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

*Having let go of Red Dog with his legs, GL now takes advantage of Lil's new proximity and fastens onto her with his legs. The resulting scream almost causes GL to let go of her until he too sees the skull.*

AAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!

*to busy doing a Vileda Mop impression to notice the commotion*

It's... It's the head of a skull!



Are those bots going to help us or have they just taken arena seats?

They appear to have taken arena seats, I'll just stay up here in the nose-bleed section until the match is over.

*takes a closer look at the skull*

Hey! It's made out of plastic! There's a windup key on the side.

*opens the sliding glass window, takes out the skull and winds the key with her teeth, then sets it on the floor*

*the skull proceeds to wend an erratic path across the floor, teeth chattering*

*Sees the skull, laughs, almost falls out of the rafters*

*the button pushing and switch flipping has indeed had an effect on the cleaning bot*

*the bot stands motionless but each arm is still holding a firm grip of Lil, GL and mop*

*it seems to be deep in thought, the only sound a faint hummmmmm from somewhere inside*

*the red light in the CLI logo on the bot's front starts pulsating*

*momentarily distracted by the chattering skull*



*then notices the red light flashing*

A flashing red light is rarely a good thing, I've found.

As long as it isn't counting down, I think we will be okay.

*Calls down to Lil, GL and Reddog.*

Do you hear or see any backwards counting?

*Sees the red flashing light.*


CLEAR THE PLACE, IT GONNA BLOW!




...or something. Hey Affy, when was it that we switched the meaning of a red flashing light from "low batteries" to "this is the big one"? And then there was the period when it meant "you've got mail". Oh, and the time when it meant "toast is burnt". And, er, "almost Mother's Day, better send a card", and "general overload, reboot" and "trouble light malfunction" and "mission completed" and....and...oh, dear. I remember one experiment that we quickly shelved. In that experiment, the flashing red light meant "Anger circuits engaged, commencing flaminco sequence". You don't think...

Garius, I think we're the castanets.

*Cringes at each description of the flashing light*

What? Hold on - did someone mention... flamenco? *dubious*

Flamenco is very emotion packed you know! Who would you possibly expect a bot to -

*recalls the difference in attitude whenever the cleaning bot has spoken*

Oh, hang on - surely you can't mean that this bot has... *lowers voice* f-e-e-l-i-n-g-s-?

*hanging from one of the Bot's arms struggling*

All I can see Witty is Garius's posterior from here

What we need is an extendable thingy.

*remembers the walking stick, reaches for it and examines the buttons and notches*

*tries pushing and pressing various combinations*

*nothing happens*

Stupid walking stick!

The buttons and notches of what?

GL's posting no.125 (which I allowed him to get away with despite not being able to hear him trying to divert my attention:


GL points and when the bot turns it's sensors where he is pointing, he quickly opens the bot's access panel and pushes 3 buttons at random, flips a random switch and then closes the panel.


Panel is closed, see?


*the humming noise grews stronger*

*the red light starts pulsing faster, but with irregular intervals*

*short-short-short, long, short-short-long, long-long...*

*tries to kick Bot, misses, swings a bit, still dangles*

the walking stick and I thought I had trouble keeping up

I think that blinking might be something similar to Morse Code. Too bad I never really learned that.