There are many constants in the Universe, regardless of what Universe you happen to be in at the time. These constants are constantly constant in every Universe, except for those constants that aren't, in which case they do not.

The first constant in the Universe is that "there are exceptions to every rule."

Another constant that persists throughout the space and time continuum has something to do with the fact that as soon as someone inside a given Universe figures out all the constants of that Universe and understands how that Universe functions irrevocably, that Universe will begin to cease to exist. It doesn't do this all at one time, but to the individual who figures it all out, it might as well. The individual who figures it all out immediately finds him or her or itself trapped in a maelstrom of energy and a quite loud and annoying sucking sound, as said individual is immediately removed from that particular Universe and into theoretical nothingness.

There's a better way to write that particular constant, but I'm not in the mood to look it up for you at the moment. Suffice it to say that when the question to the answer of life, the universe, and everything is solved, the universe holding whoever figured it out immediately wants to be as far away from that individual as possible.

The next constant in the universe is this: "nobody likes a smartass."

There are other constants in the Universe. In any Universe that happens to have suns, those suns will inevitably be very hot and not the sort of place one should place a hamburger stand. In any Universe that has humanoid species, those humanoids will most undoubtedly spend most of their existence thinking they are much more important to the Grand Scheme of Things than they in fact actually are. In any Universe that contains canine-like beings, there will also most certaintly be fleas. And it goes on and on like that for a long time and is rather boring.

Predominantly, there is an order to the chaos, and a perpetual state of chaos to the order. In the Whole General Mishmash of it all, there is a reason. And to everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven.

And coincidently in every Universe someone comes up with a phrase like that and thinks they are the first individual to think of it.

So as Jacob and his newly-found but rather short aquaintence Nob were about to discover yet another rather obvious but ubiquitous constant in the Universe that if they had sat down and thought about it they would have realized without demonstration but were about to get a demonstration anyway, it is not surprising that they were completely oblivious to the lesson they were about to learn, as were the Goothsbanians they were about to meet and make very unhappy.

For yet another constant in the Universe says (which by the way was NOT going to be the lesson they were about to learn) lessons in life tend to sneak up on you like a snake in the grass, and are usually just as unwelcome.

Yet another interesting constant in the Universe which holds no bearing on the present events in Jacob's life but is interesting to note nonetheless is this: Social political dilemmas are very much like excrement. You never know when you're going to step in some and it could take a long time to get rid of the smell.

"How dare you upset the space and time continuum in this way! Who do you think you are!? Zaphod Beeblebrox??"

They had not even finished materializing into the large but smelly and slime-infested bridge of Quaxdorn's cargo ship when Nob began taking a step towards who he assumed to be the captain of the ship. Jacob noted as he tried to keep his newly aquired babelfish in his ear and just before he became physically ill from the matter transferrence beam that a large number of Nob's atomic particles were still trying to catch up with the rest of him. This left a little trail of pretty colors behind Nob as he moved forward and the pretty colors quickly merged into the rest of Nob and it was about this nanosecond that Jacob realized he had been looking at part of what Nob had eaten earlier floating just outside of his stomach lining just before completely materializing.

Jacob then immediately doubled over, one hand still fiddling with his ear and the babelfish as the other simultaneously tried to hold both his stomach and his mouth. Jacob proceeded to vomit onto the floor of the slimy bridge, but no one seemed to notice and when Jacob felt a bit better he understood why: considering what was already on the floor his vomit actually made the place look a bit better.

Nob stepped with his little knobby legs towards the closest Goothsbanian as his subconscious tried to accomodate the rest of him by failing to properly take in his surroundings. Naturally, because Nob had never been to this particular cargo ship before, he mistakenly took Helgebrunt for the captain. Helgebrunt was surprised by this advancing little pipsqueak for a second, but then realized that he might be allowed to kill this creature if it continued to advance, and he leered his toothy slimy leer at Nob.

Nob was nonplussed by this, but his lunch suddenly wished it hadn't materialized with him.

"The Goothsbanians are not supposed to evict the inhabitants of this planet for at least another bleem according to my employer's records! I insist you return the earthlings back to Earth and go back the way you came before I start taking names and adding my salary to your accumulative bills!"

"Bills What bill?" Belani trilled her neckgills again. Quaxdorn amusedly motioned to Belani in an attempt to nonverbally say don't worry Belani I didn't see you at the Big Bang Burger Bar so you don't have a bill for them to haunt your entire life with but since Belani had never been to the Big Bang Burger Bar she had no idea what he was trying to convey to her and wouldn't have anyway because Goothsbanians are not very good at nonverbally conveying much more than repugnance.

Helgebrunt was just about to attempt to swallow Nob's little head whole when Quaxdorn interrupted him, "I believe you must be mistaken, my little friend."

"Don't interrupt me! I'm talking to your captain!"

"No you're not, you silly little man." Quaxdorn attempted to smile which caught Jacob's eye just in time to prompt him to return to vomiting on the floor. "You are speaking to my first officer. I am the captain. If you have a problem I would suggest you bring it to me as I am much less likely to swallow your head whole."

"I very much doubt that!" Nob's articulate anger spat with venomous saliva that everyone on the bridge was immune to but was actually nominally useful on his home planet which he had never been to having been born on one of its moons and drafted into service with the QuadBee soon after he learned mathematics. Nob was nonplussed by his mistake, and spinned to turn his seething dissatisfaction on this other green, slimy and frighteningly smiling creature. "and wipe that smile off your face before I make sure your meal contains botchilism."

"Ah! Now I know whose fault that was! How quaint." Quaxdorn continued smiling, for the very moment he realized who these two aliens were he suddenly felt almost giddy. "I was under the impression that humanoids like it when people smile. It is suppose to make them feel more comfortable."

Jacob had managed to stop vomiting, "Your smile looks like you could swallow MY head whole!" Jacob said this with not a small amount of fear in his voice.

"In fact I very well could. I merely pointed out that I am less likely to do so than my first officer. At ease, Helgebrunt!" Quaxdorn motioned for Helgebrunt to stop slowly sneaking up behind Nob as he had been doing. Helgebrunt grunted and returned to his seat.

"You never let me have any fun."

Quaxdorn eyed his small and angry uninvited guest, "Nob, is it? You poisoned my meal? I'm glad I know this now but I wish I had known it before. You were very nice and civil to me a few years ago. Apparently you have not experienced that yet."

Nob immediately called his bluff but his stomach was rapidly trying to find a way out of the rest of him, "oh well then why don't you just kill me now and be done with it since you're upsetting time and space already!"

"I would if not for your vomitous friend here."

"M-m-me?" Jacob asked meekly.

"Yes. I like you and owe you a debt of gratitude."

"Uhm, you're welcome," said Jacob in that way that humans from Earth tend to say you're welcome when they don't know why they're saying it but they're saying it anyway.

"You're the one who tells me the food is spoiled. I returned the meal and ordered the cook shot. Unfortunate, that, but still it was satisfying at the time. So you see, my little assassin, I've already been to the Big Bang Burger Bar and so your threats as an employee of that lovely establishment are irrelevant. I even paid off my debt before I went, and therefore enjoyed it much more immensely."

Jacob was sick of this, not to mention still a bit queasy in general. "Why are you evicting my planet?"

"YOUR planet!?" Suddenly laughter erupted from Quaxdorn, Helgebrunt, and several other Goothsbanians who do not have speaking lines and are therefore not worth mentioning other than for the fact they happen to be in the room, and Belani although she was not certain why she was laughing except for the fact that she had just noticed the lanky and wiry earthling who had just spoken and as is customary among her kind when they get sexually aroused, she found a desire to titter a bit anyway and this was a convenient time to do so.

"Your planet?" Quaxdorn repeated amusedly which to Jacob appeared to be menacingly, as they were obviously from two drastically different cultures not to mention genetic combinations, "You are mistaken but that is understandable. So was the president of your planet and so I had to dispose of him, but since I owe you a lifedebt I will explain it to you as simply as I can."

Quaxdorn sludged past Nob slowly as Nob remained there seething and offered to place a slimy limb upon Jacob's shoulders in ways he had seen on reruns of Courtship of Eddie's Father on the way to this planet. However, repulsed by Quaxdorn's approach, Jacob doubled over again and vomited. Quaxdorn found this earthling custom most admirable, that though not slimy a human would try to leave a bit of himself on the floor of his vessel as his people did. It was almost charming.

"Alright human. This is the situation. A long time ago this planet was built-"

"Built!?" Jacob managed to blurt out between what was now little more than dried heaves as his last meal was already complimenting the decor of the room.

"Please don't interrupt me I actually like you at this moment. Yes. Built. Several bleems ago in fact. By small pan dimensional creatures who housed inside the planet a large computer. It was designed to think about life or somesuch and then report its findings when it was done. Unfortunately the little creatures ran out of money soon after paying off the planet and had to sell it off to another group of pan dimensional beings, who after a bleem or two sold it off to a corporate interest in this dimension. Several poker games and civilizatons later it eventually ended up in our hands, and the mice have recently contacted us and they'd like to buy it back-"

"Mice?" asked Jacob, sounding very much like one.

"Yes. Mice."

"What madness are you spewing?" Nob was practically stepping on Quaxdorn's large hindquarters that sludged across the floor which made seeing the little accountant a bit difficult for the very much larger and slimier Goothsbanian.

"Oh! Something the great employee of the Big Bang Burger Bar doesn't know? Is that possible?"

All the Goothsbanians in the room laughed at this point, rather forcibly. Not due to the fact what Quaxdorn said was entirely funny, but due to the fact that when Quaxdorn spoke in that particular tone where he attempted to impersonate human sarcasm, they had learned after witnessing several fellow shipmates thrown into sodium pits that it is best to humor him. He silenced them after basking in the stagnant glow of their false bravado by slicing one of his limbs in the air as he'd seen done on some satelite broadcast movie the night before.

The Goothsbanians were not yet aware of this, but they had just been affected by humanity's culture in ways that would later cause them to create very cheesy tri-D movies at exceptionally low cost and sell them to other cultures who would not know they stole most of their ideas from the humans, and in a few generations would find themselves out of the real estate business entirely.

That would be several solar cycles from now however. At the moment Quaxdorn looked to Jacob to be simply performing a very bad and overly melodramatic William Shatner impersonation.

"This planet is NOT housing a computer! My ships would have registered it when we first arrived!"

"You are correct, dear Nob. I misspoke. The planet not only houses a computer. It *is* a computer. And everything that evolved on this planet is a part of the computer's immaculate construction."

Nob flustered a bit, "but my records indicate that the present sentient humanoid race on Earth, of which Jacob is the only present member on this bridge, is not native to that planet, didn't evolve on it, and therefore are not a part of this computer's framework."

"Yes, quite right Nob. Which is why they must vacate the premises before the mice arrive."

"But you have no right."

"We have every right. They haven't paid rent in ages."

"And you're going to sell this rock to mice?"

"For a very hefty sum, yes."

"But it's shoddy goods!"

"And?" and Quaxdorn paused here for dramatic effort, "Your point?"

"Quax?" Helgebrunt was looking over his instrument panel and its viewscreen which showed nothing but the blackness of space.

"What is it Helgie?" Quax walked away from Jacob and Nob towards his first officer, which very much pleased the human being but left Nob in a twisted state of consternation.

"We just lost another cargo vessell," Helgebrunt almost showed a bit of fear in his husky voice and bulbous face.

"Damn! Who do I have to put on the list of treasonous deserters now?"

"This one didn't desert, Quax. I was looking right at it on the viewscreen when it happened. It just sort of fizzled out of existence. It didn't warp or teleport out of the region. I've never seen anything like it?"

"Did we get a record of it?"

"Oh of course!"

"On the main viewer!" Quaxdorn dramatically pointed at the main viewscreen which took up one entire wall of the bridge. A few seconds later the scene was visible to everyone. A large green behemoth of a cargo ship, perhaps one of the most prized possessions of the Repossessitorian Goothsbanian Fleet, one moment was there and then with a strange pink and silver shimmering effect that left chills down the spines of everything in the room that had spines, a moment later it was gone. A large object almost one third the size of the Terran moon, suddenly ceased to be. No sound. No warning. No laser beams or warp signatures. No explanation. It seemed to have been just as surprised to no longer be there as they were.

"What-what does that mean?" Belani's neckgills trilled passionately.

Helgebrunt swallowed hard, "it-it means we're next!" His eyes widened at the nothingness on the screen.

"What do you mean?"

"Well Quax, as you know all of our cargo vessells are numbered. They're numbered in the order they left the Goothsbanian shipyards."

"Yeah."

"The oldest ship in our convoy disappeared first," Helgebrunt punched a couple buttons and on the main viewscreen was a list of all thirty ships that consisted of the Goothsbanian Eviction Convoy sent to Earth. The first ten slots said "empty" to the right of their names. The numbers on the far left were numerical in order. "The oldest was one-seventeen: Vorgsbane's ship."

"Yes, an old and dear friend. I almost wept when I ordered him killed for treason the next time he shows his face."

"Well, one thirty-three was next. It was the next oldest in our convoy. One eighteen through thirty-two are on other eviction missions elsewhere in the galaxy."

"Yes. Go on." Quaxdorn was almost impressed. He knew Helgebrunt could count but that he was able to put this information together coherently fascinated Quaxdorn. Occasionally, his first officer almost showed signs of intelligence. Rare among his race. It's why he kept Helgebrunt around.

"The next oldest in our convoy is one forty-seven. Then one forty-nine. As you can see from the list captain, our vessels are disappearing in numerical order. The one I personally witnessed disappear was two thirty-nine."

Jacob looked around the room. Everyone else was staring at the viewscreen, their mouths agape with awe. "What number is this ship?"

Helgebrunt swallowed hard, a bit of drool dripping from his maw, "We're two forty-two," he gasped hoarsely.

"Well it's been fun!" Nob grabbed Jacob by his front jeans pocket and pulled Jacob behind him. "I warned you not to mess with the space and time continuum but you didn't listen to me. So we'll just be off-"

Suddenly the entire ship shook with an unimaginable gravitic force. Everyone but Helgebrunt felt shoved to the left of the room and everyone's stomachs suddenly turned queasy. Helgebrunt remained where he was only because he was notably larger in size than even his captain. However even he had difficulty remaining in his seat and at his control console.

Quaxdorn could hear the gravometric generators behind the walls and floor spinning in doubletime, putting a massive strain on the entire ship.

"Quick! Helgie! Kick in the backup gravometric generators!"

"What is it!" Belani screamed.

"Viewscreen! Vid-view eight!" Quax ordered. Helgebrunt's large limbs flew across his controls expertly and almost with a grace that defied his bulking mass, as the gravity of the room began to return to normal.

"On screen as ordered, Captain!" Before them was the frontal view of the cargo vessel. All they could see on the screen was yellow.

"Decrease magification!"

"Uhm, captain? It's at zero magification!"

"What does that mean?!" yelled Jacob.

"Whatever that thing is, it's practically on top of us! Evasive maneuvers!"

Helgebrunt attempted a few controls. Then stood up and punched a fellow Goothsbanian at the console next to him, too stunned to move himself, from his seat. Helgebrunt pounded on a large button and commanded more controls. The ship began to strain against a massive gravitic force, and they slowly pulled backwards from their present position.

Jacob looked around him hopelessly, Nob still pulling at him and fiddling with a small black metallic device. "If that thing is so big it's affecting us this way, what's it doing to the gravity of the Earth?"

"We're not going to stay around long enough to find out!"

Jacob looked back at the scene of mayhem around him. Some Goothsbanians were commandeering controls by punching other Goothsbanians out of the way. Other Goothsbanians were being punched out of the way, their faces contorted in states of horror and fear that any race would noticably understand. Belani Cruse stood by her console. She stood out because she was the only one not moving. She stood there motionless, staring back at Jacob. For the first time since arriving there, Jacob noticed she was rather cute.. for an alien.

Without really thinking, his right arm raised in the air, as Nob continued ushering him hurriedly away from the scene with one hand and fiddling with his device with the other.

Belani's gossamer wings unfolded behind her, and Jacob suddenly felt something inside his ribcage blossom in a way he'd never felt before, and he got all warm and goosepimply.

"We've got to get out of here, human! You understand me!?"

"Belani!" Quax's back was to her as she gracefully lifted her lower limbs from the floor and began to flap her wings towards the human, "open hailing frequencies! ..Belani?"

_{[Added February 2002]}

"Take me with you!" Belani cried to Sydney.

Sydney's head spun around from Belani to Nob, and Nob knew the look on his face was unmistakable. "Can we take her with us?"

Most humanoid races had a similar response to people of Belani's race. He couldn't help but agree. She was rather lovely, but now was not the time to think of such lustful things. "Oh alright! Make it fast! Both of you touch this device!"

Sydney placed his hand over Nob's, who was holding the blinking device, "What is it?"

"A Sub-Etha Signaling Device!" Belani's tongue clicked out of her oral orifice and wrapped itself around Sydney's fingers as her wings wrapped themselves around the three of them. Sydney noticed a sweet smell of exotic perfume. Nob activated the device, signaling his own ship that they were ready to return.

_{[end of Added bit. the rest of this is from June 1999.]}

Quax turned around as the sound of churning gravometrics increased in their strain. He saw Belani vacating her post, and reached for his blaster pistol when Helgebrunt diverted his attention.

"Captain?" Helgebrunt was now staring again at the main viewscreen, the large yellow color slowly showing more definition and vaguely looking like the wall of a very large ship as the Goothsbanian cargo vessell retreated away from it. There was a large sign on the ship. Helgebrunt had already inputted the letters into the computer and it chirped out a translation, though it did point out on the translator's small viewscreen that this was a guess because those five characters were not in its databanks.

"What is it, Helgie?"

"What's a Vogon, sir?"