So Long, and Thanks for All the Ponies

by Sir Ginger

Part 6- Adventure Bound and Gagged

The Hitchhiker’s Guide describes the planet Gagriflex as perhaps one of the most revolting places in the known universe. Its people are vaguely equiform, but with overlong legs and almost permanent expressions of unabashed adoration. Culturally, the entire race gave itself over to loving anything different, in a form of crazed xenophilia unmatched across reality. They annually order in billions of tonnes of extra-gagriflexial lifestyle magazines, thousands of hours of extra-gagriflexial reality TV shows, and mountains of extra-gagriflexial random memorabilia. Whatever their leaders had currently decided they should adore, the public did.

Any tourist on Gagriflex would likely enjoy the first day, as they would be mobbed by admiring locals. But almost any sane being would quickly tire of the complete, total and utterly sincere admiration they would receive for literally every action they performed. An average tourist would last for about three days before either leaving or killing themselves, whereupon the locals would gather round to admire the quite fantastic way in which foreigners decomposed. Tourism never really took off on Gagriflex, which is a shame because apart from this quirk, it really is a lovely place. Vast oceans stained a shimmering blue by aquatic flora, hulking bauxite mountains of almost unmatched beauty rising dramatically over silken plains filled with brilliantly diverse wildlife almost too perfect to look at: All these wonders were ignored by the populous, who chose instead to stay inside to find out what the rest of the universe was up to.

*

The sun was just rising as the Heart of Gold touched down on the peak of one of the mountains, and the deep indigo sky seemed on fire on the edge of the horizon. Inside, Zaphod was rubbing his forehooves together. He liked Gagriflex. He had washed his long mane, and its green and blue streaks shone, looking absolutely horrific next to the yellow and orange vinyl of the two-headed jacket he wore with both collars popped. The gold necklaces he wore were set with glowing stones, and his sunglasses were firmly in place. He grinned broadly, and the speaker he had set into his teeth gave off a *ting* as they shone in the light.
“How do I look Marvin?”
“Hateful.”
One of Zaphod’s heads turned to face the metal humanoid behind him, then snorted.
“Ah, what do you know.”
“More than you can possibly imagine. According to the fashion advice software I come with, which, incidentally, I detest possessing, that outfit is almost as horrific as my own existence.” He paused for a moment, “Which is extremely,” he clarified.
“It’s called looking interesting baby, I wouldn’t expect you to get it.” Zaphod zipped up the last of the eighty or so pockets the jacket was loaded with. “Now, where are those lovely ladies?”

*

The three “lovely ladies” were currently holding a discussion in the room Fluttershy had taken. She was looking worried.
“I just don’t know how we’re going to find them. The universe is a big place.”
“Darling, I’m sure Zaphod will help us once he understands what we need.” Rarity sighed. “Besides, it’s not like we have a choice. Our friends are out there, and you can bet they’ll be out looking for us, and he’s our best hope for being found. If he really is President, then I’m sure he can put out a message.”
Dash was scowling. “I still don’t trust him.”
“Of course you don’t darling, but let’s go see him anyway. He might be better this morning.”
Rarity turned and led the way out of the room. Fluttershy gave an apologetic look to Dash before following her.
Dash followed behind, muttering under her breath, “Calling me a stallion.”

“Have a nice day!” said the door as they passed into the bridge, to find Zaphod standing impressively before a large visi-screen. He flashed a broad smile at them. *ting*
“Good morning ladies, stop one on your fantastic tour of the cosmos, welcome, to Gagriflex!” The screen behind him flicked on, revealing the landscape spread out below them. Zaphod grinned at their awestruck faces.
“You’ll need to have these fish in your ears if you want to come with me.”

*

Pinkie stood at the end of the row of ships, a large foam hand stuck on the end of one of her hooves, it’s thumb sticking hopefully up. Twilight had to ask.
“Pinkie, what in Celestia’s name is that?”
“It’s called a hand! Some creatures out there have these things called hands, and they have these things called thumbs, and a thumb means you want to hitchhike! We don’t have thumbsies, so I make do with this!”
She playfully wiggled the hand in front of Twilight’s face, who slapped it away. Applejack came back, a souvenir pen from a tourist stand in her mouth. On it it had the classic: “Someone I know went to Barnard’s Star and all I got was this lousy pen,” which proves that there is always at least one person out there who genuinely believes this to be funny. Be afraid.

Pinkie grabbed the pen and began scrawling on her towel. Eventually she held it up.
“Maximegalon University or bust!” was written in large letters across it. The “or bust” part was clearly printed on the towel, and looking closely it was easy to see that other destinations had been washed out before.
“Now we just wait for something heading our way!”
“And when we get there we can research where this thing would have difficulty getting to?”
“Exactly! You’ll like the university Twilight, there are squillions of books that nopony touches anymore!”
Twilight brightened considerably.
“Squillions?”
“I think it was about four squillion to be exact.”

They waited. Pinkie was in front, hoof stuck out to the side with the foam thumb hopefully raised. Her other forehoof had one corner of the towel. Applejack held the other corner up, a look of resigned patience on her face.

An hour passed. Pinkie hadn’t moved, her expression of hopeful friendliness unchanged. Applejack had switched out with Twilight twice, and was now back to holding it up. Even so, her leg ached and her temper was rapidly fraying.
“Uh, sugarcube?”
No response.
“Sugarcube?”
Pinkie turned silently, her expression by now frozen solid on her face.
“Hundreds of these things have gone past. Some of ‘em I don’t even wanna know what they were. Could we... try something else?”

It was then that, because of certain laws of narrative causality, something was obliged to stop and offer them a lift. It was about five feet tall, it’s smooth purple hide almost unmarked. It had two arms, two legs, two eyes and a visible mouth, which was stretched in a smile just slightly too broad to look normal. It could, on reflection, have been something a whole lot worse. It was wearing nothing but a scarf which read, to anyone who cared to look, “UMM Brockian Ultra Cricket Team.”

Brockian Ultra Cricket is a game that involves the complex interplay of professional athletes using random sporting implements to hit each other very hard, and then running away and apologising. It is only played in this dimension by the same sort of person we might see playing ultimate Frisbee while armed with a Nerf gun. When it spoke, it drawled around a small, rugby-club shaped dent in it’s face. “You dudes going to the double M? I got this. Come with me.”
Without waiting for a response, he began sloping off towards a distant ship. They followed at a distance until it came into view. It wasn’t exactly shabby, but it was clearly old. It’s interior was clearly large enough to contain them, and it had several stickers pasted on it:
“Freesplorking is not a crime!”
“How’s my warping?”
“Maximegalon students do it with reference to our extensive library.”
“Vote Beeblebrox”

“Do we... do we go with him?” Spike was watching it nervously.
“Of course! He’s a student!”
“But what species is he?” Twilight was staring at the strange creature as it fumbled around for a set of keys.
“Like I said, he’s a Student!”

*

Shortly after the founding of the university of Maximegalon, one student studying for an advance degree in Playing God began a project to engineer something to do his studying for him, and so the species Scientiatem Quaerens was created. It was the perfect university student; able to survive off nothing but noodles and low level intoxicants for many years at a time, interested in any and all pointless games available to it, genial except around exam time and certainly not averse to moderately illegal pranks at any time of year. They would drift around the campus for several years, occasionally attending lectures and passing or failing exams more or less at random and generally enjoying themselves. By now, they made up almost the entire population of the university, as most beings rich enough to afford a place at the university could also afford to send something else there to do the whole experience for them.

It was one of these with whom our heroes now embarked. He was returning from his annual migration to “Just wherever, I gotta get out of here and unwind man”. This migration is made throughout the year by members of the species, all of whom fervently believe themselves to be performing some form of unique soul searching adventure, which usually only results in extensive liver damage, increased poverty and occasionally an arrest or two if it goes well. This particular individual was the only one of its group to avoid being incarcerated, and as such his ship, adorned as it was with slogans such as “If this ship’s a’distorting, don’t come a’teleporting”, was stocked with sleeping for our intrepid ponies and ready to act as a convenient plot device for the next part of the narrative.

*

Zaphod was silent as he led the three across the bare rock of the unnamed mountain. Past vistas of unimaginable beauty, whitish cloud parted hundreds of metres below them to show rich forests of eye-hurting vibrance.
Zaphod ignored all this. “There’s something better up ahead” was all he said.
Rainbow took to the sky and flew on ahead, looking around, so she was first to see it. “OH MY GOSH!”
As Rarity and Fluttershy came to the crest and looked out towards the city in the distance, their jaws dropped. Zaphod sat himself down, one hoof lazily gesturing towards... it.
“Well, ladies? What do you think?”
It was a statue. But that word scarcely did it justice. It was simply massive. “Hill” would scarcely be a worse word for it.
“Quite a good likeness, yeah?” Zaphod grinned at their stunned expressions. The Gagriflexians had really taken to him, and he had in turn taken to them. As he was one of the only creatures whose ego was sufficiently inflated to be able to bear the place, he had spent a lot of time there, and that had led, inevitably, to the statue before them. It showed him in one of his favourite poses, sitting down, with one head staring dreamily into the distance, and the other following the line of his outstretched forehoof, a rogueish wink on it’s face, as if to say “Who’s awesome? You’re awesome. But not as awesome as me. Oh god no, don’t even think that. I’m just... just great.” Also known as pose number 1. Built of solid granite, and constantly painted in the lurid colours he often bedecked himself in, it reared over the city. It was, frankly, a horrific sight, a testament to an ego capable of dubbing the infinity of creation a “Real neat place”, and legitimately believing a statue like this to be a sign of his own brilliance.

Rarity was in shock. Again, this utterly uncouth pony was behaving as if it owned the whole universe. On reflection, perhaps it did, but that didn’t excuse acting like it. She knew herself to be the most beautiful Unicorn in Ponyville, but she made certain nopony knew she knew it. Still, it never hurt to be polite. “It’s... lovely, who made it?”
“Oh just some of those cats down there know a good thing when they see it. We shouldn’t go down there” He put on an air of suffering humility. “They might get over-excited. I can only tone my charisma down so much, and I don’t really like all the attention.” He glanced out of the corner of one of his four eyes to see if they bought it. All three were staring at him in plain disbelief “Ah, who am I kidding, who wants to come down with me for a bit and hear them tell you about how great I am?”

It was at this moment, that a voice rang out from the sky ahead of them.
“O.K. Beeblebrox, hold it right there. You’re under arrest.”
“Yeah, we got you this time Big Z, Mr. President sir! Got you good and in our sights!”
“That’s right! Any second now we’ll have these babies warmed up enough to cause you some hurt, so you better not move!”
“Yeah!”

*

There are certain feelings which are universal. Nowhere in the cosmos does the sight of an official looking vehicle with flashing lights and armed occupants not cause a general feeling of trepidation in most beings. The most law abiding citizen will feel like a criminal when pulled up at a red light next to a police vehicle, and struggle to maintain a relaxed composure, glancing only briefly aside, trying not to look like a law breaker. The Encyclopedia Galactica describes this as; “a natural part of our psychological make up, a certain unjustified feeling of guilt that all beings have when faced with an authority figure.” The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy describes it as; “a natural part of our psychological make up not to want to get shot or arrested. Especially when you just know those pigs are just begging for a chance to pull you over and maybe go through your stuff, and you just know they’ll find those medicinal things you have in the glove box, and make all the wrong assumptions.” The article is followed by an editor’s note that the Guide is currently looking for a new transport correspondent, pending a breakout at the Ursa Minor Criminal Rehabilitation Centre.

That said, it is even easier to feel like a guilty party when a large police cruiser is not only directly facing you and your companions, but has deployed it’s forward guns meaningfully and has stated that you are under arrest. Zaphod is as guilty as sin, but he still feels aggrieved at any attempt to make him feel as if he has done something wrong. Even the notoriously optimistic gamblers of the Morzell system wouldn’t bet much on him coming quietly.

Comments

[metallusionsismagic]

shenanigens

This smells of spelling shenanigans!

Twilight blinked, and Applejack Facehoofed, Spike was long since asleep in the back.

Facehoofed©?
Fixed it: "Twilight blinked, Applejack facehoofed, and Spike was long since asleep in the back."

[Maelstrom]

He had washed his long mane, and its green and blue streaks shone, looking absolutely horrific next to the yellow and orange vinyl of the two-headed jacket he wore with both collars popped.

you might be cool, but you'll never be vinyl two headed jacked popped collar cool

[Reisentanith]

Brockian Ultra Cricket is a game that involves the complex interplay of professional athletes using random sporting implements to hit each other very hard, and then running away and apologizing. It is only played in this dimension by the same sort of person we might see playing ultimate Frisbee while armed with a Nerf gun.

I want to start a team.

[Always Breakfast]

“Maximegalon students do it with reference to our extensive library.”

YES. ALL OF MY YES.

[StarrySkies]

"Populace", I think - not "populous".

[Kabasue]

Gagriflex = changeling heaven