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

A wall slid silently open and a small monorail car sidled to a halt in front of him.

The monorail's door lifted open and Leicesterschniictch Kitanya-irrania-tatonya-karenska-alisov unfurled from within. He was a large man, wearing a good suit and sporting a trim black moustaches. He bore above his left brow a small angry scar that strecthed round to his temple.

"Tim..." he said simply.

"Y-y-yes...boss?" stuttered Tim.

"I am here to deal with thismater personally. You have served me well as my agent on the inside of The Agency. Continue to do so and you shall be well rewared. Come with me now. You can tell all that you've learned. I am most eager to hear of you progress in preventing Boutros regaining a new body."

He gestured and Tim nervously approached the side door and slid inside.

"Well...y'know...it's funny you should mention that...."
Tim was cut off as the doors closed firmly, the monorails wheels were lifted up into it's underbelly. On the side small panels slid aside and a complex gantry of, what looked like skis, pressed themselves aginst the side of the sewer.

The engine re-ignited and the car glided off down the passage towards the light.

Meanwhile in the Honey Moon suite of the Royal London Hotel...

Jill, Agent X, and Agent Bruce (XXXX - He wouldn't give a Castlemaine fourex for anything else) were sitting around the foyer, drinking champagne and smoking Cuban cigars. BBG's head was sitting on a small yet elegant coffee table in the middle.

"Jolly good rooms Bill got for us," remarked Agent , in what he thought was a very non-sexual way.

"Bob," Jill corrected non-committally.

Boutros's head sat...er... rested on the table, trying to take a sip from the glass that lay in front of him.

"Say, where is the chap?" asked Bruce (XXXX - He wouldn't give a Castlemaine fourex for anything else), looking around. "I haven't seen him for a good six or seven chapters, at least."

"I think he's with the neurosurgeon," Agent X said. "At least, that's what he said. I'm not so sure she was a neurosurgeon, though. I thought neurosurgeons wore a bit more than what she was wearing. She didn't even have a white lab coat, or a stethoscope."

"You know what I think?" asked Jill...

"I think we are in the Astoria, not the Royal London"

Realisation gradually dawned - someone had swapped the hotels while they weren't looking.

Quick yelled Jill - Bob is probably in mortal danger. As one they rushed out of the hotel room, realised the doors were too narrow so reconsidered and rushed out in single file

In the honeymoon suite Tim had dropped his leggy neurosurgeon disguise and was looking pityigly (but in a slightly sexual way) at a bound and gagged Billy-Bob. "I would say it had been fun - but frankly I found it was tedious and lacking in style!". Tim pondered as he adjusted his silver grey wig "but you do have a realy cute body and it would be a shame to spoil it with a bullet hole - so I'll let you live"

Tim glanced at is watch. By now everyone would be rushing up the stairs to rescue Bob - this really was all too easy. He climbed out onto the fire escape and down to the floor below, along the corridor and tapped on the door to one of the larger suites - there was no answer.

Tim slipped out a pass key opened the door and as he expected the room was deserted except for Boutrous Boutrous's head fast asleep in its glass jar. "The drugged wine would not last long" Tim thought so speed was of the essence. He picked up the jar and with a cursory backward glance he closed the door and headed swiftly to the lobby

The lobby was full of grey headded gentlemen carrying glass jars with heads in them. Overhead a lurid orrange banner proclaimed "Welcome to the 10th Annual Steve Martin Convention"

Tim was about to blend into the crowd and make good his escape. Unfortunatly, he stopped to grab a bagel from the food table and the few crucial seconds he wasted spreading cream cheese proceeded to complicate his life enormusly. If Tim had just gome out the back...

Instead he was still in the center of the lobby, noshing his bagel, when all the doors burst open. The lobby filled with policemen, riot squads, and some very comfused animal rights people. (the animal rights folks had thought they were on their way to picket the circus)

Tim gasped in horror, dropped the bagel, and tried to run. He almost made it out the door when a large hairy hand grabbed his arm, and a raspy voice said...

"I, Heddingly Edgbaston, am placing you under citizen's arrest!"
He executed a quick uppercut to Tim's chin and threw him to the ground. Boustros's capsule summersulted through the air, which Heddingly caught mastefully under one arm.

In his former life as a witch doctor, Heddingly had experimented with many fermented herbs and potions of distilled watermelon, to perfect his cures. And he had survived. Consequently, his immune system was to put it bluntly, 'Steel Plated with nuts on'. He was the first to awake from Tim's drugged wine and had just gone downstairs when Tim came running through a door and barrelled straight into him. The wine had had other effects as well, his voice sounded a bit hoarse but soon regained it's newly-discovered rich timbre.

"There you go Officers, there's the cad. Take him away.

Tim was dragged off-semi-conscious by the riot-squad officers. The animal-rights lobby had taken to staring angrily at anyone attempting to try the shrimp Hor's d'oeuvres. Boustros stirred in his globe.

"Oh, Heddingly, my word! what a headache! I must have drunk too much of that wine." said Boutros.

"Oh no, we just foiled another kidnapp plan by the same group who had you abducted to Siberia." said The Doctor.

"Really?"

"Yes, the police have taken Tim into custody."

"Tim? but he seemed so nice and you have to admit, he was quite a natty dresser." said Bourtos with a trace of dissapointment. "So when am I going to get my new body?" he started agin excitedly.

"I have everything prepared. We'll go back upstairs and wake the others and then the operation can begin." said Heddingly as he carried Boutros to the lift...

Upstairs, Bob, Jill, X, XXXX and X.com paced back and forth nevously.

"How long have they been in there?" asked Bob.
"Almost four hours now." said Jill.
There came from behind the closed bedroom door the shrill-wail of a buzz-saw.
"I can't take this for much longer." said X

There was knock at the door. Bruce put down his beercan and strode across to the door. "Who is it?" he said through the door.

"It's me, Guy." Bruce recognised the face through the spy-hole, he opened the door.
UPS Guy stepped in and took off his coat
"Where's Boutros, is he out of surgery yet?" he asked.
"No we are still waiting." said Jill

At that, the doors across the room were flung aside and Heddingly marched briskly from inside then removed his gloves and face-mask.
"The operation has been a 100% success!" he beamed.
"Is Boutros alright? has he gotten used to the new body yet?" asked Guy.
""We had a little trouble wiring up the nerves down his spinal cord. At one point every time he blinked he kicked his left leg into the air but we got that one sorted in the end. He's in there right now resting, he's still a little groggy from the anasthetic but he should pick up soon, you can go and see for yourself if you like."

Everyone in the room peered around the door way Bob and jill pushed forward and into the bedroom.

Boutros lay on the bed. He looked...different...

Bob was the first to recognise the glamourous figure that lay on the bed blinking gently and smelling faintly of formaldahyde.

"Its Imelda Romuáldez Marcos the former beauty queen and wife of the Argentinian Dictator. Didn't she became a powerful figure after the institution of martial law in Argentina in 1972."

Yes agreed Agent.X "I seem to remember she was often criticized for her appointments of relatives to lucrative governmental and industrial positions while she held the posts of governor of Metropolitan Manila (1975-86) and
minister of human settlements and ecology (1979-86)."

More importantly added UPS Guy her body was preserved after her untimely death. Actually it's a little known fact that she didn't die of cancer but was in fact transplanted into a new body by the CIA in return for certain unspecified favours.

We managed to pull a few strings and secure the body, replacing it with a lifelike polymer dummy.

I hate to be a party pooper said Jill but isn't that going to make Boutrous just a tad conspicuous ...

and whatever is Leia Maria Boutros-Ghali going to say?

"Perhaps we can get him a face lift, while we're at it?" offered Agent X.

Meanwhile, at the Royal London, Tim was planning how to switch the hotels again. Nibbling on a shrimp, he leaned back heavily in a plush velvet chair and marvelled not at what an impeccable dresser he was.

He remembered being dragged semi concious from the Tenth Annual Steve martin Convention by people whom he thought to be the local police. That was, he assumed, a good assumption, considering their uniform and overuse of their night-sticks. So it was much to his surprise that he found himself brought not to police headquarters, but to a black stretch limo, which had two masseuses and a hot tub for him to relax before he had to get on with his next assignment, which was, as mentioned before, switching the hotels again.

The purpose of that was...

"Come let's leave Boutros to get some rest." said Heddingly.
"Alright." said X, and turned to leave.
Bob went to get a glass of water from the sink-unit.
X was already half-way out the door.
Guy, Arthur and XXXX were on the far side of the room, near Heddingly who stood over Boutros's brow.

This meant that there was absolutly no-body near the window when the wrecking ball exploded through the wall.

Bricks and lethal shards of glass flying into the room. Bob threw himself to the ground Jill, fell backwards through the open doorway. Arthur XXXX, X, and Guy dived for safety and covered their heads with their arms from the glass. Heddingly stood ridgedly still and watched as the chain and ball swung between him and the bed just inches above Boutros's nose and then shifted and went flew back through the exceeding large hole it had made on the way in.

This all took about 8 seconds.

"EVERYONE!....JUST STAY EXACTLY WERE YOU ARE...AND DON'T...BLOODY MOVE!" shouted Tim as he scaled the rigging from the crane's cab to the end of the arm and jumped onto the balcony's shattered lip.
"I assure my dear fellow, I had not intention of going anywhere...possibly ever again." said Heddingly with a slight twitch.
"SHUT UP! Hands in the air...all of you!" he said as he waved a large and powerful-looking automatic rifle at the group.
"But what about the Riot-Squad officers, I saw you taken away?" said Heddingly.
"They're dead."
"Oh." said Heddingly. "So what do you plan to do with us Mr Tim?"
"Well seeing as you were busy whoring with this tramp, Tim gestured to the new female form of the unconscious Boutros, and that Head-thing is nowhere around. I guess I'll just have to take you all as hostages back to the Red leicester. Pity. I had wanted to execute him here in front of you all."

Arthur and X exchanged brief but meaningful glances
*look, he doesn't know it's him!*
*I know!*
*What do we do now?*
*Just go along with it, we've gotten out of worse scrapes than this before. Remember the Custom's storage locker at the airport? The bare-knuckles fight to the Death in New York? The Goat-trading convention in Kreplakistahn?*
*I still have the scars.*
*Yes, well that's my point. If we just go with Tim, no-one need get shot. We will be one step closer to Leicesterscnicttch kirtanya-irrania-tatonya-karenska-alisov, and when Boutros come's to, he's bound to realise what has happened and come and rescue us.*
*You think?*
*Oh absolutly.*
*Really?*
*Yes, now remember LOOK terrified.*
*How's this?*
*Wonderful...*

"The Red leicester will be pleased with my catch." gloated Tim.
I'm taking you all to him...RIGHT NOW!" He pointed the gun and the group all filed out of the main door to the room.

On the floor above. Mr Edgar Brrows, 56 clung with grim determination to the ledge of his window 14 storeys up. And swore quietly and earnestly never to call his wife Edna, a 'daft stupid cow' ever, ever again.

Meanwhile. Inside the mechanical heart of Big Ben, the clock tower above the Houses of Parliament, The Red Leicester was pacing impatiently...

The body of Emelda Marcos paced the fourth floor corridor of the Royal London Hotel. Atop its shoulders was the head of former UN Secretary General, Dr. Boutros Bourtros-Ghali. It took him some time to learn to walk properly again. But considering that it had been several years since he had lost his own body, he got the hang of moving about as an elderly South American woman remarkably quickly. The body seemed to function much better in high-heeled shoes, of which several thousand had come free with the body.
He returned to the room where rain was blowing through the hole where one wall was missing. He was alone there. His agency had been taken, and everything was up to him now. He stretched his new body. It was not ideal for anti-terrorism, as bodies go, but surely better than nothing. He would, however, need help. He picked up the phone and made a call. After chosing a fine pair of scarlett stillettoes, Boutros was gone.

Later, by the lake in St. James's Park, a small old woman with an unusually large and ugly head, and a man with a curly green wig, heavy face make-up and long flappy shoes, were seen feeding the ducks.
"Listen, Gonzaroolio," said Boutos "I have a proposition," his voice was still gruff and low.
"I'm listening."
"First tell me, who has taken over the Criminal Federation of Stage and Screen Talent since the demise of Grant?"
"That would be me," said Gonzaroolio.
"I thought so. Was it worth killing him then?"
"Oh yes," sniggered the clown.
"Well, following that little turf war, you are now in sole control of the Red Leicester's agents in the UK, right, -the whole operation?"
The clown glanced over and nodded.
"So, now its your operation alone, -what do you feel about freeing yourself from the boss?"
"Sorry?"
"Severing ties with the mother country."
Gonzaroolio condidered this and threw bread at ducks.
"That might be profitable," he said at length.
Meanwhile, Boutros's agents were being herded up the winding staircase of the clock-tower at the Palace of Westminster by Tim the natty dresser.

At the top of the winding staircase, Tim stopped short, causing a chain reaction in which Jill bumped into him, Bob bumped into Jill, Agent X bumped into Bob, Bruce (aka agent XXXX) bumped into Agent X, and Agent X.com bumped into Bruce. In short, they all walked into each other, and pushed Tim off balance. He landed heavily on his rear, ripping the pocket on the seat of his natty-looking pants.

That would have been the ideal time for any of the agents (or Bob) to perform some dazzling escape feat, but unfortunately they were all tied up, and couldn't.

"Blast!" Tim swore (he would have spat, but he didn't want to be kicked out of the story for a violation of the h2g2 site rules). "I don't know where the hell I'm supposed to go! My current writer isn't British!"

"Why not use your story-disambiguator, and fold the seams of the Story-Time continuum, to jump us from the Clock to someplace the writer knows a bit better? Say, the Mid-West?" suggested Bob.

"Doufus!" Agent X smacked Bob in the head with his tied-together hands. "Don't help him! If we stay here, someone might come to our rescue whilst Tim is still struggling to think of something to do!"

"Who? You mean B..."

"SHUT UP!!" everyone shouted at Bob, who cowered for a minute until they all looked away in annoyance.

"Hmm..." said Tim, "that might not be a bad idea..."

Tim pulled from the inner pocket of his natty suit a small metal device with a large red button on it. Enscribed on the button in small black letters were the words:

"In
the name
of all that
is sacred don't
push the
butto -
arrgh!"

"No! shouted Arthur.
"In the name of all that is sacred don't - ! Jill didn't finish.
Tim pressed the button and there was a flash of white light that left purple patched on the back of your eye-lids.

There materialised in front of them a thin, glossy pamphlet which floated serinely to the ground.

"What is it?" said Bruce.
"It's a holiday brochure." said Tim with sudden inspiration.
"So now what?" intoned Arthur.
"Well I guess we just pick were we want to go. said another.

There was some brief and hurried discussion and eventually a unanimous decision was agreed. Tim pressed the button. There was another flash of white light that left purple patches on the eyelids of the local London populous and a few wondering where the Houses of Parliament had dissapeared to...

The inhabitants of the Bahamas stood around large, impressive looking stone buildings that had appeared out of nowhere on their tropical beaches. The writers don't know the geography of the Bahamas any better than they do London, but the climate is much nicer this time of year.

Meanwhile, word had reached BBG that the Houses of Parliament had disappeared.

After his meeting with Gonzaroolio, Boutros had come back to the Secret Headquaters of The Agency. It had taken some doing to get the guards to let him through. He reflected now on what an asset a female form might prove to be. And yet, he was troubled by all of this. When he had...lost his body he had a first felt helpless but with the help and freindship of Guy and Arthur he had grown used to his disembodied status. Now; now he had a new body. Heddingly had done a good job. But still it wasn't HIS body....

His thought sturned away from this. Someone had destroyed...no moved the Houses of Parliament. His best agents were in the grasp of his enemy. He had a plan, Gonzaroolio had consented, but first he needed to find his friends. He turned in his chair to the large video wall behind him and started to scan all the channels and frequencies for news of sudden occourences of architecture for no apparent reason
what-so-ever. "I'm going to END THIS!!!!" he scowled...

If anyone anyone apart from your humble narrator been stood with Boutros while he thought about all of these things, they might have noted that he wore an expression extreme irritation. All of those years of clam, patience and temperance had been striped away and there now sat a (man/women - take your pick) about to wage war.
But if they thought Boutros looked a little intense wll that was just fluffy bunnies to the fury that the Red leicester was about to unleash...

*On some non-decript island, somewhere in the Bahamas...*

"TIM!!!" he barked.
The assemlbed captive agents tried looking meek and terribly unimportant on the Bahama sand as Leicesterschniitcht Kiatnya-irrania-tatonya-karenska-alisov flung open the entrnace to the Palace of Westminster and came at a determined stride over the dunes. In his full-length trench-coat and fur-parka the Red leicester looked wholly out of place. A kind of anti-lawrence of Arabia. He glowered at Tim. The trees the lined the edge of the beach scurried to get out of the way of that look. A couple of them ignited.
"TIM!!!"

"sir?" said Tim, suddenly for the first time very afraid of his boss.

"WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED!!?"
"i just thought we could use some sun, that's all. I folded the story-time continuum with this decice to bring us here.

Leicester snatched the device from Tim's hand and sent it flying into the surf.

"DON'T YOU REALISE WHAT YOU HAVE JUST DONE? screamed the Red leicester. "I HAD A PLAN, THERE WAS TO BE SHOWDOWN, I WAS GOING TO KILL BOUTROS. THERE WAS TO BE BOMBS AND CARNAGE AND THE RENDING OF HAVOC! - and YOU ruined it."

He punched Tim to the ground and would have killed Tim then, but miraculously Tim said the one thing that could have brought him reprieve:

"Um...were have all the Agents gone?"
The Red leicester looked up. Beach.
"FIND THEM!!!!"
Tim scurried off into the treese and vines and the dense undergrowth. One of the locals tried to get closer to the strange men on the beach but the Red Leicester just threw coconuts at him until he went away...

Heddingly was rapidly stripping off his clothes. Jill (and come to that, Tim) watched in a frankly sexual way.
"That's more like it," said H, wriggling his toes in the sand "I feel much more at home now"
"Come ON!" said Bruce "Let's get away NOW!"
"Don't you worry" said Heddingly, supremely in control despite his near naked state "I am a master of tropical island life, and what we need to do is this:...

Tim peered into the gloom. He pushed away some dangling vines with the butt of his silenced revolver and moved closer. A spy by nature and an assasin by training. Tim was on a hunt. He entered the dense tropical forest.

*Now!* whispered Heddingly.

Outside the Red Leicester heard this:

*swish!* Thwa-tak! Arrg-fu! -nnh..."

The Agents all turned their gaze upward. Tim was suspended several feet above their heads in the canopy swinging from the trap that Heddingly had set.

"With his only henchman out of the way, maybe we can all jump Leicester." said Bob

"No. it's too risky." said Arthur.

"Where's Boutros?" asked Jill...

....*Krzzk*......"Meanwhile in other news...*click*

...*Krzzk*......a small duck...*click*

...*Krzzk*...became trapped inside *click*

..*Krzzk*....Elton Jon's baby grand piano...*click*

*Krzzk*..........Migration pattern linked to....*click*

*Krzzk*.....Deforestation in the Amazon....*click*

...*Krzzk*.......The President began holidaying....*click*

....*Krzzk*....During the mating season, the male constructs his nest in the *click*

...*Krzzk*...Houses of Parliament...*click*

( ! )

*click* *click*

....Were sighted by sighted by fisherman in the bays off of the shores of the Bahamas. The Government has been recalled from it's Summer recess refused to comment on the building's dissappearence. Temporary accommodation has now been allocated. In the Millenium Dome. Back to you in the studio"....*Krzzk*...



"A-ha!", said Boutros to himself.