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

... look up the copyright implications of following a road set out in another story. As usual, the laws were so unclear that, to be safe, they decided to make it a Copper Brick Road instead, and set out to find a coppersmith and a brick-layer (union, of course) to lay the road.

However, finding these things proved to be difficult because Arnold decided to re-enter the story at this point. As our group was just starting there search, Arnold (with wings) flew out of the temporal rift, and crashed on a small building which instantly caught fire for no reason.

Our group of heroes stared at the building. Finally, Merlin said, "Do we really have to solve this problem to?"
"Well," Death said, " . . ."

"NO
I think we can all agree that we already have too much to deal with and it doesn't bother me if a couple of people in a building get their toes singed."
But after death said this they all realized that the building was the home of the copper-smith and if he died it they wouldn't be able to build that road. Arnold reverted to his old T-rex form for no apparant reason after he hit the building and said he would help save the copper-smith. The group ran into the building except arnold who was too big and simply smashed into the wall allowing more air into the building to feed the fire.

"Hang on a second." said Arthur and dissapeared.
He reappeared a few seconds later.
"Just had to sort something out in another story." he explained.

"Hang on a second." said Arthur and dissapeared.
He reappeared a few seconds later.
"Just had to sort something out in another story." he explained.

Nobody had time to wonder which story or why he had to do something twice or whose face that was smiling at them mysteriously through the smoke, because right then...

Arthur woke up. It had all been a crazy dream. He looked around at the scattered, empty beer cans strewn about the room and suddenly felt the searing pain in his head. At his side an elfin faced female stirred. He decided to spontainiously explode, as he didn't want to...

.. hallucinate any more. Just then he felt Death shaking him. As he came to his senses, he breathed a sigh of releaf.

"Thanks Death. I was having a nightmare that this was all a dream and I was a normal person with a hangover and didn't know you personally (yet) and I had an elfin faced girl beside me in bed. Wait ... that last part was OK. Anyway, thanks for bringing me back."

"No problem", said Death "You blacked out from smoke inhalation while trying to save the coppersmith. You did save him, by the way. See, there he is, putting copper on bricks for the bricklayer to build the road with. They've layed 2 feet of road since lunch."

"I think this might be a long process. We probably have time to tackle the time rift problem in the meantime."

Just then the phony scientist came by with their stuff, dumped it in a heap in front of them and said: "What kind of crap is this? It's useless for anything but time rift healing. I thought it was something useful". He left in a huff.

"Now where did that huff come from", Merlin said to a chorus of groans.

"OK, to make use of this stuff we need to ..."

"get some sort of plan. I knew what it was a few minutes ago, but the smoke made me forget it. Who could possibly think through this situation to make a plan?"

Just then, Douglas Adams reentered the story. He said, "Can I have my cell phone back yet?"

Suddenly, everyone, except Mr. Adams (think he minds being in this story?), had the exact same idea.

Because it was Douglas Adams' cell phone, he was the one required to push the buttons to make it work. Now that he was present, the only thing left to do was . . .

...to completely ignore this fact and call out for pizza and Chinese take-out, because, although nobody's bothered to bring it up, they hadn't eaten anything for quite a while (except Lucy, who had ruined the soda can's chances of winning a Pulitzer). But, as everyone knows, it is virtually impossible for a group of people to agree on what to put on a pizza. So they decided to simply call the Chinese take-out place and order everything on the menu, assuming that such an action would make everybody happy. And it did, all except for Death, who would have really preferred a pizza.

Actually, Douglas Adams wasn't all that happy either, because he still had apples for eyes, and he was getting really tired of passers by making 'apple of your eye' jokes. Not only that, but since he couldn't see, everyone else had given him the most gross looking bits of Chinese and he was afraid he might have eaten the sweet & sour mauve weasel.

Oh, and Donny Most (or whatever his name is) wasn't happy either, but nobody paid any attention to that.

But afterwards Douglas Adams started bi#*hing about everything and soon no one else like him. So they took advantage of his blindness and ditched him in a field next to a McDonalds. They decided they could just use a normal phone that they found on the street instead of his. When they got back from the field to work on their plan they discovered that the road wasn't being built anymore. It was only 15 ft. long so it couldn't be finished. They tried to find the
copper-smith and the brick layer but they were gone. All that the quartet found was a not that said this: "If you want to see your workers again then you will deposit 1 billion dollars in the account of that researcher who wants to build sassy robots."
The gang decided to...

build the sassy robot, using bits of the researcher, leftover copper, and most of the plastic bag. (None of them had that kind of money anyway, and this was their only other option.)

When they had finished, since this time dimension seemed to have far too many loops (not to mention silly dream sequences), they all jumped into the time rift. Arnold, who had seen them go, concentrated, grew his wings back, and flew to the time rift, diving in just as it closed.

They all found themselves standing in the Great Hall of the Dutch Royal Family, being stared at by...

...the Dutch Royal Family. Also in attendance were....

10 mauve weasles and 3 blind mice.

"Now you listen here," the mauve weasel leader said. "The whole plot of making the belgium population sing "Follow the yellow brick road, backwards and in E-major while riding unicycles and juggling rubber chickens made of Bob Evans breakfast sausage, is OUR mission in this story! That's an EVIL thing, so why aren't you guys trying harder to stop us??"
"Well..." Death hesitated. "Why would we?"

"More to the point, why would you want us to?"

The reigning female looked at deat suspiciously. "And how did you get into this story, anyhow?"

"They picked me up in a bar while I was depressed and on strike. I'm still on strike, but this has proven to be a rather fun group, so I'm not depressed anymore. Unless you're going to request that I go back to work? I know a certain monarchy that is just about due for a succession..."

"Oh, no!" the Queen interjected hurriedly. "No, no.. You're quite welcome to stay, thank you."

About that time a green weasle poked his head in from another dimension (just his head, mind you.. a bit cheshirish, don't you think?) and demanded, "Hey! Why weren't we invited to attend this do?"

The reigning male stared at the green intruder with his most practiced disdainful stare and said, "...

Be gone foul green creature". "OK - see you later, and look out for the bushbabies" said the Weasel and disappeared in a puff of green fur. "What did he say?" said the reigning female. "He said look out for your bush baby" said a mauve weasel. "I don't think he did" said Lucy. "Oh, who cares what he said" said Arthur (he would regret this later), "If we fix the time rift we wont have any more bloody weasels anyway, then the population of Belgium will be safe". "I agree" said Death, "I can think of better ways for them to perish anyway". It was just then when...

...they all started to feel hungry again. Arthur said: "I love chinese, but it doesn't stay with me". The Dutch princess clapped her hands twice and said to the servant who rushed in: "Bring personal-sized pizzas for everyone here - find out what each one wants". The servant scurried around and took the orders then rushed out to phone the pizza place. Twelve minutes later a dump truck pulled up outside and dumped 1000 pizzas at the door. Since it had taken longer than 10 minutes, the princess refused to pay, citing the pizza companies "10 minutes or free" policy. The driver began to protest about how it was 1000 pizzas, but stopped as the princess glanced at her guards.

The group started to look through the pizzas. Arthur said:"who ordered all the anchovies? All these pizzas have anchovies! And why are there so many?"

Arnold grinned sheepishly.

Amazingly (and yet to no one's suprise), a rather confused American walked into the room.

"Where the Hell is this?" he asked, looking utterly shattered by the experience of having just been in New York planning a holiday party for his firm. He had just finished ordering a whole mess of anchovy pizza delivery for the party when suddenly he felt the strangest sensation of being in some sort of royal court in Belgium.

The American, whose name was Mr Rosenfeld, decided to keep quiet for a moment and regain his composure. He looked around the room calmly and took in his surroundings. He then decided to panic, screaming...