Mostly Harmless - Douglas Adams [76]
Tricia fast-forwarded.
Ah. Now, the next bit had been quite promising. They had emerged out of the ship into a vast, gray hangarlike structure. This was clearly alien technology on a dramatic scale. Huge gray buildings under the dark canopy of the Perspex bubble. These were the same buildings that she had been looking at at the end of the tape. She had taken more footage of them while leaving Rupert a few hours later, just as she was about to reboard the spacecraft for the journey home. What did they remind her of?
Well, as much as anything else they reminded her of a film set from just about any low-budget science-fiction movie of the last twenty years. A lot larger, of course, but it all looked thoroughly tawdry and unconvincing on the video screen. Apart from the dreadful picture quality, she had been struggling with the unexpected effects of gravity that was appreciably lower than on Earth, and she had found it very hard to keep the camera from bouncing around in an embarrassingly unprofessional way. It was therefore impossible to make out any detail.
And now here was the Leader coming forward to greet her, smiling and sticking his hand out.
That was all he was called. The Leader.
None of the Grebulons had names, largely because they couldn’t think of any. Tricia discovered that some of them had thought of calling themselves after characters from television programs they had picked up from Earth, but hard as they had tried to call each other Wayne and Bobby and Chuck, some remnant of something lurking deep in the cultural subconscious they had brought with them from the distant stars that were their home must have told them that this really wasn’t right and wouldn’t do.
The Leader had looked pretty much like all the others. Possibly a bit less thin. He said how much he enjoyed her shows on TV, that he was her greatest fan, how glad he was that she had been able to come along and visit them on Rupert and how much everybody had been looking forward to her coming, how he hoped the flight had been comfortable and so on. There was no particular sense she could detect of being any kind of emissary from the stars or anything.
Certainly, watching it now on videotape, he just looked like some guy in costume and makeup, standing in front of a set that wouldn’t hold up too well if you leaned against it.
She sat staring at the screen with her face cradled in her hands, and shaking her head in slow bewilderment.
This was awful.
Not only was this bit awful but she knew what was coming next. It was the bit where the Leader asked if she was hungry after the flight, and would she perhaps like to come and have something to eat? They could discuss things over a little dinner.
She could remember what she was thinking at this point.
Alien food.
How was she going to deal with it?
Would she actually have to eat it? Would she have access to some sort of paper napkin she could spit stuff out into? Wouldn’t there be all sorts of differential immunity problems?
It turned out to be hamburgers.
Not only did it turn out to be hamburgers, but the hamburgers it turned out to be were very clearly and obviously McDonald’s hamburgers which had been reheated in a microwave. It wasn’t just the look of them. It wasn’t just the smell. It was the polystyrene clamshell packages they came in which had “McDonald’s” printed all over them.
“Eat! Enjoy!” said the Leader. “Nothing is too good for our honored guest!”
This was in his private apartment. Tricia looked around it in bewilderment that had bordered on fear but had nevertheless got it all on videotape.
The apartment had a water bed in it. And a Midi hi-fi. And one of those tall electrically illuminated glass things that sit on tabletops and appear to have large globules of sperm floating in them. The walls were covered in velvet.
The Leader lounged against a brown corduroy beanbag chair and squirted breath freshener into his mouth.
Tricia began to feel very scared, suddenly.