Reality Bytes
Created | Updated Jun 23, 2004
Ever wondered what would happen to 5 die-hard h2g2ers if they were taken offline and locked inside a house with... no net access?
The Contestants
Day 9
Khamsin and Anthea are up early so that they can spend as much time as possible with each other. Feuille and Skenvoy wake up within minutes of each other and start gathering their items to throw at the next contestant to leave. Anthea and Khamsin realise that if they are to get out safely they need some sort of active defence. Anthea makes a suggestion and they both hurry off to prepare. As the time of eviction arrives Anthea and Khamsin say one last loving farewell to each other, which makes Feuille say that she feels sicker than if she had eaten one of Anthea's cakes whole. The intercom then bursts into life stating
'The second housemate to leave the house is... Khamsin.'
Skenvoy and Feuille prepare to dive at him and beat him up (again) but Anthea's defence plan actually works - Khamsin holds out one of the mice in front of him. Skenvoy screams and runs off in terror and Feuille drops her brick (painfully on her foot) so that she does not accidentally hurt the mouse. Khamsin backs all the way towards the door before hastily handing Anthea the mouse, grabbing his things and leaving the house.
A few hours later Skenvoy is cowering under his blankets and wondering where the mouse is, while Feuille and Anthea are still by the door, Anthea holding the mouse and staring wistfully into space, Feuille as she can't move having hurt her foot badly when she dropped the brick onto it. Eventually Anthea snaps out of her trance and walks off carrying the mouse with her. Feuille is left by the doorway.
Skenvoy does finally emerge halfway through the afternoon to watch WWE. This surprises the psychologist, as it is seems at odds with the sorts of programs that Skenvoy normally watches. He eventually comes to the conclusion that Skenvoy enjoys watching anything which presents an alternate version of reality, and WWE fits perfectly in with this as it is fake. When this is over Skenvoy once again retreats to his room.
By evening nothing much has happened in the house and the team are worried that the housemates are now isolating themselves as h2g2 withdrawal sets in. The new psychologist also wonders if Skenvoy is scared of the mice as he is genuinely scared of mice, or as they are a reminder of h2g2. Anthea eventually leaves her room, still carrying the mouse and goes to talk to Feuille. Though talk is not the right word. Instead she rambles on, ignoring anything Feuille says (which are mainly pleads to phone an ambulance or take her away from the door), and, most worrying of all, starts to refer to the mouse as Khamsin. It seems that by being denied her two passions - h2g2 and Khamsin - the two have merged for Anthea as she has attached her feelings for Khamsin to the mouse which has many sentimental feelings from h2g2 already. Just after midnight Anthea retreats to her room once more and falls asleep. Feuille is left to sleep by the door and Skenvoy is still cowering under his blanket.
Day 10
Anthea is first up and heads to the kitchen, clutching 'Khamsin' mouse to her. She sets him down on a tabletop and starts to make breakfast for them both. The mouse, realising what is heading his way, tries to use this opportunity to make his bid for freedom. Unfortunately Anthea sees him and catches him, preventing him from making any other escape attempts. The smells of cooking food wafting from the kitchen wake Feuille and she once again starts calling out asking for help. She is once again ignored.
Once Anthea has finished making breakfast she sits down and starts trying to feed Khamsin mouse. Luckily for him it is at that point that RSPCA members storm the house protesting about animal cruelty shown by forcing the mice to eat anything made by Anthea. When they first break through the door Feuille thinks that they are there to save her, when she is once again ignored as half of them head to the mouse in the cage and the other half go to save Khamsin mouse she gets up and walks off in a huff as her ploy at getting sympathy failed and she'd been sitting there faking being hurt trying to get taken out of the house for 24 hours. When the RSPCA members leave a new door is quickly put up, though there is no apparent need as Skenvoy has still not woken up, Feuille is sitting in her room nursing her brick in a huff and Anthea is sitting lifelessly in the living room, though whether this is because Khamsin mouse was taken from her or whether it is due to the fact she ate part of the breakfast she made is a matter of much debate across the country.
By 11am Skenvoy is up. Feuille, having heard sounds of movement from the living room, finally leaves her room to find Anthea is still frozen in place and Skenvoy is drawing on her face in permanent marker. Feuille thinks about stopping Skenvoy, shrugs, and picks up a pen to add a flowery motif across Anthea's forehead. By 11:20 the work of art that is Anthea's face is finished. It is at this time that the RB team announces the new challenge for the housemates; they have now added a computer to the house which has Internet access. The housemates must prove that they are not being influenced by lack of h2g2 by not using it.
Before the task has fully been announced Skenvoy and Feuille are at the computer and logged onto the Internet, a feat made even more impressive as the connection is not broadband, yet they managed to turn on the computer, dial up and type in www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2 in less than 8 seconds! Unfortunately they find that h2g2 access has been blocked as has any website in any way related. Therefore they browse the rest of their favourites; the Cbeebies homepage for Skenvoy, the Brick Lovers Appreciation Society homepage for Feuille, and E-Bay, where they put a picture of Anthea's face up for auction.
Skenvoy and Feuille then spend the rest of the day browsing the Internet, going into other forums and then crying when they compare them to h2g2. Anthea remains motionless. Once this has become boring Skenvoy and Feuille discuss why they decided to come on the show. Feuille admits that the reason she is on the show is that she had been offered the chance to meet real people who she could hug, rather than just *hugging* them in virtual reality, and it was too rare an opportunity to pass up. To prove her point she tries to hug Skenvoy. When he backs off she goes to hug the motionless Anthea instead. In a bizarre twist of the laws of nature Anthea also manages to back off, despite remaining motionless at the same time. Feuille grows moody but Skenvoy offers to tell her why he is on the show and so she cheers up. It turns out that Skenvoy did not know where he was going. He was just told to get into the nice padded van by the men in white coats who used to give him pills every day. Feuille now starts worrying that she is trapped in the house with a mental patient and whatever Skenvoy is.
In the evening Skenvoy, Feuille and the inert Anthea play cards. As Anthea is still not responding to any outside stimuli, Skenvoy and Feuille decide to play poker. By the end of the game Skenvoy and Feuille are each £1,000,000 up and Anthea is £2,000,000 down... if only any of them had real money rather than using h2g2 money. When Feuille and Skenvoy retire for the night they do so leaving Anthea in the same position she has been in for over 12 hours.
Day 11
Skenvoy is up at 7am and is quickly on the net. Having found nothing has changed at the Cbeebies home page he recovers from his depression and goes to check how the picture of Anthea is doing at E-Bay. To his amazement he finds that the latest bid on the picture is £5,000,000 from the Tate Modern. Realising how much his drawing is obviously worth he quickly sketches another doodle and puts it up for auction. It is valued as priceless, which makes Skenvoy believe he might be rich. That is, until he realises that people mean priceless in the 'This is so bad it is not worth anything' kind of way rather than the 'this is so amazing it cannot be valued' way.
Anthea is next to move, actually blinking her eyes once. Having done that she then gets up and goes to make breakfast, though she appears to be moving like a zombie rather than a person which leads the psychologist to assume that making breakfast is now a reflex action for Anthea, just like how when she cooks it is also a reflex for her to experiment in chemical weapon designs. Once Anthea's porridge has dissolved half of the kitchen units she returns to the living room, there to see the picture of her face on E-Bay. This seems to snap her out of her trance and she instantly starts shouting at Skenvoy for drawing on her, and trying to strangle him. When Skenvoy points out Feuille did a lot of the work Anthea tells him to stop taking away her reason to kill him and carries on. It is the noise of this conflict that rouses Feuille and she enters the living room to find Skenvoy half dead on the floor and Anthea trying to access h2g2 on the net.
By 11am Skenvoy has recovered and, as no one has any other ideas what to do, he suggests playing 'Solitaire Championship best of 50,000' in which all three of them play 50,000 games of Solitaire on the computer and the person who gains the most points overall wins. The other two accept and so the tournament gets underway. At first it is extremely exciting as no one is quite sure what card will be turned over next. The public watching at home 'ohhh' and 'ahhh' appreciatively as the three contestants masterfully move the Aces (the cards, not the people) into the top places and start to sort out the rest of the cards. Unfortunalty this amazement at Solitaire fades after 4 seconds and so the next 18 hours pass with more and more people actually realising that there is a life out there which does not involve watching other peoples lives on TV. This leads to an even greater number of people watching TV so as to insulate themselves from the harsh outside world. At the end of the day the championship has drawn to a... tense (for lack of a suitable word) duel between Feuille and Anthea, Skenvoy having lost early on when he forfeited 10,000 of his games to watch more children's TV. When the final results come in it turns out that Feuille has won. To celebrate she smashes the computer vowing never to play solitaire again. A few minutes later, as there is now nothing to do, Feuille gets out a pack of cards and asks the others if they want to play Solitaire, as she is bored. Skenvoy and Anthea stare at her in disgust then walk off to sleep.
Day 12
Once again the end of the contest is close at hand for one of the contestants. It comes as a shock to the girls that, if one of them leaves, the other will be left alone with Skenvoy. Neither girl is sure she could control herself around him, alone, for that long; the temptation to kill him hoping no one would see would be too strong to resist. Skenvoy spends most of the day blissfully unaware that the two girls feel so strongly about him as he spends the day sitting at the now broken computer; he does not appear to have noticed that the screen is now in thousands of pieces. When, at 3pm, he gets up and asks the others to look at the computer as he thinks it might not be working the two girls just crack up laughing. Skenvoy doesn't realise what is so funny so goes and sits back at the computer.
During this time Feuille and Anthea have had a full 'girly' session; putting on makeup, doing their nails... it is only when Feuille looks in the mirror that she sees that Anthea has actually been using the time to get her revenge, as Feuille now also has patterns drawn all over her face in permanent marker. Feuille is shocked that Anthea could treat her like that and runs off to her room crying.
The day ends with none of the contestants talking to each other - Skenvoy as he is too wrapped up in the broken computer, the two girls as they are both sitting in their rooms crying because of each other.
The psychologist says that he thinks Feuille and Anthea should be up for eviction this week as Anthea has obviously been badly affected by h2g2 loss; what with the Khamsin mouse and all, and Feuille has also been badly affected as she tried to get sympathy by pretending to be hurt. He denies that the choices are anything to do with the fact that this will man one of the girls is left with Skenvoy and that people want to see how long it takes for whoever is left with him to snap.
