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

Superheroes had heavy workloads, so you rarely saw them getting together without a pretty serious threat to the universe -- The Avengers versus Loki and Ultron for instance, or the X-Men against a long list of foes. Getting together for fun did not seem important enough to pull off, so it was all the more remarkable that Johnny Unitem was able to use his super powers of persuasion to get them all together at the universe's first intergalactic Superhero Convention.

There were naysayers aplenty, of course, predicting that there would be friction -- Superman locking horns with Batman over the relative merits of Gotham City and Metropolis, for example. Johnny showed his golden touch in his keynote address, however, by stressing the uniqueness of each hero's domain, and by opening the doors to all superheroes of any degree.

Spaceman Spiff and Supercaptaincoolman rubbed shoulders with Mighty Mouse and Herby the fat kid who was continually saving the universe while licking his lollipop.

What Johnny had not counted on, however, was that a sci-fi/horror convention was going on next door. The Fly happened to be in the lavatory when Spiderman walked in, which meant trouble. The Blob got drunk and went to the wrong convention hall, raising the hackles of almost all the superheroes, after which the attendees for both conventions starting fighting with each other.

Luckily the Ministry of Magic was having its annual banquet at the hall in the annex, so they were able to make everyone unconscious and erase all memories of the conventions and the fighting that ensued.

They all went back to their universes with no idea that any of this had ever happened......

My grandparent's front room was filled with display cabinets of mannequins wearing red satin Victorian dresses with a window to a strange sight of floating garages that were transforming into skyscrapers, cottages with green and purple felt roofs and then transforming back into floating garages.

Back in the front room, I found a door had appeared in the middle of the wall leading several a library where there were several floors of books, separated with writing and reading desks that led to a door to a busy shopping mall.

Rooms where appearing everywhere in the house which ended up with at least 100 extra rooms all filled with furniture leading shops, seaside and countryside resorts.

[tell us more about the mannequins in red dresses. Do they come to life? ]

In my grandparent's parlour, the mannequins began twirling around to the music of 'Doctor Zhivago - Lara's theme' and the paintings of my relatives on the wall began to wake up as they began nudging each other as they see me come into the room.

"Aye, so you are the one responsible for bringing the magic of Middle Earth and Harry Potter to the modern world, we we're wondering when you would make an appearance and congratulate you on bringing sanity to this very turbulent world."

"There is much work to do, already nanna and granda's home have been transformed into much a more bigger home and acting as a portal to the two worlds; it will probably take at least 4 months for the transformation to start taking place which will be accelerated by using the weather, earth's atmosphere, food and water to speed up the world's evolution."

My grandparent's front room was filled with display cabinets of mannequins wearing red satin Victorian dresses. Little did I know the history of those dresses until one night when Uncle Ted talked about the time Grandma went on a shopping spree, leaving Granddad and Ted alone in he house.

They put the dresses on and gave an impromptu fashion show, after which they booked a sky-diving session for that afternoon. Dozens of motorists were subsequently nonplussed to see men in red dresses parachuting down into the fields next to the road.

One of the motorists was a taxi driver who was bringing Grandma back to the house. Granddad and ted hurried across the fields, arriving home just in time to put the dresses back into the display cabinets and put their own clothes back on.

Grandma had to assume that she had been hallucinating on her ride home, so she took some aspirin and went to bed early.....

Marco the Magnificent was a magician to reckon with in his
youth, but time had been cruel, reducing him to low=paying
gigs at birthday parties on the wrong side of the tracks.
As his assistant I was the high point of his act, for I had
a well-kept secret that made me the ultimate subject for
a saw-the-lady-in-half routine.

Alas, one day even the birthday party gigs dwindled, and Marco
had to go into retirement. This left me unemployed, as the other
magicians already had assistants. The only other job I could get
was at a car dealership selling tiny little cars that hardly anybody
wanted. My income was too low to let me get an apartment, so I
took to sleeping in the two cars the dealership let me use. My torso
would fit in one car, and my lower body fit in the other -- until
the awful night when someone looked into one of the cars, saw only
half of me, and concluded that I had been murdered....

Olivia had played with her toys for hours, but Christmas was now
two days in the past, and she was bored enough to wander around
the living room staring at the furniture and walls.

Grandpa, why do the old dresses stay in the display cases rather
than being worn by anybody?" she wondered.

"Nobody wears those styles any more," I explained, "and in any
event we keep those dresses as a reminder of my grandmother, who
made them 100 years ago, just after she and my grandfather moved
here." Olivia's face lit up in expectation of a story, so I went on:
"The Big People used to have five daughters, who wore red satin bows
in their hair at Christmas, but the daughters left the bows behind
as they grew up an got married. They called us the Borrowers, but
my grandmother saw nothing wrong with borrowing those unused bows
so she could turn them into dresses for her own daughters, who wore
them to our own Balls until they went out of style."

Just then, Olivia's teenaged brother came in after a day of skydiving
and followed Olivia's gaze to the red dresses. "It's a shame those
things couldn't be converted into parachutes," he said.

"Or sails," said Cousin Horatio, who was well known for his long, boring tales about adventure on his yacht.

Agamemnon, Achilles and Ajax had gotten together to play jacks
when Hercules arrived with an urgent plea for help with his ninth
Labor.

"I have to capture a leather belt that Amazon Queen Hippolyta
uses to carry her sword and spear," Hercules explained.

"You got yourself into this mess and you can jolly well get yourself
out of it," Achilles snapped, eager to get back to his game,
but Ajax, who'd been losing money since the game started, said,
"Everything I've got belongs to you anyway, Achilles, so why not
if we can make a few drachmas by helping Hercules?"

"Jupiter forbid that we should turn away a brother in need," Agamemnon said, painfully aware that they were about to burst into song at any moment.

A thousand miles and many weeks later they crouched on a bluff watching the Amazon army parading around in the red satin dresses that were their official uniform....

The little paraplegic paper boy had always completed his delivery
rounds, but with two feet of fresh snow on the ground no one on
Maple Street expected he'd make it today. Josh, who rose early from habit, was pouring his second cup of coffee when he heard a "whit-whit-whit" sound outside. Opening his door, Josh saw the boy floating six inches above the ground, propelled by puffs of air in a home-made hovercraft.

Josh's jaw dropped for a second. Then he went inside for his camera.

The front page of the next day's paper had a photo of the boy on his
hovercraft, delivering papers when nothing else was moving anywhere.

Disillusionment was setting in, now that the Revolution had
begun to fade into the past.

The cat lost interest in the fiddle when she saw a ball of
yarn roll past.

The little dog stopped laughing when he realized that he had
been manipulated by the high muckety mucks; Doctor Woofgenstein
was working to bolster his self-esteem, hopeful that Prozac
would not be required.

The cow was in traction, as her friends predicted. Jumping over
the Moon was the easy part. A soft landing was much harder to
arrange.

The dish and the spoon were back now, sobered by the realization
that they were seriously mismatched. The dish was now dating the
fork, while the spoon had often been seen with the bowl.

One quadrillion tiny bots flew through Manhattan, photographing [8]
everything, inside and out. Assembling at Megalactic Pictures on the
Planet Galactiwood, they downloaded their images into a state-of-the-art bank of supercomputers. "People throughout the galaxy love to see New York destroyed," bragged the studio president. "Now we can show them destruction on a wide scale without building scale models or expensive sets."

He had intended to say more, but a nearby star went supernova at that point. The real New York continued to do fine.

Tharg was less than happy, in fact he could be quite easily described as in a state of ha, and that is a lot less than happy.

For some time his universe had remained in a state of equilibrium, and for the first time in decades that was more the result of equi than librium.

The thoughts, thought by the Thinker, had been in complete balance with the emanations from Arborvilla, and all was well.

He had at first been proactive in monitoring the situation, logging into H2G2 every morning to check that all was well.

And then, at this very moment, he noticed that Pebblederook appeared to have been released from his secure psychiatric institution, and was bent once more on the destruction of the logical universe.

"Moving to the Typo Universe was my worse mistake ever," Liane
lamented.

"How so?" Doctor Fraud asked.

"I wake up to smelly coffee, listen to the children talk nonstop as they get ready for Chatter School, and worry that my split-level
branch house will fall out of the tree."

"Do you have any friends in the neighborhood?"

"no one on Manic Street even notices me. My husband wanted to run for the Broad of Oldermen, but he wasn't broad or old enough."

Doctor Fradu saisd somwerthinfg elser, burtbrther tyrpos were so basd she xcousdn'rt unwedfweerastaNSD RTHWEM.

One day Dija Voontz noticed a familiar name in the obituaries. He wracked his brain, then remembered her as the love of his life, now dead and never married!

Building a time machine, Dija returned to his last meeting with her to propose marriage, but her jealous boyfriend destroyed the
time machine and gave him a blow to the head that caused temporary
amnesia. Unknown to Voontz, the boyfriend soon abandoned the girl, while Voontz was transferred to a far-off facility to recover from his head injury.

One day years later, Dija Voontz noticed a familiar name in the obituaries.

Life for me is getting weirder since I went to Harry Potter studio tours where I had a cup of butterbeer.

Since then I have received in the post from an unknown sender a hazel wand with a core made with dragonheart string which is 13 3/4 inches in length and a time turner.

These items I have used extensively doing a complete makeover of my apartment flat where I have used the undetectable extension charm ( don't let the British STRIKE or Excalibur groups find out) where I have added 120 rooms where have various types of storage rooms, libraries and studies as well as holo-suites and rooms dedicated to my hobbies, relaxation and keeping fit.

Suzanne Jones had always loved hilly Aviemore with its snow covered mountains, for this was a place where she felt most at peace.

She was a tall, intelligent, invincible, mead drinker with caramel brown hair that went down to her hips, who her friends saw her as a loyal and trusty friend.

Then she saw something in the distance, or rather someone, it was the figure of Mary Thornton, a determined eccentric with a slight frame and golden blonde hair.

Mary gazed with the affection at the compassionate phoenix and said, in hushed tones, "I greatly admire you and I want to have powerful magic powers," so Suzanne looked back towards Mary and said, "Mary, I have omega plus, reality changing mutant powers,".

These powers were gifted from them from the cosmic energy pulsating through their bodies from the phoenix that covered them with a white golden light enable to change the realities of alternate dimensions and be able to change the past so as to change the future.

"The rain will end, Baddeley," Mrs. Basquette told the butler. "Our picnic will take place."

"A picnic on wet grass?" Muffy exclaimed. "Ew!"

"I'd rather play computer games inside," Biff added.

"Madame, the river's rising," Baddeley said, pointing to their picnic table, which was floating toward them across the sodden lawn.

"The rain will end badly," Mrs. Basquette sighed.

Have an egg-ceptional day all those called Eggbert. Get board with a boaring boar at the Boarshead inn for those who want to hog the limelight. Eat hot cross buns with an annoyed bunny. Those affected by bugs get a bug bear.

She had everything: silky blonde hair, Spode complexion, the body
of the century.

We danced, enjoyed candlelit dinners, made love.

Then I noticed the cowl and scythe in her apartment.

"Cruel, duplicitous Death!" I hissed.

"One last fling," she purred. "Go out smiling."

"You must be Peter's wife."

"How did you guess?"

"The pumpkin shell blouse. Looks like a custom fit."

"It is. Peter's a plant scientist. The seeds were designed
for me. We live in a two-story pumpkin."

"How's the upkeep?"

"Easy as pie."