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

(What? Am I missing something here? Where do those statments come from and why do they apply?)
Just then a giant cat came running down the street and smashed into the cafe virtually destroying it. Luckily our heroes were all going to the bathroom at the time and the cafe had made its bathroom out of a former bomb shelter.

(It's a play on words based on the statement "The drinks were on the house".)

Just then Arnold farted and felt quite embarrassed.

(Congratulations. You've killed the story.)

(oh come on!)
The gang moved out of the rubble that once was the cafe. They headed down the road, which was oddly made of brass onions. As they walked down they spotted two weasels on a double bicycle and started following them.

"Don't follow us!" said the two brown weasels. "Follow the yellow brick road! Look, there's a section of it on that trailer heading northwest. You'd better follow it quickly or you'll lose sight of it!"

Now normally our group would distrust the weasels but they felt th4ey didn't want to veer to far from the story and started following the truck/trailer. Luckily the traffic was slow due to prevailing winds from the northwest and a giant cat that was attacking the other end of town. So they had little trouble keeping up.

Road

You are standing on a road in the middle of a city. Side roads lead east and south, and the main road continues northwest. You can see a trailer heading northwest. Lucy, Death, Merlin, and Arnold are here.

>l at trailer

The trailer appears to have a section of yellow road on it.

>follow trailer

I'm sorry, you'll have to be more specific.

>nw

You follow the trailer northwest. Lucy, Death, Merlin, and Arnold follow you.

Road

You are standing on a road in the middle of a city. Side roads lead east and south, and the main road continues northwest. You can see a trailer heading northwest. Lucy, Death, Merlin, and Arnold are here.

>talk to lucy

"For heaven's sake, follow the trailer!"

>

(When did this become the text based hitchhiker's game?)
Finally the trailer stopped in front of a cafe. The driver, a tall burly man who didn't know he was related to the once all powerful ruler of the universe Bob, went inside. Our heroes arrived at the trailer and suddenly they realized that they didn't know what to do now, so ...

(Actually, that's a reference to more than that game. Pretty much any game by Infocom during the late 70's and the 80's. The Zork Series, Planetfall, Stationfall, The Leather Goddesses Of Phobos, A Mind Forever Voyaging, Beureaucracy, Shogun, Arthur: The Quest For Excalibur, Sherlock And The Riddle Of The Crown Jewels, The Enchanter Saga, Moonmist, Deadline, Witness, Suspect, Suspended, Nord And Bert Couldn't Make Head Or Tail Of It, and a few others I won't bother to mention. *Takes a bow*)

they flipped a coin. The coin rolled into the trailer, so they had to follow into the trailer, where all of the secretsthat these last six, ridiculously complex chapters have been building up to were hidden! The mauve weasels, the occasional weasels of different colors, why Arthur turned into a scarecrow in the first chapter, and how they all come together.

They saw the answer when they stepped inside (thus narrowly missing the Surface-to-Air missile that the three blind mice had fired at them, as well as stepping over Stupid the Dog who just happened to be there), and the answer was . . .

(Afgncaap5, I am much impressed. I didn't think anyone else remembered those games. Not that I'm remembering them as such, it's more of a recent discovery in my case, but that's not the point. And in response to Siguy, I'm experimenting with styles to keep the story fresh. Look at the last real entry before the Infocom stuff.)
...in a book. The book was large, and bound in rich leather. The gold inlay on the cover curled and twisted delightfully around an ornate symbol. The symbol drew the eye to it, and it was difficult to say exactly what it was, but it awakened a vague racial memory deep in the minds of everyone present. Merlin looked at the book in astonishment.

He started to speak: "My Lord! Could it be, could it be? Why yes, I think it is. It's the prophecies of Nostrodamus (misspelled)!"

Death scoffed. "Nostrodamus (misspelled)? Ha! Never liked him. Got too big for his own shoes, that's what I always said. Know what I did to him? This!"

With that, Death swung his scythe, narrowly missing his twin brother Elvis, who just kind of stood there, impaling the leather book, and hurling it into the fire. It began to smolder. Slowly, every eye turned to Death, with a overwhelmingly threatening look of annoyance.

"SOMEONE GET THAT BOOK!" Arthur shouted.

(I think it is spelled Nostradamus but not sure) Just then, LUCY SNAPPED! SHE YELLED "Why the hell are you always making one of us do these things. Who do you think you are arthur? the narrator? I'll kill you!!!" Lucy grabbed a hat pin that had apparently been wedged in her bag and began swinging wildly at arthur and thus blocking everyone else's path to the fire. Unfortunately for them, this was a magic book, so not only did it burn, but it also EXPLODED!

The explosion knocked our heroes to the wall. The place where the void had been was replaced by a kind of purple glowing light. The light began pulsating.

"Would you like to know the point of this story?" the light asked.

"YOU BET!" they all cried, simultaneously. Unfortunately, the three blind mice entered. "Stop right there!" one of them said. "Nobody move until we get our crate of chocolate covered . . . fruit. I think its fruit, right?"

The mice consulted for a few moments, before agreeing that fruit would do, whether it is what they had originally wanted or not.

The purple pulsating light then said in a booming voice: "And if that is your one wish then it is granted. Your next wish can be requested 3,000 years from now." With that the light dissapeared, it seems that it was actually a genie who didn't travel as smoke anymore because of the second hand smoke lawsuits. As it disappeared a large crate of chocolate colored apples dropped in front of the mice who really didn't know what to do with it.

Then Arnold had a great idea about what to do with the chocolate covered apples... well at least he thought it was great, but who knows? Arnold's brain is probably smaller than those of the mice.

"Since you don't know what to do with them, may I have those chocolate-covered apples?" he asked the mice.

"Sure! We don't like chocolate anyway," said the mice.

So Arnold took the chocolate-covered apples and travelled the world making billions of dollars selling the newest, healthiest Easter treat. He even gathered up the iMacs from chapter 1 (and possibly 2) and had a promotion where you could buy his chocolate-coated apples and win an Apple.

From then on, Arnold's ego was huge and he wouldn't associate with his old friends, and anyway he was busy travelling the world promoting his apples. But the others did occasionally see him on the cover of Fortune magazine, and Lucy fell in love with his line of chocolate-covered apple breakfast cereals.

Just so there would be no loss of characters in the story, a replacement character appeared - a small green gnat named Cinderella, who had magical powers so he could speak loudly enough for the others to hear him. Cinderella knew a lot about abstract algebra too, which will come in handy later in the story.

"Wow," said arthur, "Who could believe so many months have passed? I just wish we had continued our quest instead of sitting here next to a gnat reading magazine headlines about Arnold." The mice decided that they needed a new direction in their life. With their fruit desire quenched they decided to go to college. They hoped to catch up to our heroes later and make more unreasonable demands but that would have to wait for spring break. They were too busy right now because they had an eco-sat quiz the next day and their mid year reviews were due next week.

"So what exactly is our quest, then?" asked Lucy.
"To follow the yellow brick road," replied Arthur.
"That's exactly what I'm getting at. It's an entirely arbitrary goal based on a running gag started by the same person responsible for all the iMacs and weasels."
"But it's the only direction we've got. So we may as well stick with it."
"Why? What good has it done us? Arnold's gone, we've had to deal with being shrunk, kidnapped, shot at, imprisoned, and being made the butt of a lot of bad jokes. On top of which, we've somehow become accquainted with tbe Grim Spectre of Death."
"I'm retired," interjected Death.
"That's not the point!" yelled Lucy. "Don't any of you see? We're not getting any say in what happens to us."
"Lucy, now is not the time for an existential crisis," said Merlin.

Just then a researcher reminded them that the last time Lucy said these things, they all went on strike and a certain researcher (aka me) tortured them all in such horrible ways that it could be never written down without causing grown men to weep in pity all around the world. So our heroes decided to just keep walking down the road and hope a new quest appeared. Just then a large flying elephant told them that they had to save a factory in bolivia from being destroyed by beavers who looked a lot like weasels in beaver suits.