Life, The Universe And Everything
(Douglas Adams)
Deciding to enjoy life on pre-historic Earth by going insane, Arthur Dent is sidetracked by the reappearance of Ford Prefect. Ford pulls him through an eddy in the space-time continuum (cleverly disguised as an anachronistic sofa) and into Lord's Cricket Ground two days before the Vogons are to destroy the Earth. Unfortunately, the pitch is about to be the scene of a shocking act of intergalactic terrorism. A ship lands and robots steals The Ashes while wreaking havoc in an obscene parody of cricket. Slartibartfast arrives too late to stop the violence, but Ford and Arthur help him. On Slartibartfast's ship, Arthur learns the history of Krikkit. Centuries ago, the inhabitants of Krikkit were peaceful people. Their planet and sun had been encircled by an immense dust cloud; since they couldn't see the stars, they had never considered the possibility of life outside their home. When a spaceship screamed through the dust cloud and crash-landed on Krikkit, the Krikkiters were traumatised. The only course of action, was to build a fleet to destroy the universe beyond their homeworld. They launched warships and robots to slaughter every other species; they were defeated after a long and bloody war and sentenced by galactic judge Judiciary Pag to be sealed within a Slo-Time envelope until the rest of the universe died out naturally. (The British sport of cricket, as it turns out, came about as the result of a vague interspecies collective unconscious memory; everyone with knowledge of the Krikkit Wars is quite disgusted by how the humans turned it into a sport.) Somehow a lone Krikkit warship has escaped and is looking for the three stumps and two bails that will form the Wikkit Gate; this is the key that will unlock the Slo-Time envelope and release the Krikkiters to complete their genocidal mission. While pursing the Krikkit ship, Arthur is diverted to a dark cave where an angry creature confronts him. This creature, (Agrajag), has been killed by Arthur hundreds of times in various reincarnations. He was a rabbit killed by Arthur on prehistoric Earth; he was a fly swatted by Arthur; he died of a heart attack when Arthur materialised in the middle of a cricket match he was watching; he was the bowl of petunias suddenly called into existence several miles above the surface of Magrathea. After many of these deaths, he began to notice that the person who dispatched him looked familiar and eventually formed a consciousness that spanned his various lives. Agrajag finally managed a reincarnation in one final hideous form and constructed a Cathedral of Hate, where he has brought Arthur to kill him. While recounting his many murders at Arthur's hands, however, he says that he died after an assassination attempt on Stavromula Beta missed Arthur and hit him. Arthur stammers that he's never been there, and Agrajag realises that he's brought Arthur to the Cathedral too soon. He attempts to kill Arthur anyway, and suffers yet another accidental death at Arthur's hands. Fleeing from the collapsing cave, Arthur discovers the knack of flying: keep your mind so occupied that you forget to hit the ground when you fall. He soars jubilantly until he is hit in the small of his back by a flying party, where he rejoins Ford and Slartibartfast. The group completely fails to stop the Krikkit war party from reconstructing the Key and opening the envelope. However, the Krikkiters seem to have lost their bloodthirstiness over the centuries. As it happens, the dust cloud was actually the pulverised remains of Hactar, a supercomputer built by the Silastic Armorfiends. Hactar was originally tasked by the warlike Armorfiends with creating a weapon of ultimate destruction that would cause every sun in the universe to go supernova simultaneously. Shocked, Hactar did as asked but designed a small flaw into the device. It hoped that when the weapon failed to destroy all of existence, the Armorfiends would see the folly of their ways and turn to a life of penstead, they blasted Hactar into molecules before finding entirely new ways of killing each other. Hactar's construction was such that every molecule retained a bit of its consciousness, however, and even in its unconventional state was still functional. As the Armorfiends died out and gave way to the peaceful Krikkiters, Hactar resolved to complete its original task. Through centuries of subtle influence, it guided the psychological development of the inhabitants of Krikkit before fabricating a mockup of a ship to inspire their xenophobia. In the wake of the original Krikkit Wars, however, the Slo-Time envelope blocked Hactar's influence and allowed the Krikkiters to return to their peaceful ways. The universe seemingly saved, Ford, Arthur and Slartibartfast return The Ashes (which had been part of the Wikkit Gate). Arthur can't resist his only opportunity to bowl a ball at Lord's; he finds a red ball in his pouch and a batsman stands before a wicket. As he begins to bowl, time slows and he realises several things. First, he never had a cricket ball in his pouch, and it must certainly be Hactar's doomsday weapon, surreptitiously placed there by the supercomputer. Second, the batsman is in fact a Krikkit robot, and if it manages to strike the ball, it will detonate the bomb and destroy the universe. Distracted by these thoughts, Arthur trips and begins flying again, sending the weapon sailing harmlessly off into the distance.
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