Richard Book is Innocent (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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tweedandtinsel2011-02-16 06:20 pm
oxfordtweed) wrote in tweedandtinsel2011-02-16 06:20 pm
Perfectly Safe: Prologue
Title: Perfectly Safe
Fandom: H2G2
Character/s: The whole sort of general mishmash. Arthur/Fenchurch later on, and eventually Random/Mown for the crack pairing lulz.
Word Count (this chapter): 540
Rating: Whatever the film was rated. PG, was it? Something like that.
Summary: Earth has been demolished, but there are still a few kinks to be worked out.
Notes: Follows all continuities, and none of them at the same time (much like the series itself). On the whole, it ignores And Another Thing..., though that did provide a few good gags that I’ve thrown into a combine harvester and recycled into sort of flat-pack bits and pieces. Directly follows the events of Mostly Harmless.
Several passages have been shamelessly copied from a previous story I wrote (Hitchhiking, which was posted under a different name), because they sounded good and they worked in the context of this one. So, if bits seem familiar, it’s entirely possible that there’s a reason for it. Will be posting this at a rate of one chapter per week, to avoid spamming everybody. Since this follows Adams' narrative style as much as possible, I do apologise in advance for the smaller chapters.
Read all in one go on AO3
Perfectly Safe
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think internet video streaming is a pretty neat idea.
This planet has – or rather had – several fundamental problems, each more fundamental than the next. More important than the general unhappiness of the planet’s inhabitants or even the movements of small green pieces of paper (which, as it happened, were on the whole quite happy indeed) was this planet’s position on the probability axis and its rather unfortunate location in one of the universe’s many unstable plural zones.
These problems together were more important and fundamental than any other problem this planet had ever had the misfortune to encounter. The reason behind these problems can best be summed up in two simple words.
Mostly harmless.
Because of this planet’s position on the probability axis and its rather unfortunate location in galactic sector ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha, it doesn’t do to just know that a person is in that sector. Planets in plural zones are, as their name suggests, subject to existing in quantities greater than one. If, for instance, a hyperspace express route needed to be created, and a few planets demolished along the way to make room, then the planets would simply be demolished and the day’s work would be done. But if one of those planets existed in a plural zone, every instance of that planet would need to be demolished. There have been unfortunate instances when this was not the case. When the Starship Gargantuan was launched and made a jump into hyperspace, it immediately collided with a version Beta Geminorum VI that hadn’t been demolished on the probability axis. It was this particular disaster that led to the decision that the Galactic Council of Planning and Development should all be sacked on the spot, and their jobs handed over to a race known for being particularly bureaucratic, thus insuring that such a cock-up didn’t happen again in the future.
The first change that was implemented under the new management was that under no circumstances should a hyperspace express route ever be laid through a plural zone, for any reason. Go over, under, around, or (in the most extreme cases) in the complete opposite direction if you have to. Either way you do it, the process will be infinitely cheaper than having to send crews out to find every single planet on the probability axis.
Of course, these things have a habit of coming back round full circle to sabotage the whole system. This is why, when an otherwise insignificant little blue-green planet Galactic Sector ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha had been ordered to be made perfectly safe, as opposed to mostly harmless, the whole mess had been regarded as just another massive cock-up by the Galactic Council of Planning and Development. The galaxy rolled its collective eyes, and went on with its collective day, and nobody could even be bothered to launch a formal inquiry.
Which, as it happened, had been the plan all along.
Chapter 1
Fandom: H2G2
Character/s: The whole sort of general mishmash. Arthur/Fenchurch later on, and eventually Random/Mown for the crack pairing lulz.
Word Count (this chapter): 540
Rating: Whatever the film was rated. PG, was it? Something like that.
Summary: Earth has been demolished, but there are still a few kinks to be worked out.
Notes: Follows all continuities, and none of them at the same time (much like the series itself). On the whole, it ignores And Another Thing..., though that did provide a few good gags that I’ve thrown into a combine harvester and recycled into sort of flat-pack bits and pieces. Directly follows the events of Mostly Harmless.
Several passages have been shamelessly copied from a previous story I wrote (Hitchhiking, which was posted under a different name), because they sounded good and they worked in the context of this one. So, if bits seem familiar, it’s entirely possible that there’s a reason for it. Will be posting this at a rate of one chapter per week, to avoid spamming everybody. Since this follows Adams' narrative style as much as possible, I do apologise in advance for the smaller chapters.
Read all in one go on AO3
Perfectly Safe
Prologue
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think internet video streaming is a pretty neat idea.
This planet has – or rather had – several fundamental problems, each more fundamental than the next. More important than the general unhappiness of the planet’s inhabitants or even the movements of small green pieces of paper (which, as it happened, were on the whole quite happy indeed) was this planet’s position on the probability axis and its rather unfortunate location in one of the universe’s many unstable plural zones.
These problems together were more important and fundamental than any other problem this planet had ever had the misfortune to encounter. The reason behind these problems can best be summed up in two simple words.
Mostly harmless.
Because of this planet’s position on the probability axis and its rather unfortunate location in galactic sector ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha, it doesn’t do to just know that a person is in that sector. Planets in plural zones are, as their name suggests, subject to existing in quantities greater than one. If, for instance, a hyperspace express route needed to be created, and a few planets demolished along the way to make room, then the planets would simply be demolished and the day’s work would be done. But if one of those planets existed in a plural zone, every instance of that planet would need to be demolished. There have been unfortunate instances when this was not the case. When the Starship Gargantuan was launched and made a jump into hyperspace, it immediately collided with a version Beta Geminorum VI that hadn’t been demolished on the probability axis. It was this particular disaster that led to the decision that the Galactic Council of Planning and Development should all be sacked on the spot, and their jobs handed over to a race known for being particularly bureaucratic, thus insuring that such a cock-up didn’t happen again in the future.
The first change that was implemented under the new management was that under no circumstances should a hyperspace express route ever be laid through a plural zone, for any reason. Go over, under, around, or (in the most extreme cases) in the complete opposite direction if you have to. Either way you do it, the process will be infinitely cheaper than having to send crews out to find every single planet on the probability axis.
Of course, these things have a habit of coming back round full circle to sabotage the whole system. This is why, when an otherwise insignificant little blue-green planet Galactic Sector ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha had been ordered to be made perfectly safe, as opposed to mostly harmless, the whole mess had been regarded as just another massive cock-up by the Galactic Council of Planning and Development. The galaxy rolled its collective eyes, and went on with its collective day, and nobody could even be bothered to launch a formal inquiry.
Which, as it happened, had been the plan all along.
Chapter 1