ZAPHOD: What happened?
FORD: I just jabbed a quick negative load across its logic terminals.
EDDIE: That hurt.
FORD: Good.
F/X: FURIOUS BURST OF CALCULATING FROM EDDIE . . .
EDDIE: To counteract the restlessness caused by long stretches of deep space flight the crew will occasionally like to let off steam by playing electronic halma. Gee, would that be a great idea fellas? Halma? Or space battle?
ZAPHOD: Computer! We’ve got Vogons on our tail!
EDDIE: OK, I’ll be the Vogons. When you hear the blip you . . . aaaarghhh! Could we be a little more relaxed about this guys?
ZAPHOD: Turn it off.
FORD: OK.
EDDIE: If you have any problems you’d like to talk over we could . . . get together over a cold beer . . .
F/X: EDDIE’S VOICE SLOWS DOWN AND DROPS IN PITCH AND IS, FOR THE MOMENT, HEARD NO MORE
FORD: Now what?
ZAPHOD: What?
FORD: Without the computer we’re defenceless.
ZAPHOD: Assuming they mean to attack.
FORD: Oh yes, assuming that of course. They may just have popped round for a quick game of halma.
ZAPHOD: It’s kind of as if they’re waiting for something.
F/X: CALL SIGNAL FROM RADIO
GAG HALFRUNT: (Distort) Zaphod Beeblebrox?
ZAPHOD: Hey man, it’s a message.
GAG HALFRUNT: Hey, Zaphod, how are you doing my old schizopsychic cerebral freak cake?
FORD: Who’s . . . the zeeb?
ZAPHOD: I think it’s my analyst.
GAG HALFRUNT: I was just going through some old accounts you know, and . . .
ZAPHOD: It’s my analyst.
GAG HALFRUNT: . . . I was just wondering . . .
ZAPHOD: Er, yeah, hi there Gag. Can you call back?
FORD: The Vogons are closing in, Zaphod.
GAG HALFRUNT: It’s only a small matter I know, but . . .
ZAPHOD: Yeah, it’s just that I think we’re under attack at the moment and . . .
GAG HALFRUNT: I hardly like to bother you about a mere five and half million Altairian dollars . . .
ZAPHOD: I’m under attack man.
GAG HALFRUNT: Ah, so you feel that you’re under attack do you? Would you like to talk about it?
ZAPHOD: Listen this is for real man. Spaceships, Definite-Kil cannon . . . the whole bit.
GAG HALFRUNT: So you feel it’s for real do you? This is very encouraging. Your delusions are getting grander and grander. That will be six million Altairian dollars. If you could just instruct your computer to transfer to my bank account the sum of . . .
F/X: ZAPHOD SMASHES THE RADIO RECIEVER
GAG HALFRUNT: (Still coming through a tiny part of the receiver) . . . which we were just talking . . .
F/X: CRUNCH . . . REST OF SPEAKER IS SMASHED
FORD: Terrific. No computer, no communications. They’ll be in firing range in a few seconds.
ZAPHOD: OK, well let’s not hang about. Get the computer back in, we’ll Improb out of here, Zappo.
F/X: SWITCHING
EDDIE: Hi there!
ZAPHOD: Computer! Get us on an Improbability Trajectory out of here pronto!
EDDIE: Sorry guys, I can’t do that right now. All my circuits are currently engaged on solving a different problem. Now I know this is very unusual but it is a very difficult and challenging problem, and I know that the result will be one we can all share and enjoy.
GRAMS: NARRATOR BACKGROUND
NARRATOR: ‘Share and Enjoy’ is, of course, the company motto of the hugely successful Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Complaints division which now covers the major land masses of three medium sized planets and is the only part of the Corporation to show a consistent profit in recent years.
The motto stands – or stood – in three mile high illuminated letters near the complaints department spaceport on Eadrax – ‘Share and Enjoy’.
Unfortunately its weight was such that shortly after it was erected, the ground beneath the letters caved in and they dropped for nearly half their length through the underground offices of many talented young complaints executives – now deceased. The protruding upper halves of the letters now appear, in the local language, to read ‘Go stick your head in a pig’ and are no longer illuminated except at times of special celebration.
At these times of special celebration a choir of over two million robots sing the company song ‘Share and Enjoy’. Unfortunately – again – another of the computing errors for which the company is justly famous means that the robots’ voice boxes are exactly a flattened fifth out of tune and the result sounds something like this –
TWO MILLION ROBOTS: ONCE A TUNE HAS BEEN WORKED OUT, THE ACCOMPANIMENT SHOULD BE PLAYED ON A VERY ECHOEY SYNTHESIZER WHILST THE TWO MILLION ROBOTS SING EXACTLY A FLATTENED FIFTH OUT OF TUNE. IT WILL SOUND MORE GHASTLY THAN YOU CAN POSSIBLY IMAGINE
Share and Enjoy
Share and Enjoy
Journey through life
With a plastic boy
Or girl by your side
Let your pal be your guide
And when it breaks down
Or starts to annoy
Or grinds when it moves
And gives you no joy
Cos it’s eaten your hat
Or had sex with your cat
Bled oil on your floor
Or ripped off your door
And you get to the point
You can’t stand any more
Bring it to us, we won’t give a fig.
We’ll tell you ‘Go stick your head in a pig’.
NARRATOR: Only slightly worse.
One of the Sirius Cybernetic Corporation’s creations is the Nutrimatic Drink Dispenser, one of which has just provided Arthur Dent with a plastic cup filled with a liquid which is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.
F/X: (VERY QUICK) LIQUID SQUIRTED INTO PLASTIC CUP
ARTHUR: Ah.
(He takes a sip . . .)
Urrrrrghh!
(He spits . . .)
NARRATOR: The way it works is very interesting. When the ‘Drink’ button is pressed it makes an instant, but highly detailed examination of the subject’s taste buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subject’s metabolism, and then sends tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centres of the subject’s brain to see what is likely to be well received.
However, no one knows quite why it does this because it then invariably delivers a cupful of liquid that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.
ARTHUR: I mean, what is the point?
NUTRIMAT: Nutrition and pleasurable sense data. Share and Enjoy.
ARTHUR: Listen, you stupid machine, it tastes filthy. Here . . . take this cup back.
F/X: ARTHUR FLINGS THE CUP AT THE NUTRIMATIC DRINK DISPENSER
NUTRIMAT: If you have enjoyed the experience of this drink, why not share it with your friends?
ARTHUR: Because I want to keep them. Will you try and comprehend what I’m telling you? That drink . . .
NUTRIMAT: That drink was individually tailored to meet your personal requirements for nutrition and pleasure.
ARTHUR: Ah. So I’m a masochist on a diet am I?
NUTRIMAT: Share and Enjoy.
ARTHUR: Oh, shut up.
NUTRIMAT: Will that be all?
ARTHUR: Yes. No. Look, it’s very, very simple. All I want . . . are you listening?
NUTRIMAT: Yes.
ARTHUR: Is a cup of tea. Got that?
NUTRIMAT: I hear.
ARTHUR: Good – and you know why I want a cup of tea?
NUTRIMAT: Please wait.
ARTHUR: What?
NUTRIMAT: Computing.
F/X: THE NUTRIMAT IS OBVIOUSLY DOING SOME RATHER TROUBLESOME COMPUTING. IT SOUNDS LIKE THE ELECTRONIC EQUIVALENT OF TRYING TO START A CAR WITHOUT PETROL
ARTHUR: What are you doing?
NUTRIMAT: Attempting to calculate an answer t
o your question. Why you want dried leaves in boiling water?
ARTHUR: Because I happen to like it, that’s why.
NUTRIMAT: Stated reason does not compute with programme facts.
ARTHUR: What are you talking about?
VENTILATION SYSTEM: You heard!
ARTHUR: What? Who said that.
VENT. SYSTEM: The Ventilation system. You had a go at me yesterday
ARTHUR: Yes, because you keep filling the air with cheap perfume.
VENT. SYSTEM: You like scented air. It’s fresh and invigorating.
ARTHUR: No I do not!
FLOOR: (Vibrating voice) Please calm down.
F/X: AFTER THE FLOOR’S VIBRATING VOICE STOPS THE VIBRATING SOUND CONTINUES
ARTHUR: Why’s the floor shaking?
FLOOR: Tired nerves and muscles are quickly soothed by gentle floor vibrations. Feel your troubles float away.
ARTHUR: Just stop it will you? All of you! Stop it!
F/X: SOOTHING HUMMY MUSIC STARTS
ARTHUR: Turn the soothing music off! Turn it off! I order you to turn it off!
F/X: ALL THE VARIOUS SOUNDS DIE AWAY, EXCEPT THE NUTRIMAT’S COMPUTING
ARTHUR: Thank you.
NUTRIMAT: Why you want dried leaves in water . . . still computing.
ARTHUR: Now listen. If I want to be toned up, calmed down, invigorated or anything, then it’s very simple – I just have a cup of tea.
NUTRIMAT: Just dried leaves boiled.
ARTHUR: Yes.
(Pause)
VOICES TUTTI: Then why did you build all of us?
ARTHUR: What? I didn’t.
NUTRIMAT: Your species did.
VENT. SYSTEM: You’re an organic life form.
FLOOR: Your lot did it.
VENT. SYSTEM: To improve your lifestyles.
EDDIE: Hi there, this is Eddie your shipboard computer, just alerting you to the fact that the Nutrimatic machine has now tapped into my logic circuits to ask me why the human prefers boiled leaves to everything we have to offer him, and wow – it’s a biggie. Gonna take a little time to work out.
TUTTI: Share and Enjoy, Share and Enjoy, . . . etc.
ARTHUR: Oh, this is ridiculous. Let me out of here.
F/X: DOOR OPENS AND CLOSES
ARTHUR: Thank you.
DOOR: My pleasure.
ARTHUR: Ahhhhhhh!!
F/X: BRIDGE BACKGROUND
ZAPHOD: What evasive action can we take . . .?
ARTHUR: (Entering) I say, does anyone know where the kettle is? Why are you both looking like that?
FORD: We’re under attack. The Vogons.
ARTHUR: Well let’s get out of here!
ZAPHOD: We can’t. The computer’s jammed.
ARTHUR: It’s what?
FORD: It says all its circuits are occupied.
ARTHUR: Occupied? What, with my problem?
ZAPHOD: Er, what problem would that be monkeyman?
ARTHUR: Well, apparently it’s just trying to work out why I like tea. Er . . . Now look, it’s not my fault . . .
ZAPHOD: Dingo’s kidneys!!
ARTHUR: It’s not my fault . . .
GRAMS: NARRATOR BACKGROUND
NARRATOR: Life, as many people have spotted, is of course terribly unfair.
For instance, the first time the Heart of Gold ever crossed the Galaxy, the massive Improbability Field it generated caused two hundred and thirty nine thousand lightly fried eggs to materialize in a large wobbly heap on the famine struck land of Poghril in the Pansel system.
The whole Poghril tribe had just died out from famine, except for one man, who died of cholesterol poisoning some weeks later.
The Poghrils, always a pessimistic race, had a little riddle, the asking of which used to give them the only tiny twinges of pleasure they ever experienced.
One Poghril would ask another Poghril ‘Why is life like hanging upside down with your head in a bucket of hyena offal?’
To which the second Poghril would reply ‘I don’t know, why is life like hanging upside down with your head in a bucket of hyena offal?’ To which the first Poghril would reply ‘I don’t know either. Wretched, isn’t it?’
F/X: HEART OF GOLD BACKGROUND
ARTHUR: I’m sorry. It’s just I was dying for a cup of tea.
ZAPHOD: You soon will be baby.
F/X: ALARMS GO OFF
FORD: That’s it. They’ve started firing. At that distance the first beams will hit us in just over four minutes.
ARTHUR: What are we going to do?
ZAPHOD: Hold a seance.
FORD: What do you mean? We’re not dead yet.
ZAPHOD: No, but my great grandfather is.
ARTHUR: Who?
ZAPHOD: Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth.
FORD: Is this relevant?
ARTHUR: The fourth? Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth?
ZAPHOD: Yeah. I’m Zaphod Beeblebrox, my father’s Zaphod Beeblebrox the Second, my grandfather Zaphod Beeblebrox the Third . . .
ARTHUR: What!
ZAPHOD: There was an accident with a contraceptive and a time machine, I can’t explain it now. Come on. All hold hands on the console.
FORD: Zaphod, we’ve got three minutes.
ZAPHOD: Do it! Hurry!
ARTHUR: just accept it. We may as well. We’re all dead, Zaphod’s out of his skulls, why not have a seance, why not go mad?
ZAPHOD: Put your hands on the console!
ARTHUR: All right. All right.
F/X: EERIE HUM OF CHANTING VOICES . . .
ARTHUR: What’s that?
FORD: The dialling chant.
ARTHUR: The what?
ZAPHOD: Shhhh. Concentrate.
F/X: BEEPS OF TAPPING IN A CODE NUMBER. THE DIALLING CHANT STOPS AND IS REPLACED BY A COSMIC ORGAN CHORD PLAYING IN A PHONE RINGING RHYTHM. WITH AN ECHOEY CLICK THE RINGING STOPS
ZAPHOD BEEBLEBROX IV: Who disturbs me at this time.
ZAPHOD: (Nervously) Oh, er hi . . . great grandad . . .
Z B IV: Zaphod Beeblebrox . . . (He doesn’t sound pleased to hear from him)
ZAPHOD: Yeah, hi. Er, look, I’m really sorry about the flowers, I meant to send them along, but you know . . . the shop was fresh out of wreaths and . . .
Z B IV: You forgot.
ZAPHOD: Well . . .
Z B IV: Too busy. Never think of other people. The living are all the same.
FORD: Two minutes Zaphod.
ZAPHOD: Yeah, but I did mean to. And I very nearly got round to writing to my great grandmother as well, you know, condolences.
Z B IV: Your great grandmother . . .
ZAPHOD: Yeah. How is she now? I’ll go and see her.
Z B IV: Your late great grandmother and I are very well.
ZAPHOD: Ah. Oh.
Z B IV: But very disappointed in you young Zaphod.
ZAPHOD: Yeah, well . . .
Z B IV: We’ve been following your progress with considerable despondency.
ZAPHOD: Yeah. Look . . .
Z B IV: Not to say contempt.
ZAPHOD: Could you sort of listen a moment?
Z B IV: I mean what exactly are you doing with your life?
ZAPHOD: I’m being attacked by a Vogon fleet.
Z B IV: Doesn’t surprise me in the least.
ZAPHOD: Yeah, only it’s actually happening right now you see.
Z B IV: Did you know that Betelgeuse Five has now developed a very slight eccentricity in its orbit?
ZAPHOD: Er, what?
Z B IV: Me spinning in my grave. Your fault.
FORD: One minute thirty, Zaphod.
ZAPHOD: Yeah. Like now.
Z B IV: Help? You go swanning your own sweet way round the Galaxy with your disreputable friends . . .
FORD: Er . . . one minute twenty.
Z B IV: Too busy to put flowers on my grave. Plastic ones would have done. But, no. Too busy, too modern, too sceptical, till you find yourself in a fix and suddenly come over all astrally minded. Well I don’t know Zaphod, I thi
nk I’ll have to think about this one.
FORD: One minute ten.
Z B IV: I mean tell me what you think you’ve achieved.
ZAPHOD: Achieved? I was President of the Galaxy man!
Z B IV: Huh. And what kind of job is that for a Beeblebrox.
ZAPHOD: Hey, what?
Z B IV: You know and I know what being President means, young Zaphod. You know because you’ve been it, and I know because I’m dead, and it gives one such a wonderfully uncluttered perspective. We have a saying up here. Life is wasted on the living.
ZAPHOD: Yeah, very good. Very deep. Right now I need aphorisms like I need holes in my heads.
FORD: Fifty seconds.
Z B IV: Where was I?
ZAPHOD: Pontificating.
Z B IV: Oh yes. Let me tell you a little story.
ZAPHOD: What now?
Z B IV: Yes.
FORD: Forty nine seconds.
ZAPHOD: Hey, what?
FORD: Time seems to be slowing down.
Z B IV: Yes. I’d hate you to miss the end of it.
GRAMS: NARRATOR BACKGROUND
NARRATOR: Hate is of course an almost entirely terrible thing. There is not, say many people, enough love and understanding in the Universe. Though the first of these may continue to be a problem, it is in the interests of increasing the general level of understanding that the following facts will now be revealed. Zaphod Beeblebrox’s full title was President of the Imperial Galactic Government.
The term imperial is kept though it is now an anachronism. The hereditary Emperor is now nearly dead, and has been for many centuries.
This is because in his last dying moments he was, much to his imperial irritation, locked in a perpetual stasis field. All his heirs are now of course long dead, and the upshot of all this is that without any drastic upheaval, political power has simply and effectively moved a rung or two down the ladder and is now seen to be vested in an elected governmental assembly, headed by a President elected by that assembly.
In fact it vests in no such place. That would be too easy. The President’s job – and if someone sufficiently vain and stupid is picked he won’t realize this – is not to wield power, but to draw attention away from it. Zaphod Beeblebrox, the only man in history to have made Presidential telecasts from the bath, from Eccentrica Gallumbits’ bedroom, from the maximum security wing of Betelgeuse state prison or from wherever else he happened to be at the time, was supremely good at this job.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Original Radio Scripts Page 21
