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

Paul

The surreal world of The Thinker

I woke up in the morning and found that I travelled back in time when I was 2 years of age but with all my knowledge and experience; when my family and I lived at my grandparent's house in Ashington.

As I went down stairs to the kitchen, I found my grandparents, my parents and uncle extremely happy as they had letters regarding the inheritance from long lost extremely wealthy eccentric relatives with cheques of several millions of pounds and money put aside to build their own Eco-build homes.

[I'll bet you discovered relatives that you didn't even know existed when they came forward to argue for a share of that money .

Jason's plan had seemed almost foolproof on paper: Take a time machine back to the late Cretaceous, raid a Troodon nest, bring the eggs back to the time machine in a vehicle powered by light and wind, hatch them in his 21st-century lab, and see if Troodons were really the brightest dinosaurs of all time.

Putting the plan into action proved to be much dicier than expected, though, owing to Jason's greed -- he took all 20 eggs in the nest he found -- and a total lack of wind on a pitch-black night. This meant slower going with the backup power source provided by bicycle pedals, a heavier cargo because of 20-plus pounds from the eggs themselves, and some nerve-wracking sounds behind him as the Troodon parents
apparently woke up and set off in hot pursuit.

Suddenly his vehicle speeded up as the engine kicked in, but the *reason* for the power surge was even more worrisome than the pursuing Troodons: overhead was a blindingly bright asteroid hastening toward impact with the earth.

Fortunately, Jason got himself and the eggs into the time machine in time to program it for the return to 2014, though he began to worry as the eggs all hatched simultaneously and the hatchlings began looking at him with hunger on their faces....

WAS UNCLE OTTO MURDERED?

One beautiful Spring day I was removing dandelions from my lawn when I discovered that the roots of every dandelion I dug up were potatoes.

The media descended on me, and soon everyone wanted seeds from my spudlike dandelions. A few months later, the executor for my late Uncle Otto's estate dropped by with a video that he had bequeathed to me. The video had scenes in which representatives of the big seed and pesticide companies were threatening Uncle Otto with big trouble if he didn't euthanize the new dandelions -- turns out he had created them in his lab! -- because the companies faced big losses once
everybody began getting potatoes from their front lawns instead of stores or farm stands.

A close-up of the video showed Uncle Otto destroying the dandelions while a few rogue seeds escaped from his window, soon to take root in my lawn, which was next door to Uncle Otto's lab.

Three cars picked us all up to take us to Belsay Hall where we were to find out the details of our inheritance to find that all other relative of my grandparents had all arrived and were waiting inside.

There in the main hall was sumptuous buffet provided, and on the stage were sat several men and women sat behind a long table as they provided details of what was required of them to be eligible for the full benefits of the will.

Two centuries had passed since the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden, and the Creator continued to be happy with the plants and animals that covered the surface of the Earth. Mankind, however, suffered from an excess of optimism regarding his own importance and abilities, gregariousness [which meant that every bad habit he learned tended to be quickly copied by other humans], and a tendency to see animals as tasty morsels on a plate rather than valuable
companions and co-inhabiters of the planet.

One day the Creator assembled some trusted angels and asked if they could think of even one man who lacked the human vices that were quickly turning the Earth into an unimaginable pit of vice.

"There's a man named Noah who is paranoid about offending you, antisocial, and frankly obsessed with how nice the company of animals is," said one archangel who feared that such a nutcase as Noah was the last person who should be entrusted with a mission by the Creator.

After 40 days and nights of rain and a triumphal landing of the Ark on a mountain top, the Creator and archangels realized that saving the animals was only half the equation, as most plant species had been destroyed, hence the need to create them again....

It was a bad time for Sigismund to come down with tuberculoplagueosis.

Hildegarde couldn't nurse him through it, as she was at No Help Atoll discussing design glitches that made solar trains slow down at night.

The twins were away on a scavenger hunt, some nonsense about gathering bat eggs and lizard milk in the caves.

Having nowhere else to turn, Sigismund summoned the androids and briefed them on his schedule of antibiotics and meals.

Arioso stayed by his bedside while Sigismund worked on an octet for seven instruments, though the android's quibbling about the impossibility of such a composition was annoying to say the least.

No one, not even my mother, thought I would succeed at creating synthetic antigravity, despite the obvious advantages in rocket launching and crash-proofing airplanes. So, it was with enormous jubilation that I proved them wrong. Not only could I make synthetic antigravity, I could even control it with computers to create a digital antigravity field that could be placed around anything that needed to be levitated.

Then things went seriously amiss. In real world tests, I found that synthetic antigravity had no effect on real gravity -- we seemed to be back at square one.

But wait! What if we created synthetic gravity and substituted it for real gravity? Would that work? Ten long years later, we managed to do just that, controlling it with computers just as we did with antigravity. Now even my mother admitted that I had been right to work on this. Airline stocks went through the roof, and there
was even talk of a Nobel prize for my efforts, not to mention billions of dollars in licensing fees to companies that wanted to use my technology.

I would certainly love to get a Nobel Prize. I hope they'll put it aside for me if I ever get back to the Planet Earth. You see, another planet found out about my work and used it to ferry me there against my will....

They say that the road to ruin is paved with good intentions. Such was the case when my father decided to name me after Uncle Saludo and Uncle Tedesco. In any other family, it would be an honor to be Saludo Tedesco, but our family had the surname Penuto.

My nickname was Sal Ted before I could walk. In first grade, the kids were calling me "Salted Peanuts" by the end of the first day. [That was months before they could read "Run, Spot, run."]

Well, everybody eventually manages to put school days behind them. I thought I had managed to do just that until I went on an ocean cruise with my wife and kid. My wife was sunning herself on the deck, and the kid was watching the circus clowns who were part of the entertainment on the cruise. I was reading the paper in my cabin when
I heard a knock at the door.

It was a cabin boy. "Mr. Penuto, the elephants in cabin 17 would like to get your autograph," he said.

Suddenly I was back in first grade. Had the elephants read my name on the passenger list and assumed that I was a peanut supplier? What would they do when they found out I had no peanuts to give them? Would they heckle me like my classmates of long ago?

I need not have worried. When I got to cabin 17, the elephants were sympathetic. They even offered me some of their peanuts. I made some good friends on that day, and never worried about my name again.

A tall man with long black hair who was wearing long flowing green and silver robes stood up on the stage and addressed us; informing us that the food and drink was laced with special ingredients that they were to give us special powers to alter both time and reality.

Then he explained that to benefit from the Will we need to use our powers to make the world a better place but we also need to remember by changing history, we also change our present.

"I'm going to miss Contradexter," said Muriel as the waitress began handing out menus.

"The Strange Signs Department won't be the same without him," Collingswood agreed, reaching for the rolls -- he'd skipped breakfast that morning, and was starved.

"All his signs were brilliant -- except for that last one, of course," Wilson mused, "though my favorite has always been "Go ahead and panic, you know you want to!"

"That was good, but I preferred 'No authorized personnel beyond this point; they rarely know what they're doing anyway,'" Bud interjected.

By now the second round of drinks had arrived, and the discussion of Contradexter's fatal last sign, "Don't walk on the grass," centered on how wrong he was to champion grass at a time when cows were in disrepute for greenhouse emissions, and lawnmowers were severely rationed because of their contribution to air pollution.

"If you let grass grow, it'll take over the whole planet, and then where will we be?" Muriel insisted, and no one argued the point...

They were a race of technologically advanced aliens who were temporarily homeless -- a nearby supernova had incinerated their home planet -- and it would take a year [Earth time] to restore it. As their planet was one-twelfth the size of Earth, they asked Earth's leaders for only a small portion of our planet while they waited, and they promised to pay a very high amount of rent for the privilege.

Not one country was willing to make room for them, however, so they went with Plan B: rent 1/12 of the Earth each month, using their technology to provide a virtual version of the space for the original residents to relocate to during the 30-day period.

I happened to be leaving London at the end of May, just before North America's June occupancy was scheduled to begin. Flying out of Heathrow at 10:00 p.m. on May 31, I landed at Boston's Logan Airport in the early hours of June, hoping against hope that the new software would give me a seamless version of the country I was flying into.

Camels were playing ping pong with kangaroos in the waiting rooms at Logan as I passed through -- weird but essentially harmless, I thought -- and the predawn gondola ride down Boylston Street to Copley Square seemed a bit much [Boston's new Mayor apparently wanted
to impress his constituents with his imaginative use of virtual technology], but the biggest shock came when I arrived at my parents' house in Newton.

Mom and Dad had apparently asked for twenty more rooms and a flock of llamas in the back yard -- I found them riding the beasts at 6:30 a.m. But it wasn't just the house that was different, though that would have been way more than enough. My parents had gotten some virtual siblings for me, including a brother who chain-smoked when he wasn't inventing new elements in his lab, a sister who was a United States Senator, and my twin brother, who was writing a story about technologically advanced aliens who were temporarily homeless due to a nearby supernova.

At dawn's first light I was in my greenhouse burning yesterday's waste and planting seeds for the next week's meals, when a Space Guard ship delivered an ancient space probe to the field next to my house.

"We found it a few hundred light years away in deep space," the Space Guard captain said with a smile, "but we brought it to you because you're the closest expert on extremely ancient languages in this sector."

One look at the word "Voyager" on the probe's side confirmed for me the wisdom of having brought it here, a planet settled tens of thousands of years earlier by settlers from the planet Earth. This place has the good fortune to be the most Earthlike planet of all those that Earth humans have colonized during the long eons that Voyager was drifting through pace. Oh, we tweaked the orbit, rotation, and tilt a bit to give us seasons and put us in a perfect temperature zone, but except for inadequate carbon we had all the right atmospheric gases and oceans and minerals. Extra carbon was supplied by a nearby planet, so tiny grass plants cover the land surface, but agriculture has to be done in greenhouses where CO2 levels can be kept high, and where fast-growing seeds can give us all our needed nutrients within a week's time.

I played the golden disc that contained music, sounds, and images from then ancient Earth, marveling at the pictures of lush rainforests and the complicated animals that were supported by them -- unlike this planet, where animals can be kept as pets only by the
extremely wealthy in domed estates.

Oh, to be able to visit this planet Earth that had such wonderful things, I said to myself.

To start at the beginning.

Creative writing books, articles, websites all offer roughly the same advice; write about what you know. Sadly I don’t know much and the little I do know is so mundane it would take a genius to make anyone else want to suffer it. I know me I supposed, but when I apply some thought to the matter I wonder if I really do. Maybe it’s just a picture of myself that I hoped I might be.

So the solution could be to write a story about a journey of self discovery. But if I haven’t found myself by now, what hope is there that I will succeed just by hitting keys on a keyboard. I definitely need some serious help, and as I neither know an inexpensive brain care specialist nor care for anyone I do not have a total and proven trust in to be tramping around the lower depths of my mind, the only place I will find assistance is inside my own head.

I looked up the synaptic phone book and almost immediately a name sprang out, Samuel Chauvel, Private Investigator, missing persons a speciality. I need no appointment; whenever I call he will be free no matter how busy he may have been before I arrive or after I leave.

I knocked on the door of his office. A typical door in a typical building that Humphrey Bogart would have found his way around blindfold. Sam sat behind a desk, mostly because that is the way I always imagined it. He was a non descript person, in the sense that I cannot describe him physically as he has no physicality.

‘What can I do for you, kid?’ he enquired, which I thought at the time rather odd as he could not be as old as I was no matter how old I might be, chickens and eggs you see. You cannot imagine any one without first having developed an imagination. I expressed this thought.

‘Listen, kid,’ he said,’ just because you have only this minute imagined me, that doesn’t make me a younger person. You could be imagining me as an older person, without breaking any of the rules.’ ‘If I imagined you as someone older than me,’ I said,’ you would be far too decrepit to undertake the task I wish to hire you for.’

‘OK, pal,’ he responded,’ here’s the deal. You just need to imagine that I imagine you are a lot younger than me, see. That way when I show myself to have more experience, insight, and downright good sense, it won’t seem incongruous either.’

I was beginning to like him. It may not make much sense but hang the sense of it when it makes you feel better.

[Nicely written, pebblederook!

I rarely look back at a story I've written without thinking of ways that it should have been better. Am I boring the reader with unnecessary information, or leaving out things that would have made the story more interesting or plausible? Writing is hard work, because a story tends to be a chameleon that is constantly changing. I suppose that explains why so many writers like to write about dreams. In a dream, you go back to look for something you've just seen, and it's either not there or much different than it was before.

[..and there's more...]

‘I want you to find me a missing person,’ I said.

He reached for a pad and pen. ‘OK, shoot, who is missing, how long have they been missing, and do you have a picture.’

‘You are going to think this sounds crazy,’ I said, ‘but here goes nothing. I am missing. I’ve been missing for so long I don’t actually remember when I was last here. Oh yes, and I look much like I do at the moment except younger.’

He stared at me briefly. I was thinking of what an absolute idiot I must sound and could feel the embarrassment beginning to colour my face. I started to turn toward the door.

‘Kid,’ he said,’ I have spent my entire existence, however long that was, inside your head. You think the job sounds crazy? Wait until it is over and then you will see what crazy really looks like. Sit down and fill me in the detail.’

As I sat he reached into the desk drawer and drew out a half full bottle of whisky.

‘No,’ he said, fixing me with a grin,’ it’s half empty. You’re the optimist around here.’ He found two glasses and poured two fingers of whisky in each. It was fascinating. I was brought up on American detective novels and had never worked out whether the two fingers were vertical or horizontal. I guess logic should have told me that two vertical fingers of whisky was equal to one horizontal detective, but then most of them seemed immune to brain damage of any description whether via alcohol or a lead filled sap. The only time a private eye’s brain turned to mush was when some posh, apparently virginal, dame turned up and sobbed on his shoulder.

Usually just before she stole his money, set him up for a crime he didn’t commit and then ran out on him, on the arm of the local crime boss. Sounded like the history of my life other than the facts that included me not being a private eye, and posh virginal birds not crying on my shoulders a lot, although taking the money and running off with some low life seemed a regular thing.

[The story that follows is based on a recent dream. I've cleaned it up a bit, though. ]

An asteroid big enough to take out a country the size of France
was on track to hit the Earth within three hours. People who didn't
much like France hoped it actually *would* get hit, but scientists
stressed that they didn't know where the impact would be.

End-of-the-worlders didn't care where it hit, as long as they got
vindication for their beliefs.

Meanwhile, people across the planet were heading for whatever refuges
they could find. In my case, that was the Cabot Lowell Murphy School,
which coincidentally was the place I had attended elementary school.
The name seemed appropriate right now: the Cabots and Lowells had rarely shared their insights with the general public, and Murphy was famous for the idea that if anything could go wrong, it would.

I remembered the numerous times we had all congregated in the school's auditorium on the bottom floor for air raid drills. It was next to the cafeteria, so if the building didn't fall down on top of us in whatever attack our enemies had on tap, we could survive for months on government surplus cheese and peanut butter.

I huddled in a corner, listening to Wysteria Niven read aloud the news updates that cropped up on her laptop. Since the scientists had failed mankind by missing the asteroid until it was too late to stop it, I wondered why she cared. "If it hits a continent, it'll kick up a cloud of debris that will rain down on the planet for weeks to come," she said. "We'd be better off deep underground...."

"No we wouldn't," said Ziggy Smith, who was next to her. "They're saying it might hit the ocean and produce a tsunami hundreds of feet high, drowning anybody who was underground near the sea."

I joined a group of people who were headed up toward the roof. Perhaps we could see the asteroid coming and deduce where it was likely to land. At first we saw nothing. Then there was an explosion. As the TV networks explained it later, an eccentric billionaire who was en route to the Moon to start a colony happened to get in the way of the asteroid. He had enough nuclear fuel on hand that the explosion on impact diverted the asteroid toward a crash landing on the Moon instead of the Earth.

The surplus cheese and peanut butter would just have to wait until the next crisis.......

"You're 123 years old today and still sharp as a tack," the head nurse said with a nod of approval at the crossword puzzle that sat in my lap.

"It's just as well that I don't sleep in a water bed then," I said wrly, "but since we're on the subject, I heard them arguing about how to fit 123 candles on my cake as I passed the kitchen."

"Don't worry about it," the nurse said, patting my shoulder. "Worry will give you wrinkles."

"I doubt that," I replied. "There's no room left for any more."

After the nurse left the room I thought about being the oldest person who had ever lived. Surely such a long life had allowed me to do all the things I ever wanted to do, right? Well, actually not right. No major mountains climbed, no books on the best-seller list, no Nobel Prize. Then there was the matter of coming out of the closet. I had kept postponing that until later. Should I take that secret to my grave?

That cute guy who gave me sponge baths every morning passed by in the hallway. Then I was wheeled into the recreation room for morning scrabble, followed by wheelchair aerobics and then lunch. I swear they put sleeping pills in my lunch, for I napped until four.

Dinner was a gala event complete with photographers and interviewers -- did I mention that I was now the oldest person who had ever lived? The cake did not have 123 candles. Rather, it had candles that spelled out 1-2-3.

After all the hubbub and the bright lights and interviewers I was so tired that I slept like a baby -- a very very old baby -- that night.

I never did come out. Maybe I'll save that for next year.

I was going to suggest six candles arranged in a triangular array.

I know the feeling.

After what my Mom has gone through the past year, I really must plan better for myself.