h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

*red eyes glow amused*
Styx is on Styx's side, Yes Man.
So what about ratant ancestry? A rat and an ant want to know. We think ratants are like concordes heh heh heh

*following the trail of shredded plants where the motorbike has plowed through*
Yowzupman, please don't hurt the Majic Wood. It doesn't like people mashing it and scaring the wildlife. It distresses me a bit, too, cos lots of researchers come here for the peace and quiet...

*examining cave entrance, notices several ratants watching from a guardhouse*
Hello Amy and Styx. When did the ratants get all organised like this and how come you're giving them orders, Yowz? You talk of sides. What are the sides?

to Asteroid- good vs evil and all of those who know not what they are. Minos has organized them and I am hear to recruit a couple for a special project I am working on. I didn't want to hurt the forest, infact I like it alot. But I couldn't seem to find the path, got fedup and just plowed through. Directions would be appreciated

to Styx- Your side ehh? Well I hope you are strong enough of will to stay Neutral. If you are my blessing is upon you, if you are not then you are weak and shall be destroyed in the end.

to Styx- I do not know how the Rat-Ants came about, all I know is that they are hear. How does any being come into exsistence? The Elves where created by the great ones, Humans by God, AI (artificial intelligence) by humans, and etc etc.

*one of those heat seeking devices used in earthquake rescues appears to make its way through the forest by itself*

*close inspection reveals it is being carried by thousands of leaf-cutter ants*

hedging, heh heh heh, "Yo" is hedging! Down to good vs evil? Tell Food Lady which one you are Yowzupman! And when did ratants start listening to you? Ratants obeying Bad Wolf and Lizard and their chamion.

*turns aside and pulls wapphone out of backpack hits a key and says a few words in Ratlish. listens then closes phone*

Nothing mystic about ratants. Wrong to compare them with good things like elves. ratants too ugly.

*soldier ants form a defensive ring around the heat seeking device as General Mayhem of the Engineers (brown ants) stares as the readout*

*General Mayhem adjusts his hard hat and issues orders*

*thousands of brown ants with mechanical diggers move into place on top of the ratant nest and start to dig*

*meanwhile, the Majic Forest has not only healed itself of the damage done by Yowzupman's hog but has used the bike as a climbing frame for a vigorous stand of kudzu vine. Strand after strand of woody vine has grown over and through the spokes of the wheels and across the chassis of the Harley*

I don't actually advise fighting the Majic Wood, Yowzupman. I'm sure you have the ability to chop your fine motorcycle loose, but the Wood will remember you and make your stay really unpleasant. Maybe you could plant some trees or something and re-establish goodwill? It's really best to stick to the trails or else make a new trail a bit more carefully than you did...

Even a member of STUMPED has to be a little ecologically conscious, surely? *looks around* With a flourishing nest like this, I wonder why there is no trail already?

*the forest is filled with the humming of tiny earthmoving machines*

General Mayhem: If you would just stand to one side ma'am, we're trying to dig a hole just where you're standing.

*wap phone rings* General Mayhem answers* picture of Amy the Ant appears on the screen*

Amy: Is everything going to plan, General?

General Mayhem: Yes, Sir! The Engineers have nearly broken through the roof, Sir!

I say, what's going down here? Anything I can do?

Sorry Yowzupman. It would be a foregone conclusion with me to be on the other side of anything STUMPED was in. You do know my landlords are Garius Lupus and Afgncaap5? So my loyalties are pretty clear.

And I feel pretty strongly about the conservation of the Majic Wood, too.

General Mayhem: You see that rope just above your head, Ma'am? Pull on that when I give the order.

*Lil looks up to find three hundred leaf-cutter ants lowering a rope from a branch above her head*

*some distance up river, brown rats have digging and tunnelling led by tall thin brown rat* feeder stream has been dammed and water diverted partway into many tunnels. Only held back by gates made of birchbark and vines*
*rats reporting back on waps to Ratcommander Jenner*
*Jenner waiting for signal from General Mayhem*

*Meanwhile, on the Space Station Big C, the Professor is still watching the threads progress...at seeing the latest occurances, he begins to get interested, and heads immediatly to the Probe Command Room...*
*...once there, he has three standard reconassance probes fitted with the new An-P/EI/M equipment (see 11.6 in A432460), which should keep them safe from any magic, majic, or majik, or anything like it in the forest...*
*...he despatches the probes, and they disperse themselves around the area, watching everything, unnoticed...*

*looks down to make sure this isn't a trapdoor joke* OK, whenever you say, General.

Do I smell San Beta wine?

*Yowzupman's motorbike is by now an indistinguishable lump of greenery*

*The probes communitcate together briefly, and then wash their respective oddours away...*


San Betian Wine is, quite frankly, a horrible beverage. Styx might like it, but that's another story...
The best drinks to be had are San Betian Seawater (non-teeth-rotting sugar water), and Canfrieda Wine (sorry, can't remember my previous description of this...).

*KL has been peacefully wandering through the woods. He notices all of the commotion in the rat-ant colony grounds and steps into the group of people and animals. He has a worried expression on his face*

My ants haven't been doing anything wrong, have they? It looks almost like there's some kind of invasion of their caves going on. That's not the case is it? It wouldn't be very nice for these ants to have their nice tunnels ruined when they've not done anything wrong lately.

*Hopes that all of these tunnels and ropes and things that Amy and Styx have been working on are all harmless, as KL has been hoping that his ants wouldn't have any reasons to act hostiley towards anyone as of yet*

General Mayhem: NOW! *repeats this into wap phone* *Asteroid Lil pulls on the rope as instructed. The rope isn't connected to anything and the coil just falls out of the tree onto KL's head* *Several hundred thousand ants scarper in all directions with silly grins on their faces* *meanwhile, underground, the floor beneath the Queen Ratant collapses. Following orders from Amy the Ant the queen is bundled into a bag to stop her using her wings and carried up the tunnel a short way before being placed on a trolley that runs on rails through the Majik Forest towards the Atelier* *elsewhere, the rats release the damn and water starts to flow towards to ratants' nest...* http://www.h2g2.com/F38024?thread=82193&latest=1

Damn, I meant dam.

*a crack team of pharaoh ant queens hides in the nearby bushes awaiting their orders to advance*

*KL's radio beeps. He picks it up and listens to the soggy sounding clicks from the other side. He looks at all of the people in the forum*

Someone has just done something terrible. They've flooded the rat-ant tunnels. The queen has been kidnapped (don't know why, she didn't really have much command anymore). The other ants are slowly dying in the tunnels.

*Sadly looks at the ground before throwing his head back and emmiting an extremely loud sound that seems to be a cross between the kind of sob that someone gives when their favorite pet gets hit by a car and the kind of scream generally only heard when someone is in a murderous rage. He then looks at the tunnel where some water is starting to flood out of*

Who could've done this terrible thing! It's not like there's anything I ever did to them...

*Whiles he's mumbling these things, KL dives into the mouth of the cavern, yelling something about coming to save them*