1

"Positive you can 'andle it?" asked Douglas Adams—renowned comic author: dead in some universes, still alive in this one—as he handed over the royalty payment.

"Oh, I'll handle it," said the hitman, a young acne-stricken lad named Garian who looked as though he still believed Santa Claus was dead. He had a tuft of what appeared to be mandarin-orange pubes growing out of his chin, and a few stray hairs attempting to escape from the area beneath his nose. "Handle it like I handled your mum last night. CAN I GET A PIECE OF THAT!?" he suddenly shouted, raising his cashless hand high.

Douglas coughed respectfully, but didn't give Garian a piece of anything except his mind. "'Andle it like you 'andled those inflamed sores on your cheeks, or...?" He let the insult hang over them like a cloud of laughter from a crowd. What kind of name was Garian, anyway? Not the name of a quality hitman, Douglas felt certain of that. Not really a name for anyone.

The sting of tears in his eyes, Garian looked away. "I killed the pimples, didn't I? I killed them good, right?"

"Er—yes, I suppose you did."

The hitman turned to face Douglas once more. His eyes were full of fire. "And I'll kill The Cosmic Cutie, too. I bet my life on it." He went to his knee and bowed his head dramatically. "You have my sword."

Douglas sighed and glanced around to make sure nobody was staring. "Yes, yes, and you 'ave my axe and my bow. Now get to it!"

They went their separate ways.

2

Douglas Adams ambled from shop to shop, feeling on top of the world now that his dreams had finally been set into motion. He'd just hired a man to kill his arch-nemesis, The Cosmic Cutie. They had a long, sordid history together. He'd hated that spherical green bastard for as long as he'd known him.

Ever since his first novel had been published, and his American publishers had claimed the American people would be too stupid—"too dull-minded, sluggish, imbecilic" were their exact words—to realize his brilliant plans to write a five-book trilogy of six novels, that they'd have to connect them somehow, visually, with an iconic character. So the publisher had cobbled together a dream team of marketers—truly the best and the brightest—to brainstorm who would be said iconic character. It would have to be easily identifiable but also simple, like the dumb Americans.

So they'd settled on a stupid-looking, grinning green circle with hands, and dubbed it "The Cosmic Cutie."

They tried to get him to write the bugger into his stories. He'd swiftly declined. Many, many times. And yet they still pressured him, still made The Cosmic Cutie the centre of the marketing campaign.

Not Marvin the Paranoid Android.

Not Zaphod Beeblebrox.

The Cosmic bleedin' Cutie.

That was bad enough. But then Douglas learned the bloody bastard actually existed. He wasn't even a marketer's wet dream—he was a living, breathing being.

Douglas ground his teeth as he remembered their first face-to-face meeting. He'd been married at the time. Not for long, though. Not after The Cosmic Cutie made advances on his woman and stole her from him. He'd caught Joleen going to the green side in the backseat of his Ford Prefect, The Cosmic Cutie shouting "How's my driving?" over and over while he railed her up the tailpipe. Douglas had divorced Joleen, sold the car, and cried every time he wrote about Ford Prefect the character.

Now he was just pissed off.

Calm yourself, Dougie-boy. Don't panic. Just let the memories wash away. Oh, look. A bookstore. You like books. Go get a book. Sniff the pages. Maybe they're old and therefore better-smelling?

He browsed among the one-dollar paperbacks and found a few gay-erotica novels that looked pretty good.

"DUUUUUUDE," said a voice from behind, loud but not shouting.

Paperbacks in hand, Douglas turned to see a young man in a tie-dye T-shirt grinning at him, jeweled and beaded necklaces hanging from every extremity. The young man had piercings in his gums. "Er—?"

"YOU'RE DOUGLAS ADAMS, RIGHT, BRO? DUUUUDE, I LOVED HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE, BRO. DON'T PANIC, RIGHT, BRO? THAT COSMIC CUTIE, BRO. MY FAVE 'RACTOR, BRO, AND YOU GOTTA LOTTA CLASSIC 'RACTORS. BUT COSMIC CUTIE. SOOOOO JOKES, BRO. I LOVE THE PART IN TWO, WHEN HE STARTS SLAPPING HIS BALLS AGAINST ARTHUR DENT'S CHIN, BRO. THAT WAS CLASSIC COMEDY, BRO. I LOVE ALL YOUR BOOKS, DUUUDE. YO, HEYO. WHATCHA READIN', BRO? BRO...?"

But Douglas was already running, paperbacks tossed aside. Fuming, he stormed into a bong shop and trembled with rage. He hated his "fans," the ones who apparently had never read his books but just looked at the covers and claimed to have read them. There was no ball-slapping moment, not that he was aware of.

And then he realized where he was. Saw the grinning faces and the tie-dye T-shirts. Swarming closer. A hive-mind thing.

"YOU DOUGLAS ADAMS, DUUUDE? COSMIC CUTIE, BRO. CLASSIC COMEDY, BRO."

He screamed.

3

Things weren't much better for the hitman, Garian. Oh, sure, he had The Cosmic Cutie—serenading a group of naked women by his mansion pool—in the sights of his sniper, but he didn't know failure was in his immediate future.

He brought the reticule over the target's body, which also served as his head. He inhaled deeply, exhaled. Touched the trigger, inhaled again, squeezed.

A woman raised her head.

The muffled shot blew her skull to pieces.

"Shit!" Garian prepared to evacuate. Took apart his sniper and packed it into the designated slots inside his briefcase.

Over near the pool, a garbage truck suddenly pulled up and two robotic arms picked up the dead woman and dropped her into the back of the vehicle. Inside, hundreds of teeth worked her corpse to a nutritious paste and emailed it to the local dog-food factory. The truck drove off.

Garian would just have to try again another day.

4

Try again he did, this time planning to get up close and personal. There was no way he could fail if he were two inches behind the target, slitting his throat—or chest, or whatever—with a bowie knife.

Garian had snuck into the mansion undetected by climbing over the side wall, choked out the waiter while he tried to select a suitably old wine for dinner, and now Garian climbed into the waiter's clothes. It was a loose fit, and the waiter had been a non-redheaded Asian, but Garian was certain he could successfully masquerade as the waiter long enough to kill The Cosmic Cutie.

He left the waiter naked and unconscious on the floor, closed the door behind him, and walked confidently through the mansion. He tried to avert his gaze whenever he came across another member of the staff. Thankfully there were a lot of large windows he could pretend to be looking through.

He found The Cosmic Cutie spanking a whore in the dining hall, a smoking cigar firmly planted between the teeth of his grinning mouth.

"Giles, that you?" the target asked.

Garian did a double take and discerned the waiter's name must be Giles. "Ah, yes, sah. Absorutery sah." He cringed as he did the poorest, most offensive Asian impression he'd ever heard. But it had been the first thing to come to mind, so he'd gone with it.

The Cosmic Cutie didn't seem to notice. "Then come over here and help me tie this beauty down."

Standing behind the target, Garian felt his blood simmer. His first kill! And a high-profile target, too! Joy! He raised the knife and prepared to slice and dice.

The target turned. Slowly.

Eyes widened.

Garian's hands trembled.

The blade dropped.

He went to his knees and kissed the place where The Cosmic Cutie's feet would be.

He was in love. He was smitten.

5

Garian tried for weeks to have his advances reciprocated. Tried and failed. He even stood outside The Cosmic Cutie's mansion, boombox on his shoulder, blaring the saddest, most emotional music he could steal from a suicidal teen.

But no such luck.

He didn't know why he felt the way he did. Perhaps it was years of pent-up loneliness, manifesting itself once and for all, focusing on an unobtainable object of affection.

He realized he was suicidal himself, like the now-dead teen he'd stolen the music from. Then he wondered if he hadn't caused the poor kid to off himself, and that made him feel worse.

His final act—before blowing his own brains out with a double-barrelled shotgun—was to pen a letter, which he took the time to deliver by hand before splattering his brains upon the door he'd just knocked on.

6

Douglas heard the knocks, then the bang. He opened the door, saw the corpse with the head like a smashed watermelon, closed the door, sighed, saw the letter on his welcome mat, picked up the letter, opened the letter, read the letter.

Garian, that rat bastard, useless bleedin' hitman. Said he'd fallen in love with The Cosmic Cutie, as if that were even possible. Scum. Trash. He'd have to kill the bugger himself.

Eyeballing the bleach he'd been scrubbing the floors with, Douglas Adams had a plan.

7

Armed with a can of paint thinner he'd marked "Orange Juice," Douglas walked up to the front door of The Cosmic Cutie's mansion and pounded on it. A maid let him in and walked him to the pleasure room, where he found the bugger in the nick, going at it with an invisible orifice, Oculus Rift strapped to his face.

The maid cleared her throat.

"'Ello, Cosmic," Douglas said.

The Cosmic Cutie took off the headset and grinned, tongue hanging out. "Dougie, do mine eyes deceive me?" He rushed over and wrapped his hands around Douglas. "It's been too long! I hope you've finally forgiven me for whatsername. We didn't work out, by the by," he added, in hushed tones. He noticed the bottle of "Orange Juice"—"What's this, good man? A housewarming gift? For me?" He accepted the poison and took a long swallow. Stared down at the bottle with a scowl on his face. Then grinned. "Dougie, you tried to trick me! This is paint thinner! How'd you know the national beverage of my people, Dougie?"

Douglas felt his body trembling. His heart pounded in his toes and eyes and temples. This freak. This piece-of-trash monster. This fornicator. This wife-stealer. He just wouldn't die! And there was only one way he could express everything he felt, everything he'd been holding in for years and years and years: "RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

Throwing around chairs and flipping tables, even shoving the maid into the nearby crackling fire, Douglas Adams kicked The Cosmic Cutie in the crotch and ran out of the mansion. He saw the yellow sports car in the driveway and wrenched open the door. Climbing inside, he ripped off the ignition cover and grabbed two random wires, stripped them with his teeth and jabbed the exposed ends at one another until the car roared to life.

By this point in time, The Cosmic Cutie stood outside his mansion, scratching his bald green head.

Douglas Adams threw the car into drive and slammed his foot down on the pedal. The tires screeched and smoked and the car took off. "'OW'S MY DRIVING, YOU GREEN BASTARD!?" he screamed, spitting all over the dash. "'OW'S MY FUCKING DRIVING!?"

The car smashed into The Cosmic Cutie, driving him up against the brick wall of his home. He howled in pain for a while. Then he fell under the wheels and was ground down to a puddle of green guts in no time at all.

Douglas Adams kept his foot down until the car ran out of gas and chugged to a halt, repeating over and over again: "'OW'S MY DRIVING? 'OW'S MY DRIVING?"

And he kept his foot down after that, too.

He only stopped when an eleven-foot-tall giant tore off the driver's-side door and tugged him out of the vehicle.

"Douglas Adams?" the man asked in a really deep voice. "I'm Officer Joseph Tugger, Space-Cop. You're under arrest for the murders of Garian St. Cool, Irabetta Consuelez and Charles 'The Cosmic Cutie' Cutmiscocsen. Anything you say or do can and will be used against you in the court of law. This is my court. And I am the law."