?? This chapter is also available as a full-cast audiobook and movie - see author's note above.

  As Accidentally Skyward regained consciousness, the first thing he noticed was Quimly's expression. Not just smug amusement. Something almost like genuine concern. Not genuine concern either, of course, but something more like it than Accidentally could remember. The sight really did make a situation that seemed like it couldn't possibly get any worse, unquestionably ANY worse.

  Accidentally was lying in the ashen dust with one knee pointing SKYWARD and the other pointing at an angle that implied it hadn't hitherto settled on a specific direction.

  Quimly seemed to notice Accidentally noticing his expression of almost genuine concern and quickly turned his face upside down and poked out his tongue. Accidentally did his best to ignore Quimly as he pushed himself up to his elbows in the dust in a wobbly, noncommittal half press-up.

  'Did I say anything while I was passing out, Quimly? I sometimes pass-out talk, you know, giving glimpses into my complicated psyche.'

  'Master Skyward said, "Oh no, I just did a WEE WEE in my purple underpants."'

  'Ewww… I didn't… did I?'

  'Quarfs cannot lie,' Quimly said, matter-of-factly, out the hovercar window.

  'So you quarfs always say, yet my overalls just feel the normal kind of damp.'

  'Oh, and Master Skyward also said a not very important name of someone not very important and did a not very important discovery of the true origins of Master Skyward's galactaphobia. Just very big stupid Master Skyward nonsense much.'

  Before Accidentally could finish standing up enough to think thinks out loud about THE NAME... or THE ORIGINS of his galactaphobia, he promptly became distracted as the public alert system recleared its electronic throat with a new burst of static before announcing, possibly even a bit more enthusiastically than before.

  'Attention... Attention... no... really... listen up again, you lot. I have more to say about the invasion. Ah… did I say invasion? I mean… ah… cosmic… flower arranging… or something else very calming and possibly also rhyming like that. Space vessel Nemesis has entered Earth2 airspace to destroy… ah… the competition in an… ah… GARDEN OFF… yes… we have those… or something else nice like that. All citizens are to remain calm and think nice thoughts.'

  'Oh… and… ah… if anyone was like… trying to decide when the best time might be to go and visit the sister's kids in the Beige Nebula or pop over to one of the casino systems circling the outer rings of Splurge, then today or tomorrow-ish really might not be a bad time to check those out. Now is… you know… as good a time as any to… live a little… ah... longer… ah... on another planet… I mean… not… like here… while... the thing is going on. The thing? The thing? What did we call it earlier? Let me see… let me see… I wrote it down here… yes… here it is… total and utter planetary obliteration.'

  'Hang on… no… ah... that can't have been it. Nope. That was… ah… my shopping list… for… the ah… planetary obliteration fancy dress party on Thursday. Ah, yes, here is… the ah... real thing… that you probably shouldn't hang around here for. The… ah… pretty... nice... and probably very calm and safe... relaxing time... that is no reason at all for anyone to panic. Yes. That was it. Okay. That's all. For now. And maybe forever... if...ah... you don't go visit the sister's kids... just saying. As you were. No, not you at the back. Jesus9, this is a public street…'

  The voice trailed off.

  Quimly spoke suddenly as though to himself, 'Too soon, too soon. None of this was supposed to start yet.'

  'What was that mysterious thing you just said, Quimly?'

  Quimly blinked at Accidentally and said very slowly and loudly, 'IS… MASTER… SKYWARD… READY TO STOP GURGLING AND FLOPPING ABOUT IN ALL THE DIRT MUCH?'

  Accidentally wasn't entirely sure. He finished standing up anyway. His galactaphobia symptoms were receding faster than usual. Which only served to alarm him more than usual, which he didn't find really all that unusual, which he found really quite unusual… and also pretty alarming.

  Though not quite as alarming as the holographic street signs that had all started flashing as they all whined and all traced out displays of emergency evacuation routes that he was pretty sure hadn't been updated since the Great AI Blimp Disaster of 2289.

  A row of ThinkerLinker public display screens for the galactically impaired farther along the roadside had switched from advertisements to the official MANDATE emergency symbol. A cartoon button with anxious eyes and the caption, 'Don't Be Alarmed Unless Instructed To Do So.'

  He heard someone on an adjoining street say, 'I'm glad no one has instructed us to be alarmed yet, Constantine. We have those think tickets to the quarfish museum of modern gloop today. I sure would hate to miss all that gloop. HEY, isn't that fellow in PURPLE over there the one everyone's been thinking all those thinks about on Thinkerlinker and such? What do you mean, I'm not supposed to think THAT SORT of think out loud anymore? Oh, YES, I see how that could be a problem now. I hope I haven't just ruined EVERY THINK, I think.'

  Accidentally looked around for the person in purple who the random person on the street had just been thinking thinks out loud about, but he stopped when he saw something strange through the window of the nearby Shaky Quarf bar that rang loudly with jangling, discordant quarfish music combined with excited quarfish chatter, despite the early hour.

  Some number of quarfs inside the Shaky Quarf seemed to be writing in the air with sparklers toward the Nemesis, 'Welcome to Earth2. You can exterminate the human and humany things first, if you want. We sure won't miss them!'

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Though he couldn't be completely sure that was what the quarfs were writing with their sparklers, because quarfs had quite stumpy arms, and several of them seemed to have accidentally set their fluff on fire.

  Across the street, the Quite Convenient and Fairly Useful Bits and Bobs outlet had transitioned to Crisis Mode, its shelf signage rotating to display the steadily inflating prices of rapidly diminishing emergency supplies.

  Someone had unfolded a folding table on the footpath a few steps away. Presumably, the person or persony thing in the bright orange poncho sitting behind it, who had the untroubled expression of someone who had been waiting for exactly this moment their entire life.

  Accidentally read the hand-lettered sign on the table. 'Doom drinks. Because WHAT ELSE are you going to do TODAY? GO TO WORK?'

  Atop the folding table, a row of tall glasses brimmed with something the colour of a sunset on the planet Quondo Quondo Quondo, each littered with a small collection of paper umbrellas. The prices had been crossed out and rewritten maybe a hundred times. The final figure was considerably higher than the first.

  'Eleven flimflams,' the person or persony thing said in a voice that sounded far too posh for their grubby appearance, almost as though it was really a neat person wearing a clever disguise.

  'Eleven?' Accidentally asked back.

  'Supply and demand,' the person said, with the equanimity of someone who hadn't been quite so certain that they were quite so right about something for quite a long time.

  Quimly's arm appeared from the hovercar window and placed a large pile of lint on top of the table with a decisive slap.

  'Quimly is buying four,' Quimly said.

  'But that's not money, that's LINT!' Accidentally noted.

  'I'll take it,' the man said, eyeing the lint greedily. 'Wanna come for a ride on my rocket ship?' the man asked, raising his eyebrows at Accidentally.

  'What?' Accidentally winced back.

  'Wait… that didn't come across how it sounded in the rehearsals… that's what you get when a creative team becomes deadline driven.'

  Accidentally stared at the man with new confusion before staring up at the Nemesis with new confusion, before staring at the drink with an older confusion he was more familiar with.

  He picked up the drink.

  It was bright orange.

  It seemed completely wrong and entirely appropriate simultaneously, just how most of his life did.

  He raised it to his lips.

  The man watched with a gleeful smile.

  Before Accidentally could manage to take a sip, Quimly blasted the trudgeworthy5 horn, and Accidentally spilled down the front of his overalls the entire contents of the drink, which seemed roughly nineteen times the volume of what the glass could possibly have contained.

  He gurgled a fresh sigh as he dabbed uselessly at his soggy pants with his dripping sleeve. 'What's the time, Quimly?' he spluttered as he remembered he'd been in quite the rush to get to work before his galactaphobia episode.

  'How is Quimly supposed to know what the time is, Master Skyward?'

  Accidentally stared wide-eyed. 'You literally have one job. To think onto ThinkerLinker so you can answer questions like, "What's the time?" If you're not even doing that, what was the whole point of my parents going to all that trouble of evolving you from potato peelings and earwax that terrible day?'

  'Master Skyward's parents just plopped some manky old, scooped-up gloop in a jar, screwed down the lid, and pressed evolve.'

  'Precisely! What a waste of time!'

  Accidentally breathed deeply, then immediately regretted it. The air smelled even worse than normal. The usual fried-electronics stench had been overpowered by a more pungent scent that Accidentally had long suspected MANDATE added to emergency broadcasts to make them seem more emergency-y.

  'Vrooooom!' Quimly vroomed the trudgeworthy5 forward, perhaps a little less enthusiastically than he'd been vrooming it forward before, though just as slightly out of Accidentally's reach.

  'Sigh,' Accidentally sighed back, trudging along just behind the hovercar, perhaps even a little less enthusiastically than before. He added in a shoulder slump for good measure. 'I hope that STARBLASTER... and that BOOMING sound... aren't going to make me very on-time for work again, Quimly.'

  'Oh no, Master Skyward,' Quimly said excitedly through the hovercar window. 'Quimly doesn't think the big, ugly, terrifying, yummy, angular starblaster with the ominous weapons array will make Master Skyward and Quimly more very on-time than normal much.'

  'Normal? You? Ha! Look, will you please stop vrooming the darn hovercar out of my reach for long enough to at least think onto ThinkerLinker and check if I'm running very on-time? Maybe also check about the starblaster with all the guns, and that booming sound while you're in there. And... I couldn't find my favourite sock this morning. Maybe have a quick think around for that. The one with the pineapple on it. But also... don't get too distracted in there. Finding out the time is the most important part. Pretty sure.'

  'Why not ask the car what the time is? The trudgeworthy5 has a built-in clock.'

  'You know full well the clock doesn't work.'

  'It works perfectly, stupid Master Skyward.'

  'No. It doesn't. It thinks it's a toaster.'

  'The clock works perfectly, if what you want from it is toast.'

  'Look, I don't want to get into the rights of the clock to think it's… whatever it wants to think it is. But… the trudgeworthy clock can't… make… toast. Because it's a clock. I thought quarfs couldn't lie. Isn't that what you're always saying?'

  'QUARFS... CANNOT... LIE,' Quimly said grandly, twirling his silver cape grandly, too.

  'Hey, where did you get that silver cape? Did you always have a silver cape? Don't answer that. You'll just distract me more.'

  Accidentally walked behind the trudgeworthy5, a paper umbrella tucked in his hair where he'd put it when the trudging had resumed after all the spilling, before he'd had a chance to find a better solution.

  'Just darn-well link onto ThinkerLinker and check the DARN TIME darn it!'

  Accidentally winced and tried not to look as Quimly shoved his finger up his nose to the second knuckle, triggering his ThinkerLinker linker, causing a steady pulse of green light to blip from his nose. Quimly withdrew his finger and wiped a strand of snot against his chest fur.

  Accidentally finished wincing at Quimly and looked away. Through the gaps in the buildings, he glimpsed public viewscreens in Smogington Square, displaying the angular starblaster alongside a rapidly updating threat assessment that couldn't seem to decide between Routine and Existential. Without warning, he found himself calculating escape routes with inexplicable clarity. He mentally mapped paths through Smogington with a foreign precision. It was almost as though someone else's thoughts were bleeding into his own.

  'What's happening to me, Quimly? I really AM NOT feeling MYSELF today. It's like SOMEONE ELSE is FEELING ME! Trying to take over my Brian. Wait. Did I just say Brian? I meant… BRIAN. Jesus9, I really am losing my Brian.'

  Then it felt like someone reached into his Brian and gave it a FLOODY GOOD squeeze, and Accidentally Skyward finally thinked an incredibly important think about some thinks that he really should have thinked MANY MORE thinks about before a terrifying starblaster settled onto the streets of Smogington.

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