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

("xyzzy" was a spell in the first text game ever, called variously "Adventure", "Colossal Cave", or "Colossal Cave Adventure." It teleported elsewhere whenever you said it. Many text games have tributes to this in that when you type in xyzzy it does something, as opposed to saying "I don't know the word 'xyzzy'".)

(For instance, in the Zork Trilogy (LONG LIVE ZORK!), typing 'Xyzzy' would make a hollow voice say "Fool!". In many more recent non-profit games, they have many humorous responses. My two favorites involve a glove appearing out of nowhere to slap you several times, and you just dying right then and there.)

Lucy screamed when she realized that her hair was on fire. She tried the old stop, drop, and roll trick, which half worked. Only half, because Merlin had the forsight to throw a bucket of melted ice at Lucy. Lucy jumped up, and screamed "That was cold!", completely oblivious to the fact that Merlin may have just saved her life. Stupid poked his head in the door and made the mistake of pointing out how much Lucy had changed since she was first introduced.

Lucy then took the heel of her shoe and drove it into stupid's skull. Then through a miraculous turn of events he was reborn, left the story again, and became prime minister of Sweden. Lucy started cleaning chunks of stupid's brain off her shoe and accidently flicked some onto the poke'mon cards. Their cash value now decreased 400% (That isn't possible since the most they could decrease to is 0 dollars which would be 100%, but who cares) The five of the four horsemen now surrouned Lucy, their eyes glowing with anger. They slowly advanced on her until...

Suddenly, Phrank realized that he was probably also in danger from the angry horsemen and decided to act. "Girgol!" he yelled out. The horsemen looked at him oddly, as they were used to phrases such as ", I choose you!" as opposed to simply "", despite the fact that girgol isn't a pokemon. At least they would have, had they not suddenly stopped in their tracks. Merlin looked at the horsemen, then slowly walked up to War and gently poked him in the chest. When this failed to elicit a reaction, he kicked him in the shins.

The kick sent a strange signal to War's brain/soul/whatever. The nerves in his leg had mis-fired when kicked and rather then registering pain, they sent incredibly complex and perplexing riddles to his brain/soul/whatever (from now on refered to as his bswha). This got his bswha thinking, and suddenly he understood his life and all the mistakes he had ever made. He quickly ran out of the room so that he could perfect his life by starting an oyster petting farm, on the way out he screamed "I retire!"

Death, was technically still retired as well, so the remaining three horsemen, pestilence, famine, and that kid, were rightly pissed about being undermanned again.

Suddenly, Merlin realized two things. First of all, Phrank would have to somehow be calmed, due to the fact that he could cast the most powerful Zorkian spells without a scroll. What if Phrank had a whim to banish the population of Murmansk with a Guncho spell? Secondly, he remembered that he owned stock in Four Horsemen, Inc. Pulling out his stock certificate which, due to the retirements of Death and War, and the fact that the kid had not yet received his stock options, he disolved the company.

The three remaining horsemen just stood there, aghast. Helpless to use their powers against him, especially since they meant nothing without Death, they trotted off, vowing vengance.

Lucy rolled her eyes, wondering how the world would ever cope without death, war, famine, pestilence, and . . . whatever the new kid was. Then she realized that it might not actually be that bad.

That thought was quickly banished from her mind when she looked outdoors and saw The Armies Of Barney marching across the land! Without the four (five?) horsemen to keep them in check, The Armies Of Barney could finally conquer the cosmos! Not even the mauve weasels would be able to stand up against the evil that was now unleashed!

FX: DRAMATIC CHORD

(By Barney do you mean that big annoying purple dinosaur that makes children's videos? Also, you say "Armies of Barney" Are the members of this army multiple barnies? Or do they simply work for him?)
Merlin suddenly rushed into the bathroom to relieve himself but forgot to raise the toilet cover.

This caused Martha Stewart to appear and drag Merlin off for being so dirty. On her way out she colour co-ordinated the whole story, making sure that nobody clashed with mauve.

(finally another post, anyone notice how whenever there is a lull of posts, I am the last person to have posted since I always reply to everything.)

The current researcher realized that it had been 5 weeks since the last post and quickly clicked the back button to figure out what was going on.

After checking, the story continued. The armies of Barney the Purple Dinosaur were smashing windows and creating havoc wherever they went. Lucy talked over the situation with Phrank, Death, Merlin, and ... just then the researcher realized that Arthur was dead, as was cinderella the gnat. Finally, they all decided to...

...roll one of those bizzare 4-sided dice from D&D to determine whether they should a) try to save the world from the purple dinosaur menace, b) try an impromptu seance to get in touch with the ghost of Arthur, c) try to get Death to just kill all the Barneys so nobody else would have to deal with them, or d) go have a picnic.

Well, the current researcher rolled a regular, six sided die (I really did, seriously), he got a 1. So everyone now had to save the world from the purple dinosaur menace, of course it seemed like rolling a 3 would have done the same thing, but who cares. Lucy's hair caught fire again and she had to roll on the ground to put it out. However, her firery hair sparked some pieces of busted up barnies. Our heroes now started running as a fire raged behind them.

Our heroes kept running, until the fire had spread so far, that it covered every possible escape route except for one. However, when they tried to run in that direction, Barney himself appeard, started singing his "I Love You" song, and tried to suffocate all of our heroes in one giant bear hug! Fortunately, . . .

... Arnold the dinosaur reappeared in the story. He was carrying the "rail gun" from the popular Quake Computer Game series. With one swift blast a laser penetreted Barnie's soft and pliable skull and emerged from the other side. His head caught fire and in terror he released our heroes from his grip. He ran around screaming before falling to the ground. As he did, all the other barnies in the world fell to the ground lifeless. Our heroes ran over to Arnold to thank him, but when they looked closer, they realised it wasn't Arnold!! It was...

Happy Lenny the Lucky Penny-' Gee Lenny how can we ever repay you ' they chorussed 'you're our hero'

Happy Lenny (the lucky penny) blushed bright red like a penny heated in the fire 'aww shucks, these things are always happenning to me' He grinned happily at the surprised people.

(Wow, technoyokel, the creator of this story, from way back in its ask h2g2 days.)

Lucy leaned down to Lenny and picked him up. They all sat down together on a couch that had conveniently appeared in the story. A lovely converstaion ensued and it was obvious that everyone was having fun.

Lucy batted her eyelashes at Lenny playfully but then remembered that she had had her head on fire many times and that she no longer had eyebrows.

Happy Lenny (the lucky penny) could hardly believe his luck, and he was even happier. Not many people converse with pennies (happy and lucky or not) let alone bat non-existant eyelashes at them.

He sat back on the couch drinking a cold beer and smiled the way only a happy penny can. I hope Evil Spence the Grim Fivepence doesn't turn up now he thought.

Meanwhile, Evil Spence (the Grim Pence) was busy playing a strange game with a gam of oddly colored weasels. No matter how hard he tried, he could not juggle rubber chickens while riding a unicycle, and he had never seen the movie "The Wizard Of Oz".

"This is a stupid game!" he yelled when he fell on his face for the twenty-seventh time. "Why do you do it all the time?"

The weasels looked around at each other, with a questioning look on their faces. This question had never occured to them before: why *did* they keep doing it?

They turned to the leader of the Gam, who was about to tell them all, when the story suddenly shifted plotlines and went back to our heroes, who were trying to save Happy Lenny( the lucky penny). He had accidently fallen into a crack of the couch and was lost. The others were trying to find him in the couch, when...

And he didn't enter the story. Or wait, maybe he did? Let me check. ummm, I see a penny, lucy, a couch, and some beer. Oh, and a five pence piece sneaking up behind them while holding a chicken shaped like an axe. What was I supposed to be looking for?

And he didn't enter the story. Or wait, maybe he did? Let me check. ummm, I see a penny, lucy, a couch, and some beer. Oh, and a five pence piece sneaking up behind them while holding a chicken shaped like an axe. What was I supposed to be looking for?