It was a warm late-summer Thursday. Fenchurch stood looking out of the kitchen window of the little West Country house. She cradled her teacup in both hands and peered over the top.
For days now she had been having the strangest feeling, as if she was about to give birth. This was, in itself, not strange as she was, in fact, about to give birth. Not that minute but very imminently.
It was very nearly a year since they had returned to this Earth and it had not taken them long to decide that, even though it was not their Earth, it was the nearest they would ever find and it was time they put down some roots.
After all the goings-on at the guide offices, they had been trying to decide what to do when Slartibartfast had realised that the Earth Mk2, that he and the Magaratheans had built would not have been destroyed along with all other existences because it was not in fact related to any of them.
He had not taken much persuading to drop them off on it before himself returning to see if he could revive his culinary career on Aislix.
Ford and Roosta had decided to return to Saquo-Pilia Hensha with the intention of trying to rebuild the Guide into its former irreverent, fun-loving self.
Somehow they all knew it would never quite be the same but they thought it’d be fun trying.
Then, just a week ago, they had received an update on the battered copy of the Hitchhikers Guide that Arthur still kept hidden away in a cupboard.
They looked up the entry for Earth and found to their surprise: -
Earth
Mostly harmless but a hell of a lot of fun and home to one of the greatest guys you’ll ever meet and a pivotal character behind the success of the Guide.
Zaphod and Trillian/Tricia had “borrowed” a starcruiser from the Infinidim fleet and set of to Cromadraz on the outer edges of the Galaxy. They hoped the isolation could help them find a way of rationalising the complexities of the four minds that occupied their two bodies.
In the year that had passed since then, they had renovated Arthur’s house, which had fallen into a state of disrepair while they’d been gone but blessedly had been spared the blight of squatters or property developers.
Their grey fishbowls stood proudly alongside each other in the bedroom, Fenchurch having retrieved her’s from Russell who, inexplicably had decided to take a new job working with the World Wildlife Fund.
They sold Fenchurch’s Islington house to her architect friend who was now in the process of “doing wonderful things” to it.
It had not taken long to re-acquaint themselves with their old friends in the village who seemed not at all surprised that they had suddenly upped and moved to Australia without warning and just as suddenly returned.
It seemed that people just didn’t want to know about things they couldn’t understand.
Even the visit of the giant spaceship was now a distant memory. Every so often a TV show would speculate whether another would come or whether we should spend some silly number of billions of dollars trying to find out where it came from. But, generally, everybody was just glad to get back to his or her normal lives.
Nobody even seemed to notice that Arthur Dent had discovered a long lost daughter.
The same daughter who now came into view, walking up the garden path with her father.
The same Arthur Dent who had been rescued from the ruins of this planet, or at least one remarkably like it, twice.
The same Arthur Dent who had returned to this Earth and with whom she, Fenchurch, had fallen in love.
The same Arthur Dent she had lost, searched the universe for and found again.
He was looking at his watch. It was the first thing his daughter had bought when they came to this planet. An old fashioned watch with hands and a date. A watch made in Switzerland.
He then looked at his daughter, now a beautiful young woman rather than the crazed, wild child she had been when she had gone to that other Earth.
She also wore a watch. It was on top of a sweatband that she always had on her wrist to cover the small flexopanel, which she never watched these days. At least, hardly ever.
A bond had grown between them as strong if not stronger than any that could ever exist between any father and daughter. This was all the more amazing considering for a large part of her life he had not known she existed.
Fenchurch saw all these things and she felt the strange feeling grow even stronger inside her. It felt so familiar, as if she had experienced before. But she had never been pregnant before.
Then it came, the feeling of incredible inner peace. It was so simple, so wonderfully and extraordinarily simple.
She felt she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place.
She dropped her teacup.
¨
Far away in another place the Old Man moved the pieces one more time. He felt the myriad of complex shapes slowly slip into place. Plug fitted socket, bump fitted recess, convex fitted concave. The matches were made, the pieces fitted. The puzzle slowly dissolved from his gaze and another, more complex one appeared in its place.
A sepulchral voice whispered, “Congratulations, you have reached level forty-three – do you wish to continue playing?”
“No” said the Old Man, “that’s enough for now,” and he walked outside to watch the Cricket
End