Really Wild Things by Nigel Mitchell

(c) Copyright 2007

The characters and situations presented are fictitious. Any similarity between persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Some portions of this novel, including characters and settings, are based on the property of Douglas Adams and are intended to honor and celebrate his work. Any valid request from the copyright holders or caretakers of Adams' estate to cease distribution will be honored. The author makes no profit for this work and this work cannot be sold or distributed for profit.

For Douglas

Introduction

Those who have read the novel Mostly Harmless might be alarmed to find several of the characters who ended up dying there quite alive in this story. To those, we offer the suggestion that the following events occurred prior to the events of Mostly Harmless, but after the events in the novel So Long and Thanks For All The Fish. At what exact point those events occurred is best left up to the reader. Those uncomfortable with that suggestion can safely assume this story takes place in a parallel universe where the events of Mostly Harmless did not occur.

Those who have never read the novel Mostly Harmless can safely pretend this note never existed, and have instead wasted precious seconds in their lives by reading it.

Prologue

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book containing information that is often enlightening, entertaining, and occasionally even accurate. However, another remarkable book that is not as well known is The Employee Handbook of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. It is not well known for the very good reason that only employees of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation are supposed to know about it. In fact, when the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation found out that a member of a tour group wandering through the company offices happened to glance at one of the pages of the Handbook, the Corporation not only launched a fleet of Aggressive Sales Representatives to locate and destroy the tour member, but it destroyed the tour group, the tour ship, and the home planets of everyone involved as well.

Needless to say, the tour company was none too pleased about the extinction of its clients and the bad publicity that followed, but the Sirius Corporation gave it a nice fat contract to conduct company tours for the next hundred years, which ended the controversy. The fact that the home planet of the tour company was destroyed a week later by Sirius Cybernetics Corporation warships only led to a decision by the Galactic Better Business Bureau to leave well enough alone.

The Employee Handbook is immense, almost three times larger than The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, requiring that it be distributed in an electronic form as well. It covers every aspect of a Sirius Cybernetics Corporation employee's life from how to brush one's teeth to how to polish one's shoes. It tells how to fill out Form GX-92B (which is the requisition form for a new chair), and how to sit in the chair to extend its life and keep from needing to order a new chair in the first place. It tells how to find customers, how to keep customers happy, how to reason with customers who try to lodge a complaint with the Galactic Better Business Bureau, and how to dispose of the bodies of customers who won't be reasoned with.

The Handbook even mentions The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but only in the vaguest possible terms to prevent copyright issues. It states that a certain book claims that the most massively useful item a hitchhiker can have is a towel. The Handbook states that this is incorrect. The most massively useful item anyone can have is a paper clip.

The paper clip, says the Handbook, can be used to tighten the tiny screws on the Genuine People Personality circuits of a Sirius Cybernetics robot, straightened to form a needle for sewing up torn clothing before going into very important business meetings, waved in the air to make a point at particularly dull meetings, flicked at members of those dull meetings to wake them up, or even hold together pieces of paper if it still seems to be straight enough.

It is for this reason that the very first line on the very first page of the Employee Handbook reads: "It is company policy that all employees of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation must carry a paper clip on their person at all times." The Handbook does not say exactly what would happen to someone who was caught breaking this rule, but the word round the office is that it is extremely nasty.

There is a legend round the office as to how this rule came into existence in the first place. The legend is told to new employees around the Nutrimatic Drinks Synthesizer while they wait for it to dispense something that doesn't taste filthy, which never happens, hence the reason for wasting time around the Nutrimatic Drinks Synthesizer. The story usually goes something like this:

Far back in the mists of time, before the Third Great Economic Blunder, when life in the Galaxy was good and free, there was a man called Sirius Nottqytt. Nottqytt worked for a company that manufactured artificial cheese for artificial crackers, a very profitable trade in those days when demand for artificial crackers was at an all-time high. In those days, you couldn't get someone to eat real crackers. No, they would push away a tray of real crackers and pound the table forcefully until they got their artificial crackers. And with those artificial crackers, they would want artificial cheese to go with it. Hence, the demand for artificial Sirius Nottqytt was not one of those who profited from artificial cheese. He only worked there. He was a Secondary Assistant Associate to the Third Co-Manager of the Little Bits of Pepper Division. His job was so insignificant that there is no record that exists anywhere in the Universe as to what he did, and there is speculation that even Nottqytt himself didn't know at the time. But the job involved a lot of paper. Hence, the job required a lot of paper clips as well.

Nottqytt used to spend much of his time at the company searching for paper clips to hold together his paperwork. In fact, versions of the story claim that eighty percent of his job involved searching for paper clips, another ten percent involved attaching paper clips to his paperwork, and the remaining ten percent involved reviewing the paperwork to figure out why it was so important that it needed to be clipped together so badly.

The job was good until the day came when he could not find a single paper clip. He searched the office all day until he discovered that a freak accident with a quantum corkscrew, a candy bar, and a Static Photon Distribution Vector had caused every single paper clip in the company to disintegrate overnight.

The news spread quickly, as did the paperwork on everyone's desks. Within hours, the offices of the company were strewn with loose papers. Reports that had been painstakingly constructed and carefully clipped now lay in piles everywhere. All exits became blocked with paper. Paper cuts became more and more frequent. Panic set in among the employees, which led to fights, then open combat. By evening, the company had collapsed into chaos that only ended when someone set the Artificial Olive Shredder to overload and blew the entire building to smithereens.

The only survivor of the disaster was Sirius Nottqytt. He had managed to salvage one single paper clip that had been accidentally wedged into the cushions of his chair (which he been sitting in proper to prevent unnecessary wear). With that paper clip, Nottqytt clipped together two documents containing the top secret artificial cheese recipes, then used the paper clip to unscrew the cover of a ventilation shaft and make his escape.

With his former employer gone, there was a huge opening for artificial cheese, and Nottqytt started his own company using the stolen recipes. Nottqytt became extremely wealthy for a change, which led him to start a new company to manufacture robots that he called the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. This company, Nottqytt said, would make life easier for all life forms in the Universe by manufacturing assistants, servants, and workers of all shapes and sizes. They would be neat, efficient, not too expensive, and easily repaired using only the average paper clip. And the employees would always have enough paper clips.

Just to be sure, Nottqytt founded the Sirius Paper Clip Corporation, which flooded the Galaxy with so many paper clips that it triggered the Third Great Economic Blunder. The Blunder wiped out all the artificial cracker factories, triggering the collapse of the artificial cheese factories including Nottqytt's. Fortunately, by that time, the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation had become so profitable that the artificial cheese branch of the company was no longer necessary. Nottqytt went on to become extraordinarily rich and the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation became extraordinarily large and powerful.

Some have gone as far as to suggest that Nottqytt's experience with paper clips had driven him a bit mad. Those who suggest this are partially correct. They would be fully correct if they omitted the unnecessary phrase "a bit." But since no one has seen or heard from Nottqytt in millennia, his eccentricities are no longer considered a problem for the Corporation.

Thus, ends the tellers of the legend, is the origin of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation and the insistence on having paper clips. Usually, at this point, new employees undergo a full body cavity search to ensure that they do indeed have a paper clip on their person. Those who do not are dragged away to the manager's offices, never to be seen again.

Having been told this story, many new employees (who have a paper clip and hence are still round to say it) point out the odd twist in the middle. Why, they invariably ask, would a man go from manufacturing artificial cheese to manufacturing robots? Where is the connection? And what does that have to do with paper clips? And why are the current models of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation robots not easily repaired with paper clips as Nottqytt intended, but require a frightfully large collection of tools hauled in three interstellar megatankers for service calls?

The answer to the latter question has always been that the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation repair department is the most profitable arm of the company, second in size only to its complaints department. The answer to the former was always written off as eccentricity.

This assumption was entirely and unequivocally wrong.

In fact, the real answer has been unknown for thousands of years, but the time for its revelation has come at last. This, then, is the story of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, the real purpose for its existence, and what it all has to do with paper clips, lobsters, ball-point pens, and a contraceptive.

The story begins with a party.

1

Ford Prefect was at a party, which was not unusual. Ford at a party was like a lion on a savannah; it was his natural habitat. Ford Prefect was not in fact invited to the party, which was not unusual either. Ford rarely let things like invitations get between him and a party. In fact, Ford preferred to go to parties where he wasn't invited. That way, if something went wrong, no one could identify him later. Only two things made this party unusual for Ford Prefect.

We shall see the second thing in a moment.

The first thing was across the ballroom, laughing and chatting with guests. The thing was known as Eccentrica Gallumbits, the triple-breasted whore of Eroticon Six. Eccentrica had gained a large following not only for her three breasts (which were astoundingly large even judged by the standards of Eroticon women), but for her best-selling book The Big Bang Theory - A Personal View. It was, in fact, her party, being thrown to celebrate Eccentrica's one millionth customer, the Premier Vice-King of Muundo Nine.

Eccentrica Gallumbits had consumed almost all of Ford Prefect's attention since he had gained entrance to the party. Ford, in turn, had consumed a third of the planet's liquor supply. Eccentrica had made the mistake of having an open bar.

But the alcohol was only part of the reason that Ford Prefect was at the party. Ford was a field researcher for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and had been for many years. He had come to do an interview with Eccentrica Gallumbits for the Guide. Or at least, that was the excuse he had given. If, during the process, Ford ended up going to bed with Eccentrica, then so much the better. He had already figured out a way to write the experience off as a business expense.

Ford was almost hypnotised by Eccentrica. He had seen holograms of Eccentrica, of course. Quite a lot of them, in fact. Yet to see her in person was something else. Her three breasts shimmered in the light under an outfit that could only qualify as clothing by three centimetres. It was no wonder Plaything had voted her the Universe's Most Beautiful Being for twenty years straight.

Unfortunately, in three hours, Ford hadn't been able to get near her. Eccentrica had three enormous bodyguards round her at all times. Their sole purpose seemed to be keeping people like Ford away from people like Eccentrica. The bodyguards were Fonkyu, known for their dense muscle mass as well as their psychic abilities. They could not only withstand a blast from a Kill-O-Zap pistol at point-blank range, but could also read the minds of anyone within fifteen paces. Anyone who even thought of approaching Eccentrica without her permission ended up on the floor with only a vague memory of fists and searing pain to let them know what had happened. Ford had seen the bodyguards at work several times, and had no interest in being their next target.

Ford had finally come up with a plan to get past the bodyguards. The plan involved getting extremely drunk. He would get so drunk that his thoughts would be cloudy and disjointed, keeping the Fonkyu bodyguards from reading his mind and ripping his kidney out before he got to Eccentrica. The best part about the plan was that he was already halfway there. Ford figured a few more drinks would do it. The tricky part would be to stay sober enough that he would remember the plan long enough to execute it. Ford was already having trouble with that part.

Between drinks, while keeping one eye on Eccentrica, Ford was having an enthusiastic argument with a large B'Logg female. He couldn't remember what the argument was about, but didn't want to admit it, and was doing the best he could to keep up his end.

Ford snarled, "What about the other one?"

The B'Logg's horns went missing in folds of skin on her forehead as she scowled. "What other one?"

"You've never heard of the other one?" Ford yelled. "How can we discuss this like two reasonable beings when you don't even know about the other one"

"But I thought that was your whole point, that there's only one."

Ford threw up his hands, trying to draw the attention of the bemused crowd around him. "Well, if you think that was my point then you obviously weren't listening. Besides, we all know it creates more problems than it solves."

"How can it create problems?" asked the B'Logg. "It doesn't even exist. We're discussing a theoretical concept."

"Theoretical, my eye! I'm talking about cold, hard facts! It's people like you with their heads up their orifices that cause all the problems in this Galaxy."

The B'Logg lumbered away. "You don't even know what you're on about. This is a pointless argument."

As she shuffled away, Ford felt the need to point at the ceiling and yell something to put the cap on the discussion, so he pointed at the ceiling and yelled, "That's what they said on El-Qubit Three right before they launched the Second Wave!"

As Ford finished his Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, he made a mental note to see if there really was a planet called El-Qubit and if there was anything like a Second Wave there. That phrase could come in handy for his next nonsensical argument. Before he could do that, something extraordinary happened.

That was, in fact, the second thing.

Ford's attention to his drink was broken when he heard a sound like a thousand people saying "wop" at the same time. He had been round the Galaxy enough to recognise that sound as the arrival of time travelers. He had also been round the Galaxy too much to find time travelers interesting. They tended to prattle on about things that would happen in the future or in the past and try to change things that everybody else felt comfortable with, like history. Nuisances, more like it, as far as Ford was concerned.

Ford was about to execute his plan when he realised someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned. Six men wearing purple body armour stood behind Ford. All of them carried Kill-O-Zap rifles. Ford wondered why the six men wobbled back and forth and how they managed to do it without falling down. Then he realised it was Ford himself who wobbled and wondered how he managed to do it without falling down.

"Excuse me," the soldier said. "Is your name Ford Prefect?"

"Possibly," said Ford, who had bad experience with that question.

The soldier held out his hand. A hologram of Ford Prefect's smiling face appeared over his palm. Ford recognised the image from his Betelgeusian starship's pilot license fifteen years ago. He couldn't help thinking how silly his haircut was back then. Ah, youth.

The soldier nodded. "Visual identity confirmed. Mr Ford Prefect, due to your interference and impact on future events, you have been selected for execution by the Campaign for Real Time. Your execution has been predetermined and confirmed as successful. Kindly do not resist. Your death will be for the good of the space-time continuum. Do you understand?"

Ford tried to pick out which of the six men was talking to him. "What?"

One of the other soldiers said, "I told you this was a waste o' time, Lunn. Let's just shoot 'im."

"No, Fleek," the soldier called Vloon said, "we do this just like we practiced. Do you understand, Mr Prefect?"

At that moment, it began to dawn on Ford that he might be in trouble. The phrases "your death" and "shoot him" weren't something he fancied having applied to him. It dawned on Ford as his vision cleared that there were only three soldiers, after all. That made things a little easier, but the rifles in their hands still tipped the situation out of Ford's favour.

Ford recognised the Campaign for Real Time, a group formed to try to combat temporal paradoxes caused by time travelers. Since the discovery of time travel, the space-time continuum had become choked with people trying to change history, followed by other people trying to change history back, and still others trying to change history again, and finally more people trying to clean up after all of them. The result was a timeline that threatened to crumble under the weight of billions of interruptions. The Campaign worked to put everything back to the way it was, and keep time travelers from meddling in the first place. But Ford had never heard of the Campaign using soldiers.

Ford glanced round the room. The arrival of a time-traveling death squad had apparently put a damper on the party. Even the twelve-armed members of the band had stopped playing to watch. Ford felt a moment's elation at the fact that Eccentrica Gallumbits was looking at him. This had certainly broken the ice between them. Now he just needed to live long enough to say "hello" to her.

Ford tried to think fast, but the Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters kept getting in his way.

"Look," he said, "you say you're going to kill me for my impact on future events. I demand to know what those events are."

"I'm sorry," the soldier said. "I cannot reveal that information. Your knowledge of the future would impact future events."

"But if you're going to kill me anyway, then how can my knowledge affect future events?"

The soldiers looked at each other. Their guns lowered slightly.

The second soldier shrugged. "He's got you there, Vloon."

"No, he doesn't. We don't have to tell him anything. We're the ones with the guns here, Fleek."

They raised their guns again.

Ford's mind was rapidly coming out of its alcohol-induced stupor. Facing certain death worked better than a cup of coffee. Ford glanced round for the nearest exits as he held up a finger. "But if you kill me before I do whatever it is I'm supposed to do, wouldn't that change history? Aren't you, in fact, causing the temporal paradox you're trying to prevent?"

"I told you," said Vloon, "this has already happened. We're just carrying out the execution that has already been determined."

"But if I'm dead in the future, then I couldn't have affected history. So I don't deserve to be executed, because I didn't do anything."

"Well, you would have if we hadn't killed you."

"How do you know?" Ford spluttered.

"Because if you weren't a threat to future events, then we wouldn't have killed you. Obviously. I mean, if you weren't a threat, then why would we have wasted our time and energy comin' down here? Now clam up. We got killin' to do."

They raised their weapons again.

Ford thrust out his hands as he played the last card he could think of. "Wait, wait! You can't do this. I know the Campaign for Real Time. I even worked for them on the Krikkit Wars. Slartibartfast! You know him, right?"

"Slartibartfast," said Vloon, "worked for us years ago, when the Campaign for Real Time went pussyfootin' around. We're through with the velvet glove approach. Now we're into action."

Ford gave up. Reason wasn't going to work in this case. He wondered why he ever bothered with logic. Lunacy worked much better.

That's why Ford whipped his towel out of his satchel, dipped the end in a wineglass someone held nearby, and snapped the towel at the soldiers.

The soldiers jumped back in surprise, which was what Ford had planned on. It gave him the distraction he needed to dive under a table of appetizers.

The table exploded as energy bolts slammed into it. Ford crawled frantically across the room, dodging a rain of splinters. The party collapsed as men, women, and beings ran screaming from the attack. Eccentrica Gallumbit's bodyguards rushed her out of an exit and blocked the door behind her. They were hired to protect Eccentrica and screw everybody else.

Ford Prefect ducked out from under the table just as it disintegrated. He dove behind an ice sculpture carved into a shockingly obscene shape, which began to melt as the soldier fired their energy bolts into it. A few guests had drawn out weapons and fired back at the Real Time soldiers, giving Ford another distraction but one he could not take advantage of. People rushing out or people rushing in jammed all the exits. There was no escape and no salvation. Ford closed his eyes and waited for the end to come.

Then a large object came crashing through a nearby window.

To be continued...

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