my name is not important.
you must come with me. terrible events are afoot. you must come or you'll be late.
what is your name, earthman?
late as in "the late dentarthurdent." it's a sort of threat you see. never been much good at them myself, but i'm told they can be terribly effective.
your friends are safe. you can trust me.
my name? very well.  my name is. slartibartfast.
i said it wasn't important.
i must warn you. we are about to pass through, well, a sort of gateway thing. it may disturb you. it scares the willies out of me.
i told you you might find it a bit disturbing.
did you know we built planets?
fascinating trade. doing the coastlines was always my favorite. used to have endless fun doing all the little fiddly bits round fjords. but the galactic economy collapsed, and seeing that custom- built planets are something of a luxury commodity.  at any rate, there's been a terrible mix up with your planet. you must come with me or it's all going to blow up in our faces. the best laid plans of mice, you know.
mmmm? what?
i don't think men have got much to do with it.
welcome to our factory floor.
the galaxy was a bit of a shambles, you see. everyone enjoying themselves being singers and comedians and really creative and interesting things like that. no one doing the boring jobs.
in spades. so a species was genetically engineered to do the boring jobs. tax inspectors, traffic wardens, government officials. we were commissioned to build a special planet for them. problem was, some cleverdick made it so any time one of the creatures had an interesting idea it would get a hefty smack around the face.
then i gather you've met some of the inhabitants.
relentless blighters.
here we are, then. look familiar?
actually, it was. this is a back-up. earth mark ii.
well, not me alone. it was a group effort. i did my part, though. ever heard of a place, i think it's called norway?
that was one of mine. won an award you know. lovely crinkly edges. i was sorry to hear about it being blown up. shocking cock up. the mice were furious.
are you a fan of plate tectonics?
voila! himalayas. good, eh?
earthman, you must realize that the planet you lived on was commissioned, paid for, and run by mice. it was destroyed shortly before the completion of the purpose for which it was built. ten minutes later, we would have been free and clear. but we gave them our standard ten million year warranty and they have come here to retrieve this back-up copy. and they've brought you with them.
these creatures you call "mice" are merely the protrusion into our dimension of hyper- intelligent pan-dimensional beings. the whole business with the cheese must've been a front. they were experimenting on you, you see. a vast computer program.
oh, i gather they arranged for you to conduct some primitively staged experiments so they could prod your thinking here and there. but you were actually elements in the computer program. they really are very clever hyper- intelligent pan-dimensional beings. ah. they've nearly finished the oceans.
that's bureaucracy for you.
that's just perfectly normal paranoia. everyone in the universe has that.
i don't know, perhaps i'm old and tired, but i always think that the chances of finding out what's really going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is say hang the sense of it and keep yourself busy. i'd much rather be happy than right any day.
no. that's where it all falls down of course. here we are, then.
pardon the interruption, but i'll just be getting back to work now.
but. they've nearly finished the oceans.
i've just been informed by some of the lads that since we're so near completion, we're going to go ahead and finish earth. we can put it back exactly the way it was when you left, you know -- unless there's anything you'd like to change. something you think your planet could do without?
okay. hold tight.