The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Further Radio Scripts

by Douglas Adams

  TRICIA McMILLAN: I’ll get the bag. (Moves off) Really, I won’t be a minute—

  ZAPHOD: Nothing personal, sweetlips, but a minute was I all I had. Ciao . . .

  FX: Communicator beep.

  ZAPHOD: (Sighs) Beam me up, Eddie . . .

  EDDIE THE COMPUTER: (Distorted) Whatever you say, El Presidente.

  FX: Transporter.

  INT. – ALPHA CLUB, NEW YORK

  TRICIA McMILLAN: . . . Now although it was that kind of a party, I know he wasn’t of this world. And hardly a moment goes by that I don’t wonder about Some Other Me. A me that didn’t go back for her bag. I feel like she’s out there somewhere and I’m – I don’t know – walking in her shadow.

  GAIL ANDREWS: Are you married, Tricia?

  TRICIA McMILLAN: I came close a few times. Mostly because I wanted to have a kid. But every guy ended up asking why I was constantly looking over his shoulder. At one point I even thought I might just go to a sperm bank and have somebody’s child at random. But I never went and found out for real. That’s why I gave up astrophysics and went into television. Nothing is real.

  GAIL ANDREWS: Something else is wrong, isn’t it?

  TRICIA McMILLAN: Gail, I didn’t just come over from London to record our interview. I had another reason. NBS asked if I’d like to try for Mo Minetti’s breakfast-show job.

  GAIL ANDREWS: Wow! They asked you?! I heard she was leaving the show to have a baby.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: Yeah, in spite of the money they were offering for her to have it on the show. Anyway, the car was late picking me up, and then I realized I’d left my bag in my room.

  GAIL ANDREWS: But you didn’t go back for it?

  TRICIA McMILLAN: No. I just turned up, sat down and they ran the autocue. And I couldn’t read it.

  GAIL ANDREWS: Why not?

  TRICIA McMILLAN: My contact lenses were in my bag. In the hotel.

  GAIL ANDREWS: Oh. I’m sorry.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: Don’t be. Look, I’m really sorry about this morning and . . .

  GAIL ANDREWS: Don’t say another word.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: Thanks. (She gets up) I want to see if I can still get tonight’s red-eye back to Heathrow. (Moves off) Goodbye, Gail. And thanks.

  GAIL ANDREWS: (Calls) Don’t forget your bag.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: (Coming back) There are times when you do not go back for your bag and other times when you do. I just need to figure out which.

  INT. – THE BOOK AMBIENCE

  THE VOICE: Thanks to modern hyperphysics it is becoming clear that the universe consists of a complex web of dimensional layers which duplicate certain levels of existence and form branches to others. Evidence for this is legion, from the way in which a long-unused phrase such as ‘Total Perspective Vortex’ suddenly crops up three times in as many crosswords to the fact that Zaphod Beeblebrox, having left Tricia McMillan behind at that legendary party, was, due to the vagaries of Improbability, instantly transported to the same party on a different Earth in a parallel universe where he was (a) too drunk to notice he’d just eaten the same vol-au-vent twice and (b) struck by a dark-haired girl who looked very familiar and did not need the constant accompaniment of her handbag. That same Zaphod Beeblebrox it was who, more recently, returned Arthur Dent to the planet Krikkit after the Ashes were time-travelled back to Lord’s Cricket Ground, delivered Ford Prefect to the nearest planet with a pool table, amicably parted with Trillian at the Siderial Daily Mentioner recruiting office and is now seeking some kind of truth and reconciliation with his past. A search which has followed a trail of rapacious economic plunder from an H-shaped building on Ursa Minor to an H-shaped building on Saquo-Pilia Hensha, where a figure wearing a fast-food delivery-service uniform and two jetbike helmets carries a large insulated satchel into the reception area.

  FX: Hitchhiker reception. Various laid-back dudes in background, under:

  ZAPHOD: (Lifting visors) Hey, frood, this is it, right? Megadodo Publications?

  RECEPTIONIST: Let’s not get hung up on names, dude. Just chill and be awed, because you are standing in the home of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the most totally remarkable book in the whole of the known Universe.

  ZAPHOD: Frosty cool, bro’. Now I got a pizza delivery for uh – Zarniwoop? Double anchovy, Caesar salad, easy on the squid liver?

  RECEPTIONIST: No problemo: elevator to his new office on the twenty-third floor, make a left at the water cooler, third door on the right.

  ZAPHOD: (Moving off) Sure thing, my man.

  FX: Ding! Elevator bell

  LIFT: (As he goes in) Hallo. I am to be your Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Happy Vertical People Transporter to—

  ZAPHOD: (Enters, businesslike) Twenty-third floor and step on it, meat crate.

  LIFT: Stepping with pleasure . . .

  FX: Elevator doors shut. Immediately the laid-back vibe evaporates.

  FX: Security robots appear and zip about.

  SECURITY ROBOTS: (Distorted, zooming about) Reception Area Code Blue. Go back to your posts. Return all flared jeans, kaftans and wigs to costume storage. This is not a drill. Have your sleeves rolled for barcode scan and your expenses itemized.

  FX: Intercom buzz.

  RECEPTIONIST: (Cold) Mr Vann Harl? Reception. He’s on his way up. Two heads, three arms. It’s your boy, all right.

  VANN HARL: (Distorted) Thank you.

  INT. – VANN HARL’S OFFICE

  VANN HARL: Have the accounts mainframe booted up and alert security. Remind them to bring an extra half-pair of handcuffs.

  RECEPTIONIST: (Distorted) Yes, sir.

  FX: Door knock, opens and closes, under:

  VANN HARL: It’s open, Zaphod.

  ZAPHOD: (Entering) Hah. Do all four of my eyes deceive me? I think not. Not this time – Zarniwoop.

  FX: Zap gun cocked.

  VANN HARL: Ten out of ten for observation. Why don’t you holster the zap gun, put down your pizza and I’ll pour us a drink.

  FX: Gun holstered, pizza box opened, under:

  ZAPHOD: Make that two. I’ve waited a long long time to find out what’s been going on. And I’ll need to be very very drunk to understand it.

  FX: Drinks poured, under:

  VANN HARL: Zaphod, that’s the only way you could understand it.

  ZAPHOD: (Eating pizza) And this is a very spicy pizza. It’s going to take a lot of washing down. I’d offer you some but I kinda hate to share. Cheers.

  VANN HARL: Cheers . . . or should I say in your case, ‘chin chin’?

  ZAPHOD: (Sprays out mouthful of Gargle Blaster)

  INT. – COLD AMBIENCE

  VOICE OF THE BIRD: (Icy whispery feel) Anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again.

  Though not necessarily in chronological order . . .

  INT. – THE BOOK AMBIENCE

  THE VOICE: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, when pressed, locates the planet Hawalius far out on the Eastern Rim of the Galaxy. It is highly renowned for its abundance of oracles, seers and soothsayers. It is also highly renowned for its fast-food franchises, because most mystics are utterly incapable of cooking for themselves. If you land on Hawalius and pick up one of its tourist brochures that drift like snow in the litter-strewn corners of its spaceport, you will find it witters on about the ancient mystical arts of the seers and sages of Hawalius, while wildly over-representing the level of accommodation available. In fact the generally uncared-for condition of its biggest town suggests that some sort of calamity has befallen it.

  EXT. – STREET – VILLAGE OF THE PROPHETS

  FX: Distant wailing, prophets intoning, a generally new-age biblical thing going on . . . But despondently.

  FX: Hammering of boards onto a window. Stops, under:

  ARTHUR: (Approach) Excuse me . . . um – why are you boarding up your shop?

  PROPHET: (Stops hammering) Going out of business. No call for us prophets any more. (Starts hammering again)

  ARTHUR: (Sotto) Hope i
t didn’t take you by surprise . . . Why’s that?

  PROPHET: (Stops hammering, sighs) Hold the end of this plank and I’ll show you.

  ARTHUR: (Doing so) Right-oh.

  FX: Door.

  PROPHET: (Disappears into shop) Where are you, where are you? Ah. (Re-appears) Here.

  FX: Tuning, between each example:

  ARTHUR: A Sub-Etha video?

  PROPHET: Well, it’s not a toaster. Watch this.

  NEWSREADER: (Distorted) . . . be confirmed. In a speech he will give tomorrow the Vice-President of Poffla Vigus, Roopy Ga Stip, will announce that he intends to run for President. He will also—

  PROPHET: And this—

  NEWSREADER 3: . . . denied it categorically. Next month’s Royal Wedding between Prince Gid of the Soofling Dynasty and Princess Hooli of Raui Alpha will be the most spectacular ceremony yet witnessed in the Bjanjy Territories. Our reporter, Trillian Astra, sends us this report.

  FX: Cheering crowd, tinnily, on radio, under:

  ARTHUR: Good grief – Trillian?

  TRILLIAN: (Distorted) Well, Krart, the scene here in the middle of next month is absolutely incredible. Princess Hooli is looking radiant in an off-the-nipple smock with gold tassels—

  FX: Click. Sub-Etha video off.

  PROPHET: See what we have to contend with?

  ARTHUR: I was watching that.

  PROPHET: You and everyone else. That’s why this place is like a ghost town. Every vid reporter is a prophet now. Quick bit of time travel, quick hop across dimensions, there it is. The future, the past, several versions of someone you know—

  ARTHUR: Yes, that’s what I mean, that was someone I know.

  PROPHET: Princess Hooli? If I had to stand around saying hello to everybody who’s known Princess Hooli I’d need a new set of lungs.

  ARTHUR: No, the reporter. Her name’s Trillian. I don’t know where she got the Astra from. She’s from the same planet as me. I wondered where she’d got to.

  PROPHET: Oh, she’s wall-to-wall over the continuum these days, gallivanting here and there through space-time. She wants to settle down and find herself a nice steady era, that young lady does.

  ARTHUR: Is she, erm – always dark-haired?

  PROPHET: Oh, I don’t watch this stuff, thank the Great Green Arkleseizure.

  ARTHUR: No, of course not . . . it’s just that I have seen a Trillian – Tricia McMillan – blonde. And sort of American. On Earth, where I came from. But in another dimension. Possibly.

  PROPHET: That’s what I was just saying! Look, I’m not here to sort out your dimensional issues, I’m busy going out of business. For what it’s worth – here’s a bit of free guidance. (Intones portentously) ‘It’ll all end in tears. Probably already has.’ (Normal again) All right? Now hold the plank steady while I nail it.

  FX: Two nail strikes then soggy crunchy thud of hammer hitting thumb. The prophet audibly heard turning purple, then . . .

  ARTHUR: Are you all right?

  PROPHET: (Low but in enormous pain) I – suggest – you – trot along now – . . . I may need to speak in tongues for a few minutes . . . please—

  ARTHUR: Oh . . . all right, then.

  PROPHET: (Fading in background) Try that cave over there . . . that’s only a suggestion, mind, not formal oracular advice . . .

  ARTHUR: (Walking off) Thank you . . . Bye . . .

  PROPHET: (Distant HUGE scream) Ffuhhhh . . . !! (Cuts)

  INT. – THE BOOK AMBIENCE

  THE VOICE: The days are long gone when the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Building was the third hippest place to be in the whole of Ursa Minor, as its offices are often shifted at very short notice, from planet to planet, for reasons of local climate, hostility, power bills or tax. They are always reconstructed precisely the same way, as for many of the company’s employees the layout of their offices represent the only constant they know in a distorted personal universe. Unless you have your own personal universe inside your office, of course. The Hitchhiker’s Guide Building is currently located in the city of Antwelm on the world known as Saquo-Pilia Hensha. Ford Prefect has entered it in his usual way – via the ventilation system rather than the main lobby, because the main lobby is no longer peopled by real people with unkempt hair and a relaxed attitude to footwear, but patrolled by melonsized flying security robots whose job it is to quiz incoming employees about their expense accounts. Ford Prefect’s expense accounts are notoriously complex and difficult affairs and he has found, on the whole, that the lobby robots do not fully comprehend his understated approach to book-keeping. He prefers, therefore, to make his entrance via the ventilation shafts leading to the building’s higher floors . . .

  FORD: (Big effort) Mmmmggggrrrhhhhhh!

  FX: Crash of ventilation-shaft grille. Alarms.

  FX: Ford drops to ground clumsily.

  FORD PREFECT: Holy Belgium! I swear they’ve been saving money by rebuilding the floors lower.

  FX: He limps up the corridor painfully, under:

  THE VOICE: Ford is carrying a satchel in which he is carrying a lightweight throwing towel, a No. 3 gauge prising tool and a toy bow and arrow, bought in a street market, for reasons which will shortly become apparent.

  FX: Security robot buzzes up the corridor. Alarms stop.

  COLIN THE SECURITY ROBOT: (Officious, approaching) Intruder, your presence has been detected. Have your sleeves rolled for barcode scan and your expenses ready for inspection. Do not attempt to run. Do not attempt to offer bribes. (This runs under:)

  FX: Toy bow and arrow effects to match:

  FORD PREFECT: (Sotto) Lick the suction cup . . . aim . . . and – if its movement sensors are the usual Sirius Cybernetics garbage—

  FX: Twang! Arrow hits opposite wall with wet splat.

  COLIN THE SECURITY ROBOT: (Turning to follow it) I detect your movement! Do not attempt to run! Empty your pockets!

  FX: Towel, under:

  FORD PREFECT: (Stealthily) Robot diverted – aim towel – urf!

  FX: Towel flung over robot.

  COLIN THE SECURITY ROBOT: (Muffled) Emergency! Emergency! Third-party vision-circuit impairment!

  FORD PREFECT: (Grabbing it) Grab the ’bot—

  COLIN THE SECURITY ROBOT: (More muffled, indistinct but pitiful whining) Mffmnnf . . . nnff . . . Mnmnmfff . . .

  FORD PREFECT: (Wrestling with it) Prising tool . . . power switch off—

  FX: Robot powers down.

  FORD PREFECT: Logic circuit cover—

  FX: Ford working on robot, under:

  THE VOICE: Logic is a wonderful thing but it has certain drawbacks.

  Anything that thinks logically can be fooled by something else which thinks at least as logically as it does. The easiest way to fool, say, a completely logical robot is best demonstrated by the famous Herring Sandwich experiments conducted millennia ago at MISPWOSO (The Maximegalon Institute of Slowly and Painfully Working Out the Surprisingly Obvious).

  FX: Laboratory background with suitable FX, under:

  THE VOICE: A robot was programmed to believe that it liked herring sandwiches, after which, a herring sandwich was placed in front of it. Whereupon the robot said to itself—

  COLIN THE SECURITY ROBOT: Ah! Herring sandwich! I like herring sandwiches!

  THE VOICE: It would then tip down and scoop up the herring sandwich, in its herring-sandwich scoop, and straighten up again. Unfortunately the robot was fashioned in such a way that the action of straightening up caused the herring sandwich to slip off its scoop and fall onto the floor. Whereupon the robot thought to itself—

  COLIN THE SECURITY ROBOT: Ah! Herring sandwich! I like herring sandwiches!

  THE VOICE: —and repeated the loop over and over and over again. The thing that prevented the herring sandwich from crawling off in search of other ways of passing the time was that it was only marginally less alert to what was going on than the robot.

  The scientists at the Institute thus discovered the driving force behind all change, development
and innovation in life, was boredom. Or rather, the practical function of boredom. In a fever of excitement they then went on to discover other emotions, like ‘irritability’—

  COLIN THE SECURITY ROBOT: (Irritably) Who left this herring sandwich here?!

  THE VOICE: —‘depression’—

  COLIN THE SECURITY ROBOT: (Depressedly) If I drop that sandwich again I’m going to switch myself off (Sob) . . .

  THE VOICE: —‘reluctance’—

  COLIN THE SECURITY ROBOT: (Reluctantly) This sandwich has got carpet fluff all over it . . .

  THE VOICE: —‘ickiness’—

  COLIN THE SECURITY ROBOT: (Ickily) Urgh! It’s got green stuff growing on it too!

  THE VOICE: —and so on. The next big breakthrough came when they stopped using herring sandwiches, whereupon a whole welter of new emotions became suddenly available to them for study, such as ‘relief’, ‘joy’, ‘friskiness’, ‘appetite’, ‘satisfaction’, and most important of all, the desire for ‘happiness’. This was the biggest breakthrough of all. Now all that robots needed was the capacity to be either bored or happy. They would then work the rest out for themselves.

  The robot which Ford has trapped under his towel is a logical, if momentarily unhappy, robot. It is happy when it can move about. It is happy when it can see other things. It is particularly happy when it can see other things moving about, particularly if they are doing things they shouldn’t do, because it could then, with considerable delight, report them.

  But Ford will soon fix that. His logic is that by reconfiguring its logic circuit, he will have a robot that is logically – and ecstatically – happy to help him do things he really shouldn’t do.

  FX: Final click. Robot powers up again with a trill of joy.

  FORD PREFECT: Power on. Towel off.

  COLIN THE SECURITY ROBOT: Mr Prefect, sir! I’m so happy to see you!

  FORD PREFECT: Good to see you too, little fella.

  COLIN THE SECURITY ROBOT: My fulfilment is uncontained at your return! I am so happy I could clear all your expenses without requiring adequate proofs of purchase!

  FORD PREFECT: Don’t let me stop you.

  COLIN THE SECURITY ROBOT: (Sadly) Such clearance is restricted to the Editor. Or the accounts computers.