"What the fuck is that?"
"Buggered if I know."

It was dark. Well, darkish. The sort of dark where you can just see enough to reinforce exactly how dark it really is. You get the idea.
It was also cold and damp. In fact the night had all the attraction of a leaky shoe but without any of the fun.

"It hasn't moved in a bit though".
"Hmmm."
"But it makes groaning noises from time to time."
"Hmmm."

This conversation was being held on the side of a windswept, bleak, damp and altogether pretty unpleasant bit of moorland by two very damp sheep, called (for reasons best left to the imagination) Bugger and Molest.

"I've heard about these things" said Bugger the Sheep, "from my cousins in Wales. It's definitely a dragon."
"Hmmm," replied Molest, "it does look a bit odd doesn't it. I mean, there's smoke coming out of the front and it's got strange scaly markings on it. Isn't that writing on the side?"
"I think so."
"Can you read it?"
"Oh for heaven's sake I'm only a sheep you know. I didn't want to be a sheep. I wanted to be a slug."
"A slug?"
"Yeah. OK.. that's an M.. E.. G.. an A.. what's the next one?"
"a T?"
"OK.. T.. U.. R.. B.. O another R.. A again.."
"is that a one or an I?"
"I.. and an L"
"What does that spell?"
"Ummm... MEGATURBORAIL."
"What a funny name for a dragon," remarked Molest.

The dragon-thing suddenly let fly a shower of sparks and a huge puff of smoke.

"It's not a dragon, it's a 1927 S15 class steam locomotive," commented a voice.
"Bugger?"
"Not me. Who said that?"
"I did," said a little fluffy bunny-like creature.
"Oh hello, what's your name?" asked Bugger.
"Grantvix."
"And what do you do?"
"This..."

"What the fuck was that?" asked Bernardette the Gorilla, who was squeezed into a small third-class compartment of the MegaTurboRail train.

Her companion looked wide-eyed in terror. This was not partly due to the blood-curdling bleaty-scream that was coming from somewhere out in the dark, but mostly due to the fact that he was a Tarsier and... well, that's just how they look.

"[fizz]... [crackle]... we apologise for the late running of this train.. [bzzz]... due to the fact that it's a heap of [whrrrrr] and belongs in a [fzzzz] museum."

In addition to the gorilla and tarsier, the carriage contained two humans, a Slime Mould named Cyril, six Christian lemmings on a day trip and a green bug-eyed monster called Eric who worked for BT.

They were all carefully ignoring the noises from outside - although Eric did look up briefly when something large and wet hit the window and slid off.

The lemmings had starting to sing songs to keep their spirits up. The two humans were entertaining themselves in an obscenely biological way. The Slime Mould just sort of oozed.

"Will we be here long?" asked Arndale the Tarsier.

Bernardette looked at Arndale. It was hard not to, as he was about 6 inches long and had huge staring eyes and big, sensitive-looking ears.. oh and he was sitting on top of a huge steamer trunk which dwarfed him completely. Also he looked kind of cute.

"Dunno. I think they had to get fresh semolina for the engine or something."
"Oh."
"Yes."

There was a pause which really needed to be filled by conversation, even if just to drown out the sounds of happy-clappy singing and passionate sex.

"So where are you going?" asked Bernardette.
"To university... Broom."
"Really? That's where I am! I'm a second-year sociologist... what are you doing?"
"I have come to learn more about making underwear so I can help with my parent's clothing factory."
"Oh... interesting... what course is that?"
"I understand it is called 'Softwear Engineering' I think"
"Oh..."

Soon enough the train started on its way again, and it grundled as far as the next station, Carven Tree, where everyone had to get out and get onto another train to Broom. Bernardette the gorilla looked on sympathetically as Arndale carried his heavy trunk from one train to the next.

Then they had another MEGATURBORAIL ride trundling at a snail's pace (actually it was overtaken by several snails - admittedly giant racing snails, decked out in their British Racing Green shells) to Broom New Street station. Bernardette looked on even more sympathetically as little Arndale lugged his huge trunk out of the train, up the stairs, along the hall, down the other stairs (the escalators weren't working) and onto the little local train (when it eventually came).

When they got to the university Bernardette watched with enormous sympathy as Arndale the very small Tarsier sagged under the weight of his enormous trunk on the half mile walk up to High Hall where he disappeared wearily into the lift.

...but it didn't matter at Dr M Z Wombat had also been asleep for 4 days so that was all alright then.

When Arndale did wake up, he found that he was staying in a room that obviously hadn't been cleaned since about 1987 (there were about 150 sabbatical election leaflets in a pile next to the door). The room did, however, come with a number of extras such as a pile of plates with dried-up curry welded on and a window box full of unidentifiable dead plants.

Arnie decided that he had better go into the university to see what was going on. Also, he decided he might want to join one or two sensible societies at the Fresher's Fair being held in the Students' Union. Actually, the Union had called itself the "Noble Order of Students, Trainees, Researchers and Intellectual Lefties" (or NOSTRIL for short) in an attempt to go upmarket. It had a very fetching corporate logo.

He thought he'd better dress smartly, so he put on a pair of number 6 double-gussetted silk Y-fronts, a freshly ironed pair of jeans, a shirt and a tie and made his way to the lift...

Arndale walked down the path through the Vale and had a good look at the strange building half-submerged in the Lake, reachable only by a drawbridge guarded by a fierce looking white goose. It was a very dilapidated building, looking almost as if it had been blown up several times, patched back together again and finally given a coating of a very odd shade of green paint. It also had an illuminated sign (not actually illuminated) which said:

Arndale made a mental not never to go into this building if at all possible.

Not long after this he found a Sainsways shopping trolley just by the corner of Masonic Hall, and being a conscientious little tarsier, he decided to return it to its proper place.

He continued on his way with his trolley, but what he did not know is that having been asleep for 4 days he had missed the massed overseas student vetting by the City of Broom plc Rabies Control Unit, and they had just realised this.

In a little over half an hour 5000 City of Broom plc Rabies Control Unit operatives had the area sealed off, and had orders to shoot the suspect on site.

Luckily for Arndale, nobody knew what a tarsier looked like.

So, the small animal kept on pushing his Sainsways trolley down Eggbashton Park Road. But the trolley had no wobbly wheel, and soon it started to trundle out of control. In an effort to save it he jumped in, only to notice that the trolley was trundling towards the dreaded, busy and amusingly noisy Bristle Road...

The trolley skidded wildly out of control, and bounced and bumped its way until it ended with a thump in the car park of the "Gnu Barrel" public house in a pile of snow.

This was odd, thought Arndale, as cocaine was illegal. And then he realised that is wasn't that kind of snow.

"Wehey! I'm cold" thought Arndale.

It was at that point that fate intervened, or in fact a Sabbitacal occifer of Guild Offshore (or at least in the middle of a lake) Enterprises Intervened.

"That's my trolley yer bastard" said the unusually named Graham Epoch.
"Sorry" replied Arnie, who had a mouth full of snow and was foaming slightly.
"Fuck off you rabid git!" shouted the Sabb as he drew out a gun and shot Arndale dead.

Or at least would have done if he had been armed.

"Can I have it back, please?" asked Graham.
"OK" replied Arnie.
"Ta."
"By the way," remarked Arnie, "did you see that?"
"What that giant spaceship that just crashlanded into that unseasonal snowdrift?"
"Yes."
"No," replied Graham.

There was a pause.

"Ummm look," said Arnie "can you tell me how to get to the Students' Union?"
"You're not a student are you? I hate students." *
"Umm yeah... can you tell me where it is?"
"OK.. hang on.. umm I forget.. what does it look like.. oh yeah.. there it is!" ** Graham pointed at a mock-Elizabethan (Elizabeth II that is) building sitting on top of a small rise about 100 metres away.
"Ta."
"sOrrite"

* you may find this odd that an SU Sabbitacal hates students, but since Graham got elected on the slogan "All Students Are Scum" by an easy margin, you shouldn't be too surprised.

** oh yes, his other slogan was "What The Fuck Is A Students' Union Anyway?".

Arndale climbed up the hill and entered through the nearest available door. This was to prove to be a mistake as big as Gary Glitter getting his PC serviced, as he tundled up the stairs and found himself in the offices of Stage Staff.

At that moment, Stage Staff were having a slide presentation of old lighting rigs up and down the country. People were currently oohing and aahing at the rig found in the Tunbridge Wells Opera House.

Arndale cleared his throat.

"Huhuhuhuaaaaaaarrrrchhhhhhhhhuuuuuuuutttthhhhhhppppppp[f/x splot] oh sorry."

Everyone stared at him.

"Ummm I'd like to join" said Arnie.

"Certainly," said a rather too-quick-off-the-mark hedgehog called Sidney, "that'll be £5000 per year, or £10 for three years..."

Meanwhile, over in the Muirhead tower, Dr. M.Z. Wombat was holding his first tutorial of term in the paternoster, for a laugh.

As he was in charge, and also rather overweight these days, he got a paternoster to himself, which meant that nobody had a chance of hearing him, so he didn't even bother to speak. He had already done the important part which was to hand out the reading list which contained mostly books written by himself which the students would have to go out and buy.

After a while he got bored of this and got out of the paternoster next time it came round to the ground floor. There Migglezimblatt (for it was he) noticed a small piece of string lying on the floor.

He tried to pick it up, but discovered that it wasn't a small piece of string after all, but a longer piece of string going into a hole in the floor. When he pulled on it, more string came out of the hole.

Miggy hauled on the string, and more and more came out. There was some resistance, but not much. He kept on pulling out more string. Suddenly he noticed that:

• the floor was covered in messy piles of string
• a small Wallaby (whose name was Wendy) from his tutorial group was standing watching him.

"And that," said Miggy in his tutorial-finishing voice, "is why you should never leave a string unterminated."

With that he strode out of the Tower where a strange sight met his eyes.

One side of the tower had been pulled up and was all bunched up and concertina'd somewhere near the top, like a venetian blind gone wrong.

And from the now-exposed rooms, three dozen pink pachyderms were parachuting down rather fast towards him...

"Fuck me!" said Miggy, and for the first time in several years, he fainted...

Meanwhile...

Over the skies of Broom the clouds started to shoot across the sky and a low throbbing could be heard. A huge disk appeared over the horizon until it filled the sky. Within the blackness of the disk could be seen flashing lights and strange yet artificial shapes. Think expensive special effects here: like Independence Day only more so. Some people ran from their houses screaming. Others wrote strong letters to Any Questions. The national grid shorted out. Thunder roared, lightning flashed, Cliff Richard started singing. The throbbing stopped abruptly and a small circle of light appeared in the centre of the disk, directly over the University campus. The circle grew, and an intense white beam shot down. Surprisingly, nothing happened. Then, a small dark globe appeared within the circle of light and slowly descended to the ground. A hatch opened and out stepped two surfer dudes in Hawaian shorts, and two pneumatic blonde babes in badly designed bikinis, and in unison, they chanted "Like... groovy".

The usual sort of people who turn up at alien visitations appeared, and Michael Whinner stepped forward.
"Like... who is this dude?" asked one of the babes.
"Well... Francois Truffle is dead, so they asked me" replied Whinner. "You look strangely familiar" he continued.
"Like... yeah" said the taller (and better hung) of the surfer dudes. "We have intercepted your communications, and became very impressed by your early 1950s American Teen Beach Musical films starring Frankie Avalon, and so we have changed our formerly slug-like bodies into the forms you see. We come from the ice moon of Ipswich in search of thermal underwear. The ship you see is part of an intergalactic tarsier survey team. We read the mind of one such creature and discovered your `soft wear department'."
"Ice moon?" asked Whinner. "Yes" replied the well-hung dude. "It used to be a warm and pleasant world until hordes of Ewoks descended and removed all our trees to create their Forest Moon. Now we suffer due to the inadequate thermal properties of beachware."

On the sidelines, Miggy listened. Thoughts of intergalactic trade resulted in dollar signs appearing in his eyes and the sound of a cash register being operated, like a cliche from a Hanna-Barbara cartoon. How to convert a computer science department over to mass production of thermal underwear? There was only one person who could help: He would need a video archive and a time machine... it was time to summon Mike Baldwin.

Whilst miggy was musing on how best to summon Mike Baldwin, he grew tired and fell asleep, during a particularly lucid section of REM sleep he had a nightmare. It went like this...

[f/x wavey fade into dream sequence]

Miggy was considerably older than he was now and had moved away from Broom. He was also married and had two baby wombats (no that's not the nightmare). He was enjoying a general slowing-down in life and had just had a milestone birthday. As part of the celebrations of this birthday a few friends and himself had revisited Broom with the intention of visiting a few old nighttime haunts, drinking far too much cider and falling down a lot. He believed this would be the last major "bash" of this type as the days when he could "strutt his funky stuff" (and generally throw his still ample fur about all night) were drawing to a close.

Or so he believed.

Having consumed the aforementioned "far too many ciders^TM" he hit the dance floor with an energy he thought had left him years ago. Although admittedly he didn't recognise most of the music being played he found it generally agreeable. As the night drew to a close he became increasingly aware that one particular female wombat (of the many gorgeous ones he had been looking at all night) was smiling at him. This being such a rare occurrence he decided he would like to leave Broom knowing what her name was. So he asked.

A brief conversation ensued which contained approximately two sentences where Miggy spoke his mind about how gorgeous he thought the female wombat was, after which he left and returned to his friends who were preparing to leave as it was now 2am. A few seconds later he found a small piece of paper being handed to him. Puzzled, he opened it and to his sheer amazement found it contained a series of digits, beginning with "0121". Miggy was feeling particularly pleased with himself at this point but threw the piece of paper away as he was already married.

His friends and himself staggered outside and milled around a bit, engaging in the traditional arguments concerning which local eatery was going to ultimately benfit from part of their wages, when he noticed that one of their number was missing. He looked around and saw his friend, approximately 10 yards away engaged in conversation with a couple of female wombats. Within minutes his friend was "getting on famously" with one of them when the other turned round and Miggy recognised her as the smiley one from inside the club.

Seing as how there seemed to be no imminent decision being reached about the group's next destination, Miggy decided to have a few more words with the female wombat. he barely had time to say "hello again" before she pounced on him. Miggy was stunned into defencelessness as her passionate kisses searched ever deeper. He could not help but reciprocate, even though he knew it was wrong. Shortly he pulled away and, catching his breath, told the female wombat that he was married and that nothing was going to happen.

But he turned out to be wrong...

[f/x wavey fade back into reality]

Miggy woke with a start, sweating like a wombat, and feeling glad it was all a bad dream. The problem was, he couldn't seem to forget the name "Natalie".

Meanwhile, in the building across the road from Miggy, Lars the Labrador was shaking Sven the Spaniel awake. They were PhD students in the Broom University Institute of Bizarre Thingies and Hard To Explain Studies and they had been conducting an experiment which involved Sven sleeping a lot, one of his favourite activities.

"Well? Did it work?" asked Lars, who was a blond scandinavian labrador BTW.
[f/x yawn] "Um. Dunno. What was that dream supposed to be about again?"
"Natalie the young wombat. We got it from that old married wombat dude, remember? About his night out with the lads etc?"
"No... nothing like that... just a dream about a man with very long legs and pork chops tied to his knees... WOOF!"
"Calm down, I'll just check the equipment". Lars went over to the bizarre contraption which was his PhD project. It looked like a big pile of scrap held together with millions of optic fibres, which was fair enough as much of it was made from components he had salvaged from skips outside the back of the Applied Cybernetics dept and the School of Computer Science. In the midst of it all (and providing the main dream-inducing engine of his invention) was the remains of a Dalek. This dalek had for many years been elected by the students to go to NUS conference, but finally its conference-going days were over and its water pistol squirted no more, so it had been scrapped.

As the dream-machine needed a lot of space to be properly set up, the whole lot was mounted on a rickety wooden cart.

"Hmm," said Lars, "the right dream is definitely loaded. But it looks like the focal length is all wrong, I must have projected the dream much too far away from you. I'll just need to log into multics and run my calculations again..."

However, Sven wasn't listening, he had climed up onto the cart to look out of the window. He was looking, not at Miggy walking past, but at a rather attractive and leggy student.

"Phwoar, look at the legs on that! I could give either of them one, any day! Coooor!"

Sven was wagging his tail so hard that the cart began to shake violently, rattling the equipment.

"Stoppit!" Lars barked angrily, "see, see will you? You're breaking my cart, you're shaking my conference dalek!"

Meanwhile, Miggy had reached the car park and was climbing into his purple and green polka-dot Ferrari (his one last remaining expensive item from his days as a mega rock star). Still, one day soon he hoped to be rich again, if he could just find Mike Baldwin to help him produce lots of softwear for the scantily clad aliens. He drove out of the University and headed for Pebble Mill, where he had heard they still had the original time tunnel from "Time Tunnel" stored in the basement somewhere.

Unfortunately, in his excitement he started driving much too fast down the amusingly busy Bristle Road, and he got stopped and pulled over by a policeman.

"Book me!" said Miggy, and fainted.

Meanwhile, somewhere else, Arndale the Tarsier was hurrying through Broom looking for a garden centre. His new friends in Stage Staff had told him that every trendy student these days should have a mobile fern.

Meanwhile...
Those surfer dudes and babes needed soft wear. In all the cosmos, the most productive source of fabrics was the Coronation Street clothes factory run by Mike Baldwin in the 1970s. Miggy knew how to get there. He needed a source of unreality and a time machine. Unreality came from his archive of Daily Mail editorials for the past 20 years. The time machine was deep in the bowels (metaphorically speaking) of the Pebble Mill studios. After weeks of work, concentrating the editorials into a small glowing flask of suppurating and radioactive unreality, Miggy entered the large intestine (metaphorically speaking, although appropriately rather smelly) of the studios.

Deep underground, Miggy located a room that stretched as far as the eye could see, and, oddly, much further. The occasional static discharge sparked between machines that seemed to distort the fabric of reality. Miggy walked slowly across the room. Drawn, more by instinct than intellect, he found a worn cable covered by dust and abandoned TV scripts. Brushing aside a page labelled Dixon of Dock Green - Alien Invasion Miggy followed the cable until he found what he was looking for - a large switch labelled POWER - don't turn on unless you seriously want to distort reality, man. He threw his weight against the switch, and as it clunked into position, the room filled with light and bad special effects.

This was it. After 30 years, the Time Tunnel was back in action.

Miggy walked up to a control panel. After pressing buttons at random, he threw the ultimate source of unreality into the Time Tunnel, then ran in after. Strangely, before the rather feeble special effect that threw him into the maelstrom of temporal dimensions, Miggy's last thought was of Bette Lynch.

There are a thousand stories on the mean streets of the big city.

A thousand stories of anger, hate, jelousy, love and passion.

A thousand stories of the struggle against everyday life.

A thousand stories never to be told.

But this story is about a garden centre and a small tarsier who was attempting to buy a mobile fern.

After browsing fruitlessly amongst the plants in Grantvix's Universal Houseplants for the best part of an hour, Arndale finally plucked up the courage to ask a shop assistant.

The assistant looked quite cute and furry, and she had a name badge on saying Miss Grantvix.

"Ummm excuse me, I'm looking for a plant"
"Well, you've come to the right place." She beamed a dazzling smile, but if Anrdale had been paying attention, he might have been concerned about Miss Grantvix's multiple rows of razor-sharp teeth. Instead he was too busy trying to look down her blouse. "What sort of plant are you after?"

Arndale said that he'd been told to get a mobile fern.

"Hmm... we don't have any of those. We do have one of these however..."

Miss Grantvix led him over to a display with a very large, not very attractive plant that looked a bit like a cross between a Sunflower, Amaryllis and Venus Fly-Trap. If was about 10 foot tall, and had a row of little pods around the base of the stem. It was chained to a sturdy-looking pole.

"Is that a fern?"
"Not exactly. It is the only plant we have that is mobile, though. It's latin name is Vegetatis Mobilis. We like to call it a triffid."
"OK, how much is it?"

Miss Grantvix told him. Man, this was going to be expensive.

"Look at it this way," said the assistant, "you'll save loads of money of bus fares, and the thing practically feeds itself."

Arndale looked doubtful, at which point the triffid pulled against its chain and started to drum rapidly on the pods at the base.

"Awww look, she likes you," cooed Miss Grantvix, "it would be a shame to disappoint her!"

Reluctantly, Arndale handed over his Sumatran Express card.

Something was badly wrong.

Miggy stepped out from the cheapo-swirly special effects and found himself standing in Mike Baldwin's factory, circa 1979.

At least, that's what his digital watch said.

The factory had been abandoned, seemingly part way through an afternoon shift. Everything was covered in dust. On the wall a calendar read "March 1974".

So, he stepped outside the unlocked doors of the factory and into the Street outside. Everything had the same air of desolation.

Next stop was the Rovers Return.

Something was badly wrong here as well.

Arndale was clinging to the stem of the triffid, attempting to steer it out of the shop, but it seemed that it had a mind of its own.

Lurch-lurch went the triffid. It had come as a suprise to Arndale that:

1. the plant came with no instructions, apart from a small booklet in Japanese.
2. it appeared to be called Tricia. Tricia Triffid. How naff.
3. that people were running away screaming

After an hour of lurching, the triffid stopped outside a large white building with the letters BBC written on it.

Also after an hour of lurching, Arndale lost his lunch, but that is a different story (The Saga of Arndale's Lost Lunch in fact).

"Hmmm, something's not right here," thought Miggy, surveying the empty pub. It took him quite a lot of work with his theodolite to survey it fully, but when he'd finished he still couldn't work out why nobody was around, so he left again. He walked back into the time tunnel and with the usual f/x went back to where he came from.

Unfortunately, just as he floated back into Pebble Mill, he met a large blob of sick floating the other way.

"Urgh" thought Migglezimblatt, trying to wipe the worst of it off himself, as he landed in a corridor next to a green and white tarsier and a triffid which was busy eating a researcher.

Still wiping his eyes, he stumbled through some doors and was met with a strange sight. However strange sights were part of everyday life for Miggy, so it didn't faze him one bit, though it did very nearly phaser him.

"We need more power to the microwave or we'll never make it, captain" a black vulcan in a chef's hat was saying.
"Delia to engineering! I need more power!" shouted the woman in the captain's seat.
"Torres here," replied the intercom, "we could re-modulate the pulse phase of the warp core, but it'll take 20 minutes, and that's not counting the time to chop the vegetables."
"You've got 10 seconds, or my souffle's ruined!" snapped Delia.
"Captain, we've got 3 Klingon birds of prey off the port bow!" exclaimed someone else.
"Shields up, and tell Neelix to prepare a game sauce" said Delia.

Miggy pulled on a lycra top and some flares and prepared to go look for Seven Of Nine in some nice dark part of the ship. But just then, a malfunction in the point-to-point transporter beamed him out of the building and he found himself back at the University under the clock tower.

Luckily all the students were having a 70s retro phase so he didn't look at all out of place in his flares.

Miggy was just wondering whether the flask of unreality he had thrown into the time tunnel was anything to do with the merging of Star Trek and a cookery programme when a dalek trundled past in the distance. But when Miggy looked more closely it turned out to be the recycled remains of a dalek on top of some other equipment on a cart pulled by two dogs.

Just then Miggy had another thought... if he could find Mike Baldwin maybe he could make other types of clothing and make even more money. He could make fur coats for the Furengi, cardigans for the Cardigassians, pervy rubber suits for the Vulcans, lycra gear for the Clingons, and so on.

However, he had no idea where to find a bunch of 70s soap opera characters who been translated by the unreality source into this universe.

So he went to a disco instead.

Miggy stood in the corner of the disco, watching young kids strutting their stuff in exotically coloured clothes. There was something strange here, something Not Quite Right. As reworked versions of Bee Gees songs started to play Miggy suddenly realised with a growing sense of terror - this was dangerously embarassing.

[It it possible to actually die of embarassment? When this interesting and oddly relevant question was put to TV celebrity psychologist Raj Persil, he replied "Yes". So there.]

Miggy crept out past drunken students with Leo Sayer haircuts. On the way out he caught a glimpse of himself in a conveniently placed full-length mirror. That long crumpled raincoat! He was caught in a Columbo revival, and had no choice but to do the decent thing and solve the mystery of What Was Going On in a worthy 1970's detective kind of way, while being interrupted every 20 minutes by adverts for Shake'n'Vac and Fairy Liquid. Oh well, at least he wasn't McCloud... In the cold night air, walking into the distance behind the end-of-episode credits. Miggy stopped and cleared his throat. He was obviously feeling a little horse.

"Let go of me you pervert!!" screamed Tuesday the Shunicorn and galloped off into the night.

"What a bizarre thingy" thought Miggy. Suddenly, he had an idea how to go about finding out what was going on.

The next morning, Professor Moley shuffled into the common room of the Institute of Bizarre Thingies and Hard To Explain Studies only to be greeted by his research student Lars the Labrador.

"Hi Prof! Wow, really fab tie there" remarked Lars.

"But I've been wearing this tie since 1974... and nobody else has ever said that before... how bizarre..." muttered the professor. "I suppose everything comes back into fashion eventually, I wonder if there's a formula for it. Odd that every single person who works here should suddenly be so fashion conscious though, that's never happened before either," he pondered, though the various flares-clad staff and tank-topped students knew better than to listen to his almost continuous ramblings.

"Good morning professor," said his secretary Julie as he entered his office. "there's a Migglezimblatt the Wombat here to see you."
"Is he a cuddly toy wombat?" enquired the mole.
"No, a real wombat" Julie replied, giving him a funny look which he didn't notice, "I'll show him in, shall I?" Moley nodded.

"Hello professor Moley" started Miggy as he was shown in.
"Ah, Migglezimblatt, what do you know about...

...the zombies in the graphics lab?"

"Only that they've been there for years, why?"
"Just curious"
"That's not why I came to see you... professor, is it me or is there a very serious seventies craze going on?"
"A craze? Possibly..." mused the mole, "but serious? I doubt embarrassment levels could reach terminal severity in any normal circumstances, why do you ask?"
"Well, I'm looking for Mike Baldwin, only I had an accident with a time machine and an unreality source, and I think he might be in the present day now, only I need to find him so that he can help me make lots of clothes for the scantily clad aliens so that I can make lots of money and buy back MiggyCorp and become rich and famous again."
"When was this?"
"Yesterday"
"Well that has nothing to do with the seventies revival then, it's been going on for weeks, around here at least, it seems to have taken longer to spread more widely..." Professor Moley leaned back in his chair and gazed out into the pleasant woodland surrounding the Institute. "What we need is a way of measuring the seventies influence, that might provide some insight into what's going on and lead us to your fictional character."
"How would we do that then?" asked Miggy.
"Well, the simplest way of measuring seventies-ness would be to construct a slade rule..."

"Mama, you're all crayzee now!" replied Miggy.

During this conversation, Sven the spaniel had been quietly working on the dream machine. Well at least it started quietly, but his gentle adjustments with the claw hammer had been getting louder and louder, to the point where the din was now quite obtrusive.

"Come on!" shouted the Professor, "I can feel the noise".

As the professor and Miggy left the building, Julie wished everybody a merry Christmas. Miggy thought that something odd was definately going on.

"As an aside", began the professor, "Have you ever had a Lucid dream?"
"Yes, twice only". Replied Miggy.
"Aha!" said the professor. "I think we have one of them on the dream recorder. Can you tell me about the other one?".
"Certainly" replied Miggy. "It sort-of followed on from the first one."

"Eurgh, how did this bit of fur get in my frying pan!" exclaimed Neelix, and fished it out.

Later... the unique and terrifying situation of a professor's (Moley's) tie being fashionable roused Miggy into something resembling lack of apathy. As Miggy and Moley walked through to the staff room in search of a 'cup of tea' as possibly semi-legal substances were termed, Miggy noticed several corpses in a state of particularly putrescent and nauseating decay: many more than usual in a red-brick university. When asked for an explanation Moley explained that in recent days some of the students had, on sight of his tie frothed at the mouth and collaped. Assuming this was no more that the usual response to the Student Union 'beef' burgers, Moley was not surprised.

Miggy took out his Slade rule (which had been finished just in time for this chapter), which made a sort of nice 'beep' sound as it flicked open, and several artistically placed lights on one end flashed enthusiastically.
"Hmm" said Miggy "I read 100.9 milliAbbas - some serious 70s influence here."
"Interesting" replied Moley "I think its time for quick edit to the next scene".

Following the ever-increasing 70s reading, Miggy and Moley approached a strange-looking forest on the outskirts of the university.
"Strange trees" exclaimed Miggy.
"They are most likely from Alpha Centauri" said Moley.
"Really?" asked Miggy.
"Yes" replied Moley. "Many years ago I was send an evelope labelled 'rare life forms from a nearby star - please plant' so obviously I followed the instructions."
"They have odd patterns on their trunks" said Miggy.
"Probably something alien" replied Moley "Hold on". Moley took out a small device. "This was given to me my one of the producers of Star Trek TNG as a reward for my detailed suggestions of Klingon sexual practices - it's a Universal translator and allows me to read all alien dialects."
Moley clicked on the device. The patterns on the tree trunks were instantly readable. "Look at this one" said Moley "It reads... Pl... something."
"Something else is odd here" said Miggy.
"You mean the way each tree looks like some alien cylinder that has been slighly burnt during atmospheric entry then experienced a paracute landing?" Miggy replied.
"No" said Moley "I mean that all the squirrels are wearing flares"

They wandered through the forest, tracing the ever-increasing Abba readings of the Slade rule. "Look over there" said Miggy "Those horses - they are acting very strangely".
"Yes" said Moley "Crazy horses, yeah, yeah".

"This is it" said Miggy. "This tree looking strangely like a cylinder from outer space is the source of the 70s potential. Look at the inscription on the bark - it says Plan 87b".
"On no!" shouted Miggy "time for an expected

...But before Miggy could finish his sentence an identical cylinder shot up from the gound underneath where he was stood. In an amazing coincidence, exactly the same thing happened to Bugger and Molest the Sheep. Not long after, Moley also found himself similarly transported.

"I feel like an Urban Spaceman" noted Moley.

These cylinders catapulted them hundreds of miles northwards to a strange and mystic land...

T'was Bradford, and the slimy tourists did gather and guffaw at Wasim's, for all mouldy was the Balti and the Gulab Jaman outdated.

"Fear not the Wombat" said a voice as a figure burst from the bushes brandishing a breadknife. "My name is Al".
"Al what?" questioned Miggy.
"No, Al Iteration" said the figure as he fumbled fruitlessly for fresh figures of speech.
"Sorry, Say that again" said Miggy.

Moley kicked Miggy in that sort of "You stupid twat he must have heard that a million times before" kind of way.
"Not another crappy character created purely to proliferate pathetic prose!" uttered Miggy.

Just then Bugger and Molest frolicked into view and strange things started to happen: Molest exploded, giving Bugger a graphic understanding of what SCSI stood for. (Spontaneously Combusting Sheep In-the-face).

Four Candles all called Ron rolled up.

3 Pink pachyderms parachuted in by air but completely missed their target and ended up Lost in Leeds. One of the pachyderms was so upset about this that he ate one of the others and told the third where he could shove his pastis.

Another new figure burst into view. "My name's Putty Knife" said the figure. "Now we're really scraping the bottom of the barrel!" remarked Miggy.

Cracks in the plot began showing.
"Hello" said one of the cracks.
"Morning" said another one, wisely.

Miggy, never one to be put off by strange phenomenon which would stun mere mortals rigid, immediately rushed through one of the cracks with gay abandon and fell into E-space. (Or was it fluidic space, or sub-space? - he never could remember). Gay was dischuffed at being hijacked.

145,600 members of species 8472 approached him, all murmuring "yeah" simultaneously and at the same time. Miggy wasn't worried however as he could see that they were some way off. Due to Eddies in the space-time continuum (who seemed to crop up more frequently than Normalities in the space-time continuum, but Normality wasn't jealous) Miggy heard four snippets of future conversations. They were "Ainted", "Twat", "Ng" and "Fk" and would come to be regarded at the four snippets of the apocalypse.

Bendix the incontinent washing machine tumbled into view, closely followed by Toby the Tram Engine for no adequately explored reason. Four figures suddenly appeared and they were so large they towered over Miggy. (Aside: since Miggy is a wombat, towering over him is not difficult).

"Fuck Off" said Miggy, "I've had enough of Dodgy characters suddenly appearing and throwing me completely off the plot. "Why can't something normal happen to me instead?".

But the dodgy characters persisted:
"We are Arial, Helvettica, Times New Roman and Zapf Dingbats - the four fonts of the apocalypse".
"Look!" shouted Miggy angrilly. "I'm getting sick of this".

The fonts were about to boldly underline their points, but only succeeded in splitting their infinitives.
"Oh bollocks I'm off for a /" said Arial.
"We'd better go before Frank the Crinkly Wabbit appears looking for ^s" noted Helvettica. Zapf Dingbats simply lit his | and the aroma of # filled the air.

Suddenly another new character burst into view.

"Hi, my name's..." started the character.
"FUCK OFF!" shouted everybody loudly.

"Alright already!" replied D'kaan fr_^$ong. "Bloody homourless twats" he muttered as he sulked off the scene.

A dozen Angry Users burst on the scene.

"Now look here!" said the scene angrily. "I'm sick and tired of people just coming in and bursting all over me. Have some respect for the plot will you".
The plot said nothing and continued resting in a corner, for he was severely shattered.

"That's my line" said Al.
"Fuck off!" said the scene. "I'm running the show here".
"Well who died and made you God?" asked God rhetorically. "Oops. Sorry. please continue!".

After a short pause (who was pissed off because things always happend around him and never starring him), the scene continued. But he was interrupted by the dozen Angry Users.

"As we were saying" they began.
"But you weren't!" said Miggy.
"FUCK OFF!" chorussed everyone at Miggy.
"As I would like to say", began one of the users, "Everybody just got a copy of a report I sent to my boss earlier".
"What were you doing at the time?" asked Miggy.
"Nothing!" they all said in unison.

After a long and protracted conversation, during which Al, the scene, the four fonts of the apocalypse, Bendix, Toby, Gay, Putty, Moley, Bugger and Molest had all got bored, sat down and brewed up, it came to light that one of the users had been seeing the words "Game Over" in his word documents for a few weeks without telling anyone. Miggy drew up a list of actions and held a vote as to what should be done to the user. The results were:

To be Hung, Drawn and Quartered: (Traitor's death)	30%
To be castrated: (Excruciatingly painful death)	25%
Be tied to a rock and be eaten alive by birds: (Mythological death)	20%
Be forced to shag the Queen Mother: (Royal death)	15%
Be read The Compleat Wombat in one sitting: (Brian death)	10%
Have Windows NT security explained to them: (Certain death)	5%
To be gang-punned by a band of Richard Whiteleys: (died and gone to hell)	0%

The outcome of the vote would have been legally binding were it not for two minor faults:

1. The results indicated someone had voted twice.
2. Nobody voted for the last entry but it still appeared on the list.

"Well it was such a good idea that I couldn't resist incuding it" said Bugger. "But you then voted for something else?" queried Molest, pulling himself together.

Bugger went away to ponder the flaws in his logic, but most people call it masturbation.

Miggy could feel the winds of change blowing him...

...through a smoky landscape. All the users, fonts, candles and sheep seemed to evapourate slowly. The only thing which didn't evapourate was Professor Moley who remained standing by Miggy as they found themselves back in the wood with a heavy pall of smoke behind them.

"Weird!" exclaimed Miggy.
"Yes" replied Moley "did you have those massive sideburns before that happened?"
"No! Were you wearing that massive tie?"
"Yes."

Miggy and walked towards the cylinder. No birds sang in this region of the forest, and a thin, almost imperceptible haze of mist or smoke hung just above the ground.

"I think this smoke must definitely be the source of the seventies influence," announced Moley.

"Wait" said Moley as he and Miggy approached the cylinder. "There is an emergency webcast on my new CyberNetTVWatch."

They watched as a familiar face appeared on the 15" screen which extended from Moley's wrist watch.

"This is Ade Kateah reporting from Broom where the death rate is increasing hour by hour. People are dropping dead of embarassment as kipper ties reach frightening proportions. Fortunately my perfect taste and style make me immune to all this. Back to the studio..."

"That must explain our survival" explained Moley.

"Plan 87b is an odd thing to call a cylinder, isn't it?" asked Miggy, examining the metal cylinder which, with its parachute canopy was perfectly disguised as a tree from Alpha Centauri. It turned out that the thin haze of smoke seemed to be coming from a series of small vents set low down on the cylinder. Suddenly Miggy found a small lever, so, even though he should have known better by now than to do things like this, he pulled the lever.

A circle of orange lights flashed around the cylinder and even more smoke started to pour out from various places. A siren sounded, then with a loud pop the top of the cylinder shot up vertically, and a huge cloud of smoke rolled out. As the smoke started to clear, Miggy and Moley saw a dark robed figure standing beside the cylinder. From deep within the hood a repulsive croaking voice spoke.

"Welcome! Let me introduce myself. I am Fimblezorgblatt your evil twin brother and a Dark Lord of the Spliff. You will join me in the destruction of the Earth. It is your destiny."

"Gosh" thought Miggy. "All this time and I never knew I had an evil twin." But he decided he'd better humour what was obviously a madwombat, who didn't even look much like him, although admittedly his repulsive croaking voice did sound a lot like Miggy's after a long night smoking dodgy cigs. "So, how do you plan to destroy the planet, Mr. Fimblezorgblatt?"
"The plan, plan 87b, is already begun! For several years I have been exposing the population to our secret weapon, and soon the entire population will be dead of embarassment! Behold!"

Fimbly pulled from his belt a shiny object, and pressed a button on it. A beam of light emerged, growing wider and wider as it got longer. Smoke began to pour from the wide end - smoke with a very familiar smell to Miggy.

"It's - it's a lightspliff!" exclaimed Moley. "Migglezimblatt, it looks like we're up against the Stoned Ones!"
"Uh?" asked Miggy.

"And now join me or face your destiny." Said Fimbly.
"Run!" cried Moley, then he started to croak and finger his collar as Fimbly pointed a gloved hand at him. Fortunately at that point the lid of the cylinder fell back down through the mist and hit Fimbly on the head. Moley recovered and threw the slade rule to Miggy.
"Press the Emergency button" yelled Moley.
Miggy pressed a red button and the rule turned orange and started to hum. With a 'swoosh' sound two beams of light grew out of each end, one red, the other green.
"Wow!" exclaimed Miggy. "Its a traffic light sabre."

Miggy advanced on Fimbly, trafficlightsabre in front of him. Fimbly advanced as well.
"So... Moley has taught you well. Prepare to meet your destiny, young Zimblatt... it is your destiny."
"Fuck me!" thought Miggy and decided to put off fainting until a less dangerous moment in the saga.

There was a kind of zapping sound and sparks flew as the trafficlightsabre and the lightspliff crossed. As Miggy and Fimbly duelled, Professor Moley was wandering towards the Plan 87b cylinder...

"Oh looky here" said Moley to no-one in particular "There is a button labelled Pump reverse. I wonder if anyone would mind if I pressed it." And so he did. Yet more lights on the cylinder flashed as a high-pitched whining sound started. All the smoke started to rush back into the cylinder. Fimbly and Miggy started to be pulled along. Miggy fetched up behind a tree where he encountered Moley who had run there after pushing the button.
"Hold on" he called to Miggy "And don't look".

All the smoke gathered into a huge column above the cylinder, carrying the lid with it, shooting up towards the clouds, and then suddenly all the smoke collapsed down into the cylinder and the lid crashed down on top, fitting perfectly. Moley and Miggy staggered out from behind the tree. There was no trace of Fimbly, apart from a battered and still gently smoking light spliff. "I'll bet we have not seen the last of him" smirked Miggy.

"Hmm... so the Stoned Ones have returned to Earth!" remarked Moley. "This could be a case for Moley and Scullder."
"Who? asked Miggy.
"Scullder is my partner... I am a member of an underground organisation sworn to protect the planet from the Stoned Ones," replied the mole. "You must excuse me now, there is much to be investigated." With this, Moley disappeared down a nearby convenient plothole.

Miggy pondered for a moment, trying to remember dim details of his youthful past. "I wonder... didn't Jimbles know something about the Stoned Ones? If only I had a way of contacting him..."

Meanwhile, elsewhere...

Scullder the Lemur was working away at a particularly difficult autopsy: An secret elephant which had died of excess alcohol intake in France. This was to be the paris poisioning of pachyderm by pernod case. This brought back fond memories of Scullder's past work with Moley. He would find strange rotting things that looked weird and she would cut them up and put them into jars. Each week the Broom catering department would drop by to pick up the samples. They worked well together; Moley with his rampant paranoia, Scullder with her refusal to accept that the intergalactic spaceships which repeatedly abucted her were anything to do with aliens. But there was a dark side to their past. A shadowy figure with fur and short legs... the spliff- smoking wombat.

Two weeks later, Miggy was drifting across the Atlantic Ocean in a balloon, a lone wombat drifting across the sky, except for the large seagull which he was following at a discreet distance.

Clearly a long flashback scene was going to be necessary, so Miggy sat back in the balloon and drifted off into a fitful doze.

It had all begun back in Broom. After Professor Moley had left Miggy had gone over to Elms Road to check his e-mail, and a nearby space hippy had been watching a webcast from the BBC news site.

Ade Kateah had been reporting on the continuing death toll due to people catching the seventies craze and then dying of embarrassment. It seemed that despite putting the lid back on the Plan 87b cylinder, the effects were still being felt. Almost the entire population of Broom had been wiped out, and the population had been decimated throughout the midlands, except in the nearby town of Carven Tree where nobody had any sense of style so nobody perished.

"Oh no!" exclaimed Miggy, "we're all going to die after all!" and disgraced himself.
"So why aren't we dead yet?" asked the space hippy.
"Dunno," replied a nearby SERF revolutionary, "I think this building must be pretty airtight, I've been in here a week and I haven't even been tempted to get a small medallion."
"Then we're all going to have to stay in here until it's safe!" said the space hippy, and sat down for a good long game of SNOKER with the speed and deceleration values set very low.

Three days later, and they were all still alive, though the pong from Miggy's soiled fur was getting pretty intense.

After another day, the space hippy had had enough, even though SNOKER had only potted four reds and the blue.

"I can't take it in here any more! I've had enough! Goodbye!" with that he ran outside the computer centre into the open air. A few moments later, he was jumping up and down and pointing in the air and singing in an unnaturally high voice. A few more moments and he was stone dead, one arm still pointing skywards in rigor mortis.

"Oh well," said Miggy, "I guess everyone's time has to come. Dying isn't that bad, after all." And so saying, he walked outside. Nothing happened. The air was silent and still, and all he could smell was the faint odour of wombat dung. Nothing continued to happen.

"I'm not dead!" exclaimed Miggy.
"No, but you sure do whiff!" remarked a seagull sitting nearby on the bike shed roof. Then it crapped on a sysadmin's bike and flew off.

The white splot of guano reminded Miggy that he needed a new bottle of Tippex.

"Hmm... could that be the answer to the seventies plague?" he wondered. There was only one way to find out. He picked up a lump of his own poo, ran inside the building, threw it at the SERF revolutionary and ran out again, pursued by said revolutionary. The SERFer did not die, and proceeded to string Miggy up from a tree by his genitals before running off to get a shower, if indeed he could stay away from a terminal that long, which he probably couldn't.

"Hmm..." monologued Miggy, "so it looks like wombat droppings are the antidote to the seventies plague... if only I had a squadron of giant wombats to cover the whole planet in wombat dung, everyone would be saved... but hang on, there really were giant wombats in the Cretacious Period... so what I need is a Tardis to go back in time and fetch some of them... but Jimblewix has the tardis and we're not speaking any more... and he hasn't been closer than the Moon in years... and he doesn't answer the phone... so what I need is some way of signalling to him." So reasoned Miggy as he swung gently from the tree.

Just then the seagull returned, alighted on the tree and crapped on Miggy.

"Did you know your shit smells like Tippex?" Miggy asked the bird.

"So..." exclaimed Jimblewix to Miggy, while sipping a Pina Colada on a beach served by a scantily clad Pleasure BiBot in the Holo Room of the Strawberry Ferret; "Continue your story of how you saved the world from Plan 87b with the involvement of Seagulls, TipEx, extinct flying giant wombats with bowel problems, the time-warp core of the Ferret and some long pieces of string."
"Another time" replied Miggy, "I'm too thirsty". He took a Cocktail from the BiBot and started to drink.
"OhMiGod" cried Jimblewix as a huge shadow was cast over them "What's that?"
"Its a 'Meanwhile'" replied Miggy, somewhat startled.

A huge arc opened up in the space-time continuum, sucking Miggy and Jimblewix into a dark vortex. "Its an eddy in the narrative matrix" suggested Miggy; "We are being pulled into a new chapter"

Indeed they were, and what a chapter it was. The chapter was, as a result of a bad pun, a group of Nuns who were cavorting in front of Miggy and Jimblewix. "I think I know what this is." Said Miggy. "This is a narrative fantasy island. The Holo Room of the Ferret has, as is traditional for such devices, failed, and trapped us in a universe created by our imaginations".
"Ah!" exclaimed Jimbles. "So those are fantasy nuns. That would explain the combination of wimples and sparse black lacy underwear."
"Indeed" replied Miggy; "and at this point, the narrative flow suggests some sort of televisual parody. I would imagine that we are stuck on this island for around a week, and the nuns are rejected at a rate of one per day. I expect we have to entice them away from their principles of chastity until there are..... 'none' left."

"How heterosexist" said Jimbles, and at that point they were distracted by the little known 'naked' stage of the Tour de France, on a rarely undertaken tropical island diversion.

"That's better" said Jimbles, drooling...

Suddenly, NUS Conference suddenly appeared from under the ocean rather like the bit where the Titanic is raised in "Raise the Titanic".

Miggy fainted.

He woke up to find himself making a point of order:

Which was that conference suspend standing orders for 20 mins so that conference could all go to Conrad's wedding...

Miggy then said...

"Why don't you fuck off Gavin"

"I can't, I'm the best man" replied Gavin

Then Miggy woke up and found he was back at the seaside, with a nice cool bottle of Newky Brown Ale beside him. The conference was over, it was just a dream.

Just then he turned around and saw that Jimblewix was dressed as a bridesmaid...

To Be Continued...