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

Speckly was sitting a long time ago in a garden when she heard her name spoken. The garden was not her own, but there was a great deal of work to do there.

But her name had been called.

She should never have given away the secret of names so carelessly. She considered ignoring the call. It was not, after all, her real name. It was a fiction. She rolled her eyes and tucked her pen behind her ear.

'It's all fiction,' she said to no one in particular, and decided.

Then she was standing in the bar. Somehow on the way there she had picked up a small rotund lizard who clung to her arm looking happy about the abrupt change in climate.

'Well hound, since you dragged me here the least you can do is go first. What's it to be?'

What's a wee lassie from the highlands doing in Luxor I ask myself - you're a long way from home Speckly, but welcome to the club.

We will be heading back to the hotel shortly no doubt so I hope you like champagne because we have some on ice. Or would you prefer a wee dram? I have a bottle of Talisker somewhere.

Have you brought your cross stitch ? I seem to have left mine at home.But I have my camera, easle and paints.

No doubt Boots will be telling us what we do next.

Jazz

Well the dare bit seemed to work quite well, Teuchter and Speckly had risen to the bait.
Jazz and Hypatia had commandeered the kissing corner so all that left was...the truth.

'Yes but who's truth?' asked Jazzme 'And what is truth? Reality? Surely not?'

The hound was well out of his depth and his Wellingtons, this needed a Ben or a Pin.

'I'm off to buy a paper, far too deep for me. Can you get the post in Luxor?'

Ah, kissing, says Ben to herself. I remember kissing.

Somewhere around the back of the planet a man lies sleeping. She had told him once she could kiss him forever. It would have been nice to have had the chance, she thinks.

Just how far can she push this fragile talisman card, she wonders.

Dare she tell the truth?

Would they tell her to kiss-off if she did?

"Um, guys". She clears her throat nervously. "Um, how exactly do you play 'Truth, kiss or dare'?"

'Is this a game you're familiar with?' she asked Jazzme.

He pondered a moment then replied, 'I like the sound of the kissing part, but the rest of it could be troublesome.'

The entire trip was troublesome, she thought. She had more questions than when they began. She thought it might be better to avoid the truth part of the game. She wasn't sure she was up to the truth quite yet.

What is truth? She repeated the hound's question to herself. How do you know it when you find it? And what happens to the journey when truth is found? Perhaps the only truth, the only reality is the journey. A thousand paths through a thousand lifetimes toward what? Oblivion? Sweet, blessed oblivion.

"Thpeak? Ith that you? I'm thorry if it'th the middle of the night..."

'Ahem. Hello Orchid. It'll be the middle of the night here for another three months'

For a little while, there is nothing but the small sounds of a small whale wrestling with a difficult concept. The elephant seal sighs theatrically.

'...so...what's the problem, Orchid?'

She hesitates for a while longer, and then whispers conspiratorially :

"The hound'th thaid thomething about reality! And kithing too. And Mr Pinniped hath'nt woken up for dayth"

The Speak-Your-Weight-Machine stares solemnly at the receiver in his flipper. At least the last part seems reasonably normal.

'Tell Boots to call me', he says wearily, and hangs up.

The charcoal tasted dreadful. She could really do with...no, the lammergeier broke her gaze from the rotund lizzard. She hopped off her perch on the larger of the Ali-Baba baskets with rather more flap than was necessary and frowned at the hound's retreating rear end.

'Now that's typical!' she thought, 'Starting hares, and then going off chasing rabbits!'. She looked at Ben somewhat ruefully, 'I know I suggested this game, but it wasn't a serious suggestion, I don't know how it works either...'

'...I could make a guess though.' She looked after the hound again,'Hey...! Hound...! Boots...! There is no Post this week so get your...ellipses...back here, I have a question for you.'

'Kiss, truth or dare, what *did* happen in the Congo, with the bandage... and the two decades... and everything...?' Her voice trailed off, she wasn't sure if Boots was within hearing or not.

"Qui vive?"

Trout Montague quizzed the Speckly and the Teuchter quixotically. This quirky quorum was not for quitters. Then "Quim", he announced loudly for no reason other than it felt good on his lips, such was the wont of the quiescent quipster.

"Vive Ben, One Spit Does Not A Summer Make?" responded the Speckly and the Teuchter, somehow in unison. Trout Montague was ... non-plussed. He hadn't really had any expectation, but clearly they had their quota of mettle. Quicksilver maybe.

Trout Montague perused their surroundings. That the erstwhile pulse-quickening adventure had descended into a quietus of quoits and kiss-chase in a luxurious Luxorian hostelry quoted quires about the questionableness of their quest. And their quatrain-loving quarry. And their qualifications to pursue her. That he'd left her hanging like that merely confirmed his fear.

He quaffed another quart, quenching the qualmish quinsy-like querulousness that the desert held for his throat. Then, suitably libated, the fish thought hard, wrestling with quadratic equations and quadrangles and quantum theory. And suddenly it came, as it were and as he often did; not one, not two, but three all at once. It was the well-worn tried and tested cliché he'd been searching for. The throbbing beat of a triumvirate of shiny red RouteMasters, all quirkily asymmetric and Khartoum-bound resonated outside the louvred windows.

"Quality", he thought, "Sheer bloody quality. We'll go back to Congo, and ride the African Queen." And in some discomfort at the thought of such a notion, Trout Montague adjusted the front of his breeches. "Who's up?" he asked, uncharacteristically embarrassed by his own unintended double-entendre.

"What's up, more like" said Boots, his shiny nose as ever in all the wrong places.

And with that, the party departed the pub and boarded the third bus.

"Ding ding", stated the bus as it accelerated out of Luxor, southbound.

"Tickets please", announced the conductor. They all looked at Hypatia.

"Erm," thought Hypatia vocally to the Conductor, "... hang on ... one seal, one junior orca, one dog, one fish, one vulture, one lizard, one lettuce, one forlorn poet in an Ali Baba basket, two adults and one charmingly eccentric senior citizen please ..." She looked around the upper deck ... "have I missed anyone?"

'The sheep...you missed out the sheep Waz'

Waz whistled...she knew that.

He loaded his credit card back on the bus.

'back on the bus eh? Any messages? You can't get the post in Luxor today by the way'

'Yeth the thpeak you weight mathine thayth can you give him a call.'

'He'll still be sleeping now. Where are we going anyway?'

'Back to the Congo...you've still got unfinished business there' said the fish.

'Says who'

'Well what was all that with the bandages and a couple of lost months?' Asked Waz

'Who says you can't beat yourself up?' The dog was feeling much stronger. 'That was just naval contemplating.'

'I think thailoth are nith.' Would no one sit on the whale?

'Where should we go then?' Trout was somewhat relieved. he was also quite pleased that Africa might be off the Agenda.

'India.' said the hound. 'I've never been to India... It's time to move forward. Take us to Jodpur driver, ellipses and all!'

India?

She looked protectively at the sheep.

In India the Hindus don't eat beef and the Muslims don't eat pork....it's a bad place to be a lamb.

There is the snorting sound of laughter from the Ali Baba Basket.

"Can we disguise him, do you think?" Ben asks.

"India's not a problem" says the seal, desperately hoping no-one suggests Northern Canada.

"I can pee on his hooves, so he smells of dog and not of wet sheep" is Boots' suggestion.

The Trout looks nervous. There are a lot of fish dishes in Southern India, after all.

The sheep bleats, and hides behind his badges.

Meanwhile, Jazz was trying to work out how to get Hypatia into the back seat so he could demonstarate his ability to deal with the 'kiss' part of the game no one seemed to know how to play.

It's one ability you don't loose with age fortunately.

He was sorry that they seemed to leave every location without achieving any of Hypatia's wishes - no picture of a rhino - no visits to the temples - not even time to empty the champagne bottles in the hotel, some waiter would be gulping it down by now.

And what were they doing on a BUS going to India - and who had the mint sauce if the worst came to the worst?

At that stage Hypatia joined him in the back seat so he drew his cloak over them and said 'May I say goodnight the way they do in India.....'

And found a wet nose and two large brown eyes glaring up at him with a mixture of impatience and bad-tempered contempt.

Not the dog, for once, but a crotchetty phocoid, who says "'Sealed with a kiss'? I don't think so...." and who then lumbers up on to the back seat between them.

"You sing on the back seats of busses, don't you?" he says, before launching into a hallitosis-laden version of "'ere we go to indja, all the way to indja, da da DUM, da da DUM"

Teuchter was sitting up the front of the bus, one hand on the Ali-baba basket, to prevent it from rolling up and down the aisle between the seats, and the other cramming yet another charcoal tablet into her mouth.

"I know!" she said, spluttering wee black bits in every direction, "Why don't we go to Scotland? We could go to Aber-bloody-deen. They love sheep there. He'd be safe if he stayed sitting down a lot. Perhaps not such a good venue for the Trout but it would be cool enough for the Phocoid"

Teuchter didn't really care where she went - she was having 'an adventure' and the fact that she hadn't yet grasped the plot didn't seem to matter too much.

"Right, queans and loons, when does this Truth or Dare game get started?"

The bus swerved and changed directions, throwing Hypatia into the phocoid and the phocoid into Jazzme's waiting arms where he planted a kiss on the seal's nose before he realized what had happened.

Hypatia got up in a huff and walked toward the front of the bus. "I've waited for a kiss for several LEDs and now you're kissing a smelly seal?" she pouted.

Pah!

The sheep sniffed a bit, and uncomfortably said "I don't mean to shoot down the ideas we have for trips, but I'd hate to go to India.

I can't.
I won't!

The bathrooms are atrocious - which is one of the indisputable factors one uses to conclude the attractiveness of a country to visit. I couldn't go to the bathroom the entire time. And that could be uncomfortable.

Scotland's got my vote. The accents are interesting and there are plenty of sheep to talk to. Sometimes, you people just don't understand the importance of the bathroom to us sheep. Us civilized, Ohio sheep anyway."

The sheep then stepped back, and bowed.

The lizard was trying her best to look poisonous by casting venomous looks at Waz. Speckly was watching the general chaos of the bus from a quiet window seat. She was fairly sure that she had been called an adult, a wee lassie and possibly a loon. Well, one out of three right was probably not too bad.

Hypatia bustled down the isle looking offended, closely followed by Jazz who babbled 'but the seal means nothing to me...' as he passed. Orchid lumbered across the isle in their wake and the bus tilted wildly for a moment, throwing Jazz up against Hypatia in a particularly forward manner. Speckly's view of the scene was obscured by Orchid squeezing into the seat next to her but she heard a sharp noise that might have been the long awaited kiss or a crisp slap.

'Hello Orchid. Would you like a blackjack or a fruit salad?' she asked, holding out a bag of chewy sweets.

'Thank you Thpeckly, but Mithter Pinniped thaid I'm not to have thweeties. He thaid they make me thilly,' a look of worry passed over her big mild face 'At leatht I think that'th what that word meanth.'

At the front of the bus the sheep was saying something about scotland and bathrooms.

'I don't mind Scotland,' the lizard whispered 'but do you think he's ever heard of haggis?'

"What? What's happened to cousin Haggis?!!?"

Oh, Jazz.

Oh, Hypatia.

Oh, Jazz.

Oh, Hypatia.

Jazz! Jazz!

Hypatia! Pinniped?

Orchid?

Boots! Not now.

Baaah.

Mierda

Hyp! BAAHH! BAHH! BAHH!
Oh, sheep!
Oh, Hyp! BAHH! BAH! BAH!

When in Scotland... do as the Scotlanders do.