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

Spot found a cozy place to sleep as the rest of us tried to make merry. Our celebration was halfhearted at best, though, and most of us tossed and turned in our sleep that night.

Christmas dawned on a landscape with half a foot of snow and bright sunlight. As we were eating breakfast the phone rang. It was Bambi. She had some good news: "The squirrels are back, and they're....happy!" she said. "Could you come up to my lab today? There's something I would like you to hear."

She wouldn't say more, except something about a Mardukian goddess who had apparently awakened after three thousand years and was ordering the people to make amends for the wrong that they had done.

The traffic was light as we headed up the coast of Maine. "Which ancient goddess do you think she meant?" Caleb wondered.

"I'm not sure there were that many goddesses," Sibyl said. "Mostly they were different aspects of just a few."

"Do you remember the first time we came to Marduk?" I said. "We were told that there was no god named Marduk. I assumed that there weren't any gods at all, and now Bambi is talking about a goddess...."

When Bambi opened the door to her office, she pointed to Cutie Pie, who was leading the other squirrels in some kind of ritual that they had presumably learned in Marduk. We quietly entered the lab itself. Cutie Pie turned to us, her eyes emitting a radiant light.

"Ninhursag has been awakened. She is the great Earth goddess of mountains and fertility," Cutie Pie said serenely. "She has blessed us squirrels, and her instructions to the Mardukians is that they must learn to live peaceably with us. Oh, and she will personally visit earth for the first time in three millennia, promoting good relations with us."

"Or scaring us all half to death," I said under my breath.

Sorry about getting gloppy and manipulative, but dea ex machina seemed to hit all the right marks.

I promise to annoy the Mardukians in the last nutshell by letting some other pest sneak onto their planet while they're celebrating the new era.

Well, they *are* bombastic, arrogant you-know-whats. Karma doesn't sleep.