{dedicated to the inventor of the clock radio.}

HiPP1E was not amused. This was the 2nd time in as many weeks that Pilgrim had caused calamity on the bridge, almost blowing up the whole console previously, sending them into the uncharted wormhole-ridden spiraling reaches of deepspace, where they currently sat. Still. As he burst onto the bridge to the sight of an upturned chair, waving legs and flailing arms dancing in the strobing multi-colour wash or warning lights, HiPP1E's anger increased and his previously furrowed brow extended so low he could hardly see where he was heading. First things first, stop that hideous noise!

500 million light years away, and roughly two weeks prior as the crow flies (or at least as the crow would fly - if it were equipped with a brain capable of inventing, stealing or borrowing the technology required to travel at the speed of light across the vastness of space, and able to deal with the all that messy proximity of time stuff) Cagey wrestled with a camera. This was no ordinary camera, it was "the latest technology" which his years of experience had taught him to read as "almost not working" and "potentially infuriating", both of which never seemed clearly enough stated in the manual. He was a fan of technology, not manuals.

The extremely excited Japanese couple who had thrust this particular "latest technology" about Cagey's person were bouncing up and down in anticipation of their photograph being taken, some time soon. Cagey considered bouncing the camera sometime soon, "stupid sodding menu...gah!" ...he'd clearly pressed something he shouldn't have when fumbling and almost dropping the camera trying to simulate the actions of the young Japanese guy, who had given a one second "pless pless" lesson involving a lot of angular pointing and smiling. Clearly convinced of the competence of our intrepid hero he'd scuttled into his now assumed position, just in front of the giant Kermit outside of the Muppet3D Theater. He and his partner looked at each other, then back at Cagey with big beaming Japanese smiles, clapping hands and bouncing up and down with glee. Curiously, Cagey found pressing all of the buttons in an erratic semi-frustrated manner returned back to the main screen (camera designers take note)....from which he could indeed "pless", and "pless" once more to take the photo so highly anticipated. As if to re-enforce the enormity of the occasion, a crowd had gathered.

You may think even dancing warning lights and 100 decibels of Barry Manilow are not quite enough to wake the dead, but then technically speaking it really would depend upon which side of the line you stood when deciding someone is actually dead, possibly or even impossibly not dead. None of this mattered to Railbird anyway.

Sleep mattered to Railbird, he was older and wiser, he left all the worrying about probability and meta-physics to those who were paid to know that kind of stuff, and young enough to not feel intimidated. Unless you could hit it with a four iron, catch it on a line or cure it with a squirt of oil he simply didn't want or need to know, and if you insisted on telling him anyway he'd ignore you at first, then he'd glare at you and talk over you before you finished your sentence, obliterating your clever punch line with something about golf, fishing or a dead-cert twenty to one.

He was astonished more by the abrupt end to Copa Cabana than it's unannounced arrival. He'd even started humming it in his head, as you do with clock radios which are supposed to wake you in time for work, though mostly serve to accidentally delay you further by playing something you enjoy, which you feel compelled to listen to, right to the end, even though you'll be five minutes late.

One must never attempt to pre-empt the clock radio's choice of music by setting the alarm five minutes in advance, this is merely a poormans attempt at compensation for the duration of the song, "the song" which is not destined to happen at that point in time anyway. A hideous manifestation of a song always precedes the one you actually want to listen to, you will happen upon it if you attempt to meddle with things in this way, so be it on your own head, you have been warned.

The correct, and only way, is to advance space-time by five minutes, listen to your song, then wind back space-time and take your shower before the song finishes, you must not listen the second time, otherwise you'll happen upon yourself mucking about with space-time and cause a most awful and unfortunate paradoxical mess.

...the aghast silence seemed to jolt the whole ship back into it's previously restful state, Railbird sighed and reflected upon the last two weeks of this kind of precision torture. "Pilgrim", he muttered as he swung his angry legs out of the bunk, his toes touched the cold, silver, shiny floor like it was made of pack ice. He dragged himself upright, wobbled slightly and cast away the linen sheets which clung to him as if to try to tease him back into their pure, fresh white warmth. He opened one eye, just in time to catch the room slowly rolling to the left and banking away like a spitfire breaking formation, he stood and woozily staggered into a narrow nearby cubicle and grunted "on". He hated sonic showers, almost as much as he hated the dreadful thought that he might (along with everyone else on this giant piece of scrap metal waste-disposal ship) be, well, theoretically....dead.

"domo arigato" said the bowing Japanese tourist, as he deftly wrestled his "latest technology" out of the hands of Cagey, with the precision and efficiency of an assembly line robot. Re-acquainted he politely scuttled away whilst Cagey shrugged his shoulders and looked around, just at the edge of his vision he spotted the mexican lady he'd rudely ignored earlier in favour of staring up at the suddenly spaceship-less sky. He promptly made chase, he felt he should apologise.

Somewhere East of the Muppet 3D Theatre a telephone rang. Dust particles danced their way across the room, slowly drifting and spinning, moving back and forth in rhythm with the breathing face of a sleeping tall broad figure. The ringing stopped. Only the level of light illuminating the dust particles had the energy to change, everything else in the room seemed to sigh back into a warm, calming stasis. Once again the telephone smashed the silence as best it could, this time distorting it's ringer as if in irritation of the lack of attention from the sleeping giant. The caller hung up, in a fit of rage the telephone kept on ringing, sending dust particles spiraling out of control from the sheer force of it's sonic shrills until finally a giant tarantula-like hand pounced, clumsily swiping the telephone clean off the desk......much ado ensued, a great clatter and protesting "brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr".

Dr Crane tipped back in his leather executive chair, frustrated with the amount of phone calls suddenly appearing under the "call again" column of his spreadsheet. He needed to speak to these people, surely it wasn't asking too much for any one of them to answer. Just one? He quickly calculated in his head his percentage failure rate, the percentage re-tried so far and it's associated failure rate, the percentage not tried so far and predicted failure rate, took them all away from each other and ended up with five. "Better than a plastic penguin" he mused to himself as he counted down the list, "urrn, deur, twar, cat"....and pressed the enter key. The tarantula pounced once more..."hello?.....can I help you?" inquired a deep sleepy voice, "oh, hi....I wonder if you could...with a little problem, well it's kinda big, lets just call an apple an apple, Mac. A colleague gave me your number and said you may be able to help me out, or rather help me in....finding something, we seem to have misplaced one of our waste disposal units, or rather, displaced it". "I'm not sure I could help you with that", replied the deep slowly awakening voice, "it's not exactly my field, who gave you this number?" ..."let me see now, I just have the initials here BHD? now let me try and..." "that would make sense" interrupted the giant voice.

Meantime plus roughly two weeks into the future Railbird stepped out of the sonic shower. He didn't feel dead, well no more than usual for this time of the morning. Was it morning? "Ah, too hell with morning" he thought to himself "..who cares about daylight saving when you're theoretically dead?"