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

How art thou?

*His Divine Shadow sits down in a compfy armchair and gets out a newspaper to read whilst waiting for Jordan to respond*

I be'st well, but who art thou? I doth not understand!

[Sits down next do HDS and nibbles at some .]

- Jordan

*grabs a handfull of out of a bag in his pocket*

Things go well, as ever for me, and I hope they go well for you

I remember you... but I can't recall who you were! Doh!

Your name is ringing bells all over my head and I don't know why...

- Jordan

I was the ruler of the Divine Order and the League of Twenty Thousand Planets, but now I'm just a man reading a newspaper, talking to a guy eating chocolate

Way to go down in the world!

I think it all started with that makeover, by the way...

http://www.geocities.com/jerboa_lemur/fashionemergency.html

- Jordan

I like how they did that, but that was a predessesor of me, and he has relized the futility of attempting to alter my Divine wardrobe

rotten fashion people, , I think they're a bit fruity

that's why I stick to my black *smooths over a fold in his robe*

Fruity? You mean, like Starburst?

Yep, I hated the new name and design and all.

Um... Don't you think black is a little, well, clich/ed? (I did that because I can't be bothered setting up a key binding for accents.)

Why do you remind me of R. Daneel Olivaw? Anyway... I have this charming robe here... it's in the most fantastic dark blue colour, almost like the sky at night, and it contrasts beautifully with the vermillion inside. And it's specially articulated with invisible flexo-tendon micro-amplifiers, which make it swish out impressively with the slightest breeze. It's stunning, really. Very evil.



Please don't tell me to kill myself, I'm very messy.

- Jordan

you needn't kill yourself *stands up* I don't have any of the net launchers with me anyway

*raises arms and fires a net at Jordan, Vaporizing him*

see? its easier to do it myself, and so much more satisfying

[Reappears.]

Well, it seems my buffer works.

[Replays footage of his destruction.]

That was nicely done, by the way. I like the way the net was clearly visible and yet I didn't actually have time to meditate on my imminent demise.

You may be interested in my range of phoson pistols. Have a peek!

[Tosses HDS an extremely odd but nevertheless highly accurate and powerful piece of advanced weaponry.]

- JOrdan

ok, lets see what she does

*shoots Jordan*

(so whatr exactly does this gun do anyway?)

[Jordan remains unhurt, but watches in dismay as most of a huge building behind him disappears in a flash of energy.]

Oh dear... no, you have to set the range, right now it's set for 100 metres on a low beam-width. See, I'm only a few metres away, so you have to set the range for, say, five metres, then put it on a very fine beam (so it only gets me and doesn't catch you}...

It fires two beams which produce antiparticles in juxtaposition to each particle within the volume of intersection. It's very complicated, the phosons collide and the properties of local space are disturbed to elicit the antiparticles from the quantum vacuum...

[Tinkers briefly with the weapon.]

Range control. [Points.] Beam width. [Points again.] Now try firing it.

[Steps five metres back.]

Wait a minute...

- Jordan

*shoots*

[Is completely annhilliated, along with a large chunk of the ground he was standing on and part of a bench.]

[Buffer begins reassembly.]

- Jordan

[Is reassembled.]

I don't know why, but just after being reassembled I have this odd tingly feeling... It's merely a stored impression of myself being reconstructed by a vast remote computer-reconstructor-teleporter device, so I should feel exactly the same.

Yeah, you can keep that. Consider it a present for being gloriously evil.

You might not want to shoot me too much in a short timeframe, or the computer will conclude that I'm in a dangerous area and will teleport me somewhere it thinks is safer. One time I got caught in a nuclear meltdown and I found myself in the hot tub with Eliza Minelli!

- Jordan

what manner of computer is this?

It takes a snapshot of the precise arrangement of my body a few times every second. It buffers the information for about a day or so, before wiping the old data, and if I die it reconstructs the most recent stable configuration it has. Most of it can't actually be seen on the ordinary three dimensions.

Of course, its location is secret so that no one can actually kill me permanently... However, it's generally considered a bad thing to kill on the first date, or before getting to know me better.

(I'm making an exception for you since you're extra-specially evil.)

- Jordan

I just transfer my soul, through nemerous means which aren't all documented into newly prepared bodies, clone bodies, or the bodies of my enemies

Unfortunately, my methods are not so elegant. It's data storage method alone depends the fact that objects in higher dimensions can have a very large volume despite the actual size in any given plane being relatively small, and it's immensely complicated. And it means I forget whatever I thought of milliseconds before death was imminent, depending on how soon the computer took the last copy and how stable my body was immediately before death.

It's all a bit fancy.

Could you teach me that whole soul-transfer thing? It might come in handy...

- Jordan