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

...you stutter a little, and manage to get out a 'what?' before it sharply instructs you to stand up straight and look it in the eye when you are addressing it. And you should call it 'sir'.
Your mother always told you to be polite to enormous birds with sharp claws, so you attempt to stand up, only to slip back over, to the bottom of the inexplicably huge dish shaped room that you seem to be stuck in. The bird gives you a look...

....as if to say 'even tony blair has more street cred than that' and then turns it's back on you to continue preening.

you wish you were back in the music room.......

....and then you are. The kiwi is standing opposite you. It seems it has more to say......

(I understand why the bird is big and can see... comming from the fantasy land of "New Zealand/Australia")

...the Kiwi says "after all this are you gonna play something?"

Looking around you see more dead people. A thought crosses you mind to quote a certain movie but you think better of it. The dog smiles at you and you begin to feel woosey...

...you always did get terrible stage fright. The bird seems to want to be entertained, so you begin to recite a poem you had been composing.

"Blood rushing
in my veins
swirling deeply...

Blood rushing in my veins
swirling,deeply noodled brain
talking kiwi, smiling dog
Blimey Charlie where's the bog?

Eventually, the effect of the drugs passes.

The bird tells you to stop mucking about...in a very stern voice. "You have a mission here", it says.

You reply, "What mission and why me?"......

...everyone pauses for dramatic effect

da da da daaa

You were wrong there were drums...

your mission (said the bird) and you have no choice about accepting it,....is to find out what wnet on in this house all those years ago. You were here before and you have blocked it out of your active menory. Everybody else that was here then has died in an unplesant manner. You need to find out why.....before it happens to you too.





You stare at the bird in horror, and wish it had just let you go on reciting bad poetry.

Then the bird says....


this bird will self destruct in 10 seconds.
10


9


8


7


6


5
this day just got way worse.......

The bird flies upwards, out of sight, and you hear a soft 'pop'. Feathers float down upon you, each one as long as your arm (this really was a very BIG bird).

Thinking you've been stuck down this hole long enough, and with the remnants of the drugs still swooshing round your system, you decide to fly out by flapping the feathers.

Miraculously, it works. Or was it just a very strong updraft?

You fly off the balcony and feel such a sense of relief. You can finally get out of this place and leave this nightmare behind. You don`t care about what the bird had to say.

You flap you`re arms as hard as you can and head for the easist way back to civilisation. You reach the perimeter of the propert . "See ya later, freaks" you think to yourself. This turns out to be a lot sooner than you thought though. You are unable to exit. Instead of flying over the perimeter, your wings vanish and you come
crashing to the ground. You are knocked unconscious.

Next thing you know.....

a large giraffe is licking your leg which is covered in squashed raspberries,....you appear to have landed in the orchard.

You find this strange, since you had always thought of an orchard as a place with trees, and as far as you know raspberries spotaneously come into existence in little plastic boxes in the supermarket. Since this is significantly less strange than most of the events that have happened to you recently, you immediately foget about it.

There are trees here, in fact. Quite large ones. The sort that look like they have faces...

and they dont look very pleased that the giraffe is now munching on them

A branch whips around the giraffe's legs and before you have a chance to intervene (assuming you would intervene, after all, the other animals you've met so far have all appeared to want to kill you) the tree is munching on the giraffe.

you think to yourself that you'll never look at that crazy vegan outside McDonalds quite the same way again. You start wondering what else she may be right about.

except the whole not washing thing....which you never did understand

Ok, you think to yourself, this is getting really out of hand. Now trees are eating life forms!! You`ve either been slipped some really bad drugs or you`ve completely lost your marbles.

You think that things couldn`t get any worse. Of course you are wrong. At first, you feel very small vibrations in the ground. Kinda like an oncoming earthquake, you think.
Then you hear a rumbling/humming noise growing louder and louder. Something is coming at you, something much bigger than that kiwi or the giraffe......

goodness! what if it's greebo!

It isn't (luckily). Not meaning any offense to greebo, naturally.
It is a swarm of bees, collectively larger than any swarm you have ever seen, but each back and gold striped individual is tiny.
There must be millions of them.
The power of their collective mind overwhelms you, and seems to communicate something to you. They want you to follow them...