Mostly Harmless [43]
In the ensuing days of carnage every single window in the city, rocket-proof or not, was smashed, usually to accompanying cries of "Get off the line, asshole! I don't care what number you want, what extension you're calling from. Go and stick a firework up your bottom! Yeeehaah! Hoo Hoo Hoo! Velooooom! Squawk!' and a variety of other animal noises that they didn't get a chance to practise in the normal line of their work.
As a result of this, all telephone operators were granted a constitutional right to say "Use BS&S and die!" at least once an hour when answering the phone and all office buildings were required to have windows that opened, even if only a little bit.
Another, unexpected result was a dramatic lowering of the suicide rate. All sorts of stressed and rising executives who had been forced, during the dark days of the Breathe-o-Smart tyranny, to jump in front of trains or stab themselves, could now just clamber out on to their own window ledges and leap off at their leisure. What frequently happened, though, was that in the moment or two they had to look around and gather their thoughts they would suddenly discover that all they had really needed was a breath of air and a fresh perspective on things, and maybe also a farm on which they could keep a few sheep.
Another completely unlooked for result was that Ford Prefect, stranded thirteen stories up a heavily armoured building armed with nothing but a towel and a credit card was nevertheless able to clamber through a supposedly rocket-proof window to safety.
He closed the window neatly after him, having first allowed Colin to follow him through, and then started to look around for this bird thing.
The thing he realised about the windows was this: because they had been converted into openable windows after they had first been designed to be impregnable, they were, in fact, much less secure than if they had been designed as openable windows in the first place.
Hey ho, it's a funny old life, he was just thinking to himself, when he suddenly realised that the room he had gone to all this trouble to break into was not a very interesting one.
He stopped in surprise.
Where was the strange flapping shape? Where was anything that was worth all this palaver — the extraordinary veil of secrecy that seemed to lie over this room and the equally extraordinary sequence of events that had seemed to conspire to get him into it?
The room, like every other room in this building now, was done out in some appallingly tasteful grey. There were a few charts and drawings on the wall. Most of them were meaningless to Ford, but then he came across something that was obviously a mock-up for a poster of some kind.
There was a kind of bird-like logo on it, and a slogan which said "The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy Mk II: the single most astounding thing of any kind ever. Coming soon to a dimension near you.' No more information than that.
Ford looked around again. Then his attention was gradually drawn to Colin, the absurdly over-happy security robot, who was cowering in a corner of the room gibbering with what seemed strangely like fear.
Odd, thought Ford. He looked around to see what it was that Colin might have been reacting to. Then he saw something that he hadn't noticed before, lying quietly on top of a work bench.
It was circular and black and about the size of a small side plate. Its top and its bottom were smoothly convex so that it resembled a small lightweight throwing discus.
Its surfaces seemed to be completely smooth, unbroken and featureless.
It was doing nothing. Then Ford noticed that there was something written on it. Strange. There hadn't been anything written on it a moment ago and now suddenly there was. There just didn't seem to have been any observable transition between the two states.
All it said, in small, alarming letters was a single word:
PANIC
A moment ago there hadn't been any marks or cracks in its surface. Now there were. They were growing.