An Eating Guide to the Silver Millenium, Part 4: Interlude

By Richard Beaubien

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Once, in the great endless history of the universe, there was a galaxy called the Milky Way. And in this galaxy was a small plain looking solar system which had a yellow sun and 8 planets in it. The system was just a usual little system, it had it's asteroids, it's moons, and it's own form of life inhabiting the local planets.

And so all was happy there for a few hundred years for the eight planets that lived in the solar system. Life proceeded normally along it's evolutionary path with no side turns or detours. The people where as nice as any folk in the universe, and could make a killer drink which was always a plus for any civilized species.

All in all it was a plain existence for the people.

Plain that is, until that one infamous day, the day when the ninth planet appeared out of thin air into the solar system. Budging line to become the third planet of the system, it and it's moon began to slowly orbit the sun like it had been part of the solar system since day one.

This perplexed the original inhabitants of the system since it wasn't exactly normal for a planet to pop out of space just like that.

Comets yes, Asteroids maybe, and an occasional traveling space circus probably. But never in the history of the universe had a planet just popped out of thin air and start orbiting a sun.

And so in a sudden rush of curiosity, the people of the solar system decided to set up a research station to study this planet. Using the moon as it's primary location, scientist began to collect data on the new resident of the system. And all of this data was collected and stored in the moon's computer systems for further study.

This continued over the years until intelligent life evolved on the planet, and the research station turned into the seat of government for the solar system. It was during this time that the leader of the government sent down 8 of her closest advisors to meet and set up relations with these people.

At this meeting the advisors were to learn the name the people used for their planet, a name which is used to this very day. And thus a grand ball was held to celebrate the starts of relations with the planet and to mark the beginning of a relationship which would transcend time itself.

For at long last the rogue planet was a part of the system.

And it would for ever more be known as Earth.

****

In a small but dank office hidden in the corner of a rather run-down building which was on a rather bland planet, was a man which was smoking a rather rancid cigar.

The smoke filled the office with its putrid aroma, though the man didn't care about that. Smoking Cigars was one of the few things he enjoyed about his job and the smoke itself helped to cover the down-right ugliness of the place. The peeling wall paper, the grimy floor, the broken windows, and the various pictures of Dogs playing Poker all helped prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that this office was indeed a hell hole.

Which is why the Universe's best cleaner picked this very office to be his home base. No one with even a shred of intelligence would even think of using this office if they had the money to be elsewhere, thus nobody would ever expect him to be here, in the middle of the biggest job in his career.

The Cleaner grimaced as he flipped one of the paintings over to reveal a sub-space communicator. The job seemed so simple at first, infect some organic computer with a virus so it wouldn't be able to complete it's original purpose. And since it was a multi dimensional computer he would have to infect a node in every dimension, or at least 75% of them, to complete his task.

A simple task really, if it wasn't for the anti-virus programs the computer had. Programs which had foiled his best efforts so far to place a virus in the system.

Still, he was the best Cleaner in all the dimensions. And he always had the means to solve any problems he encountered.

Even if it meant destroying a few solar systems in the process.

The communicator suddenly flashed to life as a nervous underling started to make his report. "Sir, they seemed to have failed. The Kargons I mean. I don't know how since the system is a 1 on the blotch* scale, but they failed!!!"

The cleaner frowned at this, clearly the computer had even tougher defenses than he had expected for the Kargons were own of the deadliest species he knew. But they had failed to deliver the virus to the computer which mean he had to go to his back up plan.

A plan he rather liked if the truth be known. It involved alot of backstabbing and betrayal and a good romantic sub plot which always made his job more enjoyable. "Switch to Plan B!! Stay where you are and make sure nothing goes wrong."

The screen faded to blackness as the cleaner started to walk over to another painting. A smile crossed over his face as he flipped it over revealing a small keyboard and computer. The virus he was about to launch would be one of the most powerful in the history of organic computers. And it would be entertaining too, which just made the plan even spiffier.

It was almost a guaranteed success really, nothing could go wrong.

And on the keyboard screen he typed out the password to start the virus, a password which read...

'METALLIA'

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*The blotch scale is one of many scales developed by statisticians to put a number to almost every aspect of life.

(An example of this was the failed Binary system of naming, which consisted of a series of 1 and 0's on a punch card to tell one person apart from another).

To develop the blotch scale, a group of statisticians went out and started a random series of almost pointless wars. Looking at the aftermath of each battle they reasoned that the more effective units would leave a large amount of blocths (which where the remains of their opponents) while the less effective units would have little to no blotchs on the battlefield.

Using these astute observations, they decided that a high number on the blotch scale meant that the unit was a killing machine while a low number meant that the unit was as a tame as kitten.

There is one exception to this system is the zero blotch rating, which varies upon use of the Vernier Blotch scale or the Fournier Blotch System. In the Vernier one zero means that the person is helpless weakling while in the Fournier version zero is the most dangerous because the unit in essence vaporized his opponents (thus leaving zero blotchs around).

The system is no longer in use because many statisticians despised the simplicity of the scale. Instead they prefer to use the much more complex and less understandable Kill Rod scale, where 100 KR (Kill Rod's) is deadlier than 50 but weaker than 250.

This may also be the reason as to why most statisticians are among the first targets of an invading army (right behind lawyers and Street performers).

****

The harsh winds of the moon beat down upon Queen Serenity, as she slowly walked among the ruins of her once great Kingdom. Her last bit of energy was used to send all of the people of her Kingdom down to the Earth so they would have a chance at a peaceful life in the future. And One of those people was her very own daughter...

Now the once great queen was hanging on to what remained of the thread of her life. The great rest of the ages would soon await for her as she did not wish to be reincarnated. It was time for the new generation to take the lead and it was time for her to finally visit her old friends. Perhaps now they could finally have that game of bridge that they had always wanted to play. After all, Queen Serenity would soon have all the time in the world to follow any hobby she wanted to pursue.

But for some weird reason the final rest she craved was denied to her as an unknown force was pulling her somewhere. A place she could no longer recognize, but then the entire palace was foreign to her at this moment. The ruins carried none of the comfort that the palace once held.

But still she was forced to go on, almost dragged towards her final destination. The place where she would finally be able to rest for eternity. And that place was the sea of Serenity.

The former queen collapsed to the dirt of the moon as the force which had dragged her along vanished into thin air. In front of her was the great computer of the Silver Millennium, its monitors flashing a bright red colour. Serenity knew what that meant, the computer itself had a message of extreme importance to tell. A message that only the Queen could hear.

Using what remained of her strength she pulled herself up to the terminal. Placing her hand on the screen, both she and the computer started to glow a cool white colour. And as the colour faded Serenity almost collapsed to the ground, only to have her fall stopped by the terminal..

"It can't be...No, not this," She cried, her tears running covering most of her face. "I didn't send them to the future to face this!!!"

"But you did send them forward, and there is nothing you can do about it," A voice from behind her laughed, causing her to turn around. The man was of a rather bulky set and had two reptilian goons beside him, each one having a large gun pointed at her. "You fought a brave fight but you only delayed the final destiny of this system. But you seem to know that now."

"I swear, I will stop with every last ounce of my power!!" Serenity yelled, trying to buy some time to gather in the needed power to accomplish what she needed to do.

"Your burned out, and now your dead." The man said plainly as he pointed at her. His hired goons followed his order by pulling the trigger on their guns.

Serenity smiled as she pulled in the last wisps of her remaining power, ignoring the energy blasts that impacted into her. "I will...fight... you..." she mumbled as she let go of the power she was storing, surrounding herself in a white ball of energy.

However, the ball faded shortly after it had formed, leaving the corpse of Queen Serenity to fall to the ground with a thud. "She's dead, but the computer is gone," the man muttered as he looked around the Sea of Serenity for any signs of the computer, "Well we might as well go home. I doubt anyone else could find it."

It wasn't until well after the hitmen left that the body of Queen Serenity began to glow again. And from the glowing body game a small yellow sphere, a sphere which began to fly slowly down to the planet Earth.

****

It was not going good...

Every single plan, every thing devised to prevent the computer from achieving it's true purpose had backfired. The Wars, the Space Pirate Ryouko, and Bill Gates had all failed to infect the computer with their virus.

And thus a majority of the computer's nodes across the dimensions still worked towards it's one goal. A goal which would soon be completed if he didn't do something soon.

And he already knew what just what he was going to do this little computer.

"Send in the Vogons, I'd rather like to see an Express way built in that system."

****

Once there was a group of inter dimensional beings who began to ponder the important questions of life, like who are we, why are we here, and why did the Rubix cube sell so well?

Thus they built a super computer to answer these questions, only to find that the answer to life, the universe, and everything else wasn't exactly as grand as they had originally expected. In fact it was a rather bland answer of truth be known. And the answer was presented with yet another problem...

To find the true question for the theory of life, the universe, and why people think convertible cars are neat in a rainy climate.

So, in order to find the question to the answer they created the greatest super computer known to in the history of multiverse itself. A computer so great that it had to be placed in another dimension where it would be monitored by a group of scientists turned into lab mice.

This computer was named Earth, and it truly was a great computer.

But even the mice had no idea how great it was. For not only did one Earth come into existence in this one dimension but across an infinite amount of other dimensions Earths began to pop up as well. Each individual Earth was one node for the vast super computer, the greatest in existence. And this computer soon set out to find the real question to life, the universe, and everything else...

And all was fine and dandy for everyone except the people who didn't want the secrets of the universe revealed. People whose own personal hold on power would be lost with these very ideas released. And thus they went about trying to stop the computer from doing it's task, sending in Computer viruses like the Metallia virus, the Microsoft virus, and the New Coke virus.

But except for a scant few planets the viruses didn't work. The computer was able to produce a series of Anti Viral programs to protect most of its nodes, to stop these attacks against the Earths. And the computer was still able to stay on its original task, still working to find the question to everything and nothing.

It's then no surprise that when the Vogons came to build there Interstellar bypass they ended up getting a rather unexpected welcome.

****

"What!! They failed!! But how?" the cleaner yelled as he lost control of his temper. The great Vogon Bypass project had only worked on 5% of the nodes in existence, and even then more than half of them had managed to heal themselves of all damage. That meant that, in total, the processing power of the computer was reduced by only 3% due to the work of the cleaner. And that meant it had more than enough power to do what it was meant to do.

Find the meaning of life and all that other junk.

"Well," the voice from the communicator timidly replied, "we have one report coming saying that the Vogons where chased off by the singing of a girl named Minmei. But other than that we've heard nothing. It looks like none of the other units survived Sir!"

"Do we have an idea as to why this happened?"

"No sir!!"

"Then find out. You're dismissed!" The Cleaner grunted as he lit another cigar. It had all gone down hill, and he had no idea why it had happened. No anti-viral program in existence could resist what the cleaner had thrown at the nodes of the computer, yet all of his plans had failed. Perhaps it was time to deal with this little program and take it out of the picture.

Of course he had to find out what program the computers was using to foil all of his plans...

"Sir!!" The voice started up again, this time with a hint of confidence to it, "The computers have found the reason as to why we haven't been able to destroy the nodes with the Vogons. It's a man, just one man."

"Who is this man?"

"It's Ford Prefect." The picture of Ford replaced that of the Cleaner's underling. Slowly the cleaner looked it over, taking in every detail ever known about the person. Finally the computer had made a mistake, revealing the identity of its ace in the hole, and soon the cleaner would make sure the 'Ford Prefect' program would never be able to bother him again.

"This Prefect, find him and kill him!!"

****

It was a nice spring day and the birds where singing the praises of the warm weather. The cherry blossoms where in full bloom and filled the air with its fresh scent. A fresh scent Ikuko breathed in as she opened the windows in Usagi's room, allowing the fresh air to fill the room.

"My, can't Usagi ever keep this room clean," Ikuko groaned as she looked around at the mess that her daughter was living in. After all, it just wasn't proper for a high school student to be living in a pigsty. Ikuko wished that Usagi had someone to share the room with again, just so she would have some reason to keep the place clean.

This struck Ikuko as kinda of odd since she Usagi had always slept in that room alone. She had a few fleeting thoughts of someone else sharing the room with Usagi, but Ikuko knew that was impossible.

At least she thought it was, Ikuko couldn't really be sure these days. She was still wondering just who this 'Chibi-Usa' person was and why she'd have a cup at the Tsukino household. When she asked Usagi about it she seemed to dodge the question, before answering in a nervous laugh that it was her old cup from when she used Chibi-Usa as a nick name.

Ikuko didn't need to look at her daughter's nervous face to know that she was lying because Ikuko was a 100% certain that she never heard Usagi use the nickname before.

Still, the name was familiar to her for some strange reason. And when ever she thought of it she couldn't help but think of a small girl with Pink hair and Odangos just like Usagi's.

And there was something else that was bothering her, something she had dreamed about over the last couple of nights. A dream where she stood in front of a terminal with a message flashing on it. And behind the terminal stood two girls in outfits which looked almost (but not quite) like Sailor Moon's. And what was even stranger was the fact that one of the girls looked like Usagi's friend Naru, which struck Ikuko as odd because she never seen Naru with a giant key before.

However it was just another feeling she had, one of many. And she placed it off in the back of her mind with the ones where she thought Usagi was Sailor Moon, that the world was going to end, and that Pepsi was actually better than Coke. And they had absolutely no effect on her life.

It wasn't because of these feelings that Tsukino Ikuko was planning on going to the Tokyo Tower for a day trip. She just wanted to visit there again and see the views. She certainly wasn't there because of some grand destiny.

And these feelings had nothing to do with the power the Ikuko felt in her. They where in fact cause by her daughters cooking last night. They had to be, Ikuko remembered the last '100 tums' dinner Usagi cooked for them.

It was just a coincidence that Ikuko was going to the place where the battle for the planet Earth as going to take place, a battle she was going to play an important part in. The fact that Ikuko dreamed about the battle the night before she went there was just some incredible weird coincidence....

If only Tsukino Ikuko had read the Hitchhikers Guide before going on her trip, for she would of found out that there is no such thing as a coincidence in the universe. Perhaps then she would of stayed home and watched TV instead of going to the Tower.

Perhaps then she would of avoided the fight, the questions, and the all the other weird stuff that happened there.

But if that did happen then the next chapter wouldn't be much fun at all then...

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End Interlude

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