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In the past...
-------------------- Zaledenet lived out most of his life in the pack where he was born, with his mother, father and siblings, although he rarely spares a thought for them these days. His two siblings, brother Dmitri and sister Matryona, both drowned in a river early one spring, while he was sleeping. He has few memories of them. As a pup he learned to gain the attention of his parents by pretending he talk to spirits. His talent for deception later evolved into a career as the pack's very first shaman.

At first Zale was content with the recognition and attention he received, but soon he desired more. To gain more power he "informed" his superiors that the spirits had revealed to him their true power and that they were very angry and demanded appeasement, and the only way to know what the spirits desired was to go through Zale. Of course detractors did appear. Some didn't believe that Zale was telling the truth. Later, during a famine, Zale adviced the alpha that the skeptics must be sacrificed because their doubt had angered the spirits. After the sacrifices his detractors all but evaporated.

Zale's rein lasted for two years and was spectacular to behold. Near the end he held his pack in a steely grip of fear and became alpha all but in name. His rule ended when a true seer was born under mysterious circomstances.

He first encountered the pup during his second year as shaman. The boy's mother brought him before Zale, hoping the pack's shaman could cure him of his terrible visions, which made a nervous wreck of the pup. Zale touched the boy's forehead and said a prayer, which caused a vision that would be the death of his religious tyranny. Once the truth was revealed Zale was attacked and driven out of his pack for good.

In the present...
--------------------

Mixed Forest
1. What do you know of spirits?
2. The art of bullshit

In the past...
-------------------- Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.

Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

This planet has--or rather had--a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

And so the problem remained; lots of people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.

Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, that no one should have ever left the oceans.

And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small cafe in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This tiem it was right, it would work, and no one would have to be nailed to anything.

Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, a terrible, stupid catastrophe occured, and the idea was lost forever.

This is not her story.

In the present...
-------------------- But it is the story of that terrible, stupid catastrophe and some of its consequences.

It is also the story of a book, a book called The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy--not an Earth book, never published on Earth, and until the terrible catastrophe occured, never seen or even heard of by any Earthman.

Nevertheless, a wholly remarkable book.

In fact, it was probably the most remarkable book ever to come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor--of which no Earthman had ever heard either.

Not only is it a wholly remarkable book, it is also a highly successful one--more popular than the Celestial Home Care Omnibus, better selling than Fifty-three More Things to Do in Zero Gravity, and more controversial than Oolom Colupbid's trilogy of philosophical blockbusters, Where God Went Wrong, Some More of God's Greatest Mistakes and Who Is This God Person Anyway?

In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitchhiker's Guide has already supplanted the great Encylopedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects.

First, it is slightly cheaper; and second, it has the words DON'T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.

But the story of this terrible, stupid Thursday, the story of its extraordinary consequences, and the story of how these consequences are inextricably intertwined with this remarkable book begins very simply.

It begins with a house.

4

In the past...
-------------------- Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.

Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

This planet has--or rather had--a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

And so the problem remained; lots of people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.

Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, that no one should have ever left the oceans.

And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small cafe in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This tiem it was right, it would work, and no one would have to be nailed to anything.

Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, a terrible, stupid catastrophe occured, and the idea was lost forever.

This is not her story.

In the present...
-------------------- But it is the story of that terrible, stupid catastrophe and some of its consequences.

It is also the story of a book, a book called The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy--not an Earth book, never published on Earth, and until the terrible catastrophe occured, never seen or even heard of by any Earthman.

Nevertheless, a wholly remarkable book.

In fact, it was probably the most remarkable book ever to come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor--of which no Earthman had ever heard either.

Not only is it a wholly remarkable book, it is also a highly successful one--more popular than the Celestial Home Care Omnibus, better selling than Fifty-three More Things to Do in Zero Gravity, and more controversial than Oolom Colupbid's trilogy of philosophical blockbusters, Where God Went Wrong, Some More of God's Greatest Mistakes and Who Is This God Person Anyway?

In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitchhiker's Guide has already supplanted the great Encylopedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects.

First, it is slightly cheaper; and second, it has the words DON'T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.

But the story of this terrible, stupid Thursday, the story of its extraordinary consequences, and the story of how these consequences are inextricably intertwined with this remarkable book begins very simply.

It begins with a house.

4

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