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

"HAHA!" said the robot, "you have walked right into my little trap!"
"Trap?" said Lucy.
"That's right! I have been plotting my revenge ever since the start of this arbitary, mundane story."
"But who -" Lucy began but was cut off
"I AM THE MARKETING DIRECTOR FOR UNICYCLES AND BOB EVANS BREAKFAST SAUSAGE ACROSS THE UNIVERSE!" boomed the carrot wielding robot, "and i also own the copy right to follow the yellow brick road. You have infringed on many copyright laws throughout this story as well as having numerous laughs at my expense."
"But we had never intended to - "
"SILENCE!" yelled the carrot wielder, "Ah ha," he said looking over their shoulders, "we meet again, Mr Ben. And so do we, Mr Ben."
"I am Mr Ben."
"Yes, quite...."
The carrot weilder snapped his fingers and the group suddenly found themselves surrounded by a whole group of carrot wielding robots.
Arthur gulped.

but of some reason, the robot didn't seem to care about that.
"What are you going to do with us?" asked Lucy. The robot suddenly stopped. Coming to think about it, it didn't really know....
"Well..." it said hesitating. "What do you want me to do?"

"You know," mumbled Arthur, "Back in my day we never got attacked with carrots. And this thing where you don't know what to do? Hah! When I was your age the villains would always try and- Ow! Why'd you do that for?" Lucy removed her foot from Arthur's toes and shushed him. Then she tapped the robot on the shoulder, as it had dropped off during Arthur's brief tirade. "You could always treat us to a nice meal and give us lots of money." The robot looked at her blankly. "Or you could just give us the money." The robot continued to look blank. "Or just the food, if you prefer." The robot still looked blank. This was of course because as a robot it lacked any mechanism to change its facial expression.

However, being the robot that it was, not programmed for anything but legal harassment, giving money was completely forbidden so it pulled from it's metal pocket instead a large turkey-robot, stuffed with legal pads and pencils. Lucy just sighed. "Well, has anyone a screwdriver handy?" she asked.

They all checked their pockets. After a lot of fumbling, Arthur looked sheeplishly at her..
"No," he mumbled. "But I do have a banana!"

"Are you sure that's a banana?" Lucy replied with a twinkle.

"It's yellow with little brown spots, it's shaped right, and it has a stem. What else could it be?"

"Oh drats," replied Lucy, "If you insist."

Just then a chimpanzee by the name of Brumbly (or at least that's what it said on the flap of his blue uniform shirt pocket) came by with a screwdriver. He flipped his hat round backwards and prepared for some serious bargaining to trade the screwdriver for the banana.

'Give me the banana and I will give you the screw driver,' said Brumbly.
'Ok,' said Arthur.
And off went the monkey, adjusting his cap back feeling slightly dissapointed that he didn't get the chance to offer to throw in his 'vicious, expressionless, carrot wielding robot dis-enabler kit' as part of the deal.
'Why did we want this screwdriver again?' asked Arthur.
'I am Mr Ben.'
'And so am I.'

Lucy looked at the screwdriver. "Pudding-resistant ratchet-action with interchangable heads. Neat." She shifted it in her hands. "Good balance, too. Yes, this will work. Mr. Ben!" The Mr. Bens looked at each other, than at Lucy. "I'm Mr. Ben," offered one of them. The other nodded in agreement. "Hold that robot, and don't let it get away! Arthur, get the carrot. Now then..." Lucy pried open a panel on the struggling robot's head and started poking at the circuitry saying things like "nano-assemblers", "optical microcircuitry", and on occasion "oops, that can't be good."

Meanwhile Merlin was running a finger non-chalantly over the robot's side. Suddenly the robot's lights quit blinking and the whirring sound was silent. Lucy scowled at Merlin, who simply whistled innocently and stared up at the ceiling.

"Well why didn't you use your magic for this before now?" Lucy sighed, with Death giggling in the background.
"You know..it's always fun to see you trying," Merlin teased. "Where is Arthur by the way??"
They looked around. No Arthur was there.

The resulting search for Arthur precluded anyone from bursting Lucy's misconception that it had been magic to disable the robot (it was actually the on/off switch. )

'Oh buggerydoos,' said Lucy a couple of hours later after they had sucessfully failed to find Arthur.
'I am Mr Ben.'
'I know,' offered Merlin, 'perhaps he's gone down into that future type village type thingamy doo-dah.'
Death shot him a quizzical look (in so far as it is possible for a skull to look quizzical)
'You remember,' persisted Merlin, 'a researcher pointed out a while back that we are in fact still in the future and then someone else decided to put a big futuristic city in front of us and we were just on our way there when there was that whole business with robots and carrots and monkeys and bananas and screwdrivers.'
'I don't remember,' said Mr Ben.
'But I do,' siad Mr Ben.
'What I'm saying,' continued Merlin, 'is that maybe Arthur is in that big futuristic city.'
'I suppose we'd better go there and look for him then. And let's just hope that no giant three-headed purple monsters block our path on the way down there'
So of they set towards the city...

...and were immediately attacked by three very small seven-eyed yellow fish. Lucy glared at Merlin, while at the same time supressing the urge to giggle hysterically at the complete and total lack of threat the fish posed. The resultant expression ended up as sort of a squint with raised eybrows and a thing that might have been a smirk.

The fish, however, had no real desire to attack, and instead started singing, "Follow the yellow-fish road. Follow the follow the follow the follow the follow the yellowfish road. We're off to see the..."

While being so distracted by the non-threatening fish, the group did not notice a heard of green-eyed, pink-polkadotted, purple elephants approaching along a dirt road to their left, through a filmy sort of thing that might have been another space-time phenomena that might possible have been their only escape back to their own respective time lines. Meanwhile, the fish were quite aware of the approaching herd, but gave away nothing of their awareness, as the whole encounter was a play to distract attention.

Death, though he didn't notice the heard either, wasn't really paying attention to the fish. He was engrossed in thinking of what a wonderfully silly and unusual holiday he was having, and wondering if it might possibly be time for him to reluctantly return to work. If it was, he wondered, who should he begin with?

The answer came to him in a flash. While a bright garter or ribbon worn on the hose with knickerbockers or kilt is rather an unconventional thing for an answer to come in, Death just took it in his stride. The answer was nothing! 'Nothing' was the answer to that riddle which God had asked him the last time they'd played poker.

Death turned his attention back to when and where to start working again. The obvious person to kill after his long holiday was Stephen Hawking, but how? It would have to be a spectacular comeback. And certainly involving a length of string and some mustard.