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

said Bob as he skipped out of the ward.

===========

P.S. Happy that Cloviscat's happy.

===========

The tape crackled a bit at first, but eventually the familiar voice of his old friend could clearly be heard...

"If you are hearing me Bob, then I am glad. I pray the Gestapo have not yet captured you. I apologise for the rather unorthadox method of getting this tape to you, but I feel it was the only way forward. I am afraid I must ask you to ....

Bob hit the pause button on his personal stereo and turned to Jill in shock and surprise.

“You remember the tape we were given by Guy right at the start of this whole adventure - well the message has changed”

Jill said “Don’t be daft - it can’t have changed” and she snatched the stereo from Bob and started to listen.

Her expression rapidly changed from annoyance, through puzzlement to a Zen like understanding and acceptance “Ahhh I see “ she finally said and she rewound the tape so Bob could hear the whole message.

“I am afraid I must ask you believe what I am about to tell you however unbelievable it might sound.

The message you are now hearing has been dictated by the renowned author and Spiritualist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle whose body was also cryogenically frozen after his unfortunate walking trip to Switzerland and has been stored in a waxworks museum ever since.

He was revived several months ago by a mysterious mystical group known as ‘The Knights of Arthur King’ and he first contacted me shortly before all this happened because he could foresee my unfortunate demise. At the time what he was telling me sounded highly dubious, but just as a contingency we came up with this plan which would allow me to communicate with you after my death. This tape was sent to you through a rip in the posting continuum created by one of my agents around posting

Since accomplishing my spiritual Nirvana I can see exactly what is going on here and realise now how misguided both myself and Guy have been. The only way to stop the evil that is about to be unleashed is to ...

“It stops in mid sentence” said Bob looking at Jill

“That's because the explanation took so long, stupid “ said Jill tossing her hair in an exasperated and completely non sexual way “The rest of the message must be on the other side of the tape.

“Turn it over and pass me one of the earphones so we can both hear it together”

Bob flipped the tape and they both listened intently ...

While Bob and Jill listened to the reverse side of Boutros's posthumus tape, a clown was walking down the shon de leise in Paris. It's bright green hair was masked beneath an ill-fitting hat. It pulled aroung it's haunched shoulders a large and heavy overcoat, It's extra large slippers splash through many puddles as the rain continued to sluice down from the low sky. It was, in short, not a very nice day. He was very, very unhappy. The make-up around his eyes had run in the wet and now streamed down his cheeks like some abstract form of bar-code. These thoughts were getting the clown down. Philosophically reflecting on his own wretched life outside of the lab, he felt that having this mark of a barcode displayed on his face was fitting for a creature like him. "This is the life I escaped too." wandered across his thoughts dejectedly. Trying to recall his own programming was becoming increasingly difficult. "The damp must be affecting my circuitry." he thought. Earlier he had tried to cheer up a crying child in the park but when the child saw his black and white dyed mask, his glowing red-eyes and teeth of metal he had run screaming from the place. The robot had left as well and taken to wandering the streets of Paris in the rain. He stopped to admire a flower in a flower bed, hanging heavily in the rain. He reached out and with a mechanical claw had snipped the stem and lifted up to his face. His fingers were not as dextorous as he might have preferred and his clumsy digits crushed the petals to ruin and the drifted onto the road and were swept away by the passing traffic.

He sighed a sigh of pure disheartning resignment. And exploded. And half of the road, a couple of hundred trees and several building went with him.


Meanwhile outside the hospital, Bob and Jill were still ruminating on the gravitous impact of the final part of Boutros's tape......

"It's not a spiritual message!" Jill exclaimed in horror. "It's a recording of Orson Welles 'War of the Worlds!' Someone must have taped over Boutros' message!"

"Wait," Bob said, holding up his hand. "There's something else..."

The air was tense as they strained to hear the message.

"A radio cooking show?" Jill exclaimed in disbelief. "What do we do now?"

"Hang on!" said Bob suddenly, clasping the ear piece of the tape player closer to his head. He listened intently.

"I don't believe it....!" He said at last.

"What, what? Tell me..." motioned Jill.

The tape of the cookery program just jumped, and Boutros's voice said "turn on the telly." then it stopped.

Jill went back inside the ward and escaped with the sleeping Guy's portable T.V. plugging it into a wallside socket she turned it on.

"I don't suppose he said which channel did he?"

"No, guess we'll just have to loook through them all." said Bob.

They soon found what they were looking for. CNN had a special bullitin covering the minutae of the explosion in France.

"One of the clownz?" said Bob quietly, as images of the crater were flashed before them of the destruction from high above in a helicopter.

"S'pose so." said jill shocked.

"You mean this is what we're up against?" She continued.

"Come on, lets get out of this hospital and go and find Heddingly and that weird clown fellow." said Bob as they started off down the corridor.

Just as Bob was saying: "that weird clown fellow..." Arthur and X were travelling at speed underneath Europe. They would soon be in Switzerland to carrry out their ultra secret mission bequethed to them by Boutros and initiated by UPS Guy. Before his death Boutros would have been reluctant to have admitted it to their faces but these two formed the cream of his entire fleet of agents. When the future was lain down before him by the mysterious Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, he had designed this postumous mission to be carried out only in the case of, as he alone knew for certain, his impending death.

The pair travelled in silence. Except for some excited debate near the start of the trip when they decided to swap seat cusions somewhere underneath Dover because X preferred the one without the tassels.

The monorail of Leicestersnicctch -Kitanya-irrania-tatonya-karenska-alisov drew to a smoth halt.
Arthur pushed up the door DeLorian style and stepped out. The chill Swiss wind blew around his feet, he shot a sidelong glance at X.

"Are you ready?" he asked.
"Lets do this." Said X.

Completely unnoticed by Bob and Jill as they listened intently to the taped message, a massivly out of place tree frog clung to the wall above them, also listening intently... A strange light glowed in its small gold eyes.
The frog lurked there, breathing rapidly as Bob and Jill watched the CNN bulliten and left the room. The frog watched them go, turning its head and getting a good look with both eyes. Then as they went out of sight down the corridor it nodded to itself and leaped down off the wall.

*bookmarks at post 24 instead of reading this all at once*

Better yet.

I've compiled all these helpful entries:

</.>A612587</.> [ The Compiled Edition ]

<./>F74565?thread=145244</.> [ The On-going Thread ]

<./>A644825</.> [ Characters Part 1. ]

<./>A685398</.> [ Characters part 2. ]


Enjoy!

Clive

<./>A612587</.> - 'scuse me.

thanks! this will be much more convenient i think.

We got serialised in the post too. I'll see if I can drag up the post archives 'cos they brake it down it more manigable chunks.

<./>A669783</.>

All praise to Shazz for thou art nifty.

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