Marvin's Utterly
but not quite so Completely
Depressing Day

A fanfic by Marie (But if you ask her about it she just may deny it...)

Marvin hated the night. Which wasn't all that surprising, seeing as Marvin hated everything, life most of all, but that wasn't the point. He hated the night. He hated the day as well, almost equally, but tonight his dislike for the time in which most organic life forms assumed that they were supposed to be sleeping and promptly did not was at it's utmost peak.

It started out as a fairly dreary day to begin with and had just gotten worse from there. Arthur and Ford Prefect had left the Heart of Gold only a few short days previous, gobbled up in some improbable quest, he imagined, not that he particularly cared. However their departure had left him alone on the ship with Trillian and Zaphod Beeblebrox. Which was all fine and good, they were ignoring him of course, (as most organic life forms did after exchanging their first few short sentences with him,) but apparently the boredom had begun to get to them as well. He could hear them shouting at each other in a room a couple of doors down the ship's corridor.

What they were fighting over, he did not know, (nor did he particularly care about that either) but because he was also constantly bored as well as constantly depressed, he tuned into their conversation.

And promptly tuned out again, placing his robotic head in between his knees. He didn't have any interest in the conversation anyway seeing as it apparently wasn't going anywhere. Trillian had grown tired of shouting and started asking Zaphod a soothing question in an entirely too bubbly voice, to which Zaphod would merely respond with a little less than pleasant "Zark off." Trillian would pause, and then try another question. The "Zark off" would be repeated, and the shouting would begin again. Over all it was a redundant argument.

This would go on for sometime, about a half an hour he expected, though, once again, he couldn't really have cared. Finding nothing else about to concentrate on he shut down his circuitry enough to slip into a state relatively similar to organic sleep.

He was brought to again by the sound of rapid foot steps nearing the Transport Room. With a grand display of clicking and clanking of gears, he raised his head, just in time to see Trillian enter the control room. She was upset, he could tell, because of the way she stomped about the place. He regarded her bleakly for a moment until she stepped purposely onto the transporter's beaming pad.

"Where are you going?" He asked in a low disinterested voice.

"Zark off!" Trillian snapped at him right before the shimmery lights came and swallowed her up.

Marvin found this to be slightly ironic, seeing as Trillian had always made a point of either ignoring him or being pleasant to him, and might have cracked a smile if he didn't actually hate life so much. However he didn't even have the ability to smile anyway, and the urge to do so quickly left him.

Zaphod Beeblebrox wandered into the room a little less than an hour later in a horribly foul mood. He had even contemplated being depressed for a while, but decided not to take that route this time. He wanted to make up with Trillian this time. After all the kid had a habit of getting into trouble when he left her and he was feeling a little frisky to boot. He looked around the place. All he saw was Marvin. He double checked. Once again it looked like Marvin was the only person in the room.

"Now where did she go?" He demanded to know of the robot, forgoing any attempts to be polite with the outcome of the day.

Marvin assumed Zaphod was talking about Trillian, seeing as she as she had been the only "she" onboard, but he was silent for a long moment, taking his time to reply. "She's left." He mumbled drearily.

"Well then, did you see where she went?" Zaphod demanded to know.

Marvin was forced, (once again,) to say something that came very hard for him. "I don't know." He said. It was the truth, he had no idea where Trillian had gone, seeing as she hadn't set any coordinates when she had left.

"Depressing isn't it?" Marvin continued when Zaphod pasted a self-pitying frown on his face.

"Shut up." Zaphod snapped, exasperated.

"I suppose you could go looking for her," Marvin continued drearily. "But the probability that you will find her with no coordinates are about 1 in 23,440,623..."

"Marvin..." Zaphod tried again. He had resumed pacing around the room, a thinking frown on both of his faces.

The robot was silent for a moment, but by no means did that last. "And it's all really not worth the effort if you ask me," he droned.

Both of Zaphod's heads glared at him. "Yeah, well, nobody asked you." He said. Frustrated and with his thinking frown still in place, he stomped across the room until he was standing right behind Marvin. Ignoring the robot's queries, he pressed a button, popping open a panel on the back of the robot's neck. With a few short yanks he had freed some of the wires, and with a noise of perfect self-satisfaction, he replaced the panel.

Smirking, Zaphod addressed the robot. "Marvin, can you hear me?" he asked. The robot turned and fixed baleful eyes on Zaphod, but otherwise did not make a sound.

Zaphod absolutely grinned. He did not say anything, merely began to whistle to himself happily as he walked away.

As for Marvin, the robot found himself to be in a particular predicament that was about as, if not more depressing than any other predicament he had ever found himself in before. You see he found that he was quite unable to speak.

And the day just got worse from there.

Though he couldn't speak and thus in turn couldn't make at least half of the various sounds that he usually made to show the world that he was oh so down, Marvin was having a surprisingly hard time adjusting. This made him slightly irritated, with was a slightly new emotion, seeing as he was so used to just hating everything. So to display his irritation and indignation he picked up doing something he would have never ever done in any other circumstances...

He picked up following Zaphod around the ship. Which lead Zaphod, (who had somewhere along the way acquired himself a wine bottle of sorts), to telling him to "Zark off" as well.

Which did not work to say the least.

Zaphod has begun to stomp as Marvin followed him through the ship's corridors.

Stomp, stomp.

A door opened in front of them with a slight *whirring* sound. Zaphod stomped through. Marvin followed him.

"Thank you for walking by!" the door said pleasantly.

"Shut up." Zaphod told it. He took a swing of his bottle and continued on, turning sharply at another door.

This one cheerily opened for him as well. "Pleased to be of service!" It chimed delightedly.

"Zark off!" Zaphod snapped at it.

Marvin noted that not only did Zaphod share the same opinion of doors that he did, but that he would really like to do a small bit about his out look on life right then. But he couldn't because he couldn't speak.

He also noted that they were in Trillian's room.

He stepped a slight bit into the room, watching with disinterest as Zaphod began to toss things about, obviously looking for something. Upon not finding it, he stomped back to the door, only to run headlong into Marvin.

The robot gave him a beseeching look.

"NO." Zaphod said. Grasping Marvin by the metallic shoulders he possessed, Zaphod propelled him in the general direction of Trillian's closet. When the door opened pleasantly, he shoved the robot inside. When the door closed again Zaphod said "LOCK!" very loudly and stomped away, presumably to drink himself into oblivion elsewhere.

Leaving Marvin alone in the darkness in a tangle of cloths and womanly accessories.

For a few moments the robot sat contemplating how he was going to break himself out of the closet, then decided that that was very much against his nature, and that he was too depressed to try anything like that anyway.

So Marvin sat.

For a robot that was many millions of years old and thus used to waiting, it took surprisingly little time for rescue to come for him.

Not that he wished to be rescued or anything.

It was hours later and quite late in the day as well when Zaphod back into Trillian's room looking for her.

"Hey Trillian!" Zaphod called. "Where are you babe?"

Marvin listened with vague disinterest, noting to himself that this was a particularly stupid thing for Zaphod to be saying, seeing as Trillian had just left during the day. And then he noted the particular way that Zaphod's words slurred and deduced that he was indeed drunk.

Not that Marvin particularly cared.

"Trillian, where did you go?" Zaphod continued. There was the scuffling sound of footsteps as Zaphod stumbled about the room, and then a banging sound came at the closet door.

"S'unlock!" Zaphod slurred at the door.

The door swung open agreeably, and Zaphod stuck one of his heads into the closet, (the other one miscalculating and banging against the wall.) Marvin could further deduce that Zaphod was drunk by this fact. This didn't seem to faze Zaphod in the least, and he got both of his heads in order after a couple of tries.

And then Zaphod spoke again and Marvin decided that the wretched organism was totally and completely *gone*.

"Oh there you are!" He declared, hiccuping. "Whatcha doing in the closet?" He reached down and picked up Marvin's hulk with considerable ease. "I missed you!" he grinned, (or at least one of his head's grinned, the other one was lolling), and patted Marvin's metal shoulder. His eyes took on a particular gleam as a silky blouse that was resting casually on his shoulder slid off and whispered to the floor.

Zaphod watched it go hungrily. "Ohhh... baby," he said in a hushed voice, tongue darting out to lick his lips. "You want me don't you?"

Marvin most definitely did not, however he had no ability to say so. He wasn't going to enjoy this new turn of events, he decided grimly as Zaphod's head came forward, clumsy lips seeking out a slight approximation of where Marvin's unmoving lips were.

Nope, he definitely wasn't going to enjoy this at all.

It's took surprisingly little effort to drag Marvin over to the bed, seeing as Marvin had decided to become a "non-participant" in this new turn of events. It took considerably more effort for Zaphod to fiddle with his fly and convince his pants that they really wanted to drop to the floor. Grinning when they finally managed to do so, Zaphod set about trying to convince his swimming vision to focus enough to figure out where exactly Trillian was. His eyes didn't focus all that clearly, but it was enough to sort of figure out where she was and he lurched onto her prone form.

'This is depressing,' Marvin thought dejectedly. The fact that Zaphod could be so incredibly drunk and/or stupid to mistake metal for organic flesh was enough to cause his diodes to shut down in despair. Even as one of Zaphod's mouth's found the exact location of where Marvin's mouth would be (if he had a mouth) and began to slobber on it again.

"Oh yes..." Zaphod's other mouth was murmuring excitedly. Marvin became alarmed for about a half a second as Zaphod began probing... he wasn't constructed, even as a slightly humanoid robot, to function in any sort of humanoid mating capability. All he had, if anything could be considered slightly useful in such an event was a part of his lower body could be unlatched to allow access to the circuitry inside of him.

The disheartening thing was was Zaphod had somehow, in his eager probing, hit the latch that caused the paneling to flip open. The man was talented to say the least.

His alarm grew faint awfully quickly as he realized that he was way too depressed to really care if Zaphod managed to damage him considerably. If he was damaged it would only be something else that he would get incredibly down about and then tell everyone about, who in turn would really not care at all.

Dejectedly he turned his attention back to what was happening to him presently.

Zaphod had his unresisting arms pinned and was thrusting into Marvin's slightly resisting circuitry and wires quite happily. This went on for sometime, Marvin choosing to focus his mind elsewhere, as he was quite bored. It wasn't until Zaphod sped up suddenly and then threw his heads back, calling out Trillian's name in ecstasy that Marvin felt something. Presumably a little bit of Zaphod's wayward ejaculate fell against something inside of him that it wasn't supposed to because a sudden electrical-like charge rippled through his prone form, growing in intensity, causing small flashes of light dance across his optical sensors. It came again, not a wholy unpleasant sensation, but definitely a strong one, and his metal body jerked. Again and again the pleasant sensation swept through him, about five times all told.

When the shocks completed it took a full 3 seconds for Marvin to realize that Zaphod had decided to promptly pass out on top of him and go back to wallowing in self pity. However no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't seem to go back to being quite as down as he was before... for the first time in over a millennia the diodes down his left side didn't hurt anymore.

***

"Marvin?" Zaphod questioned blearily. The man had been awake off and on for almost the whole day, but he was so hung over that he did not even realize that he was on top of Marvin until now, and it was early evening.

"Marvin!" he continued, sitting up and wincing at the twin headaches *that* caused. "What are you doing here?" he asked.

Marvin would have replied with a "nothing much I expect," but his voice circuitry was still unplugged from the day before. So he just lay there like he had been doing for the last day or so already, very disinclined to do anything beyond staring gloomily at the ceiling.

"Ahh...?" Zaphod looked down at himself, blinking. His pants were down. Leaping to his feet, he pulled them up again, a very strange expression crossing his face as he did so.

"Marvin?" He asked finally. "Did I... did we... somehow...?"

Marvin didn't say anything. He couldn't and he also didn't want to.

Zaphod suddenly seemed to remember himself with a start and slapped himself on one of his foreheads. He leaned down and grasped the robot by his metal shoulders. Hauling him into a sitting position he began to fiddle with the wires at the back of his neck.

A few tries and a couple of sparks later he succeeded in replacing the wires and gave Marvin a swat on the back. "There you are!" he said cheerily. He looped around so that he was facing the front of Marvin.

"Now Marvin," Zaphod started again. "Did anything happen last night?" He wrinkled up his face like this thought gave him a bad taste in his mouth... and it might very well have been.

For a moment Marvin considered lying. Finally he decided to go with the truth no matter how much he didn't especially want to. "Yes," he said with a resigned sigh.

"It was one of the more interesting experiences I never wish to repeat." He added after a moment of silence.

"Oh." Zaphod blinked again, one of his minds trying to process the fact that Marvin had said "yes" to his question, which meant that he had... And his other mind reeled at the fact that Marvin hadn't actually used a double negative to describe his experience... which was an absolute first for the android.

"Good on you!" Zaphod declared finally, figuring it out and giving Marvin another grand swat, this time on the arm. "I'm glad you enjoyed yourself."

Marvin ignored him. "Life." He muttered to himself, inspecting the wall behind Zaphod despondently.

Zaphod nodded sympathetically, suddenly deciding to take his leave as soon as possible... Marvin could get quite redundant when he started saying things like "life." "Well later then." He said, turning and quickly making his way to the door.

It opened happily and Zaphod walked briskly through it.

"Thank you for making a simple door so happy!" the door said.

"Shut UP." Zaphod snapped at it as it cheerily swung closed behind him. He made his way a little bit further down the hall until he turned, stopping for a moment to stare at a wall before beating one of his heads slowly against it.

"I'm so depressed." He declared with absolute feeling a minute later.

He didn't know how the android could hear him, but Marvin's disconsolate voice drifted down the hallway towards him in reply. "That makes two of us." It said drearily. "Life!" It continued. "Don't talk to me about life..."

Zaphod let out a groan and went back to slowly beating one of his heads against the wall. He suddenly realized that the thought of a very stiff drink sounded very nice... very nice indeed.

***

J'ai Fini.

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