In the first installment of our thrilling adventure serial,

the basic thrust of the narrative, if you will, was a pseudo spy-thriller of revenge, romance and narrow escapes from situations of Great Peril and so forth.

In a riotous opening scene, our hero Bob and heroine Jill discovered a small dead blue fish.

The fish was the intended recipient of a secret tape from the head of a spy organisation known as The Agency. The man that delivered the tape, a nondescript and plain looking UPS employee, is in fact one of the senior-most operatives working for the Agency.

Now, as it turned out, The Agency were in fact the good guys. Our central Bad Guy emerged under the guide of a Russian ex-Mafia KGB enforcer known as The Red Leicester.

Leicester, it was revealed, had a storied past with the head of The Agency, the former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros Ghali. These two nemeses... nemesisis? enemies had, in the past, engaged in such a climatic battle that it nearly took the life of Boutros Ghali. So dreadful were the wounds Leicester inflicted upon him that only his head survived and was cryogenically preserved in a jar.

Bob and Jill, having become embroiled in this espionage plot, were pursued by actors pretending to be Nazi SS Guards, led by the evil Richard E Grant. Grant was working for one of The Red Leicester's henchmen, an assassin and debauched alcoholic called Gonzaroolio.

The Agency dispatched two of its top agents to assist in the capture of Gonzaroolio. However, Agents Arthur Robinson and X arrived too late to prevent Grant's assassination at the hands of Gonzaroolio.

Arthur, X, Bob and Jill (now revealed to also be a Secret Agent along side Arthur and X) join forces to pursue the leads to Gonzaroolio and The Red Leicester.

Bob is deputised into The Agency and takes up a mission to bug Gonzaroolio's base. Unfortunately, he is captured, beaten and while unconscious suffers from a hallucinatory dream...

Bob came to slowly. He was in what appeared to be a darkened room and lay on a bed with red satin sheets lit by a dim red light.

...

A girl appeared suddenly beside him: talk, dark and predatory — perhaps she had been there all the time. She took a glass of brandy in her long, red-nailed fingers and lifted his head so he could drink.

Relishing the moment,Bob thought, 'Well, this could have been a lot worse.'

'Bob.' The girl whispered his name in a seductive foreign accent. 'Please believe me. You are safe. I have a message for you.'

'The dying pilchard bleeds under a turquoise moon. '

'This is all I have time to say, I must go now,' she whispered before appearing to melt back through the curtains.

Now, this phrase, 'The dying pilchard bleeds under a turquoise moon', will recur numerous times throughout the mangled plot and eventually (we promise) be revealed as being fantastically important.

The finale to Storytime I takes place on an island hideaway, deep underground in an abandon chemical missile silo.

The silo exploded, killing Boutros Boutros-Ghali and The Red Leicester.

Guy, Boutros's second in command (and also the UPS deliveryman from the start of the story) inherits control of The Agency at this point, but is badly injured in a confrontation with Leicester before the explosion.

For those of you concerned with such matters, Boutros gets into heaven for a lifetime of good deeds and Leicester, naturally, spends the rest of eternity in the Boiling Pits of Hell.

In the epilogue, Guy is recovering from his injuries: he instructs Bob and Jill to stay out of trouble and sends Agents Arthur and X away on a mission to discover the true meaning of 'The Dying Pilchard Bleeds Under a Turquoise Moon'.

At this point, Arthur and X leave the story for an extended hiatus.

Here we enter the darker and mysterious world of the Second Installment of h2g2 Storytime.

The Authors of this second volume of the collected adventures of The Agency were clearly in communion with Dark Forces during its inception, since the text is over-ridden with mention of matters spiritual and occultist ne'r-do-wells.

Bob, mild-mannered soul that he is, would happily have followed Guy's instructions and avoided any sort of danger and malevolent powers. Sadly, however, The Dangerous and Malevolent Powers have every intention of finding him.

One of Leicester's former employees, the devoutly loyal double-agent Tim, attempts to summon the spirit of Leicester through a Ouija Board. Something went badly wrong, however, and instead of resurrecting the psychopath Leicester, he instead brought back from the Nether Regions of the Beyond the very dead, despotically evil and completely deranged monk Rasputin.

Rasputin initiated a bid to take over the world and destroy it. He was a bit upset that God never answered any of his prayers and forced him, as he saw it, to turn to a life of sin and depravity, working to corrupt the Tsar's rule in Russia and culminating in Rasputin's eventual murder by Russian aristocratic loyalists.

God, meanwhile, had other things to worry about. His eternal rival Satan exploited Rasputin's escape from Hell to launch another challenge to God's rule over the Universe. He grants Leicester the Mark of Hell and releases the newly demonised Leicester from the Fiery Pits to mix things up back on Earth, with the eventual aim of returning Rasputin back to the Ninth Circle of The Damned.

In this time, Rasputin successfully deposed the serving President of The United States and assumed command of the world's largest and only superpower — his demonic visage was masked by powerful telepathy and his mind control quickly subjugated the world population. A mysterious woman called Annabel aided him in his efforts. She is a member of an ancient cult who foresaw Rasputin's Ascension, though to what dark ends is never really clear.

Also at hand is that dapper double-crosser Tim, who begrudgingly works for Rasputin but who is, nonetheless, very relieved when Leicester appears and starts laying waste to stuff.

Rasputin, meanwhile, is secured far underground. Annabel had prepared a lair for him beneath the ancient monolithic site of Stonehenge. This place is rich in occult energy that Rasputin will tap into, using an ancient device to initiate the Apocalypse.

In a raucous final act, The Agency stormed the Stonehenge Visitors Centre and located the underground lair. Leicester made it there before them, but Rasputin was prepared and used a magical incantation to transfer the demon's consciousness into the body of a small white kitten.

Deciding to ditch the occultist calling she had had handed to her and rather attached to being alive, Annabel betrayed Rasputin and made good her escape.

While all this earthly excitement is going on, on the divine end of things,God has sat down with the Devil to settle the fate of 'who controls The Universe' over a game of Paper, Scissors and Stone. Before the game is concluded, however, Gods appointed Bob as his Divine Champion. Just in the nick of time, as it turned out, since Bob is very quickly then forced into a one-on-one match with Rasputin, in which despite the monk's seeming invincibility Bob eventually triumphs. Tragically, Gonzaroolio¹ is killed in a fatalistic sacrifice.

Annabel's final bid for freedom involved teleporting out of the chamber using the very device that Rasputin had tried to destroy the world with. In so doing, however, it becomes impossible to stop the device's self-destruction. It imploded, taking Bob, Stonehenge and the Lair of Rasputin with it.

Everyone else ran away and survived.

God, who always likes to see his champions done well by, returns Bob's soul to the Earthly realm. However God tells him that Bob has no chance in Heaven of getting Jill to like him. So, like any good petulant human, once back in his mortal body and subject to things such as hormones and glands, he blithely disobeys and fawns over her just as much as before.

Annabel, as planned, had transported back to the temple of the cult that appointed her Rasputin's accomplice. Her mission, though, is far from over...

Leicester was very annoyed at being reduced to a cute kitten and wrecked terrible vengeance on the squadron of US Marines instructed to guard him. He located Tim, his faithful servant, and together they struck out for pastures new, eventually settling down in a small unregarded cottage in an idyllic countryside setting occupied by an old blind woman.

Guy debriefed all the agents and instructed Heddingly, Bob and Jill to recuperate by going on holiday.

Guy, meanwhile, went to check up on his old friends Arthur and X and found them fleeing some as-yet-unidentified THING.

Arthur and X will go beyond adventure and daring and find terrible danger which they will anxiously run away from!

Which may or may not involve Prussian goat-herders.

What does 'The Dying Pilchard Bleeds Under A Turquoise Moon' actually mean?

Who are the mysterious Cult of the Dying Pilchard

What is their goal?

What is the real truth of Annabel's amazing secret agenda?

Accountants who live amazing double lives!

Swivel chairs!

Spacecraft!

Clive the flying Ostrich

07.09.06 Front Page

Back Issue Page