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

The clock strikes midnight, and come hell, high water, or air strike, the organ is going to play.

Wlad and Zbig enter the church, turn on a few lights, and open up the organ. Wlad pushes the power button – soon the reassuring Hoovery sound fills the sanctuary, like a giant vacuum cleaner. Wlad changes shoes, arranges some sheet music, and begins. The first song is an old American hymn, 'Holy Manna'.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbsAr22DKlk

Next comes 'Waly, Waly', another folk favourite:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VluozRMTgA

Wlad's on a theme here. The next song is about climbing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnvPzdX-Wx8

Since we're climbing, we might as well go up that heavenly stairway.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbixLMrsMD8

Since Hoovermas is coming, Wlad throws in an ancient Hoovermas carol, 'Personent Hodie', with its lyrics that go back centuries to a mystical time when hoovers were, like organs, hand-pumped:

'Personent hodie
voces puerulae,
laudantes iucunde
haustri ope tapete
haustri ope regio
et de vac, vac, vac
et de vac, vac, vac
et de vac, vacuo laudate gloriose.'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcV9H2iA2-0

Zbig sits down on a pew. He finds organ music very restful, and is soon taking a power nap. While Wlad plays, he dreams about cows and llamas and Shih Tzus, frolicking in a meadow on a summer's day. In the sky, birds and tiny roombas wheel and soar.

At first, Wlad isn't thinking about anything but where to place the next note, and whether there's any way he can get that stuck pipe to unstick. He's not an organ engineer. He'll have to play around it. Still, the music's not TOO bad, he thinks.

He sends good wishes out over the carrier wave of the musical vibrations, hoping in his heart that it will reach all the citizens of Hooverville and soothe their souls, giving them energy to repair the damage of the day. He's not kidding when he says that music is liquid prayer: to Wlad, the purpose of music is to facilitate. 'Help us,' he thinks. 'Help us reach the places we can't reach with our words. Help us translate our good wishes into deeds. Fill the space between 'why' and 'how'. Make meaning where we see only chaos.'

Fred Rogers said, 'Anything that's human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable.' But before we can mention it, we have to find it: Wlad thinks that music is a form of GPS.

'What are our three words today?' he muses.

Wlad's performance did not disappoint. "Holy Manna" put Arsenio in the holiday mood. He had heard the tune in a CD of Christmas organ classics. Wlad played elegantly and with feeling. Wait, he was convinced he had also heard it in church in Punxsutawney. Hoover, he missed that church. Maybe he should join one of the churches in Hooverville. But which one?

"Waly, Waly," a.k.a."The water is wide" brought back memories of happier and more innocent times. Didn't Peter, Paul and Mary sing their version of it on an L.P. in the Sixties? The second verse had a message about leaning against an oak that broke and fell away, just like the narrator's love. And the third verse was desolate. Love is great when new, but it grows old and cold.
Is everything beautiful and good going to go to heck in the end? What is there to look forward to, then. But it's just a song, Arsenio reminded himself. Maybe it's a reminder of a sort: look at your lovers carefully and choose well. Easier said than done, though.

"Jacob's :Ladder" brought back some very happy memories for Arsenio. He leaned back in his chair and smiled. Then he realized that Wlad was being subtle in his treatment of the theme. Nothing wrong with that,in fact it was kind of nice. Arsenio wondered if Wlad was recording these pieces. Arsenio wished he could listen to this some more, to sustain the mood he was now feeling.
He thought back to the mid-1970s, when he was a little kid in Summer Bible School. He remembered the milk and saltine crackers that the nice ladies would serve the kids during breaks. Ah, to be that young again! To feel the warmth and protection of his parents and extended family. Where did it all go? He was alone now. Not unhappy, exactly, but life certainly hadn't turned out
the way he had expected it to. But as long as he could remember these things and enjoy Wlad's beautiful playing, maybe there was still something good about being alive.

Arsenio didn't recognize the next tune. I'm getting old," he said to himself. "If it's one of the newer pop tunes, it will mean something to younger people. Maybe when I'm ninety, there will be almost no music left that I can recognize. I need to try harder to stay current. I guess I should ask one of Fuller's kids to introduce me to the newer stuff. But what happens when they get older?
Will I need to borrow a teenager? This life thing seems to get harder all the time. Will I find myself in some nursing home where everything is in a sort of time-warp? Arsenio remembered the nursing home his mother had gone to. They had a "library" that was full of videocassettes form the seventies.

No, no, you're overthinking this way too much, he told himself. This is what happens when you're alone.

Then the next tune came along. It seemed to be reminiscent of "Personent hodie," one of his favorite classic Christmas songs. He remembered that time his choir sang it for a Christmas Eve service.

Then it all faded out, and he was off to the land of dreams.....

Holy Mamma, where am I?

Back on top of the Town hall, but something is different.

Ah, I am standing on one of the scales, Paula is in the other... Strange.
Last time I looked, this Themis statue did not resemble the mayor. Especially not one that looks annoyed like this.

Those Gargoyles also look familiar to me...

SILENCE!!

We have gathered here to judge the doings of Fred Ireland the fifth, at the close of this fateful day.

Jury member Schreckenghast. What is your charge?

I Charge Fred with the unnecessary borrowing of napkins to write on, without ever writing on them after all.
To show his worth, I challenge Fred to sing edible scales for my new menu!

Oh, that is easy... Can you give me a C3 on that celestial harpsichord of yours?

mimimememe..

-Large intake of breath-

DOUGH - nuts
RE - blochon
MEA - tballs
FA - jitas
SOL - dier toast
LA - sagna
TI - ramisu
DOUGH - nuts

Hmmmm. That makes me hungry. Maybe a bit oriented at the European side of the gastronomic spectrum though… I would have added waffles if the scales had a WA in. Sorry about that.


NEXT!!

Jury member Latour. What is your charge?

I Charge Fred with the murder of a perfectly brewed cup of tea, by keeping me from drinking it before it got cold (again)
To show his worth, I challenge Fred to write the last remaining prophecy at the back side of the Town hall in man sized letters. In foam!

Let me see, what was it again?
Which one dit I miss?

I have:

1-"Au revoir to the Lady's doom, On her perch perches no more mushroom" (check)
2-"The wheels of the law'n will turn to the Tzar's spawn" (probably check)
3-"One of the apostles turned red, then made everything wet" (could be Pete)
4-"Wares from the Orient, do not know where they were sent" (Maybe Arsenio knows)
5-"The Great Nocturnal Sweeper will attend mass before the End" (He'd better do that)
6-"Am I lucky I do not have to clean up this sticky mess" (not a clue)

So there was a Seventh prophecy...

I remember!

7-"If you read this, you forgot to put your pants on!"

That one was strange when I first read it.

BôôôHHHHH

Grrzmbl... Whah? Oh, That organ grinder is at it again... Why can't he leave the Pig Latin to the pigs? Back to ZZZzzzleeep...

Ted? Can you bring Pete to the Town hall? I have a foam job to do...

Cal was unceremoniously bundled into the old red pickup truck, bulging suitcases thrown into the back amongst a decrepit looking screen printer and several empty fireworks boxes, by an increasingly sleepy Cuddles.

Even with the two hour drive ahead of them, she'd still be at the airport with three hours to kill before she could even check in. She cursed all this horrid kerfuffle, thought the 'Pirates were taking things way too seriously.

She'd been in Hooverville for the best part of seven years now and was pretty sure that if Horrid wanted to target her, they would've done so long before her final night in town! Wouldn't they be pleased to see her leaving?

On the other hand, she was touched by the way her biker friends had rallied around to protect her, whether the threat from Horrid was real or imagined. She squeezed Cuddles' hand in thanks and genuine affection.

The big guy yawned a smile as the Ford began the climb into the Misty Mountains.

*Oh crud!* Cuddles meaty manicured fingers adjusted the rear view mirror.

A single, rather dim, headlight was coming up behind them, coming in fast too!

Even over the Medium Leslie on the trucks radio, Cuddles caught the distinctive sound of the Harley's slash cut pipes.

He put his huge foot down, tyres spitting gravel, tired eyes squinting back at the Limey closing the gap with every minute. The pickup lurched around a bend, Cal looking at him with disapproval.

Cuddles chugged more coffee and risked a downshift, no way was this dude getting anywhere near Cal!

It all started so innocent. Wynken and Irvin Stevens have been friends in school, at university, studying zoology together … but where Wynken ultimately went more in the direction of ecology, Irvin went into technology. Many were the discussions they had, sitting around a fire, more often than not in a beautiful, wild place, far from civilisation. Both of them agreed that this is what the world needed more of. Both of them would have loved it wilder still. Both of them had their thrilling encounters with big, potentially dangerous animals: bears, bisons, cougars …

“But imagine just a few thousand years ago,” Irv would say. And Wynken did imagine. Just a dozen thousand years ago, America was much more like Africa than most people had any idea. There were elephants … mammoths, both woolly and smooth-skinned. There were mastodons … most people would think they’re just another kind of mammoth but they were actually very different, a whole other family of trunked giants. There were camels, including enormous ones. There were lots of wild horses, some perhaps even stripey like the zebras of the African plains. There were many more species of pronghorns … today, some people call them antelopes, and they are indeed very much like antelopes, but they’re actually closer to giraffes. And there’s just a single species of them left. But there used to be several, indeed as today many species of gazelles and antelopes run nimbly over the African savannahs. All of them but one are now gone. There used to be true antelopes also, the Saiga, which today is found only on the steppes of Asia, where it is endangered. Saigas in their millions used to roam the tundra-like American steppes just south of the glaciers. Today they’re just gone.

There were birds, too, greater and grander than anything that remains. There were vultures, condors now extinct. There were the enormous teratorns or monster-birds. But they were just big. They may have been quite nice, as the vultures and condors generally are. Maybe they were more eagle-like, active predators rather than scavengers … it’s hard to tell, today, just from their bones. There were giant storks, and birds big and small more typical of tropical regions today.

There were more predators. The great dire wolves, basically just beefed up versions of the wolves still with us. There were American lions, closely related to the African ones. There were other big cats, relatives of jaguars. Then there were the great cats now vanished – the sabretoothed Smilodon, the scimitar-toothed Homotherium.

Then there were the things stranger still, of which no equivalents remain. Most strange of all must have been the giant ground sloths. It amazed both Irvin and Wynken that these were so successful in the past … dozens of species lived in South and Central America, the islands of the Caribbean, and a few even made it into North America, where at a time they roamed all the way up to Alaska and even if things had turned out just slightly differently, might have entered Asia over the Bering land bridge which existed during the ice ages. But they never did. Instead, they all vanished. Hunted by humans, or having their habitat changed so much that they could no longer survive. Today they’re gone, and we have difficulty even imagining what they looked like, what they lived like.

North America had lost all of these, an enormous chunk of its biodiversity. It lost not only the big things, but so many little things as well. We know of the Carolina parakeet, the only parrot of North America, now gone. We know of the Passenger Pigeon, of the Labrador Duck. There are many such small things that also have vanished from the landscape and from the minds of the people of America. Almost none of them living today would have any idea what a wild and diverse continent it was just a geological moment ago.

“Imagine if we could bring them back,” Irv said many times. Wynken at first thought it was just a pipe dream. A very nice pipe dream indeed. But Irv was the kind not satisfied with dreams just remaining dreams. “A good dream is a duty, an obligation,” he said. “If there is something that is so good that it *should* be true, then we must *make* it true, if it is at all possible. We have this one Universe, this enormous thing, this absolutely mind-boggling thing, and this Universe is one of possibilities being made real. The potential for different things that might be real, that might be *made* real … it’s just beyond anything. Wynken, I believe it can be done. We can do more than merely hold on to the wilderness we have. We can re-wild it, re-diversify it, even bring back things that supposedly vanished for good.”

And so Irv went into genetics. Eventually, genetic engineering. Oh, a field so fertile for all kinds of abuses… but Irv said he would be profoundly ethical. He was always very persuasive. “I’m not into this for money, you know that, Wynken.” And he wasn’t. He didn’t care for governments or powerful corporations. And yet, somehow, he did get money for his projects. He did little things here, and there; he got grants; he got donations and private contributions; he got investors. And soon he had a little company running. It didn’t look like much; it looked like a bunch of school buildings and a few sheds, but in there he had running some of the most sophisticated equipment to be found on the planet. Genomes were sequenced, and soon assembled, and he found a way to just completely revamp the entire DNA’s of cells. Of necessity he had to start small, but when he got to the point where he had ordinary lab rats giving birth to lemmings, squirrels and even porcupines, Wynken knew that something was up.

And then one day Irv showed Wynken something he’d never seen before, not even in a book. A strange, rat-like thing, but chunkier, bigger – and still just a baby. It was a giant Hutia, a rodent that used to live in the West Indies. Irv had bred it from a porcupine that he had bred from a rat. He had extracted the genes from bones gathered by his workers on trips to Puerto Rico. All the giant hutias were extinct today, and yet, here was a live one in front of Wynken’s face.

Irv hadn’t asked anyone’s permission. He also didn’t trumpet the news around. Wynken knew about it. Likely most of Irv’s employees didn’t even realize the magnitude of what they’d done.

“I don’t want no beefs with the government or with the World Wildlife Fund or anyone,” Irv said. “But these things have a right to be. They were part of the world … they don’t need permission to be part of the world again. Wynken, come hell or high water, I’m going to bring back these things … and we’re going to have to find a place for them.”

But where? And how?

For long, there was no answer. Wynken worked as a tour guide, as a wildlife demographic researcher, and from time to time visited Irv and his ever-growing zoo of incredible species brought back from perdition. He felt sorry for them, cooped up in small cages and enclosures.

And then he got the gig in the Misty Mountains Park.

“They’re not alien creatures,” Irv said. “They used to be part of this ecology. They’ve just been gone for the blink of an eye. They’ll slip right back into their old roles. And the people won’t mind. They won’t think it weird or strange. They’ll soon take it for granted, you’ll see. Don’t you worry. We're going to start off real small, with the charming and cute critters. I’m going to fake some scientific papers going back some decades, these will all be passed off as new discoveries. No-one will worry. One day humanity will give us the credit for what we’ve done. But for now, no-one has to know. This stuff is too important for us to have to contend with paperwork, red tape, laws and all. Just do it. You know you want to.”

Wynken knew he wanted to, and just did it. And now here he finds himself, in the dead of night, trying to track down an enormous sabre-toothed tiger in a town he has come to care very much about …

Finally, Wilhelmina reaches the door of her apartment over the Waffelhaus. Suddenly she remembers what she forgot: the plant! She can't let it out there for anyone to find, she has to go right away and search for it. Wilhelmina grimaces and slowly starts hobbling downstairs again. It takes her a while to reach the door, unlock it and step back out into the street.

Now, when did she last hold the pot in her hands?

Wilhelmina sighs and starts searching. All she wants to do is get to bed and finally sleep.

Lola wraps her shawl around her shoulders, switches off the light, moves the chair from the desk to the window, and sits there, knees almost touching the radiator. Nice and comfy. Warm.
Ready for the music.
Which is starting.

One day, maybe, she'll pluck up the courage to ask Wlad if she can go with him. She likes watching him play, but hardly ever gets the chance.
She doesn't know most of the songs, but she enjoys them very much.
Funny, she never did like organ music back home. It used to make her feel anxious, like something out of a horror movie.
But ever since she met Wlad, she has discovered that it can be beautiful. And also fun.

She closes her eyes to take in the music better.

This is peaceful. After the events today, she needed it. Probably the whole town did.

She finds herself humming along to one song she recognises. Singing is like praying twice, they say. Dear Hoover, keep us from harm.

Wlad wraps up with Personent Hodie. It's a classic, but they never used to sing it at her church back home. They were all for the vernacular worship, and didn't do Latin at all. That means she doesn't know the words too well.
Humming in the Night surely would be good enough for the Hoover.

Sitting there at her window, with only the streetlights and the music... She can see herself growing old in Hooverville, maybe with children, who knows...
Yes, she could be happy here.

When the music stops, she opens her eyes, feeling refreshed.

There is something on the pavement under her window. What is it? She can't tell from here.
She puts the chair back at the desk, and decides to head downstairs for a snoop.

Sheriff Rowdybush follows Wlad and Zbig into the First Church of Nighthoover and sits at the back while they turn on the lights and power up the organ. He watches Zbig take a pew, and watches Wlad enter the organ loft and arrange the sheet music.

When Wlad starts playing, the Sheriff is captivated by the music, and slowly works his way forward, trying not to let his wheels squeak on the floor, so that he can get a better view of the organist's playing. From his seat at the base of the steps up to the organ, the Sheriff has a fine view of Wlad's feet on the foot pedals, gracefully moving to play the notes that are needed.

The Sheriff is completely in awe. He thinks of his electronic keyboard in his apartment, and how it takes him all his brain power to be able to play different notes with each hand – even just the thought of playing different notes with each foot as well as each hand is almost totally beyond him. He is glad to be able to see such skill in action, and is soothed by the music and the movement of Wlad's performance.

The Sheriff is pleased to recognise most of the tunes, especially the Hoovermas Carol Personent Hodie – one of his favourites. As the piece comes to an end, the Sheriff slips away and slowly makes his way out of the building. He climbs back on to the Police Motortrike and drives it back to his apartment, humming the refrain “et de vac, vac, vac “ as he goes.

In his apartment, he continues humming Personent Hodie while he makes himself some toast and jam.

SashaQ, Superfrenchie, and Paulh get Music Lover medals for today.

Caiman Raptor Elk gets the Rogue Dream Award. (We love them!)

Freewayriding and Willem share the Midnight Action Award between them. We don't know whether we're more worried about the Big Kitty or the uneasy riders.

Finally, Tavaron gets a big and a 'Get Well Soon!' from all of us. Also, we hope Wilhelmina's plant is safe and sound.