For lovers of Terry Pratchett
Part 1: Becoming a Hero
Rincewind wasn’t entirely sure how it happened exactly, all he knew was that he had become a god. Through a series of events much beyond his control, or understanding, he had somehow ended up in control of the life a certain organ-utan. A certain orang-utan who for many years had been in charge of the Unseen University library.
With his new found “powers” Rincewind began remembering all the times that vindictive ape had thrown bananas at him, refused to give him the books he needed, and generally made his life unpleasant. So, as any newly created god would do, he had some fun. The one thing Rincewind knew the librarian would hate, is to be human again, and it would go someway to making up for all the times Rincewind had failed his wizarding exans. So, with amazing level of concentration, the librarian rose into the air, and with a satisfying “pop”, became human once again.
Dr. Horace Worblehat was re-born. He was human again. He stood in the library, looked at his rather small hands and feet and wondered what on the Disc had gone on.
What Rincewind hadn’t realised is that a quantum, backward rebound wave was created as the pop occurred. This wave rippled through all reality, before reaching the edge of the universe and heading back towards the librarian; who was standing bewildered, looking at his hands and feet.
Rincewind was smiling smugly to himself, then, the wave hit the librarian. Rincewind looked down as the wave hit, there was another pop, this time much less satisfying.
Dr. Horace was now stood in the middle of a city, a convenient sign just above his eye line said “Welcome to Godville”.
Rincewind opened an eye and looked around, judging it to be safe, he looked down at Horace, who was stood looking even more bewildered. He stared down at him for a moment. Noticing a small gang of youths approaching the hapless man, Rincewind shouted “lookout behind you Horace!”. Suddenly Horace span round, he landed a punch squarely on the nose of the leader. The man toppled over, unconscious. The other gang members looked at the man standing before them, he suddenly screamed “ook!” at them. The men turned and ran.
The city guard picked up the unconscious man and carried him away. The commander shook his hand and said “we could do with a man like you, the name’s Vimes, thanks for your help”.
Rincewind shouted down to the new hero. “Well go on then! You’d make a good hero.”
The voice inside Horace’s head said he should do it, so he did, he began walking out of the city in search of adventure…
Part 2: How to be a Hero
Horace had been following the same hero for some time now, trying to learn the heroing business. It appeared to Horace, that heroing involved drinking copious amounts of alcohol, gambling away exorbitant amounts of money, and fighting, most of which didn’t involve monsters. He had also discovered that the voice inside his head was in fact some sort of divine being. Luckily for Horace, this divine being seemed to be friendly, if somewhat unhelpful. Horace had had many near death experiences in his heroing time, and so far his god had managed to, create a rather large flower bed, and turn his hard earned drinking money into rather large, and heavy, gold bricks, which for some reason Horace had begun piling at a convenient, temple sized location.
Rincewind was getting better at using his godly abilities, he had almost mastered the art of ‘divine floristry’ and the world seemed better with more flowers. He was helping Horace when he could though, he was helping him drink less, which has got to be good for his liver. He was melting the new hero’s gold into bricks to build a temple. There had been mutterings in the godly community that this was the sensible thing to do. Rincewind had managed to conjure up an area for the temple, it had lots of flowers, which Rincewind liked.
Horace had begun to wonder what was really the point to all this heroism business. He earned money, he bought drink, he awoke with a sore head then showed monsters how he felt, the monsters then gave him items that he would then sell to get more money, and the cycle continued. This was boring. Horace needed more adventure in his life, he began asking around if anyone needed anything doing, a sort of ‘quest’ hunting mission. He was first asked by an old Mage to find a way to divide by zero, a tough but manageable quest for Horace to undertake, he was, after all, still head of the unseen university library.
And so Horace headed out of Godville to try and find a way to divide by zero…
Part 3: Questing, for Dummies
Horace had been hard at work for many days, he’d read books, he’d asked numerous scholars, he’d even tried asking a few monsters for the answer to his first quest. So far this had resulted in agonising cramp from the reading, being banned from 13 academies and libraries across the city, and a broken nose, collar bone and missing tooth. Admitadly, alcohol may have been involved in the physical injury and banning.
Rincewind looked down at Horace, who was now drowning his sorrows in his 9th pint of Mr. C.M.O.T. Dibbler’s Special Brew. He felt sorry for the poor ape, he must be in trouble if he was risking life and limb drinking Dibbler’s ale. This called for action. Firm, decisive and swift action. This needed action now. Right this second. Without a moments more hesitation. Rincewind wasn’t good at action, he was good at running away. He watched Horace finish his drink and attempt to stumble to the bar for another. Rincewind finally decided to help, thankfully before Horace went blind. Rincewind stretched out his arms, closed his eyes and wiggled his godly fingers. There was a fizzing noise, Rincewind opened an eye and watched Horace fall over himself and land unconscious on the floor.
Horace woke up in a hospital bed with a bandage wrapped around his head, he had the hangover from hell. It felt to Horace, as if a very large elephant had decided to live in his very small head and taken it upon himself to level the ground by stamping, lots and lots of stamping. He looked over to the bed next to him, an elderly gentleman lay in a very similar condition. Horace noticed the beard and tell tale pointy hat of a wizard. The hat was exceptionally pointy, clearly a high ranking individual. Horace was about to talk to the man, but thought better of it when opening his own mouth made the elephant in his head stamp harder.
Horace awoke again a few hours later, the elephant had decided to take a break, for now. He turned to the wizard, who was sat up in bed reading today’s issue of “The Godville Times”. Horace started talking to the wizard about the days news and activities. Horace moved the subject matter to wizarding, apparently the elderly wizard had once been Arch Chancellor of the Godville University of Magic. He managed to avoid the usual sticky end of Arch Chancellor’s by faking his own death. Tricky to do when some vindictive understudy is after your pointy shoes. Horace and the wizard finally got round to more intellectual aspects of conversation, after discussing in length the finites of Godville’s ales. Horace asked the man if he had any ideas on dividing by zero, the old man certainly was intelligent. This is the answer Horace received,
“Well my boy it all boils down to quantum, everything comes down to quantum if you think about it for long enough.”
The elderly wizard was right, it did all boil down to quantum, Horace was shocked that he hadn’t thought of it. Once he had recovered enough, he and the wizard parted company. He ran to find the old Mage and report his findings…