Part 2 (2/2)

'Would you... Didn't I just say... Yes, yes, it's a construct. This waiting lounge is all in your head. In all of your heads. It is a virtual room. Is there another way you would like me to impart this information?'

Ford scratched his chin and was disappointed to find that it was not as chiselled as it had been at Han Wavel. 'How about a video?'

The sky walls disappeared altogether, replaced by several representations of a robotic bird, tapping a claw impatiently.

'Ah,' said Ford. 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Mk II. I thought as much. I haven't seen you since...' Ford flipped through his solidifying memories, 'since you tried to get the Earth blasted to pieces.' Mk II. I thought as much. I haven't seen you since...' Ford flipped through his solidifying memories, 'since you tried to get the Earth blasted to pieces.'

'Not since then,' said the bird. 'Not since way back then. Imagine.'

'You've upgraded your feathers to gold, I see.'

'It's a construct, Betelgeusean. I appear as I wish to appear. So did you, back at the resort. Remember the chin?'

Ford sighed wistfully. 'I do. That was so froody. The shadows I could cast with that G.o.dlike chin.'

'I've seen a few G.o.ds,' remarked the bird. 'Some of them are not so great in the chin department. Why do you think Loki cultivates that beard?'

Ford paced a little. 'Back to my question. How about a video?'

H2G2-2 scowled, which is not easy with a beak. 'Didn't you hear me? The needles are on red. I can't hold the waiting lounge together for much longer.'

'Nothing fancy. Just some 2-D animation, old-school stuff. I know you can do it if you really want to.'

The bird rolled its eyes dramatically then disappeared from one of the walls. In its place a black screen opened and on the screen were four neon stick figures. One had rather outlandish b.o.o.b circles and another hadn't much in the way of chins.

'Ha ha,' called Ford to the sky. 'Very humorous.'

A cartoon bird appeared on the screen and hovered above the four humanoids.

'Welcome,' said the bird, 'to this video demonstration, which I like to call: Constructs for Idiots.'

Ford raised a finger. 'Does that mean that the people in the constructs are idiots, or that you're explaining it to idiots?'

The bird ignored him. 'As a pan-dimensional, mega-advanced, omniscient travel guide, equipped with the very best Organ-O-Brain, capable of running over ten trillion simultaneous calculations...'

Ford rapped on the screen. 'Could you keep it down and hurry it up? I feel pretty sure that there is bad news coming and it might be better if I get to grips with it first. Some people in this room don't handle bad news so well. I'd like to have a chance to ma.s.sage the truth a little before I present it.'

'Well, if you'd stop wittering on...'

'I am stopped. Go ahead, please...'

The bird cleared its throat in a wholly unnecessary manner. 'As I was saying. As such an advanced bio-hybrid organism, it was a simple matter for me to poke a neuron beam into the dream centre at the back of each brain... yours was a little hard to find, by the way, Betelgeusean... and then link the neural networks through a central server, that is to say, myself.'

Ford frowned. 'Show me some moving pictures,' he said.

On-screen blue beams fanned from the bird's wing-tips, entering the humanoids' heads through one ear, then exiting through the other ear and converging on the H2G2-2's forehead.

'So you sent us to sleep and gave us a dream?'

'I gave you life, for a long time.'

'But it was virtual life, we didn't go anywhere?'

'Correct. Anywhere or anywhen.'

'Which is not a word. Organ-O-Brain? Really?'

'I was trying to be succinct.'

Ford poked the wall again, this time with two fingers, watching the memory ripples run around the walls and intermingle. 'It's all a dream then. And not just this room?'

'No,' said the voice coldly. 'Not just this room.'

More poking. 'How far back?'

'Club Beta.'

'Club Beta. That bongs a gong for some reason. Club dingly dangly Beta.' Ford stopped pacing. 'Holy shankwursters!'

'I will thank you,' said The Hitchhiker's Guide The Hitchhiker's Guide Mk II, 'to mind your language. I am fully programmed to take offence.' Mk II, 'to mind your language. I am fully programmed to take offence.'

'Aren't we all.'

Guide Note: This is literally true of the Cyphroles of Sesefras Magna, a gas giant in the Pleiades system. The Cyphroles are tiny invertebrate free-swimming gastrozoa who absorb the hostile energy emitted by their predators and use it to power their own systems. This makes the predators angry and so the Cyphroles swim faster through the gas ocean. Sesefras Magna gas dragons have learned to approach the Cyphroles casually, whistling a little tune or pretending to search for a few coins they have mislaid. The Cyphroles always fall for these tricks, as nature gave them large energy filters and tiny bulls.h.i.+t detectors.

Ford's memory was still a little hazy. 'Club Beta? In London? But that was... I have no idea long ago that was.'

'It was then and it is now. My perception is unfiltered, so I see all points of my existence simultaneously.'

'How about us impoverished beings with filtered perceptions?' Ford didn't like this bird much, and believed that he wouldn't like it even with a few Gargle Blasters eating at his stomach lining.

'You are still in the club. No time has pa.s.sed.'

Ford grabbed clumps of his ginger hair. 'Why? For zark's sake, why?'

Mk II rolled its pixellated eyes. 'You try to do someone a favour. Honestly.'

'Favour?' spluttered Ford, not giving a d.a.m.n who heard. 'If you wanted to do us a favour, you could have transported us away from the exploding planet.'

'That would have been in direct contradiction with my program. I have prolonged your life by several decades.'

'Who asked you to? Not me.'

'Random Dent made the request. She is my secondary master. When the human minor realized that the entire planet was about to be destroyed, she expressed regret that she had not been allowed to live her life as she would have wished. Granting that wish did not conflict with my primary directive.'

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