(Archivists: please put at end when archiving! Thanks!!)
An X-Files/Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy crossover.
ALTERNATE SUMMARY (the one the archivists will read and then chime in unison, "Ho, hum, there's that multiple-personality Griff trying to be deep again. 'Deep' my ass! Let's all just blow off this alternate summary thing...and, hey, as revenge, we can use TV Guide's summary for the 'NightLine' where Ted Koppel interviewed Ross Perot's sister. Now, let's all go get sloshed at the nearest pub and charge it to Griffie's e-mail account!"):
Anyhow, my ALTERNATE SUMMARY:
The real reason Mulder became the man he is today.
And it's not that he bought an Ab Roller! Although, I admit, those abs are really nice...and his butt is...
Okay, now, where was I? Oh, yeah...
This story is written with loving respect by a huge fans of both XF and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy universe. I have wanted to do a Hitchhiker crossover ever since I started in fanfic - nearly two years ago. Unfortunately, about halfway through I lost contact with a friend who was going to be a writing partner on this - she had helped brainstorm a lot of ideas for this (pretty much the whole plot), even coming across a rather large ocean and an even bigger continent to spend a week with me and put our pervy heads together on this.
So, months later, I decided to do it all on my own because, as one friend just told me, "It's impossible to write any slower than you do, Griff," and I figured I'd better get something out. I'm amazed (and pleased, since I've hopefully been original) that, AFAIK, there are no other XF/HGG crossovers out there. I think it's been begging to be done. I've honestly been a little afraid someone would beat me to it while I was dilly-dallying about, going back to other stories and other pen names in the interim, so I've gone around calling "dibs" on it with various fanfic friends of mine who are fans of both universes.
So, HA! I got it out there! Phttthhhttt!
Since I'll be sending this to X-Files fanfic lists, I thought I should offer a little explanation about the universe of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for anyone who isn't familiar with it. I think you can still follow the story without knowing this, though.
Hitchhiker, or "The Guide", is a series of books written by Douglas Adams, a British humorist. However, Adams started Hitch-hiker as a program he wrote for BBC radio, which then became the first book. It later was done for BBC television, which my co-plotting friend hates me mentioning because she thinks Trillian was characterized as a brainless blonde bimbo in that. But I liked it, because the TV show was how I was first introduced to Hitchhiker as a young and impressionably stoned teenager.
Anyhow, Adams has published _The More Than Complete Hitchhiker's Guide_, which includes four Hitchhiker novels, plus a short story involving one of the secondary characters. He also published _Mostly Harmless_, the most recent, fifth book of the Hitchhiker series, and the _Dirk Gently_ detective series, which has nothing to do with my Guide references, so I don't know why I'm mentioning it.
I'd like to advise Guide fans that, in this story, I've tried to stay in the spirit of Hitchhiker without copying it. To make it a true crossover, however, I had to include some of the ideas from the books. I think that's the nature of crossovers, but this is the first one I've ever written, so it seems a little strange to me, at least, to write a story featuring ideas set forth in books I've read. Although I've done that enough with fanfics based on the XF TV show. Still, I've altered any respectfully borrowed ideas to a certain degree to make them not just carbon copies of what was in Adams' books. So, if you notice that my description of, say, a teaser or a Babel fish is different from the universe Adams established, good! It's not that I don't know the facts of the Hitchhiker universe...I just wanted to be as original as possible and avoid plagiarism.
Considering I had the convenience of time travel (well, the characters we're borrowing do), I don't really have to worry about timelines...a concept that shouldn't be too unfamiliar to XF fans. Still, my time frame is that the events in this story are after Ford has experienced the events we know of in the Hitchhiker books. Now, even though the Earth was demolished in the books, Hitchhiker fans will hopefully remember something about Magrathea and a little do-over of a certain experiment. I don't want to explain this here for non-Hitchhiker fans and spoil the books too much, but just take my word for it, it is possible for the Earth to be there even *after* it was blown to smithereens.
Now, non-Hitchhiker fans are probably going "Huh?" at this point, and scratching their ape-descendant craniums. Let me try to familiarize you a little with what the heck I'm talking about, as it is relevant to this story. Oh, and how the Earth blew up:
Ford Prefect is an extraterrestrial from a planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse. Betelgeuse 5, actually. He works as a field researcher for a company that produces_The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_. This is a kind of electronic, encyclopedic travel guide that can be updated regularly. Ford (whose real name is unpronounceable by humans, and would have caused him some funny looks on Earth, so he did some research before coming to Earth and determined that "Ford Prefect" - the name of a model of car that was recently popular in Britain - would help him blend into society) once went to Earth to update the entry on it. He was stranded there for 15 years, posing as an out-of work actor.
While on Earth, he befriended an average, kind of boring - well, no, *really* boring, I mean, terribly embarrassing to the human race kind of boring, the kind of boring that makes you want to clobber your head with a nail-ridden plank just to make things more interesting while listening to kind of boring - human, Arthur Dent. For much of the writing of this story, I had planned to keep Arthur out of it and spare you the boredom, and to keep this a gen story, but then when I bumped heads with my slash buddy, we thought: Arthur? Ford? It's a slash pairing waiting to happen! So Arthur will have a small part in this story. Pun intended, and probably true. About the size of his part, I mean.
For most of this story, Mulder is going to step in for Arthur and take the place of the perplexed human, perpetually in search of a nice glass of iced tea. I figured there's only room in this story for one perplexed human at a time. But I'm sure he won't be as painfully boring as Arthur was. No, of course not, how could he with that beautiful rear end, those gorgeous puppy-dog eyes, that...?
I managed to fit in a Speedo scene.
Anyhow, in Adams' novels, Ford saves Arthur from being destroyed along with the rest of the inhabitants of Earth when a nasty race of aliens, the Vogons, come by to demolish the planet. Ford and Arthur then go off on various adventures, finding out more about what the Earth really was, and what the answer to life, the universe, and everything is (the answer is 42, which is Mulder's apartment number...coincidence? I think not! That mystery will be explained herein!)
At one point, they meet up with Ford's cousin, Zaphod Beeblebrox, also from Betelgeuse 5, a guy with two heads and three arms at last count, who happens to be the president of the Milky Way, and Tricia McMillan (now known as Trillian), a Scotswoman with doctorate degrees in Mathematics and Astrophysics who left Earth to avoid having to hang out all day in the unemployment line.
These two have possession of The Heart of Gold, a state-of-the-art spaceship that features the Infinite Improbability Drive. This enables them to do infinitely improbable things, but generally not on purpose. They can travel all over the place, and all over time. Pretty nifty thing to have when you're writing sci-fi, right? Well, hopefully this gives you some idea of what the Hitchhiker universe is all about. Or at least give you an idea of the rambling type of humor it includes. Or of my mental state.
On with the show...
(Story begins in part 1, I promise!)
Click here to go to part 1.
- Griffin
********************************************