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

Some guests gazed through the windows at fishing boats that bobbed
lazily on sun-dappled waves, while others dug into seafood crepes and
mushroom omelets, but no one noticed as I went around filling coffee cups.

It was my second day as manager of the Bayview inn -- my cousin Jodie
had left me in charge while she attended to a family crisis -- and I was mostly doing fine. One thing was bothering me, though: I had just come from watching Aunt Gertrude perform a voodoo exorcism, and I had a hunch that a cannibalistic spirit she had ousted from someone else was now lodged in my brain.

As I brought dirty dishes into the kitchen for washing, the hunch became a certainty, for some evil force suddenly drove me to pick up a carving knife and head back into the dining room to carve up one of the guests.

In the nick of time Aunt Gertrude herself appeared to banish the evil spirit with the words "We are here to feed the guests, not feed *on* the guests," and I knew that from that point on things would go smoothly at the inn.

Alice had read stories about worlds where everyone suddenly gained
magical powers, but when it was her world's turn to receive them she
declined. As she watched her friends become fat and lazy from never
haivng to get up to do anything -- all they had to do was wave a wand
or make a levitation spell -- she determined to become the world's
leading authority on the flaws and limitations of spells.

Her ambitions were now realized, but she wondered if she had made the right move as one-eyed Saruron's gaznuls and ralbogs were coming at her from one direction, and Mortified Vole's Demise-Chompers were approaching from another. "This had better work!" she muttered to herself as she told her well-trained parrot* to say "Harky Porter" (to lure Mortified Vole) and slipped the golden band of Empowerment onto the parrot's roost.

When the opposing forces arrived and began attacking each other, Alice was safely down below in a rabbit hole where she was helping the off-white rabbit play croquet against Grammy Stormwick and Sam Vines.



*The parrot was not harmed in the battle, as she had safely flown back to Doctor Doolittle's house in Puddleby on the Marsh.

The master faced his acolytes squatting on the floor in front of him.

He said; "A man dreamed that he had fallen out of bed. This caused him to wake up. Try as he might he couldn't get back into the dream with the result that he spent the rest of the night awake in a chair."

"That's just b*ll*x" said Alice, grumpily.

"I do hope you sleep better tonight", said the master with a smile.

The acrid smell of gunpowder lingered in the air as Johnny Livestrong
plodded through the field where the last battle of the Anti-Magic War
had been fought. Reminders of carnage and horror were everywhere --
impact craters half full of water thanks to the recent rains, blue-
tinged tree stumps where magic spells had blasted 200-year-old oaks
into oblivion, dying five-headed crows that had been hit by stray spells -- but Johnny knew he would be safe in Granny Quiznunc's kitchen.

"You look handsome in that uniform," Granny said as Johnny took off
his hat and sat at a table spread with blackberry pie and rosehip tea.

Granny always had blackberries even when no one else did -- could she
be using forbidden magic to grow them or keep them safe from porcupines and insect pests? -- and Johnny had sworn a solemn oath to root out magic wherever it was to be found. Granny turned pale when she realized that Johnny suspected her of magic, but Johnny set her mind at ease by saying, "People who were using magic for benign purposes before the war have no reason to worry."

Ian was the youngest of Mr and Mrs Fants three children. He had now reached that difficult age of seventeen when he was to be found pushing the boundaries of experience.

He had left home at six in the evening and now at eleven o'clock his parents were worried.

They had contacted the village policeman for help and he was soon at their door.

'Nothing to worry about, Mrs Fant,' he said reassuringly, 'I found young Ian down at the local pub. He's had a bit too much to drink so the landlord is looking after him until he is fit to return home.'

'What are you saying,' said the distressed mother, 'that Ian Fant is mewling and puking in "The Nurses Arms"?'

The Winslows lived in a white New England house that nestled among lofty maples on a secluded lane. The parlor windows offered a spectacular view of well-tended gardens, but today Mr. Winslow's attention was directed toward the goldfish that swam lazily among water lilies in the garden pool.

"Monica," he said to his wife as he gazed, "the goldfish have used the waterproof iPad that I gave them, and they've sent an email demanding brine shrimp and duckweed."

This was true as far is it went, but Cyrus Winslow had left out the fishes' demand for $50,000 in cash as a ransom for not showing Monica the pictures they had taken of Cyrus cavorting with his mistress by the side of the pool.

The email had *actually* been sent by Mr. Chugs, an evil frog who wanted the cash as seed money for his campaign to dominate the world, but he was so intent on his computer work that he failed to notice the snake that crept out of nowhere and ate him.

Exceptionally well written.

ribbet

[Wonders of more stories about would be welcomed. ]

[here's a story that's almost ready, but I can't come up with an ending for the last line. Suggestions, anyone?]

Uncle Max had a great mind and an equally great body, but putting
the two together was a recipe for disaster due to an evil spell. He
managed all right when we kept his head and body at opposite ends
of the house, so we tried the same approach when we took him to
visit relatives in Denver.

Max's headless body was next to me on the plane, and the woman on the
other side introduced herself as the sorceress who had put the spell on him in the first place. "I was angry at him for rejecting me when he found out I was pregnant with Gunther," she confessed, gesturing toward an awkward teenager who was across the aisle from us, "but now I realize that I scared him away, and I want to make amends."

My sister who was at the back of the plane with Max's head, agreed to toss it to us so the sorceress could restore him to his former state, but...........

"Your father and I have decided to apparate to Morpeth and using a time-turner calendar we will put our winnings in our designated bank on the 5th April 1965, then come back to the present day."

"We will all apparate two weeks before the new people move into our house in Plaistow and when we arrive at nanna and granda's in Ashington where will only being staying for short time as we arrange to buy our family home in Morpeth where all our belongs will appear once we step through the door."

No takers yet? Here's one possibility for the end of the last line:


....[but] it was Cousin Margaret's head instead, which made Uncle Max look odd even as it improved his bridge game in later years.

My sister, who was at the back of the plane with Max's head, agreed to toss it to us so the sorceress could restore him to his former state, but instead of situating it back on his neck she rammed it with great force up Max's backside. 'That's better, she smiled, 'just as I always remembered him.

It's not over 'til the last Shou Falls

The mellow aroma of ripe apples wafted through the window and dry leaves rustled in the yard, but Kant Phinnesh blocked them out of his mind as he wrestled with his latest story. Sipping his sixth cup of coffee, he wrote about Ryder S Bloch, a brawny fisherman who braved the sting of salt spray by day and the nervous exhilaration of
poetry slams at night. Bloch's latest poem, the one he was sure would win the next slam, told the story of Wai Ting -- last surviving member of the Shou Dynasty -- who refused to fall asleep until he knew whether his father had brought him the panda he wanted for his
birthday the next day. At last, peeking through the window, Wai Ting spied a panda being led through the back door, so the last Shou could fall asleep. Contented with his poem now, Ryder S Bloch prepared for that night's poetry slam, and Kant Phinnesh sent his story to the publisher, after which he gathered apples and raked leaves.

Our lives changed considerably due to the changing of the timeline by altering our past that lead to the past to be completely re-written.

Because mankind had become exceedingly evolved, even more evolved than the Vulcans, it meant that since the dawn of prehistory 40,000 years meant that people lived at complete peace with each other.

Due to this, mankind could concentrate on the pursuit of high ideals and that without the distraction of wars, had developed inter-stellar travel long before in this present reality.

The population remained steady due to 200+ years extended childhood and every 28 years they would go through a more controlled version of the Vulcan pon farr without the irrational behaviour.

It was just so annoying, and so unfair.

Not only did he have to wait two hundred years before his pimples dried up, but he didn't even have the option of behaving irrationally every twenty eight years.

"And where do you think you are going at this time of night," demanded his father.

"I am going to have a word with some one called The Thinker, not that it's any of your business", he snarled.

"Kids, eh," said his dad, "they grow up so slowly."

Richard King climbed to the top of the bell tower for his daily shift and reminisced about earlier times when the view was a panorama of wonderful sights: shoppers bustling around in the marketplace, the nearby spire of the cathedral, the town walls and, further out, well-kept fields of cabbages, tomatoes, and beans.

Nowadays the marketplace was shabby and deserted, the cathedral spire was lying in a pile of rubble and the town walls were gone, victims of countless invasions by zombie hordes -- speaking of which, another zombie army was on its way.

The few surviving townspeople had nowhere left to hide, so they struck out for the gloomy Gothic castle of Doctor Veganstein, a quirky inventor whose fields had remained unscathed by the carnivorous zombies.

"It's a pity that you haven't asked me for my special serum that renders the zombies harmless," Doctor Veganstein said as the townspeople were ushered into his dining room for a meal of beefsteak tomato juice, imitation brains from a head of cabbage, and tofu
shaped like toes. "The serum tricks them into thinking vegan fare is meat and blood, so they eat their fill here and then go on their way, never to attack humans or animals again."