Excerpt 2 from The Captain Disaster Collection

From Episode 7 - "Correctness, Politically Speaking"

Landing on the floor in Paris was forbidden, so they did it anyway. The person who came to meet them from Customs spoke English with an over-the-top accent.

"Yo cinnot lond har. Et eese fobeedan."

Zero-Bit thought it was all a bit stereotyped and shot him with a Scum-Neutraliser. With that they went to London, hoping to find them speaking normal English, and not the type of English spoken by the "English" in American films. They also hoped to avoid anyone who might make the kind of stomach-churning speech that the president did in Independence Day. In both respects, they succeeded.

"Right, you're nicked." (Okay, so they didn't completely escape inane stereotypes.)

"Why? What have we done?" asked a confused Captain.

"We ain't done noffink wrong, we ain't!" interjected ZB, quickly dispelling the myth that computers can't speak bad English.

"For not speaking properly! And, prior to that, for parking in an unauthorised parking space, with an unidentified space-faring vessel, for an undisclosed purpose. You are hereby charged with traffic-code violation number 21435b subsection g paragraph 42f line 465r, footnote #*@@.  You have the right to remain silent. But I must warn you that, if you later remain silent when not doing so now, or relying in the future on something you say in the future but not now, or if you forget what you've said at any time and then try to rely on it in court, or say something, forget it, then remember it and fail to rely on it in court when asked to restore certain details omitted from your testimony when I ask you in five minutes, or say nothing, then say something, I forget to write it down, then remember it, and you try to claim you never said it even though you did and I managed to recall it and made a record for the court, you may be liable to hanging. In the event of none of these things happening, you may be tried for treason, or heard for heresy. If I don't like your face, I have no right whatsoever to shoot you like a dog on the spot, but that won't stop me from doing it. If you get on the wrong side of the Masonic Lodge, especially the local one of which I am a member, you will be forced to walk through the House of Commons wearing a white apron and some pretty little bells, and hung upside down in a block of concrete under Tower Bridge, and then tried for committing suicide. Is that perfectly clear and understandable?" asked a slightly out of breath Sergeant (soon to be made DCI).

"No" replied CD and ZB in perfect unison.

"Right, off to the station with you then."

The station was of a completely unremarkable design, which I won't remark on. There were signs up everywhere advertising the latest craze: personal police people. These were people, who also happened to be police, who provided a personal service. (You'd never have worked it out by yourself, would you?)

The Chief Superintendent intentionally inclined his head so as to make it appear bigger than it was. As no-one was looking, this was something of a wasted effort, but at least there was a mirror close by for him to note the effect. His moustache draped into his cup of tea. The lice from his moustache gladly jumped in and drowned themselves.  Theirs, after all, had been unhappy existences. He flossed thrice daily, and little bits of plaque attached themselves to the hairy protrusion above his lip, sometimes disemboweling a louse in the process.

"Name?" he growled gruffly, gleefully glancing at Glenda, who was perching her pencil precariously in a predictably ponderous position.

"Pardon? My ear-wax just proliferated", said Captainos Disasteros, the famous Greek gusset gleaner.

"Obstructing the course of justice, are you? Right, take him to the dock charged with first degree murder. And find him guilty." He leant back on his chair, sneering an evil sneer evilly. As he fell over backwards, that evil sneer became something more akin to the expression of a man who's just made himself look very stupid indeed.

"And charge him with burglary, too!", said the chair (apparently).

"Capitan Disatser" mispronounced the judge, "you are hereby charged with lots of rather naughty things and thereby sentenced to death by halitosis."

See also: Excerpt 1 from The Captain Disaster Collection

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