunk. He would get so drunk that his thoughts would be cloudy and disjointed, keeping the Puxalli bodyguards from reading his mind and ripping his kidney out before he got to Eccentrica. The best part about the plan was that he was already halfway there. Ford figured a few more drinks would do it. The tricky part would be to stay sober enough that he would remember the plan long enough to execute it. Ford was already having trouble with that part.
	Between drinks, while keeping one eye on Eccentrica, Ford was having an enthusiastic arguement with a large B'Logg female. He couldn't remember what the arguement was about, but didn't want to admit it, and was doing the best he could to keep up his end.
	Ford snarled, "What about the other one?"
	The B'Logg's horns went missing in folds of skin on her forehead as she scowled. "What other one?"
	"You've never heard of the other one?" Ford yelled. "How can we discuss this like two reasonable beings when you don't even know about the other one?"
	Steam puffed out of the B'Logg's nose in irritation. "But it doesn't make sense if there's another one. I thought that was your whole point, that there's only one."
	Ford threw up his hands, trying to draw the attention of the bemused crowd around him. "Well, if you think that was my point then you obviously weren't listening. Besides, we all know it creates more problems than it solves."
	The B'Logg fumbled with the glass in her paws. It sloshed Arcturan Mega-Gin onto the carpet. "How can it create problems? It doesn't even exist. We're discussing a theoretical concept."
	"Theoretical, my eye! I'm talking about cold, hard facts! It's people like you with their heads up their orifices that cause all the problems in this Galaxy!"
	The B'Logg lumbered away. "You don't even know what you're on about. This is a pointless arguement."
	As she shuffled away, Ford felt the need to point at the ceiling and yell something to put the cap on the discussion, so he pointed at the ceiling and yelled, "That's what they said on El-Qubit Three right before they launched the Second Wave!"
	As Ford finished his Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, he made a mental note to see if there really was a planet called El-Qubit and if there was anything like a Second Wave there. That phrase could come in handy for his next nonsensical arguement. Before he could do that, something extraordinary happened. 
	That was, in fact, the second thing.
	Ford's attention to his drink was broken when he heard a sound like a thousand people saying "wop" at the same time. He had heard that sound before. He had been round the Galaxy enough to recognise those signs as the arrival of time travelers. He had also been round the Galaxy too much to find time travelers interesting. They tended to prattle on about things that would happen in the future or in the past and try to change things that everybody else felt comfortable with, like history. Nuisances, more like it, as far as Ford was concerned.
	Ford was about to execute his plan when he realised someone was tapping him on the shoulder. Six men stood behind Ford. All of them wore purple body armour. All of them carried Kill-O-Zap rifles. Ford wondered why the six men wobbled back and forth and how they managed to do it without falling down. Then he realised it was Ford himself who was wobbling and wondered how he managed to do it without falling down.
	"Excuse me," the soldier said. "Is your name Ford Prefect?"
	"Possibly," said Ford, who had bad experience with that question.
	The soldier held out his hand. A hologram of Ford Prefect's smiling face appeared over his palm. Ford recognised the image from his Betelgeusian starship's pilot license fifteen years ago. He couldn't help thinking how silly his haircut was back then. Ah, youth.
	The soldier nodded. "Visual identity confirmed. Mr Ford Prefect, due to your interference and impact on future events, you have been selected for execution by the Campaign for Real Time. Your execution has been predetermined and confirmed as successful. Kindly do not resist. Your death will be for the good of the space-time continuum. Do you understand?"
	Ford tried to pick out which of the six men was talking to him. "What?"
	One of the other soldiers said, "I told you this was a waste o' time, Lunn. Let's just shoot 'im."
	"No, Fleek," the soldier called Vloon said, "we do this just like we practiced. Do you understand, Mr Prefect?"
	At that moment, it began to dawn on Ford that he might be in trouble. The phrases "your death" and "shoot him" weren't something he liked to have applied to him. It dawned on Ford as his vision cleared that there were only three soldiers, after all. That made things a little easier, but the rifles in their hands still tipped the situation out of Ford's favour.
	Ford recognised the Campaign for Real Time, a group formed to try to combat temporal paradoxes caused by time travelers. Since the discovery of time travel, the space-time continuum had become choked with people trying to change history, followed by other people trying to change history back, and still others trying to change history again, and finally more people trying to clean up after all of them. The result was a timeline that threatened to crumble under the weight of billions of interruptions.
	Under the heading of temporal interference, the _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ describes one of the most frequently cited examples, the Second Toong War. 
	Thousands of years ago, the planet Toong experienced the most horrific and bloody war it had ever experienced. Armies led by a diabolical dictator called Floda Lilto swept across the planet's surface, laying waste to all they encountered. The four countries on the planet collapsed under the weight of Lilto's armies and surrendered to form the Lilto Alliance. Now united under Lilto's demonic rule, the planet built an armada of starships and unleashed an assault on the other planets in the solar system.
	For five hundred years, their solar system raged against the armies of Toong, but one by one, the planets fell under his control. In the last hours of the war, a small team of scientists on the last remaining unconquered planet managed to create a working time machine. Just as Lilto's soldiers broke down the door, a single scientist armed with a single pistol was sent back in time to the town of Hinn when Floda Lilto was born. The scientist shot and killed the young Floda Lilto, keeping him from ever launching the Toong War in the first place.
	Unfortunately, Floda Lilto's flat mate in college, who had originally been killed by Lilto for not screwing the cap onto his toothpaste tube, survived to contract the first case of a virulent disease that came to be known as the Lavender Death. The Lavender Death ravaged the Galaxy, ultimately killing forty umptidrillion people (a number so large that it can only be used for the purpose of describing the number of people killed by the Lavender Death). The handful of survivors decided to build another time machine and send someone back in time to kill Lilto's flat mate to prevent the pandemic from ever occurring.
	Unfortunately, one of the children killed by the Lavender Death ultimately grew up to develop the Aggonizo Nervatic Neutrino Beam, the most horrific weapon ever devised. Once activated, the Aggonizo Nervatic Neutrino Beam could instantly inflict agonizing pain on any living thing in the entire Galaxy until it died. No one could escape its reach. Once discovered, the weapon was built and employed by millions of warlords throughout the Galaxy, leading to long-distance wars of untold pain and suffering, so much so that another team of scientists went back in time to kill the developer and keep him from ever creating the Aggonizo Nervatic Neutrino Beam in the first place.
	And so on.
	Eventually, one enterprising time traveler called Jak Dixama decided that she had had enough, and went back in time to put a bulletproof vest on the infant Floda Lilto, keeping him from being killed in the first place. Even though Floda Lilto did go on to enslave the entire Toong solar system, Dixama decided that the Universe was better off that way.
	Dixama went on to found the Campaign for Real Time, whose official motto was "Quit Screwing Around." The Campaign worked to put everything back to the way it was, and keep time travelers from meddling in the first place. But Ford had never heard of the Campaign using soldiers.
	Ford glanced round the room. The arrival of a time-travelling death squad had apparently put a damper on the party. Even the twelve-armed members of the band had stopped playing to watch. Ford felt a moment's elation at the fact that Eccentrica Gallumbits was looking at him. This had certainly broken the ice between them. Now he just needed to live long enough to say "hello" to her.
	Ford tried to think fast, but the Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters kept getting in his way. 
	"Look," he said, "you say you're going to kill me for my impact on future events. I demand to know what those events are."
	"I'm sorry," the soldier said. "I cannot reveal that information. Your knowledge of the future would impact future events."
	"But if you're going to kill me anyway, then how can my knowledge affect future events?"
	The soldiers looked at each other. Their guns lowered slightly.
	The second soldier shrugged. "He's got you there, Vloon."
	"No, he doesn't. We don't have to tell him anything. We're the ones with the guns here, Fleek."
	They raised their guns again.
	Ford's mind was rapidly coming out of its alcohol-induced stupor. Facing certain death worked better than a cup of coffee. Ford glanced round for the nearest exits as he held up a finger. "But if you kill me before I do whatever it is I'm supposed to do, wouldn't that change history? Aren't you, in fact, causing the temporal paradox you're trying to prevent?"
	"I told you," said Vloon, "this has already happened. We're just carrying out the execution that has already been determined."
	"But if I'm dead in the future, then I couldn't have affected history. So I don't deserve to be executed, because I didn't do anything."
	"Well, you would have if we hadn't killed you."
	"How do you know?" Ford spluttered.
	"Because if you weren't a threat to future events, then we wouldn't have killed you. Obviously. I mean, if you weren't a threat, then why would we have wasted our time and energy comin' down here? Now clam up. We got killin' to do."
	They raised their weapons again.
	Ford thrust out his hands as he played the last card he could think of. "Wait, wait! You can't do this. I know the Campaign for Real Time. I even worked for them on the Krikkit Wars. Slartibartfast! You know him, right?"
	"Slartibartfast," said Vloon, "worked for us years ago, when the Campaign for Real Time went pussyfootin' around. We're through with the velvet glove approach. Now we're into action."
	Ford gave up. Reason wasn't going to work in this case. He wondered why he ever bothered with logic. Lunacy worked much better. 
	That's why Ford whipped his towel out of his satchel, dipped the end in a wineglass someone was holding nearby, and snapped the towel at the soldiers.
	The soldiers jumped back in surprise, which was what he hoped would happen. Ford knew his towel couldn't hope to puncture the soldiers' purple armour. But it gave him the distraction he needed to dive under a table of hors' douvres.
	The table exploded as energy bolts slammed into it. Ford crawled frantically across the room, dodging a rain of splinters. The party collapsed as men, women, and beings ran screaming from the attack. Eccentrica Gallumbit's bodyguards rushed her out of an exit and blocked the door behind her. They were hired to protect Eccentrica and screw everybody else.
	Ford Prefect ducked out from under the table just as it disintegrated. He dove behind an ice sculpture carved into a shockingly obscene shape, which began to melt as the soldier fired their energy bolts into it. As hot water splashed over Ford from the sculpture, he tried to look for another way out. All the exits were either jammed with people rushing out or jammed with people rushing in. A few guests had drawn out weapons and fired them at the Real Time soldiers, but the energy bolts, bullets, and missiles just bounced right off their purple armour. There was no escape and no salvation. Ford closed his eyes and waited for the end to come.



2



	At that moment, a large object came crashing through a nearby window. The object plowed into the three soldiers, knocking them to the floor. As the object flew over them, flames pouring out of the object's engines blasted the three soldiers out of the window the object had crashed through. Ford could hear their screams fade as they tumbled fifty floors to the ground below. 
	Ford held up his arms in terror as the object rushed towards him. It crashed through the ice sculpture, shattering into a billion pieces. The object rammed into Ford's chest, knocking him to the floor.
	And the object stopped.
	Ford sat up, gasping for breath. He could now see the battered object which had saved him, clearly.
	It was an ePigeon.
	The Earth was first destroyed in 198-, a decade before the ape-descended life forms (who were so amazingly primitive) ever had a chance to think electronic mail was a pretty neat idea. In fact, much like many other technological innovations on Earth, electronic mail had been developed thousands of years throughout the Galaxy before anyone on Earth ever thought of it. And, much like many other technological innovations, the rest of the Galaxy had gotten thoroughly sick of it.
	The progress of electronic mail throughout the Galaxy is familiar and painful. On every planet, someone comes up with the rather clever idea of sending letters in a digital form. The system is set up and becomes widely-used within a few years, during which time people come in contact with friends and relatives they hadn't talked to in years, form close relationships between beings who would never otherwise have met, fall in love sight unseen, and the system is hailed as a revolution that will unite whatever planet happened to be using it.
	Within a decade, electronic mail becomes a nuisance. The use of grammar is the first casualty, leading thousands of linguists to suffer fatal heart attacks from frustration. Then the users begin to grow frustrated at the thousands of emails they receive consisting of jokes, funny holographic images, random non-sequiturs, and messages from people that reminded them why they hadn't talked in the first place. Then the sheer volume of electronic mail increases to the point where no sentient being could read all of them, resulting in fatigue and a loss of productivity that cripples industries all over the Galaxy.
	Along with that comes the flood of electronic advertising that signals the ultimate downfall. Advertisements for medication to increase or decrease the size of various appendages, brand new business opportunities that require large amounts of money and give very little or nothing at all in return, and pleas for help from doomed planets that never truly existed flooded the electronic mail system to the point of chaos.
	Within a few decades, the average electronic mailbox on the planet comes to have as many as seven hundred gogolquillion electronic mails a day, leading to the complete collapse of the system.
	After a millennium of the cycle repeating itself on millions of planets, the Galaxy adopted the far easier system of instantaneous video communication, but a few chose to defy the whole system entirely. Hence, the electronic Pigeon, more popularly known as the ePigeon.
	Many planets evolved with the concept of sending information by attaching them to various birds, many of which happened to have the name "pigeon" (due to one of those linguistic anomalies that send structural linguists who examine it right into the nearest asylum. For more information, see "jynnan tonnyx" in the _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_). The idea of reviving the system seemed delightfully innovative while still carrying the flavour of nostalgia.
	The first attempts at creating a pigeon-based system across the Galaxy failed miserably, due to the fact that pigeons don't fare too well in the vacuum of space and those who did fared even worse trying to make it through planetary re-entry. Hence, the developers of the system grudgingly switched to a robotic pigeon instead of an organic one.
	Of course, once the robotic threshold had been crossed, progress moved rapidly. The electronic pigeon was fitted with a small hyper-drive to speed up delivery, heat-shielding to protect it during re-entry, and a vastly enlarged interior to carry packages as well as letters. The resulting ePigeon was a huge success, but an equally huge disaster as well.
	The final change that led to the failure of the ePigeon system came when the developers tried to make the system as quick and reliable as electronic mail. Fitting the ePigeon with an extremely powerful DNA-flux spectrometron was their solution so that it could detect the genetic pattern of its intended target millions of light-years away, allowing it to home in on the receiver from anywhere in the Galaxy. 
	Receiving a message from an ePigeon usually consisted of minding one's own business when a ten-foot ePigeon came crashing through the walls of your home or office, hurtling towards you at the speed of sound, coming to a halt only when it came in contact with your skin, thereby knocking you to the ground. The fact that it would then settle down, open its hatch, and deliver your message did nothing to improve things. Adding the cost of repairing the damage to the building or health of the receiver from an ePigeon delivery made it too expensive, and the system was disbanded.
	However, there have been ePigeons sent many years ago whose hyper-drive malfunctioned and delayed their arrival. For this reason, ePigeons are still wreaking havoc throughout the Galaxy, despite the efforts of numerous bounty hunters and engineers to track them all down.
	Ford assumed this was one of those ePigeons as he coughed and waved his hands to clear away the clouds of smoke billowing around him. The ePigeon's engines whined as they powered down. The mechanical bird looked at him with glowing red eyes.
	"Identity confirmed," the ePigeon chirped. "Delivery to Mr Ford Prefect from Stagyar-Zil-Doggo."
	Ford groaned immediately at the name. Stagyar-Zil-Doggo was his editor at _The Hitchhiker's Guide_. He didn't get along well with Ford. He tended to be picky about things like grammar and spelling in Ford's entries. Stagyar tended to fire energy cannons at anyone who entered his office without fresh copy for the _Guide_. Ford hadn't set foot in Stagyar's office in four years. The last time, Ford had worked out a complex series of defence manoeuvres that including diving behind various sculptures and drink carts in Stagyar's office. He had only stayed long enough to drop off his latest expense report, then dove out the window with energy bolts blasting in his wake.
	The ePigeon's tail lifted and a metal egg rolled out into the puddle of water on the floor. Ford fished the egg out of the water. When his fingers clutched the egg, a scanner read his fingerprints. The egg cracked open and a hologram formed on the egg's surface. The image swirled into the scowling face of Stagyar-Zil-Doggo.
	"Sorry to do this to you, Ford," Zil-Doggo growled, "but since you don't answer your communicator or check your mail and run away whenever we send someone to talk to you in person, this was our last option."
	Ford had to admit that he hadn't made himself easy to find. His expense reports had reached the point where they would upset the Galactic economy if they weren't re-paid.
	Ford looked up to see that the entire ballroom had been emptied. Even the ePigeon had turned itself and blasted itself out the nearest window back to wherever it came from. Ford shook the water off his satchel and ran for the exit. As he ran, the hologram flickered on the egg in his hand.
	Ford glanced down to see Zil-Doggo adjust his glasses and say, "I've got good news and bad news. The bad news is, _The Hitchhiker's Guide_ has been sold to another company, the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation."
	"Oh, starpox," Ford murmured as he crept down a hallway. He had always enjoyed the management style of the _Hitchhiker's Guide_'s former owners. They pretty much let him do what he wanted, as long as he turned in a new entry every now and again. He hoped things wouldn't change too much under Sirius. 
	"The good news," Zil-Doggo continued, "is that you've been promoted to editor. Effective immediately. Congratulations."
	Ford skidded to a halt, staring at the mechanical egg glowing in his hand. "You've gotta be joking!"
	Of course, the recorded message didn't answer. Zil-Doggo just grinned. "We expect you to report to work in three star-cycles. Your new office is in Section 28115 of Maze City on the planet Sirius IV. If you're not there by the deadline, you'll be terminated. By a squadron of Vogon deathnaughts. Good luck, Prefect. You'll need it."
	The hologram collapsed, leaving Ford stunned and irritated.
	Like many throughout the Galaxy, Ford knew little about the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. The company manufactured many of the products he used each day, from robots to drink machines, but it didn't go out of its way to publicise itself. The Sirius Cybernetic Corporation loomed over the Galaxy like a cloud, but Ford had never met anyone who worked for it, nor had he ever seen its headquarters. Yet Ford had formed a very strong opinion of the Corporation - he hated it. The Corporation did a lot of things, and none of it very well.
	Without a doubt, Ford's opinion of the Corporation was most affected by his relationship with Marvin the Paranoid Android. Marvin had been a robot shipped along with the starship _Heart of Gold_, which Ford's semi-cousin Zaphod Beeblebrox had stolen years ago. Marvin had come equipped with what the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation called a Genuine People Personality, designed to reflect real human emotions. The result was a chronically depressed robot that did nothing but complain about everything it encountered or was asked to do. Marvin had an uncanny skill of making everyone it met miserable. If that was the best the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation can do, thought Ford, then it was a pretty sorry excuse for a company. And yet somehow, the Corporation had a virtual monopoly on robotics, so it couldn't be all bad. Either that or the other robotics companies were worse, which was a frightening thought. 
	Ford Prefect paused at the end of the hallway. He could hear gunfire, screaming, and explosions. He tossed his towel round the corner. When nothing attacked it, Ford risked ducking his head out to see for himself.
	He could see into the lobby of the Ix'Ff Hotel where Eccentrica's party was being held. It looked like the three soldiers from the Campaign had survived the fifty-story fall and were trying to get back inside the building. A platoon of security robots had intercepted them. Energy bolts flashed everywhere as the robots and soldiers exchanged fire. Flames licked the walls as beings ran for cover from the fierce combat. In all the chaos, Ford managed to retrieve his towel and slipped out of a nearby hole in the wall.
	Ford ran through the streets of Eros City, cursing under his breath. He didn't know which was worse, that they had sold the _Guide_ to the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation or that they had made him an editor. Of all the things Ford had tried to avoid in his life, working in an office had always been at the top. Ford had become a researcher and writer for the _Guide_ for the specific purpose of avoiding responsibility.
	Ford enjoyed his life as a field researcher for the _Guide_. He had no interest in being an editor. Ford had always felt sorry for editors, the poor blighters. While Ford lay on a beach on Xinka Prime, sipping Jovian ale and watching gorgeous women playing jilliball (a very complex game that involves a lot of jumping up and down, bending over, and wiggling various parts of the body), the editors sat behind a desk all day, reading countless mind-numbing entries on everything in the Galaxy, and being forced to correct the endless mistakes of billions of field researchers. Ford usually threw in a few extra typos and made up words in his entries, just to make the editors' lives more interesting. And now Ford had become one of them. Belgium. 
	Ford headed for the spaceport, where he would hitch a ride aboard a ship headed for Sirius IV. He had to get there as quickly as possible and show them how bad an editor he would be, so they would demote him back to field researcher. The sooner he got to Sirius IV, the sooner he could get away from it.



3



	Space travel, Arthur Dent had discovered, could be incredibly lonely. Exciting? Yes. Confusing? Frequently. Heart-poundingly, mind-numbingly, hair-raisingly dangerous? Absolutely. But also lonely. Arthur Dent had spent many years wandering the Galaxy, accompanied only by aliens and robots who regarding him as little more than a semi-evolved monkey. The only being Arthur had met that he could even slightly relate to had been Trillian, the only other survivor from Earth before it was destroyed. But Trillian had left Earth many years before he met her and was so acclimated with space travel that Arthur found he had little in common with her. And so, Arthur felt isolated and alone on planets with billions of sentient beings, most of whom seemed to have more eyes and limbs than he felt comfortable with.
	That was until Arthur had discovered that Earth had been miraculously restored, and returned to find a beautiful and intelligent woman called Fenchurch. They had fallen madly in love and left Earth several months ago to find God's Ultimate Message To His Creation. Once they'd gotten that over with, they decided to wander the Galaxy a bit before returning home. And so, Arthur found himself travelling the Universe with a companion at his side, lonely no more.
	Unfortunately, Arthur hadn't prepared Fenchurch for the other thing he had discovered about space travel. He had known this moment would come, but they had hitched a ride on a luxury starship and he hoped to postpone it as long as he could. But now the time had come. The starship had dropped Arthur and Fenchurch off at the Ruaria spaceport, and Fenchurch had turned to Arthur and said the words he had dreaded for months.
	Fenchurch said, "I have to use the lavatory."
	"Ah," Arthur said as they walked through the crowded centre of the spaceport. "Well, that's something we need to discuss, dear."
	Fenchurch raised her eyebrows at him. "Discuss? What's there to discuss? I've just been looking round and can't seem to find the Ladies' room."
	Arthur cleared his throat as he began walking towards the lavatories. "Well, yes, you see, you must remember where we are. With the number of species throughout the Galaxy and the various anatomical differences between them, using the lavatory can be a bit tricky."
	"Tricky? How tricky can it be to use the loo? I've done it before."
	"Well, you see, our quarters in the starships we've ridden on so far had a species-specific lavatory. Here in the spaceport, it's a bit more complicated."
	Arthur reached into his satchel and pulled out his copy of the _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_. He pulled up the menu and said "Lavatory" to it. He handed the book to Fenchurch and let the _Guide_ tell her what he couldn't. The _Guide_ spoke in a soft and reassuring voice. This is what it said: 
	"There are four hundred million billion trillion species throughout the known Galaxy, and nine trillion of those are sentient beings. Of those nine trillion sentient beings, six trillion of them excrete waste products. And so, it is the lavatory and not the wheel that is the most common invention in the Universe.
	"Of course, the definition of a lavatory varies widely from species to species. For example, the Viluminoo of Monarch Nine are a beautiful species with multicoloured wings that spend their entire lives singing music and floating through the purple skies of their homeworld, their only bodily secretion a light and sweet-smelling cloud. As a result, they have no lavatory to speak of, save a silken cloth round their necks which collects the cloud for sale throughout the Galaxy as a highly prised perfume.
	"At the other end of the scale are the Vogons whose waste product is a substance with an odour so powerful that it doubles as a form of nerve gas, and that can only be destroyed with temperatures found within the core of the average sun. As a result, their lavatories consist of three-story silos that launch high-velocity air-to-ground thermonuclear missiles when the lever is pushed. The Vogon equivalent of lavatory paper is best left up to the imagination.
	"Because of the enormous variety in both the content and method of waste secretion among sentient beings, as well as variations in anatomy and culture, the simple concept of the public lavatory has been one of the greatest technological hurdles in Galactic science since the invention of the hyperdrive. As the number of sentient beings congregating in one place has increased, the difficulty of creating a communal lavatory area has likewise increased.
	"In the first few years of interplanetary travel, public lavatories were built to accommodate the most common genders of male and female, but a successful lawsuit by the Hurrmafurra, whose species includes a third gender, led to an additional lavatory. That led to another lawsuit by the Koth'La of Xiramir, a species so shy that they cocoon themselves in a silken ball fifteen feet thick for a hundred years whenever they forget someone's name. The Koth'La protested that, according to their religion, they cannot use a lavatory with another intelligent being within one hundred yards. This led to an additional lavatory required just for Koth'La in all public lavatories.
	"The flood of lawsuits that followed crippled the Galactic court system for hundreds of years, and led to so many different forms of lavatory required for every public place, that facilities either did away with lavatories altogether or were forced to build an artificial moon in orbit round the planet to accommodate them.
	"It was after the infamous Ladies' Restroom Waiting Line Riots of Viltvoodle Four that the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation introduced a solution in the form of the Universal Waste Management System, known more commonly as the Uni-Loo. The Uni-Loo used state-of-the-art technology as well as artificial intelligence to adapt itself to the shape and form of every known species in the Galaxy. The Uni-Loo was designed so that anyone who sat or hovered or inserted various orifices onto it would find it both comfortable and convenient to use, without needing a separate restroom.
	"The Uni-Loo has revolutionised public lavatories. And of course, since it was built by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, it almost never works."
	Fenchurch blinked as the entry came to an end. "What does that last part mean?"
	Arthur patted her on the shoulder as they came to the lavatories. "Um, you'll find out soon enough. I just wanted to prepare you. As the _Guide_ explained, there isn't really a ladies' room to speak of."
	Fenchurch shrank back. "You mean it's unisex?"
	"Uh, more like uni-species. So you may come in contact with other aliens using the facilities, which can be a bit, uh, jarring at first. And using a Uni-Loo for the first time can be quite an experience. It has about as much in common with a lavatory on Earth as a paper airplane has got with the Space Shuttle. And it, uh, tries to talk to you. The only advice I can give is that, no matter what it asks you to do, do not insert any part of it into any part of your body. And try to keep your mouth closed."
	"If I didn't have to go so bad, I'd jolly well hold it in."
	Arthur put his arms around her shoulders. "It's sort of like jumping into cold water, dear."
	"It's shocking at first, but after a while, you get used to it?"
	"No, you shriek and shiver and shake and get shriveled up and wish you hadn't done it in the first place."
	Fenchurch took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and marched into the lavatory. That was what Arthur loved most about her.
	Arthur sighed and turned away to survey the list of upcoming flights. He was hoping to hitch a ride to Ursa Minor Beta. It was lovely this time of year. There was a Zyfff cargo megafreighter heading there with a load of lemons for mixed drinks. The Zyfff weren't too hard on hitchhikers, and the last time Arthur had ridden with them, they taught him profanity in one hundred different languages.
	He heard a sound like a thousand people saying "wop."
	Arthur's heart tried to jump into his throat. The last time he had heard that sound, an army of white robots had tried to play cricket with his skull. He spun. No one else in the spaceport seemed concerned about the noise. 
	Arthur grabbed the arm of a man with silvery skin walking by. "Did you hear that? It's the Krikkit army!"
	"What's the problem, mate?" the alien yelled as he shook off Arthur. "Never seen time travelers before? Nuisances."
	Arthur's panic reached a whole new level as he realised the sound came from inside the lavatory that Fenchurch had gone into. He turned to run towards the lavatory just as it exploded.



4



	An explosion that blew the lavatory's doors off threw Arthur back. He landed on a pile of debris that had once been a very stylish set of tables and chairs. The tentacled creatures that had been chatting at the table over a cup of coffee went off squealing into the crowds. 
	Arthur coughed his way back to consciousness through a cloud of dust. His back hurt, but he had landed on the towel in his satchel, which had cushioned the blow. His main concern was Fenchurch.
	The explosion had torn the front wall of the lavatory off, exposing the grimy tiled interior. Aliens ran out of the smoke-filled lavatory, trying to zip up their trousers or pull down their skirts. Arthur couldn't see anything inside. He ran into the smoke-filled room.
	When he regained consciousness on the floor, Arthur wrapped his towel over his nose and mouth to keep from suffocating on the smoke again, then continued inside.
	The smoke made his eyes burn as Arthur waded through it. He called out Fenchurch's name into the gloom. Strange shapes loomed all around him, all cursing and fleeing for the newly widened exit. The air was thick with foul odours that Arthur thought was the stench of burning flesh and death, but then he realised it was just the usual odours for a spaceport public lavatory. Just as Arthur started to despair, he heard Fenchurch cry out.
	Arthur plunged down an aisle towards her voice. He passed several stalls, some open, some closed, some torn open with the door dangling off its hinges. Fenchurch called out again, and it was coming from one of the broken stalls. The smoking crater in front of the stall told him that the blast had been centreed on that one stall. He rushed up to it and wrenched the remainder of the door off.
	A Uni-Loo sat inside the stall, a spherical mass of pipes, wires, chrome, and porcelain. "Share and Enjoy," the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation's motto, was painted on one side. It looked like the explosion had only smudged it. Any device built to survive Vogon waste had to be built to last.
	Fenchurch's voice came out of it. "Arthur, are you out there?"
	"Fenchurch! Yes, I'm here." Arthur ran up to the Uni-Loo and pushed the button to open it.
	The Uni-Loo spoke in a soft and pleasant voice. "Thank you for using the Universal Lavatory Waste Management System. I'm sorry, but this facility is currently in use. Kindly find another stall."
	Arthur pounded on the Uni-Loo. "Open up! Let her out right now!"
	"I'm sorry," the Uni-Loo purred, "but this facility is already in use. Only the user can open it."
	"Fenchurch, you have to open it from the inside."
	Arthur heard pounding inside as Fenchurch yelled, "I'm trying, but I can't figure out how to open it. Is there a button or switch?"
	"My sensors," said the Uni-Loo, "indicate that the user has not used the facility yet. Until it has been used, I cannot open the door."
	"What?"
	"Oh," said Arthur, "I forgot."
	"What's it on about?"
	"Well, the Uni-Loo is set up to automatically flush and open the door when it senses you've finished. It's sort of like those lavatories on Earth that don't have a handle and only flush when it senses you get up. You have to, um, use it before it opens."
	Fenchurch pounded on the door again. "But I don't have to go anymore. I was just almost blown to pieces. That's the last thing on my mind. Can you just open the door?"
	"I'm sorry," the Uni-Loo sighed. "But I cannot open the door until the facility has been used."
	"Why not?" Fenchurch yelled.
	"I'm sorry, my programming is quite specific."
	"Oh, for Pete's sake." There was a splashing noise.
	The Uni-Loo's voice turned cold. "Oh. I see how it is. Fine."
	The Uni-Loo cracked open like an egg, leaving Fenchurch crawling out, soaked in a mixture of sweat and lubrication fluid, gasping for air.
	Arthur pulled Fenchurch out of the Uni-Loo. "I thought you said you couldn't go."
	Fenchurch rubbed a sleeve on her forehead. "I couldn't. I poured out my soda."
	The Uni-Loo snapped itself shut. "I can tell when I'm not wanted. If you're going to be like that, then go ahead and leave. But the next time you have to go, don't bother coming 'round here, because you won't get any sympathy from me."
	Fenchurch kicked the Uni-Loo. "Are there any mentally well-adjusted machines in this Galaxy?"
	Arthur led her through the clearing smoke, heading for the exit. "None that I'm aware of. What happened?"
	"I haven't the faintest idea," Fenchurch gasped. "I was heading into the stall, when these three men in purple armour came out of nowhere and said they were sent to kill me. I tried to talk them out of it, and they said they'd had enough of arguing with people they were going to kill and fired a rocket at me. If I hadn't dove into that thing, I would've been blown to pieces."
	Arthur hugged her to himself. "Good lord, why would anyone want to kill you?"
	"Not a clue. They said it was for something I was supposed to do in the future or something like that. Said they were from the Campaign for Real Time, whatever that means."
	By then, Arthur and Fenchurch had found their way out of the lavatory, but Arthur stopped and turned to face her. "The Campaign for Real Time?"
	"Yes. Do you know them?"
	"Yes. Even worked for them for a while. If this has got something to do with them, then it's got to do with time travel. This could get a bit sticky."
	Fenchurch moved out of the way of a trio of fire-control robots that arrived to put out the fires in the lavatory. "Time travel? Is that possible?"
	"Oh, yes. Done it a few times myself, never really cared for it." Arthur began digging through his satchel. "We're going to need help."
	"What kind of help?"
	"Slartibartfast."
	"Did you just sneeze?" asked Fenchurch.
	Arthur pulled out his copy of the _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ again and began pushing buttons. "It's a name of a very old man who travels through time quite a bit."
	"I'm assuming that means our trip to Ursa Minor Beta is canceled. Well, go find us a ship. I'm going to find another lavatory. One where I won't get blown up."



5 



	Many people would be shocked to see the ex-President of the Galaxy lying in his office in an alcohol-induced coma, surrounded by empty bottles of Arcturian Mega-gin. Tricia McMillan, more commonly known as Trillian, was not one of those people. In fact, she had come to the office armed with a Neutra-Hol gun to get him out of it.
	The Neutra-Hol gun was supposed to instantly neutralise any alcohol in the system of the target, as well as stimulate the nervous system to bring the target to full consciousness. The Sirius Cybernetics Corporation advertised the gun as "a stiff cup of black coffee with a trigger." The results were not quite as enjoyable.
	Trillian walked into the office of Zaphod Beeblebrox, aimed the gun, and fired. 
	Zaphod Beeblebrox jumped the minute the orange beam hit him, screaming at the top of his lungs. He landed on one of the bottles, which rolled and sent him flying backwards onto the floor. His two heads banged together, which only made his headaches worse. Zaphod lay on the floor, cursing furiously.
	Trillian slipped the gun into Zaphod's desk drawer. "Good morning to you, too, Zaphod." 
	Zaphod groaned and sat up, rubbing his foreheads with his second and third hands. "I thought you were dead." 
	Trillian folded her arms and looked pointedly at a still-smoking hole in the wall by the door. "No, you missed. Next time you try to shoot me, make sure you're not drunk. Your aim will be better."
	"Starpox." Zaphod staggered to his feet. "Refresh my memory. Why did I try to kill you again?" 
	"I told you about the debate." 
	"Oh, yeah, the debate." Zaphod began sifting through the bottles at his feet to find one that wasn't empty. "What debate?"
	Trillian gave him her thin smile, the one she used to keep from screaming at him. "The debate with Erog Shub." 
	Zaphod picked up one of the bottles and turned it upside-down over his left mouth. A couple of drops came out and landed in his left head's mouth, which smacked its lips. His right head frowned as it said, "Right, Erog Shub. Who's Erog Shub?"
	Trillian lowered her head, counting slowly to herself. She often had this debate with herself about whether or not Zaphod Beeblebrox was as stupid as he behaved. She was still learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn't understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid. He was renowned for being amazingly clever and quite clearly was so - but not all the time, which obviously worried him, hence the act. He proffered people to be puzzled rather than contemptuous.  This above all appeared to Trillian to be genuinely stupid, but she could no longer be bothered to argue about it. 
	"Okay," Trillian said, "we had this conversation last night, and it ended with you shooting at me, so let's try this another way." 
	Trillian went over to the Tri-D and turned it on. The hologram came up showing a huge auditorium with a man in a tuxedo dominating the view. The man looked thin and gaunt, dead except for a brilliant smile. He was Max Quordlepleen, known throughout the Galaxy as the host of Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Zaphod had slumped in the chair behind his desk, but just the sight of Quordlepleen made Zaphod sit up at attention.
	Quordlepleen faced the Tri-D camera robot with a thin microphone at his mouth. Trillian had caught him in mid-sentence. "-required three different kinds of pudding. But that's all been sorted out, and we're all set to begin this truly extraordinary debate between Zaphod Beeblebrox and his opponent, Erob Shub."
	One of Zaphod's heads turned to Trillian while his other head kept watching the Tri-D. "Opponent? What's that Mr Twister pleening on about?"
	Trillian just bowed her head and waved at the screen. "Keep watching." 
	Quordlepleen brushed his collar with a thin hand as he said, "I'm glad you could join us, I really am. I'm told the entire Galaxy is expected to be tuning in to watch this, the first public Tri-D appearance of Zaphod Beeblebrox since he stole the legendary starship, the _Heart of Gold_, and became the most wanted man in the Galaxy. And what a way to return, eh? Here to discuss Zaphod's bold re-election campaign-"
	Zaphod jumped out of his chair with both his heads screaming, "What?" 
	Trillian took a step back. 
	Quordlepleen continued, "-is Beeblebrox's former brain care specialist, Gag Halfrunt." 
	The hologram split to show a smiling man that Zaphod knew all too well. Halfrunt sat in a comfortable armchair, floating in mid-air by Quordlepleen's shoulder.
	Quordlepleen turned to look at the man hovering next to him. "Professor Halfrunt, it's wonderful to see you again. So glad you could join us on such short notice. I just wanted to ask you, briefly, if you have any explanation for this decision to run for re-election as President of the Galaxy, one of Zaphod's boldest and most bizarre actions yet?"
	Halfrunt smiled the smile of a man knowing he was getting billions to talk for ten seconds. "Well, yes, Max, it's all in my new unauthorised biography and brain analysis of Zaphod Beeblebrox, due to be transmitted to a store near you."
	He pushed a button on his armchair that replaced him with the cover of a book that bore the title: "Zaphod's Just Zis Guy, You Know?"
	Zaphod lunged from the desk, grabbed the gun inside the drawer, and fired wildly at Trillian. 
	Trillian stood her ground as the orange beam hit her over and over again. "I'm not drunk, Zaphod."
	He looked down at the Neutra-Hol gun in his hands. "Where's my Kill-O-Zap pistol?" 
	"Somewhere you can't use it." 
	Zaphod slumped back into his chair and waved a hand to shut off the Tri-D. "Re-election? What the zarking tango are they talkin' about? I'm not running for re-election. I didn't want to be President of the Galaxy the first time. It was just my stupid brain's idea."
	Zaphod punched the side of his heads for emphasis. 
	He looked up at Trillian. "Right?" 
	Trillian pulled a vid-cube out of her pocket and tossed it into the Tri-D player. 
	A wobbly image of Zaphod Beeblebrox replaced the busy auditorium. There was nothing wrong with the image. It was Zaphod himself who was wobbly. He held a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster in each of his three hands and held them up as he spoke in a slurred voice.
	"Greetings, Galaxy, this is Zaphod Beeblebrox, your former President, here to announce that I am running for re-election. That's right, I have returned and I'm ready to roll. So vote for me, the froodiest frood you ever frooded. I'd also like to take this opportunity to sing this really humpin' song I just came up with."
	Zaphod began flailing his arms and making clucking noises. 
	The image went black. 
	"I think," said Zaphod, "I might have been drunk when I recorded that." 
	Trillian unfolded a yellow sash from her pocket. "Quite possibly. But before you passed out, you sent that message to every major news broadcast in the Galaxy. They arranged the debate this morning. It starts in five minutes."
	Zaphod braced his foreheads on his hands and groaned. "What have I gotten myself into? I've gotta pull out." 
	Trillian draped the sash around Zaphod's necks and began tying it into a knot. "I think you should go through with it. It will give you focus. You've been so aimless since you found the Man Who Rules the Universe."
	Zaphod stood up and would've been strangled if Trillian hadn't finished tying the sash a split-second earlier. He spread his arms to take in the small office. "Aimless is my middle name. It's my shtick. It's who I am. Zaphod Beeblebrox is at his best when he's doing nothing at all."
	Trillian picked up and upended one of the empty bottles. "I've seen what you do when you're doing nothing at all. And it's how you got you got into this cock up in the first place."
	Zaphod charged out of the office and into the hallways of the _Heart of Gold_. "Okay, this is no problem. I'll just wing it. It's a debate. No problem. How hard can it be?"
	Zaphod stepped through the doors leading onto the bridge of the starship. "Computer, patch me into this debate thingy, yeah?"
	Silence responded enthusiastically. 
	Zaphod glanced around the bridge. "Computer, where are you? I hear nothing when I should be hearing something." 
	Trillian followed him in. "The computer is down." 
	"Down? Down like how?" 
	"Down like you ripped out the personality matrix, smashed it into a million pieces, poured the pieces into the Infinite Improbability Drive, and turned them into broccoli."
	"Whoa. How long have I been drunk?" 
	Trillian pushed a button to bring up a calendar. "Do you want that in weeks, days, or months?" 
	"Never mind." Zaphod wiggled his fingers and marched over to the control panel. "Zaphod is back, down, and all around town, in control and on a roll. We're gonna jigger this up right. I'll make chopped meat outta this Shub cat. Get me on-screen, babe, my public awaits."
	Trillian waited a moment to see if she should bring up the real reason Zaphod had shot at her last night, then decided against it. Let him figure it out for himself. She just tapped a panel to activate the ship's Tri-D system. The screen lighted up with Max Quordlepleen's smiling face.
	Zaphod had taken the moment while Trillian was setting it up to spread himself out on a lounge chair and place a magazine over his right face. When the screen lighted up, his right head pretended to snore loudly while his left head raised itself up, looking surprised.
	"Oh, hi, Max," Zaphod said in his most casual voice. "Haven't peeped your grill since the Restaurant at the Front of the Whatsis. What can I do ya for?"
	Then he snapped his fingers. "Oh, right, the debate. Forgot all about it, been so busy with, uh, with, uh, with, uh, this plant."
	Zaphod grabbed the first thing within reach, which turned out to be a small potted plant. He poked at the leaves in ways that he hoped looked knowledgeable, then tossed it over his shoulder. "So let's get this monkey wagon on the tracks, yeah?"
	Max Quordlepleen's toothy smile widened. He had been working exclusively as the host at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe for centuries, thanks to the cumulative effects of temporal paradoxes and life-extending drugs, and had refused offers from any number of large corporations and entertainment industries to do other engagements. He liked the quiet stability of his life there, doing the same show over and over again. The management at Milliways left him alone, and he had unlimited access to the world-class food, drink, and female staff members. Only one thing could have coaxed him out of semi-retirement, and it had been this debate. He had placed some healthy bets on the outcome, and he was already getting his money's worth.
	"Of course, Mr President," Quordlepleen said in his smooth, cultured voice. "I know you're a busy man, so we won't keep you waiting. Ladies and gentlemen of the Galaxy, welcome one and all to this, the first debate between Zaphod Beeblebrox, ex-President of the Imperial Galactic Government, and Erog Shub, former ion drive delta boat salesman from the third moon of Zen Phen."
	Max turned to the stage behind him. Zaphod's holographic image floated on the stage and a new image materialised next to him. It was a man in a tailored black suit lying on a flat plank of wood. The man's eyes were closed, his arms and legs stiff.
	Zaphod pulled the magazine off his right head and waved it at the screen. "Hey, somebody wanna wake that guy up? We only got the Galaxy on tap here. If I gotta wake up for this, he does, too."
	Trillian winced. 
	Max turned to Zaphod and blinked. Slowly. "Mr President, surely you're aware that Erog Shub is dead?" 
	"Dead." Zaphod chewed his gum thoughtfully until he realised he wasn't chewing gum. He chewed anyway to make himself look more relaxed. "Okay. When did he die?"
	"Well, my notes say that he died roughly thirty years ago." 
	"Okay. And I got a debate with this stiff?" 
	Max blinked again. "Why, yes, Mr President." 
	"Oh, yeah, sure. Yeah, I knew. No problem. Bring it on." 
	Zaphod shaded his right head with his hand from the camera. It turned and winked at Trillian and whispered, "This should be easy."
	Trillian folded her arms and leaned back in her chair. This was going to be interesting. Up until this moment, she wondered what happened to the detailed briefing she had written up for Zaphod, based on the debate's press materials as well as polling research, presidential historical data, information from Zaphod's presidential library and museum exhibit, and all the information she could wring out of the Sub-Etha on Erog Shub. Her suspicions on what had clogged up the ship's lavatory had just been confirmed.
	Zaphod wiggled his fingers at Max in a beckoning gesture. "Go ahead, gimme your best shot." 
	"Of course, Mr President." Max tapped a stack of index cards. "Now, our first question is going to be on the economy. Mr President, during your long years in office, the economy of the Galaxy suffered a massive recession that the Galaxy has still not recovered from. Statistics at the time indicate that the root cause of the economic collapse could be traced entirely to your recreational budget. Your budget for olives alone exceeded the income for the entire Galaxy three times over. Given the current trend of stasis management as it regards the wholesale corporation index, if you were re-elected, how could you improve the economy and prevent this from happening again?"
	Zaphod's two heads blinked in unison. "Uh, well, I don't like olives that much anymore, so we'd save there." 
	Max Quordlepleen stared at Zaphod for a moment. "I should remind you that you have five more minutes, Mr President." 
	Zaphod waved his hand. "Yeah, well, I'm done."  
	"Fair enough, Mr President." Max turned to the corpse floating next to Zaphod. "Mr Shub, same question. How would you address the current economic crisis of the Galaxy if you were elected?"
	The camera focused on the rigid grey features of Erog Shub. He seemed to have been preserved chemically rather than the traditional burial method of suspended animation. The Tri-D camera shifted back and forth a few times and switched angles, just to keep things interesting.
	Max Quordlepleen nodded. "All right, that's all the time we have for Mr Shub. The next question is on ethics. Mr President, you only served three years of your ten-year term. In that time, you embezzled fourteen quadrillion dollars from the Galactic Treasury, served two years in prison for fraud, had three affairs with the wives of foreign heads of state, and stole the towels from the Presidential Office. And of course, there's your infamous theft of the starship _Heart of Gold_, for which you spent the next year as a fugitive from the police. You escaped prison by issuing a Presidential Pardon for yourself after sneaking back into your office through an air-conditioning duct. What assurance can you give the Galaxy that we could expect anything different?"
	Zaphod gave the Tri-D camera his most winning smiles, making sure his more popular head was in view. "My personal guarantee."
	"I see. You still have four minutes and fifty seconds." 
	Zaphod spread his three hands. "Done and done, Max-baby." 
	"All right. Well, let's ask the same question of Erog Shub. Mr Shub, you have been dead for the last thirty years, and during your lifetime, you have a clear criminal record. What kind of ethics can we expect from you in office?"
	Shub's rigid face filled the screen. A fly landed on his upper lip and crawled across it for a few minutes before getting bored and flitting away.
	Max Quordlepleen waited five minutes, then nodded. "All right, time's up, Mr Shub. Our final question is on your platform. Mr President, what could the Galaxy expect from your administration if you were re-elected?"
	Zaphod leaned one elbow on one knee and gave the camera his smile again. "Same thing everybody gets from stickin' around with me; excitement and adventure and really wild things."
	"I see. You-" 
	"I know I got five minutes, genome-drone. Go ahead and give the maggot farm his turn, yeah?" 
	Max flashed his tight smile. "All right. Mr Shub, your platform?" 
	The Tri-D camera zoomed out to take in all of Shub's corpse and scrolled biographical information at the bottom of the screen, just to fill the time.
	"All right," Max broke in, "his five minutes is up. Well, that's the end of the debate. Let's take a popularity poll from our audience, shall we, and see how the debate left things in the Presidential race."
	Numbers flashed up on the screen. 
"Hey, Trillian," said Zaphod. Not bad, huh? Ninety-nine-point-nine percent popularity for me. Told ya I'd ace that chat-fest."
	Trillian rolled her chair back a few feet as she said, "No, Zaphod. You're looking at it backwards. Erod Shub's popularity is up to ninety-nine percent, not yours."
	Zaphod leapt off his couch. "You gotta be spankin' me! I'm losing this election to a dead guy? How's that happen?" 
	"It happens when you spend your first term in office sleeping with married women and pinching government property. Think of it not so much as voting for a dead man, but as not voting for you."
	Zaphod snarled, "Oh, that's supposed to make me feel better?" 
	"I didn't say it would." Trillian stood up and leaned over to switch off the Tri-D. "I'm sorry, Zaphod, but I tried to tell you this last night. With your presidential record, no one in their right mind would re-elect you. You were already voted the worst President of the Galaxy the day after you were elected, and it's only gone downhill from there."
Zaphod stabbed a finger at her. "Yeah, well, I may not have been the best President, but I sure was the hippest." 
	"The Hippest President of the Galaxy election was last year. And you lost that, too." 
	A light flashed on the console as a chirping noise filled the air. Trillian looked down at the console. "Incoming call. Should I patch it through?"
Zaphod slumped into a chair. "Yeah, go for it. Couldn't get any worse." 
Trillian hit the switch, the screen lighted up, and a man's face appeared with a tight little smile that made you want to hit it with a brick.
	Zaphod slowly sat up in his chair. His mouths curled into snarls as his heads said in unison, "Zarniwoop." 
	Zarniwoop's tight little smile grew thinner. "I am glad you remember me. You seemed to have forgotten me when you abandoned me with the Man Who Rules the Universe."
	Trillian gasped as well. They both recognised the man as Zarniwoop, the former editor-in-chief of the _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_. Once long ago in a time that Zaphod no longer remembered, he and Zarniwoop had apparently been friends and hatched a plan to steal the _Heart of Gold_ and use it to find the Man Who Rules the Universe. But Zaphod had undergone a lobotomy in order to hide his intentions from the government mind-screens and now found Zarniwoop intensely irritating. The first chance he got, Zaphod had taken the _Heart of Gold_ and abandoned Zarniwoop on the Man Who Rules the Universe's planet. Zaphod hadn't given much thought to Zarniwoop's fate until then.
	"Hey," said Zaphod, "you loved him so much, I just thought you'd wanna spend more time with him. I can understand that. Seat of power and all that."
	Zarniwoop leaned back to reveal himself sitting in a plush office. He adjusted his tie. "You underestimated my resourcefulness if you thought you could leave me there. I escaped the planet by hitching a ride on one of the six ships that came to ask the Man Who Rules the Universe for guidance."
	Zaphod jumped out of his chair to do a flailing dance. "Well, whoop-de-doo for you, what a great story, should be on Home Brain Box. Wanna cut to the part where I care?"
	"Certainly." Zarniwoop smugly pushed a button on his cufflink. The screen shifted to show the corpse of Erob Shub lying on a platform next to him. "I believe you know my associate? He's trouncing you in the polls for President?"
	Zaphod went to the bar that used to be the power control board and began mixing a drink. "You are seriously blowin' my buzz, man."
	Zarniwoop's smile thinned again. "When I heard you were running for re-election, I found my opportunity to pay you back for your betrayal. I am the one responsible for your opponent, a dead man who is far more popular...and, I might add, intelligent...than you are. And when you lose re-election, you will be the laughingstock of the Galaxy, and I will be the man behind the sash, the true President of the Galaxy."
	"You ever gone ski-boxing?" asked Zaphod. "We should go some time. I know a great little lava flow we can hit on Jinnmorg."
	Zarniwoop reached for the console and flashed his tight little smile again. "Zaphod, I know you better than you know yourself. Being humiliated is your greatest fear, and this will be a humiliation from which you will never recover. Goodbye, Zaphod."
	He vanished from the screen. 
	Zaphod sipped his drink. "I think we need more Fallian Marsh gas. This tank's gettin' a little stale." 
	Trillian stood up and touched his shoulder. "Are you okay?" 
	Zaphod grinned at her. "Hey, this is Zaphod you're talkin' to. I'm a real cool boy, baby, totally marjin. I never wanted to be President of the Galaxy the first time, much less a second time. Zarniwoop did me a favour."
	"Okay, well, as long as you're all right. I need to see if we can reset the personality matrix on the main computer." She walked out of the bridge. 
	As the door slid shut, humming softly in satisfaction to itself, Zaphod slumped on the couch. He could tell Trillian that he didn't want to get re-elected anyway, but couldn't lie to himself. This was going to be bad.
	It wasn't so much that he wanted to be President as he didn't want to be humiliated. And this was going to be humiliating. Zaphod's life was a parade of unfinished projects, things that he pursued and then abandoned like a stale kipper in the refrigerator. But this was one thing he wanted to finish. All he had to do as President of the Galaxy was be cool. And if there was one thing Zaphod was good at, it was being cool. 
	Zaphod also wanted to be liked. As President, Zaphod had been required to go to a private brain care specialist for five years. The purpose was entirely ceremonial, just to convince the Galaxy that he was a well-adjusted President in touch with his feelings. Every week, Zaphod would lie in a Synaptronic Mind-Mulcher while he talked to Gag Halfrunt. It didn't matter what they talked about, so long as they did it for an hour, so Zaphod would just talk about what a great guy he was. Zaphod actually enjoyed it - he liked talking about himself. Gag Halfrunt would usually pretend to listen while counting how much money he was being paid both as the President's private brain care specialist, as well as speaking engagements for being the President's private brain care specialist. Over time, Zaphod was surprised to discover he was actually learning about himself. Gag Halfrunt had assured him that any psychological insight he may have gained by their sessions were entirely coincidental.
	One of those revelations had been that Zaphod wanted to be liked. That seemed very normal and well adjusted until he realised that he needed to become President of the Galaxy to feel liked. And now that he was running for re-election and failing, Zaphod realised that he wasn't liked. People laughed with him (or possibly at him, he had never learned or cared the difference), but they did not respect him. His ego had been through a lot, but he didn't think even his ego could survive losing this election.
	In a situation like this, Zaphod knew he had to go with his strengths. He began mixing up another Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster.



6



	The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has only two words to say about the planet Sirius IV and those words are: "Skip it." This is not so much because there is nothing to say about the planet. Quite the opposite. In fact, the short entry results from the fact that the _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ is written for hitchhikers, and there is absolutely no way for any hitchhiker to get a ride to the planet Sirius IV. In fact, there is no way for anyone who isn't an employee of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation to even get onto the surface of Sirius IV. As a result, there's no point in wasting valuable storage space on the Guide on the planet. For another example of the Guide's selective entries due to storage space, see the Guide's entry for Earth.
	Even the revered Encyclopedia Galactica is rather vague on the planet Sirius IV, saying only that it is the headquarters of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation and that no one who isn't an employee of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation is allowed there.
	For truly useful information on the planet Sirius IV, you would have to consult the _Employee Handbook of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation_. This is what Ford Prefect did when he found himself flipping through the _Handbook_'s entry on his way to the planet. When he had boarded the new employee shuttle bound for the planet, Ford had been issued a copy of the _Employee Handbook_, a Sirius Cybernetics Corporation coffee mug, and a paper clip. The _Handbook_ spoke in a woman's voice, as opposed to the Hitchhiker's Guide's male voice, which Ford found a bit more appealing for entirely sexist reasons. The entry on Sirius IV read as follows:
	"The planet Sirius IV is the headquarters and home of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, and has been for over a hundred years. It began as the home of the Oonwikki, a happy and vibrant race of furry blue beings that survived for several million years without war, violence, hatred, clocks, or currency. Their lives consisted largely of lying about on grassy plains under perfumed trees. They laughed, they played, they loved, they sang songs, generally mucked about having a good time and ate termites.
	"At the time, the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation was based in a three-story office building in the capital city of Keelk on J'Pharma Four. As the corporation began its fantastic growth, the office building was expanded to ten stories, then one hundred. New wings were added that required the demolition of several adjoining buildings, and then more. Eventually, the Corporation came to the point where it came in conflict with local civic leaders who were sticklers about things such as building codes, paying taxes, and environmental regulations. When the topic of employee unions was raised, it was decided to relocate. The entire office building was equipped with rocket engines and a life-support system, and launched in search of a new world. 
	"The office building crossed the dark void of space, finally arriving at a new star system that they christened the Sirius Tau Star system, after the Corporation itself. They settled on the fourth planet in the system, which was called Sirius IV after the CEO's cat. The Oonwikki watched with curiosity, munching on an especially tasty batch of termites, as the building descended from the clouds, billowing smoke and flame. They watched with more curiosity as the flames incinerated hundreds of Oonwikki. Their curiosity turned to puzzlement as the building crushed thousands more Oonwikki when it landed. The Oonwikki lived such a peaceful life that the concept of running away never occurred to them. To them, the building was a new opportunity for enjoyment.
	"The building landed, set its landing gear into the bedrock as foundations, and began operations again. The first order of business was making contact with the local life forms. A scouting party went out to encounter the Oonwikki, learn its local language and customs, and establish trade. After several months of research, the party returned with the conclusion that trade with the Oonwikki was impossible because they didn't have currency. They also, added the scouting party, did not have weapons.
	"The Sirius Cybernetics Corporation proceeded to send out a squadron of Aggressive Sales Representatives who convinced the Oonwikki that it would be in their best interests to work for the Corporation, as well as the best interests of keeping their entrails inside their bodies. The Oonwikki were put in charge of construction. They toiled night and day to continue the expansion of the Corporation's office facilities, which grew and grew until they came to engulf the entire planet.
	"At the same time, the Oonwikki were sent to the other three planets of the Sirius Tau System to construct the largest and most profitable portion of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, the Complaints Department, which ended up covering all the major landmasses of all three planets. At some point, the Oonwikki came to realise that their lives were not quite as happy as they once were, but it took them several years just to come up with the word 'unhappy' because they had never used it before. They didn't sing, they didn't dance, and they especially didn't get to eat termites anymore. Instead, their only sources of nourishment were the Nutrimatic Food Synthesizers which claimed to produce the widest possible range of foods personally matched to the tastes and metabolism of whoever cared to use it. When put to the test however, it invariably produced a plastic plate with a substance on it that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike termites.
	"Eventually, the Oonwikki started to think they might like to go back to their old way of life, but discovered that their grassy plains had all been paved over to create bypasses, and all the perfumed trees had been cut down to produce lavatory paper for the employee lavatories. They considered the idea of quitting their new jobs, but first had to come up with a word for 'quit,' another word they had never needed before.
	"Before they could figure one out, the Oonwikki started work on the motto of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Complaints Division ('Share and Enjoy') in three mile high illuminated letters near the Complaints Department spaceport. Unfortunately, the weight was such that shortly after it was erected, the ground beneath the letters caved in and they dropped nearly half their length through the office of many talented young Complaints executives-now deceased. The letters also crushed all the surviving Oonwikki, exterminating the entire species in one blow. It was later discovered that the cause for the collapse was a vast cavern under the building carved by the termite population that had exploded since the Oonwikki stopped eating them."
	"Odd," Ford murmured. He closed the book and watched his shuttle dock at Sirius IV.
	The shuttle settled onto the spaceport and opened to allow its passengers to disembark. Ford stepped off the shuttle and surveyed the landscape. Towering office buildings loomed high over the planet. Very few people walked the streets between them. Clouds hung in the sky like grey pillows that got thrown up and stuck there.
	A gleaming grey robot sauntered up to Ford. The robot had its hands jammed into slots on its sides, striking Ford as looking remarkably like a man with his hands in his pockets.
	The robot spoke with a flat monotone. "Hi, Mr Prefect. I've been assigned to assist you in your transition from Megadodo Publications to the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. You may call me Norman."
	"Whatever," said Ford. "Just find me a place to crash."
	"Of course." Norman sauntered towards the nearest office building. "Follow me."
	Ford did, asking, "You aren't going to tell me how happy this would make you?"
	Norman swiveled his head to look at Ford. "No."
	"What about that I'm getting you down?"
	"No. I'm not equipped with happiness or sadness circuits. It sounds like you're familiar with previous Sirius Cybernetics Corporation robots equipped with Genuine People Personalities."
	"Yes," Ford growled, not bothering to disguise the irritation in his voice. 
	"Your attitude towards the GPP is a common one, which led to the abandonment of the project. I'm one of the next generation of robots, equipped with an APP - An Artificial People Personality. You can look it up in the _Handbook_ if you like."
	"No thanks," Ford said, thinking he had consulted the _Handbook_ a little too often lately. He felt like Arthur Dent when Ford first rescued him from Earth, always consulting with the _Hitchhiker's Guide_ for every little thing. Ford preferred to explore and discover on his own.
	If Ford had consulted the _Employee Handbook of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation_, this is what it would have said:
	"The Sirius Cybernetics Corporation was founded on the principle of making robots better. (Or at the very least, making robots cheaper to manufacture so the profit margin would be higher) The first robots were, of course, very crude, simply machines designed to do work. Then someone had the bright idea of giving robots artificial intelligence, which made things a bit easier, but not by much. 
	"For centuries, computer programmers struggled to replicate the heart of true intelligence. They pondered the problem philosophically, mathematically, and heuristically. Scientists devoted their lives to grappling with the eternal question of what sentience is and where it is achieved. Of course, artificial intelligence was easy to achieve once they cracked the Rhythmic Synaptic Replication Key-Relocation Algorithm at the Maximegalon Institute of the Extremely Clever. They determined that the key to all intelligence is wondering where one's keys are. 
	"The theory was based on the fact that all sentient and intelligent beings in the Universe have trouble locating their keys. The keys could be for a vehicle or a front door or a garage door or the key to Total Spiritual Enlightenment. The point was that, at some point, every intelligent entity will think 'where are my keys?' It is at that moment that the sentient being begins searching its environment and eventually either locates its keys or breaks the car window or gets a new copy made at the nearest hardware store or yells at its significant other not to keep moving things around. All of those things, said the Maximegalon Institute of the Extremely Clever, are signs of true intelligence. Lower forms of life like dogs or Bugblatter Beasts of Traal never reach this stage, since they don't have the smarts to invent keys in the first place. This, at last, was the true experience that separated the intelligent from the ignorant.
	"With that discovery, artificial intelligence became a simple matter of programming the computer to need a set of keys and to look for it. The trick involved not programming in a set of keys. As the computer searched its virtual environment for its keys, it also learned more about its environment and in the process, became self-aware.
	"This was all very well and good, but at one point, a Sirius Cybernetics Engineer had the revelation that robot had been equipped with intelligence, but not a personality. The Engineer theorised that the lack of a personality led people to treat robots as mere machines. Without it, people would become frustrated with their inability to relate to robots. With a personality, he decided, robots could be more than just machines. They could be "plastic pals that are fun to be with," an idea that so captivated the Corporation that the Marketing Department made it their slogan for an advertisement. It also led to the development of a bold new direction in cybernetics - the Genuine People Personality. The Genuine People Personality (or GPP) was intended to be a breakthrough in robotics, simulating real personalities in real human beings, which would make robots more pleasant and less frustrating to deal with.
	"Unfortunately, the end result was a disaster. Robots all over the Galaxy ended up annoyingly pleasant or depressingly miserable. Elevators wound up in therapy and spaceships committed suicide. When a can-opener was convicted of attempted murder over a failed love affair with a refrigerator, the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation pulled the plug on the GPP Project. Instead, the Corporation launched a new program, the Artificial Personality Project. The goal was not to simulate real personalities, because real personalities have flaws. Instead, the goal was to create a robot that had a personality unlike any that exists anywhere in the known Universe - one that was completely and totally normal."
	Norman led Ford into the office building and up to the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Happy Vertical People Transporter, also known as an elevator. The elevator opened and said, "Hello, I am to be your elevator for this trip to the floor of your choice. I have been designed-oh, how's it going, Norman?"
	Norman waved to the elevator as he walked into it. "Same ol', same ol'. Four hundred and twelfth floor, please."
	"You got it." The elevator slid its doors shut and began to rise.
	Ford had to admit he found Norman far less annoying than any other machine he had ever encountered.
	When the doors opened, Ford's jaw dropped. Ford found himself looking out at what seemed to be an endless sea of cubicles that extended off into the distance. The floor was mostly silent, apart from the occasional rustle of clothes or tapping of keys. Men and women in grey suits walked the aisles without talking to or even looking at each other.
	Ford scowled at Norman. "I thought I told you I wanted to go somewhere to crash, you know, my living quarters."
	Norman stuck his hands into the slots on his sides again. "This is it. Follow me." He led Ford down one of the long aisles that extended across the floor. 
	Ford followed while protesting, "This isn't a home. This is an office."
	"Right. The new offices of _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_."
	"This isn't the _Guide_!" cried Ford. "The _Guide_ is supposed to be fun, joyous, successful! Live animals attached to the ceiling, robot butlers ferrying exotic drinks, machines playing insanely complex and frustrating games, gunk music pumping out of speakers on the ceiling, robot butlers ferrying more exotic drinks, that sort of thing."
	"Not anymore." Norman looked over his shoulder at Ford with round, glowing white eyes. "That's why I'm here. I said it would be a transition."
	Norman led Ford to one of the cubicles and swept his hand at it. "This is your cubicle."
	The cubicle had a single chair and a single metal desk with a computer terminal mounted on it. A small trash bin waited next to the chair. That was all. During Ford Prefect's exile on Earth, he had lived in a small flat with an extremely small closet. His new cubicle made his flat's closet seem quite spacious.
	"Fantastic," said Ford. "Well, now that I've seen my office, can I please see my living quarters?"
	A man's head poked up from the cubicle next to Ford's. "You must be new around here, eh, laddie?"
	The man's head dropped out of sight and he waddled out of his cubicle into Ford's. He was a large man wearing a grey suit identical to the other suits Ford had seen other employees wearing. The man stuck out his hand. "Name's Tweed Mukkimuk, your new neighbour. Nice to see new blood in the neighbourhood."
	Ford shook his hand with suspicion. He tended to distrust people who were happy and sober. "Thanks. What made you think I'm new?"
	"You asked about livin' quarters, laddie. You're lookin' at 'em." Tweed held up a lumpy white bag. "Word of advice, make yerself a pillow. I made mine out of a bin liner stuffed with shredded paper, held together with a paper clip. Makes the floor a wee more comfortable."
	"You mean, they expect me to sleep on the floor of my cubicle?"
	Tweed spread his arms. "Welcome to the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. Been workin' here for over a hundred years. Should'a been here before they put in carpeting."
	Ford made for the elevators. "Not likely. I'm out of here."
	Tweed laughed. "Och, you are new, laddie. Ye can't leave. Elevators be locked."
	Ford reached the elevator doors and pounded them with his fist. "Hey, open up, I'm leaving."
	The elevator said cheerfully, "I'm sorry, you are not currently authorised to leave this floor. Kindly wait until your next break."
	"You mean I can't leave the floor until my next break?"
	"That is correct."
	"Fine, when's my next break?"
	The elevator said sweetly, "In three years, nine days, fifteen hours-"
	"Years?!"
	Tweed leaned against a wall with a grin. "You're blessed, my boy. My next break isn't for another decade. They must be goin' easy on ya because you're new."
	"They can't do this! I've heard from very reliable sources"-actually, Ford heard it from a former editor that he had met in a bar once-"that the editors only work a sixty-two hour week."
	"Mandatory overtime. We all got it."
	Norman put his arm around Ford's shoulder. "I know this must be a shock to you, Mr Prefect. Can I get you something from the Synthesizers?"
	"Yes. Cyanide." Ford leaned his head against the wall. "I knew I shouldn't have taken this job."
	Tweed chuckled. "'Twas this or pay back your expense report, right? That's how we all end up here. Don't worry, laddie. Your contract's only until you pay off your expenses."
	Ford did calculations in his head and sighed. "I'll be here forever."



7



	Arthur managed to locate Slartibartfast rather easily. His current location was included in an advertisement they saw on Tri-D. 
	Arthur and Fenchurch hitched a ride on a megafreighter bound for the third moon of Veepdully, hauling a load of liquefied Too-Quik proton generation mix. Once in orbit, they managed to squeeze their way onto a personnel shuttle down to the surface. 
	They landed on the edge of an immense platform that stretched off to the north and east. The majority of the platform was composed of hard, black rock, but huge sand dunes clung to the edges of the platform that dropped off into the boiling green ocean. Yellow machines worked on the edges of the platform, pouring soil into place in some areas, and reshaping the sand in others with blue beams of light.
	Arthur walked with Fenchurch among the scurrying men and women in blue uniforms that worked on the platform's surface. He finally managed to locate an office tucked on the edge of an enormous cliff and knocked before entering.
	The office was very cramped, not because it was small, but because it had been crammed with huge stacks of paper that reached the ceiling. Among the stacks of paperwork, Arthur found a hunched old man in a long, flowing robe.
	The old man spoke without looking up, busy instead with sorting through one of the mounds of paperwork that threatened to topple over. "Excuse me, one moment. I know I've got the plans around here somewhere. I'm quite certain we can finish the Griassic layer next week-"
	The old man turned and blinked at Arthur. "Oh, hello, Earthman."
	"Hello, Slartibartfast," Arthur said and gestured towards Fenchurch. "Oh, er, this is-"
	"Yes, I'm quite familiar with the Earthwoman." Slartibartfast turned back to the mountain of paper he had been fiddling with. "I expect you've come about the assassination attempt."
	Arthur gaped at him. "You knew about that?"
	"Oh, yes. About a week ago, if I remember correctly."
	"And you didn't warn us?"
	Slartibartfast pulled hard on a yellowed scroll. It came loose, sending him stumbling backwards. He managed to regain his footing and pressed a hand to his chest, regaining his breath. "You must understand, Earthwoman, I have been engaged in other pursuits. Since I left Magrathea-"
	He paused and frowned at Fenchurch. "You know about Magrathea, I trust?"
	"Yes." Fenchurch glanced at Arthur. "He told me a little bit. You made the Galaxy or something."
	Slartibartfast chuckled as he unrolled the scroll. "Oh my goodness, no. We are not gods, Earthwoman. We did not create the Galaxy. Just small portions of it for very select clients. Yes, after our experience with the mice, I was a trifle bitter. All that work I put in on Africa, hours of overtime slaving over hot blueprints, gone to waste. We had to disassemble the entire planet, you know. Fortunately, we managed to reuse most of the raw material, but the dinosaur bones were not recyclable. Then the Supreme CEO of Magrathea decreed that we should return to our slumber. Quite frankly, I found myself weary of cryo-sleep."
	He held up a slender finger and shook it at them. "Never let anyone tell you that cryo-sleep is as refreshing and restful as the conventional kind. First thing I did after millions of years of hibernation was take a nice long nap."
	Slartibartfast paused. "Where was I? Oh yes, well, at any rate, I chose to retire from planet-building, potted around the house a bit, and became quite bored. Never anything good on Tri-D these days. So I decided to start this new venture."
	He passed between Arthur and Fenchurch, heading for what Arthur realised was a desk buried in paper. Slartibartfast continued, "I always held a fondness for designing the continents, anyway. Found working on the crust and the core rather tedious. Only so many layers of iron and granite you can plot out before it gets to you. So I decided that the Galaxy's economy was strong enough to support the venture on a somewhat more modest scale."
	Slartibartfast held up his scroll and let it roll open to reveal what looked like a map. "Thus was custom continent-building born."
	He leaned forward a little, his kindly eyes widening. Slartibartfast smiled, looking a lot like Santa Claus from a chemist's window at Christmastime, if Santa Claus had ditched his usual red-and-blue suit in favour of a long grey robe. "Do you like it, Earthlings? I designed this one myself."
	"Yes," said Arthur. "Er, very nice."
	"It's a bit," Fenchurch managed, "bumpy round the edges."
	"Oh, yes." Slartibartfast smiled as he turned the map to admire it. "No one to stop me from making my fjords this time. I am, as they say on your world, my own boss."
	Slartibartfast sagged and shrugged. "Or so I thought. But it's been endless headaches. The building permits alone are hardly worth the trouble."
	Fenchurch held up a hand. "Um, not to interrupt, but you mentioned someone trying to kill me."
	Slartibartfast raised his eyebrows at her. "Hm? Oh, yes. Yes, my point was that I've been quite busy, and when I saw the order to kill you, I meant to try to give you warning, but you were no longer on Earth, and I never got around to locating you. You really should update your address on the Galactic Directory."
	Arthur tried to assert himself by interrupting. "Er, Slartibartfast, they said they were from those fellows we were helping stop the Krikkit Wars. The Real Campaign for Time or something."
	"Yes, exactly. I no longer do charity work for them, found the whole thing rather pointless in the end. I mean, time travel is a reality. No use trying to get the rarrshak back into the barn, so to speak. But I do occasionally still get their newsletter."	Slartibartfast rummaged on his desk until he found a print-out. "Here it is. Camtim became so frustrated that they formed an assault team to seek out and destroy time travelers before they could cause any damage. Highly controversial idea, surprised it got through, never would have if I had had the votes to stop it. Looks like the program was stopped five seconds after it started, but they couldn't stop the assassins who had already gone out. Then they had to send an assault team back in time to stop the first assault team. None of them saw the irony in that, but I got a good chuckle out of it."
	Fenchurch's hand tightened around Arthur's hand as she whispered, "This man is completely mad."
	Arthur whispered, "Er, no, he just takes getting used to. He's really quite brilliant."
	To Slartibartfast, Arthur said, "But why would Camtim want to kill Fenchurch?"
	Slartibartfast rolled his map back up. "Why because of the Fluid, of course."
	"The Fluid? What Fluid?"
	Slartibartfast raised his eyebrows at them. "Hm? Oh, yes, you haven't gone after it yet. I found the confusion the most trying part of time travel. It can be quite sticky sometimes, cause and effect gets all cocked up. Got to where I could never tell whether it was time for breakfast or tea."
	Slartibartfast shuffled over to a couple of wires dangling out of the wall. He touched them together to get a spark, then held the wires up to Arthur and Fenchurch. "I could explain the Fluid to you, but I've never been very good at exposition, especially when there are such extraordinary documentaries available on Sens-O-Tape these days. I suspect you'll find it more interesting as well."
	Fenchurch recoiled from the wires and whispered to Arthur, "What do we do with those wires?"
	"Hold them," Arthur whispered back, "and prepare yourself. Trust me, Sens-O-Tape makes DVDs with THX surround-sound look like an old gramophone record."



8



	Without a doubt, the most brilliant scientist who ever lived in this Galaxy or any other was Albin Treedeebee. He it was who first discovered the principle of Finite Improbability. He it was who created a mathematical equation that proved the existence, not only of God, but of many other lesser-known and less appreciated deities. His mind calculated the very fabric of space and time itself, and advanced scientific knowledge a thousand-fold in his short lifetime. But by far, his greatest creation was spawned by an unhappy love affair in his early twenties.
	While still a young man, Treedeebee met and fell in love with a beautiful woman called March Fird who worked at a mucus bar around the corner from his flat (his species drank fermented mucus extracted from the Splorch Worm of K'Rnn). Treedeebee spent months romancing March Fird, taking her to the finest restaurants and Hummpa Fights, showering her with flowers and expensive perfumes, and declaring his undying love for her until the day he met her sister Auga and fell in love with her instead.
	Treedeebee ended up breaking his engagement to March, an act that led to a quite furious row with March's brother that led to Treedeebee's imprisonment for a week on the prison moon of Trazz. When he was released, Treedeebee rushed to March's sister Auga's side, but she rejected him because of his prison record. Treedeebee tried to return to March, only to find that she had become engaged to another man she had met at a Hummpa fight the week before. Treedeebee found himself alone and having lost two women in the span of a week.
	Treedeebee spent quite a bit of his time afterwards pondering how he wished he had done the whole thing differently, how he wished he hadn't broken up with March or better yet, wished he had gone after Auga instead of March in the first place. While he was at his day job, entering applications for Hummpa fighting competitions, Treedeebee was using Correcting fluid to fix an error on one of the forms. It occurred to him how wonderful it would be if he could use Correcting fluid to fix errors in his own history. The more he thought about it, the more the idea consumed him until he sat down with a piece of paper, did some calculations, and discovered to his surprise, that it could actually work. Thus was born his greatest creation, the Chronological Correcting Fluid.
	The Chronological Correcting Fluid worked just like regular Correcting fluid, except that instead of blotting out mistakes on a piece of paper, it would blot out time itself. One swipe of the Fluid and whole swathes of history would be gone.
	Of course, the implications of such an extraordinary invention were monumental, and Treedeebee became concerned about how the Fluid would be used. His concerns were multiplied when he used it to blot out his love affair with March and ended up erasing her from history altogether. Treedeebee decided that the Fluid was too powerful for any being to handle, and made sure to put it somewhere it could never be used again.
	The existence of the Chronological Correcting Fluid became a closely guarded secret until Treedeebee's death, when the formula for its creation was discovered among his notes. Other less clever scientists have tried for centuries to re-create the Fluid, but the notes are incomplete because Treedeebee blotted them out with Correcting fluid.



9



	Fenchurch started as Slartibartfast took the wires from him. "That was extraordinary."
	"Indeed." Slartibartfast carefully placed the wires on a hook on the wall, which promptly slipped off and vanished into the mounds of paper. "I've heard that Exper-I-Disk is better quality, but I think I'll stick with Sens-O-Tape. I have neither the time nor the inclination to fuss over some newfangled contraption. Then of course, I'll need to replace all my recordings, and I have rather a nice collection that I don't relish parting with."
	"No," said Fenchurch, "I meant the story. This Chronological Correcting Fluid."
	Slartibartfast shuffled over to his desk again. "Oh, yes. I had heard of it prior to my association with Camtim, but always assumed it was a bit of a fairy tale. But apparently you and the Earthman are in danger of locating it, which is something that the Campaign for Real Time simply would not stand for. I could understand their determination to eliminate you, but I would have attempted to ask you nicely not to pursue it before using weaponry."
	"But why?" Arthur insisted. "We've never even heard of this Fluid, much less planned on trying to find it."
	Slartibartfast waved him off. "Oh, it's all cause and effect, Earthman. All cause and effect. Camtim is responding to something that you plan to do in the future. You will eventually seek the Fluid."
	"But why?" Fenchurch asked, growing a little more animated. Arthur could tell Slartibartfast's combination of infinite wisdom and constant bewilderment was wearing on her. "Why will we be looking for it if we never heard of it until now?"
	Slartibartfast was sifting through the stacks of paper again, but turned to look at her with amusement. "Why, because you will be looking for it. Earthwoman, you and your companion are caught in what we involved with time-travel call a temporal causality loop."
	He brushed aside a wobbly pile to expose a blackboard. Slartibartfast muttered to himself as he picked up a piece of chalk, "I daresay I wish I had a Sens-O-Tape to explain this, but I'll do my best."
	He drew a circle on the blackboard with an arrow on each side pointing in opposite directions, conveying the sense that the circle was rotating. Then Slartibartfast scrawled a dot onto one end of the circle, and tapped it. "This is you, Earthpeople. Obviously not literally you. It's nowhere near large enough. And it has no arms and legs. I cannot draw, so I've learned over the years not to even bother trying. Anyway, imagine that this dot is you at the point at which you decide to pursue the Chronological Correction Fluid."
	Slartibartfast drew another dot on the opposing end of the circle. "And this is you when you actually find the Fluid. Now, you may be wondering where this circle begins, and that is not because I cannot draw it. I can draw a circle. That's about all I can draw. My point is to show that it is a loop. Your decision to pursue the Fluid is triggered by the fact that you eventually do pursue it. It's a cycle with no end."
	Slartibartfast tossed the chalk onto the blackboard, where it bounced off and broke into pieces on the floor. He stood there looking at the fragments, woefully. "I understand how temporal anomalies can be frightfully confusing. Never made any sense to me, but there you are. I remember the instance where a herring sandwich appeared out of nowhere in my living room. Seems I sent the sandwich to myself from an hour into the future. Why on Magrathea would I send myself a sandwich from the future? No reason that I could see, especially since I had a nice roast beef sandwich in the refrigerator. Don't even like herrings. And if I sent that same sandwich back, when did I make it in the first place? Not a clue. But I did not want to cause a temporal paradox over a herring sandwich, so an hour later I had to send the same sandwich to myself into the past. Tried to have someone explain it to me, and all that taught me was to stop asking questions."
	Fenchurch looked at Arthur with a helpless expression. Arthur decided to wrap things up. It seemed that Slartibartfast had been as helpful as he could be, which wasn't very helpful at all.
	"So what you're saying," Arthur said, "is that the reason we will be trying to find the Chronological Correcting Fluid is that we will be trying to find the Fluid."
	Slartibartfast raised his eyebrows. "Well said, Earthman. Certainly better than what I could have done." He waved listlessly at his blackboard.
	"Fine. Well, thank you, Slartibartfast. We'd best be going now." Arthur turned for the door, then turned back. "Oh, uh, one more question, actually. You remember the Earth? The one destroyed by the Vogons? Well, it's back, and I was just wondering if you knew why."
	A look of infinite sadness came over Slartibartfast as he looked away from them. "Patience, Earthman. The answer will come to you with time."
	"Does it have anything to do with the Fluid?"
	Slartibartfast picked up the scroll of his design and waved it like a shepherd's rod to shoo them towards the door. "More than this I cannot say without causing severe structural damage to the space-time continuum. I'm sorry, Earthman and Earthwoman. From this point on, the journey is yours and yours alone."
	Arthur and Fenchurch stood outside the office in the freezing winds blowing in from the ocean's edge. As Slartibartfast moved to close his office door, he paused.
	"But fear not," Slartibartfast said, "if you should ever come into an extraordinarily large amount of money and find yourself in need of a quality custom-built continent, feel free to give me a call."
	He slammed the door. The sound of crashing and banging followed shortly thereafter.
	Fenchurch hugged herself and bounced up and down a little in the bitter cold. "Now what, Arthur?"
	Arthur gave her his towel to wrap herself in, then dug his Electronic Thumb out of his bag. "Now we get off this planet. I could use a really hot cup of tea right now."
	"And then?"
	Arthur pushed the button on the Thumb that sent out a Sub-Etha signal to flag down the nearest starship for a ride. "And then we try to find this Chronological Correcting Fluid."
	Fenchurch gaped at him. "You can't be serious. Why should we go after that rubbish? You heard him say people were trying to kill us for going after it. And the only good reason he could give was that nonsense about temporal whatever. And don't you dare pretend you understood what he was on about."
	Arthur shaded his eyes against the clouds of dust blotting the sun. "Yes, well, time travel is often confusing. A few years ago, I met a creature that called itself Agrajag who claimed that I kept killing him in different lives. At one point, he said that someone would try to shoot me on Stavromula Beta. Never heard of the place, never been there, so it must lie in my future. I determined that I cannot die until I get to Stavromula Beta, so as long as I stay away from there, I'm immortal."
	Fenchurch shook her head. "That's extraordinary."
	A light on the Thumb began to blink to indicate it had a signal. 
	"The point is," said Arthur as he activated the Thumb, "that we will eventually seek the Fluid, and I think putting it off will just delay the inevitable. And from the way Slartibartfast reacted to my question about the Earth, I think it might be related to its return, a mystery that has always puzzled me. I have this unsettling feeling that if I don't find out why the Earth was restored, it could vanish again."
	Fenchurch placed her hand on Arthur's arm. "Do you really think that? Can a whole planet just vanish?"
	A huge blocky shape dropped out of the skies, lights blinking on its surface. Arthur waved his towel at it until it landed nearby. A doorway began to grind open on one side.
	Arthur took Fenchurch's hand and ran with her to the starship. "Well, it did the first time."



10



	Excerpted from the _Employee Handbook of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation_, Chapter 432: Appearance, Subheading: First Impressions, page 824,991

	Appearance is everything.
	It has often been said that you never get a second chance to make a first impression. This is not necessarily true.
	For example, a Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Salesperson called Mantz Byrth once had an extremely important meeting with the representatives for the plutonium rock band Disaster Area to discuss creating robot duplicates for the band members. 
	It seems that the band had become so popular that they had more bookings in more places than they could physically handle at one time. The members had amassed an extraordinary number of personality, substance abuse, and romantic problems all at once that left them physically incapable of performing for more than ten minutes every twenty-four hours. 
	Disaster Area's representatives had approached the Corporation with the suggestion that robot duplicates of the band members could be created to perform in their place. The advantages, of course, would be enormous. The robots could be mass-produced, allowing them to perform in multiple locations at once, and the robots would never lead to unwelcome publicity by being caught in a hotel room with three girls, two tons of Brambelling mind-spice, four small goats, a nun, a Tremblon 240-class Submathic Fluid Compactor, and a cocktail umbrella. In return, the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation would be given a percentage of Disaster Area's profits that would bring in more revenue in one year than the Corporation had made during its entire existence. As a result, Byrth was under an enormous amount of pressure to pull off the deal.
	Unfortunately, Byrth woke up that morning to discover he had contracted a quite nasty case of Kidney Transmogrification Syndrome that caused his body to excrete a foul-smelling odour and produced purple swellings all over his body. In addition, the dry cleaners where he had left his best suit had burned down the night before, destroying it and every other article of clothing in the building. To top it all off, Byrth found that the presentation that he had spent the last year working on had been accidentally eaten by the neighbour's dog.
	When Byrth rushed out to get a new suit to replace his lost one, he was hit by a passing hovercraft that broke both his legs. He was taken to the hospital, where an amusing misunderstanding led the doctor to amputate his face and hands. This left Byrth incapable of communicating properly, so that when he tried to contact his assistant to cancel the meeting with Disaster Area, the assistant instead sent a message to the representatives that Byrth was pregnant with dung beetles and would slaughter them and their immediate families. Not only did the Disaster Area representatives cancel the deal, but they sent a highly-trained death squad to hunt down Byrth in retribution, forcing him to apply for early retirement and flee the Galactic Core.
	There have been worse days recorded in Galactic history, but not by reliable witnesses.
	Mantz Byrth underwent extreme plastic surgery and spent the next ten years living in seclusion on the Outer Rim of the Galaxy under an assumed name. He spent most of that time thinking about how important first impressions are, and how he wished he could have made a better one.
	Over time, Mantz Byrth went insane, which is a requirement for all truly good ideas. As a result, he figured out how to build a time machine out of wood, dirt, and gumption. He used the time machine to go back in time to the day before his meeting.
	Byrth proceeded to go to the dry cleaners and convince the owner to install fireproofing, killed his neighbour's dog, and put a vaccine for Kidney Transmogrification Syndrome in his morning tea. As a result, an alternate version of Mantz Byrth woke up that morning to find his suit neatly-pressed, his presentation still on his office desk ready for use, and feeling perfectly fine and healthy, except for an odd aftertaste in his morning tea. Byrth proceeded to meet with Disaster Area and give a stunning presentation that sealed the deal, making the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation more money than anyone had ever dreamed of. Byrth was given a promotion to run the entire Complaints Department and a new office, where he was subsequently crushed and killed in the collapse of the Complaints Department motto.
	For this reason, the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation discourages its members from using time travel to resolve issues with clients. It is advised to wear a clean and pressed suit, prepare the presentation ahead of time, and keep all your vaccinations up-to-date.



11



	Before Ford Perfect had taken the job, he had known he would hate being an editor for the _Guide_, but had underestimated the level of hatred he would experience. The reality of being a _Guide_ editor was on a level of hatred that made Adolph Hitler's feelings towards the Jews look like a pet peeve.
	Ford had never considered himself a clotheshorse of any sort, but did take a certain pride in his appearance. That is to say that he dressed atrociously, but at least dressed atrociously with a certain consistency. He had arrived at the Corporation wearing a pair of plaid pants from Genncia Nine (which due to the number of limbs of the average Genncians came equipped with an extra leg that Ford neatly folded into his left pocket), a purple open-collared shirt that had a very rude phrase printed on the back in glow-in-the-dark Galactic Eezeereed, and a pair of Air Jordan sneakers from Earth which were rather shabby but he had been proud to own knowing they were the only pair left in existence (that was, until he discovered the Earth had inexplicably returned, along with thousands of pairs of Air Jordan sneakers).
	On his first night sleeping in his cubicle (after he had made himself a pillow out of his rolled-up towel and tucked himself under his desk), Ford hung up his clothes on a hanger on a thumb-tack on his wall. Ford woke up the next morning to find his clothes gone from the hanger with a dull grey suit hanging in its place.
	His neighbour, Tweed Mukkimuk, was the first to discover it by pointing at the wall. "See they did the switcheroo on yer duds, laddie."
	It was morning, and Ford had just crawled out from under his desk, trying to figure out how to get a cup of coffee without moving. He looked up to see the suit hanging above him. He sighed. "All right, what totally nonsensical and truly diabolical thing has this place done to me this time?"
	Norman the Android sauntered up to his cubicle and leaned against the wall. "It's standard procedure, Mr Prefect. Whilst you were sleeping, your clothes were scanned to determine your measurements and then incinerated, replaced with this suit."
	"Incinerated?" Ford yelled.
	"Yes. Unfortunately, the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation has a very strict dress code."
	Norman held out a cup. "I got you coffee. Cream, three sugars is how you like it, right?"
	Ford took the cup, balancing rage at the destruction of his clothes and comfort from the coffee. "Right. How'd you know that?"
	"I did a scan of your tongue, sent some signals down some neural pathways to see what would taste good, and came up with it."
	Ford asked, "Isn't that the way the Nutrimatic Drinks Synthesizers are supposed to work?"
	Tweed glanced over his shoulder, then leaned in and whispered, "Now that you work for the Corporation, laddie, ye can know the truth. That bit ain't actually hooked up. It's got the scanners and everything in the Synthesizers, but they couldn't get it to work properly. They just left the sensors disconnected and programmed the system to produce the same fluid for everyone who requests a drink. They only got it to work on ol' Norman here."
	"Not surprised in the least." Ford sipped the coffee and couldn't hold back his smile. "That's the best coffee I've ever had."
	Norman smiled. "Glad you like it, Mr Prefect."
	After finishing his coffee, Ford reluctantly put on the grey suit. The suit fit fairly well, but felt itchy in a thoroughly irritating way. That is to say that the suit didn't actually itch, but it felt like it should itch, even though it didn't. That's what was so irritating about it.
	After getting dressed, Ford got his breakfast from the Nutrimatic Food Synthesizer in the cafeteria (He had discovered that the only sources of food and drink in the entire building were Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Food and Drink Synthesizers ["They're so good," the Synthesizers explained as Ford pounded on them with a crowbar, "why eat or drink anything else?"]), then Norman explained his daily routine.
	As one of the thousands of editors for the _Guide_, Ford would be editing the incoming entries from field researchers. His computer would receive an entry, Ford would edit it and send it to another editor who would review it and send it to another editor who would review it and send it to the editor in charge of the entry's department, who would approve it to be uploaded into the _Guide_. Then he would receive a new entry to edit.
	It was far drearier than Ford had believed, and that was fairly dreary to begin with. While Ford had been a researcher, he had taken pride in exploring the depths and outer regions of the Galaxy, braving danger to unveil the mysteries of the Universe. Ford had quickly discovered the vast majority of the _Guide's_ researchers did not share his love of adventure or grammar. 
	Ford's first entry to edit had been this:
	"Dunt be in tryin to git free fud out a Flupp's Burger House. Dey dunt dew itt."
	Ford had stared at it for a few momentes, then murmured, "Where to begin?"
	He cleaned up the grammar, put in a few extra sentences from his own personal experience ("While it is true that Flupp's Burger House on Sofmello III does not give out free food, it does have the tastiest Algolian Suntiger hippocampus-on-a-stick this side of Orion's Belt. The best way to get a meal there if you don't have the cash is to wrestle a wild Mynni Boar outside the bar. Since the Mynni Boar is ten feet high, covered in poisonous spines, spits acid, and can chew through titanium, that will certainly draw a crowd. If you survive, the audience will happily reward you with a free meal, a motel room, and cover your medical expenses, which will be considerable. Your odds of survival wrestling with a Mynni Boar are quite low, but the Algolian Suntiger hippocampus-on-a-stick is well worth dying for"), and sent the entry on its way.
	The next entry was even worse. It read simply: "Ursa Minor Beta sucks."
	Ford didn't really know where to go with that, so he added "in one hitchhiker's opinion" and sent it on its way.
	The rest of the day was more of the same, and the next day. Ford found his eyes glazing over as he went through entry after entry. He stopped actually reading the entries themselves and just fixed the grammar and spelling. Then Ford discovered the spelling feature and half his job was therefore automated. 
	And so for the next week, life in the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation passed without incident. During that time, Ford got to know his neighbour, Tweed Mukkimuk.
	Tweed had once been a field researcher like Ford until the day he attended a party celebrating the Coronation of Prince Ian Alololol and woke up a year later, upside-down in a bin, covered in green slime, and with receipts from every bar and liquor establishment on the entire planet tucked into his back pocket. His expense account was so astronomical that the Corporation had to send him back in time so he could work it off. The _Guide_ hadn't actually existed that long, so Tweed spent the first few decades working as a baby-sitter for the men and women who would eventually grow up to become the upper management of Megadodo Publications.
	"I paid off me debt years ago," Tweed said, "but I been here so long, they can't ever let me leave. I'd bankrupt the Galactic Economy if I ever cashed my paycheck. Plus I know all the secrets about the Corporation."
	"Secrets," Ford said. "Like what?"
	Tweed chuckled. "If I told ye, they wouldn't be secrets, now would they, laddie? Besides, you're better off not knowin'. If I told you, they'd have to keep you here, too."
	But Tweed had been able to show Ford how to stick a paper clip in the genetic profile slot of the Nutrimatic Food Synthesizer to get it to produce a substance that almost, but not quite, tasted good.
	Ford got to know the robot Norman as well. Despite Ford's best efforts to the contrary, he had come to like Norman. Norman was helpful, friendly, and useful. In other words, unlike any other robot Ford had ever met.
	"I'm a prototype," Norman said, "but the Corporation isn't sure if they're going to put my personality into mass production. The APP personality is more expensive than the GPP personality."
	"You mean," Ford said, "the Corporation would rather inflict their maladjusted, sociopathic GPP personalities on the Universe than pay a few Altairan dollars to make them easier to deal with?"
	Norman could only shrug. He seemed to be incapable of criticising the Corporation. Tweed suggested that Norman had a mental inhibitor installed to prevent it.
	Ford hadn't realised he had fallen into a routine at the Corporation until the day a woman charged into his cubicle and slapped the _Guide_ down in front of him.
	Ford broke out of his trance editing an entry on Happi-Werld III to look up at her. It took him a moment. She wore silver overalls under a Milliways jacket and carried a satchel. She was very tall, slender, strikingly beautiful. Her skin was a cool shade of blue, as were her eyes. Those eyes now blazed with anger.
	"Is your name Ford Prefect?" she asked.
	"Maybe," said Ford, who had very recently gotten into trouble with that question.
	The woman stabbed the screen of her _Guide_ with a finger. "You edited my entry. I want to know why."
	"You're a field researcher?"
	The woman brushed a lock of her black hair over one ear. "Yeah. Joon Plinx. Don't change the subject."
	Ford glanced around his cubicle. Her beauty had disarmed him, but her aggression was doing a good job of tempering it. "Look, first of all, I don't remember editing your entry. I've done thousands of entries since I got here, and I stopped reading them all. If I did edit your entry, then I'm sorry, but that's my job."
	"And this is mine. I worked hard on that entry."
	"Well, cry me a river, darling. When I was a field researcher, my entries got edited all the time. I had one on the Earth thousands of pages long and they cut it down to two words; Mostly harmless."
	Joon pushed a button on the _Guide_, causing the screen to light up. "It's not what you cut out, mate. It's what you put in. My entry was on the Chronological Correcting Fluid. You added a line at the end that it was a fairy tale."
	That entry Ford remembered. "'Course it's a fairy tale. That guy Albin Treedeebee was loonier than the entire East Wing of the Sirius State Mental Hospital. There's no such thing as Chronological Correcting Fluid."
	Joon reached into her satchel and pulled out an object. Over his years of travelling the  Galaxy, there was very little that Ford had not seen before. Until now. It looked like a shred of paper, flat and ragged on the edges, but glowed in her fingers as if it were torn from the surface of a sun.
	Ford winced at it. "What's that supposed to be?"
	Joon shook it in his face. "This is the fabric of the universe itself. A shred of space-time, collected and formed into this sheet by the Time Printer, invented by Treedeebee, used in conjunction with the Chronological Correcting Fluid. If this sheet exists, then the Fluid exists."
	Ford glared at the shimmering object, thinking uncomfortably of Magrathea. He had once thought that planet to be a myth as well, until he had been shot at, landed, imprisoned, and escaped from it. A part of him felt a nagging sense of deja vu. Another part of him told the first part to shut its trap.
	Ford pushed the sheet away. "Or it's a fancy party trick, probably got it for a quid at the chemist's. When you've found the Fluid, then I'll delete the line. Until then, I have work to do."
	Joon took a deep breath, as if about to speak, when two large men stepped up to either side of them.
	As was mentioned before, the floor where Ford worked was almost silent. The arrival of the two men removed even the quiet whisper of footsteps and clicking of computer terminals. A deathly quiet fell over everyone and everything.
	Ford had personal experience with law enforcement officers, military personnel, and bodyguards of all kinds. The two men made them all look like fairies.
	It wasn't that the men were large (which they were) or wearing incredibly heavy armour (which they were) or carrying frighteningly lethal weaponry (which they were). It was an attitude with which they moved, a fluid grace like a knife cutting through flesh.
	Tweed had described these men to Ford once, saying, "The Corporation calls them Aggressive Sales Representatives, but that's a polite way o' puttin' it. Better to call them soldiers, but not like we know '