Glossary

$mith (sic), Tom,     Two-Dan    Head of SCT and universe hopping hero.

Aftershock, Olivia    Nurse and Barista at the Doctor Crippin Hospital.

Alchy Salsa    Galactic cure-all. It adapts to any particular ailment, and will rectify anything, after reading the base information from the patient’s cell structure. Even the manufacturers admit, though, that reanimating frozen corpses may be a little beyond its powers, except in the case of local council officials with headaches.

Arachne, Life of    Like the ‘Life of Reilly or Riley’ it was popularised by the music-hall song of the ‘Tarantula of Red Widow Twanky’: “The famous wild tarantula of Red Widow’s no more. After ‘living the life of Arachne’ for over a year, evading the fly-swats and spinning her rear, whose kitchens she cobwebbed in all corners four.”

Archangel, Arianne        A pleasure droid, discovered in Tween Space.

Badloser, Ferdinand    Former head of SCT and total bastard, killed at least twice in previous adventures. May well be related to Ferguson Poordraw or May Welby.

Basilopolis    Capital city of the planet, Out.

Bereavement Notable    The moon-sized battleship the Skagans have built to claim back withheld tax on Vac’s book.

Black Empress Kara’s Good Fortune    Originally the Fukeds Belle, but refitted with doku-shunt gun batteries, and renamed for use as the definitive pirate vessel.

Blurgars     Nomadic primitive tribe, originally called ‘The Gar’, but after the chance discovery of a CD player, and a few disks, they learned to speak, decided that modern life was rubbish, and being unable to see distinctly through all the rain, renamed themselves and started a chain of opticians. Sadly, they were then mistaken for housebreakers by the dyslexic Emperor of Out, who persecuted them until his mysterious disappearance.
They are noted for their bare chests and the ability to make great pants out of stainless steel.

Bonigalia    A country popular as a source of cheap security personnel.

Burglar Slayer, Basil the Second    Dyslexic founder of the magnificent city of Basilopolis, centuries ago. 55^th Emperor of Out.

Charmony    A peaceful country on the far side of Glenforbis, famous for their tolerance of all races and beliefs, and having never invaded anyone.

Chips, Suzanne    Long, beautiful redhead, lush, and wife of Tom. Married as a trophy bride by his former self and quickly turned bad. Tom still has feelings... mostly her fingers in his wallet.

Clarkson, Saint    Patron saint of Basilopolis and misplaced wheeled vehicles. Some believe he is a purely fictional figure, owing to the fact that wheels are totally impractical in the soaked environment of Out.

Coles, Amber    Faithful secretary and Director of Finance of SCT. Born in Newcastle, UK, and has no idea how she got into the Fourth Universe. You can guess if you read the other Dan books though.

Consortium, The    A collection of strip-mining, property development and specialist pollution manufacturers, defeated by the Skagans, and now reduced to collecting rocks, and apologising.

CRAP    Complete Rip-off at Parking, the organisation run by May Welby.

Dearheat, Rannie    Dodgy dealer in innovative goods, and international woman of mystery. Former lover of the Magus.

DO-A    Robot reporters for the Daily Outrage are all given letter designations. DO-A is obviously their prime reporter. ‘C’ covers medical developments, ‘G’ the animal interest stories and ‘X’ any problems with available companions.

Doku    A large, four-horned placid bovine creature, with the ability to translocate in a similar way to the Magus, only much further. They are usually found on the planet, Glenforbis, renowned for its fertiliser industry, lush pastures and bracing air.

Doku Shunt    The Doku-shunt weapon can be loaded with any small sharp items. Favoured are mined slivers of diamond from rogue asteroids, and they prove very popular with the victims, who make a special point of collecting the remaining fragments as compensation for the inconvenience.

Doku-virus    A virulent affliction that causes excessive hair growth. No known cure (as yet).

Errorcode, Montague    Shifty weasel in charge of Change Management at SCT, for the only reason that he can't be sacked because of his original contract.

Existentialism control    An emergency life-saver, put in by one of the under-graduates on an engineering/philosophy joint degree, studying the meaning of life... existence precedes essence—e.g. how badly do you need to escape? The scale goes from ‘I don’t care about life’ to ‘save me, I have furry animals to support’. The Magus always liked to have it set round about seventy-five percent.

Fairway, Pietro        Head of the car parking organisation, PUSS.

FOAD button    Stands for ‘Fuck Off And Die’. This was added by request to standard keyboards as a more extreme form of the ‘escape’ key. It overrides all the various warning prompts such as ‘Are you sure?’, “Are you really sure?” and “By pressing this key you confirm that all your personal data will be collected by the browser and search-engine, and left on a memory stick in a taxi of our choice.”

FoFF    The Federation of Footwear Fitters—shoe-sellers to the rich and famous. ‘Never knowingly under-priced’.

Fortune, the    See The Black Empress Kara’s Good Fortune.

Fuksake    Pronounced ‘Fook-Sarkey’, a strong Skagan spirit. You really don’t want to know how it’s made. (Actually, if you want to risk it, have a look at the reference in ‘The Fifth Correction’.)

Fuksit    Sapristi is breaking away from the Consortium of planets so they can set their own car-parking laws. Also known as Sapsit, but that doesn’t reflect the feelings of most of the inhabitants.

Glenforbis        The planet that supplies all the fertiliser for the galaxy from their extensive dung mines. Home of the doku. See also, Glenodure.

Glenodure    The capital of Glenforbis is one of the smelliest and unhealthy places in the galaxy, where diesel fumes lock into the reek from the dung deposits, and create a toxic smog that when compressed can be used as road surface.

Glowplug    A Skagan pilot of extreme skill.

GoD    The Galactinet of Doobries. Everything is connected in to this omnipresent data-sharing network, which is specifically controlled by the security forces for signs of insurgency, and the criminals for signs that you have gone away on holiday.

Gong Farmers        Workers in the dung mines of Glenforbis.

Gottstein, Ludwig    A wealthy Charman businessman, and one of the Magus’ main clients and friend.

Groat    A Skagan pilot of little talent or understanding.

Headphones    The Time Cylinder works on thought waves. The pilot wears the apparatus and thinks of where he/she/it wants to be in time and location, and the Time circuits read the thought waves and do the rest. Much safer than random relocations, where there is a high probability that the machine would materialise inside a planet, or worse still, Brussels.

Itchy-sandal    Secret organisation, roughly translated as ‘one-three-five’, a winning hand in Baccarat, at which they are very poor at cheating. Other players are advised to pretend not to notice.

Lagomorph    Any of various plant-eating mammals of the order Lagomorpha, having fully furred feet and two pairs of upper incisors—including rabbits, hares, and pikas.

LARD42    A universal spray lubricant and preservative, one of only two vital maintenance items required for a toolkit, the other being duct tape. With these, you can repair absolutely anything. As Oilflig himself wisely said, “To get anything moving, use LARD42; to stop it moving, use duct tape.”

Luigi, Big Three-Fingered    Rannie’s henchman, loves rabbits and runs a polite extortion racket. Also a part-time hitman.

Magus, the    Private investigator, owner of the doku herd, and strange little man with alien physiology, odd powers, and a hat.

Maurice the Bastard        Usurper of the throne of Out. Acting as Grand Vizier until another Emperor can be found that is stupid enough to accept the post.

Maurice the Other Bastard    His devious twin brother. Head of the Out army, what there is left of it.

MUPPET    Mental Unconscious Permanent Physical Ethereal Translocation—Auto-Telekinesis.

Musoketeba    The location of the Nishant Corporation—it could be a planet, a country or a star system. Nobody knows, or really cares. The outsourcing deals are cheap.

Nishi, Joshi    Head of the Nishant Corporation.

Norbert    Deity of the Skagans, who have many gods, all called Norbert, to make things simpler for them.

Out, the Planet    The wettest world in the universe. ‘We gotta get out of this place’, became simply, ‘Out’, once the water got into the CD player. Was the headquarters location of the Temporal Conduct Authority.

P units    Small autonomous killer drones, built by the SCT workshops for STOP, with instructions to reclaim parking fines, or destroy the offending vehicles.

Personal Development Plan    PDP: an idea thought up by personnel departments and top management to keep their workers unsettled in their jobs. This results in the brightest, and therefore most troublesome, of their workers handing in notice, and subsequently saves the cost of redundancies.

Phoist, Oilflig    The legendary founder of everything in all universes, wit, oracle and nemesis of most of the good guys. His name is used as an exclamation of shock, surprise, and dismay at postal deliveries that consist of small cards telling you to go and get the parcel yourself.

Pionio    In particle physics, a pion consists of a quark and an antiquark and is the lightest meson and of lowest power. In this case, a directed stream of pions is the equivalent of flag waving, and very secure for line-of-sight ship-to-ship transmissions. The ‘pionio’ is that transmitter and receiver device.

Poordraw, Ferguson        Main head of TBP. May be related to Ferdinand Badloser. Assumed the leadership of STOP.

PUSS    Parking under Special Sircumstances (sic)—acronym developed by trained marketing people at Nishant.

Sapristi    Also known as ‘Fukeds’ by people who live there and disagree with the government... which is just about all of them.

SCT    The company Tom found himself in charge of. Nobody could tell him what the initials stood for. It has been rebranded ‘SCT’ as ‘Space Community Transport’ simply to save having to change the headed notepaper and shiny hats.

Sex    There is a school of thought that suggests that terrorists and warmongers are only so because they don’t have enough sex. In a more liberated society, folks are more interested in rutting, than blowing things up. Ask yourself, how many wars have been started by Bonobo apes, who spend all their time at it?

Shunt    See Doku Shunt.

Singpurvitch, Mr    Representative from Nishant Engineering.

Six, Caryl    Former lover of Tom, refugee from a people farm and newly discovered heiress to the galactic ‘Six’ empire. She is currently away, tracking down her family, in the hope she can get some of the wealth for herself, and doesn’t feature much.

Skagans    Stunning (in looks and effect), statuesque race of warmongering sex maniacs.

Skagos    Home planet of the Skagans, beautiful, peaceful and newly terraformed after an unpleasant strip-mining invasion by the Consortium.

Skull Stitch    A variation on cross-stitch, where instead of a cross shape, each of the stitches resembles a skull with an axe imbedded in it. Also known as ‘the mad psycho-stitch’.

Spigot    A Skagan woman. Always wanted to be a poet, but very good with engines too.

STOP    Secure Terrain for Orderly Parking. Ferguson Poordraw is CEO, with May Welby and Pietro Fairway.

Swedwayland        A distant country of coldness and lakes, famed for the beauty and height of its few inhabitants who grow tall and blond, in an attempt to reach what little light there is. First discovered by Earnest Swedway, and quickly abandoned again when he also discovered the size of the mosquitos. Repopulated many years later, after the invention of anti-aircraft weapons. The women are known across the galaxy for their compliance and willingness to move to any country where they can marry for a local passport, and their make-up doesn’t have to contain anti-freeze.

Swipes, Faye    Sister of Len Swipes, fighter and dermatologist. After marriage to Basil the Second time around of Out, changed her name to Faye the Blurgar Saver.

Swipes, Len    Leader of the Blurgar barbarian tribes and part-time optometrist.

Tanda    Skagan second in command, the milder face of Skagan intelligence.

Tay, Kara    Anatomically perfect former pleasure gynoid and creation of one of Tom’s other persona. Hates Tom but can’t dispose of him because of her original programming.

TBP    Total Bastard Parking—the force determined to take over everything. Evolved into the combined organisation, STOP.

TCA     The Temporal Conduct Authority was set up to stop all these time travellers mucking about with history. Disbanded after its leader, Ferdinand Badloser, lost at tennis.

Tuesday, Mrs    Tea lady, nouveau Director of the SCT Incorporated Catering Kitchen (SICK) and Duchess of Twatt.

Tween Space    There are thought to be several types of space: External Space, in which all the normal conditions rule, Inner Space, where thoughts, emotions and satire comes from, Tween Space where you go if you get really lost, and Third Space, where there is no thought, no emotion, and little energy—much like the content of some road planners’ heads.

Tweenies    Inhabitants of ‘Tween’ Space, of limited intellect, but easy to please, and willing to be educated.

UNIX    Universal Network Information Exchange, a vintage operating system, famous for its transparency in using the default administrator password, which it is mandatory never to change, and the fact that its programmers have to learn a secret language, understood only by those over the age of 60.

Vac    Skagan chief and original head of security for SCT.

Vermicelli, Mycroft        Spokesperson for the common employee. Trade Union leader.

Welby, May    Owner of CRAP and lesser member of the new STOP triumvirate.

WIMPS     or wimps. Weakly interacting massive particles—Rannie is of the opinion that the Magus converts himself to dark matter when he performs his MUPPET telekinesis. She is still trying to find a practical application for it, but has only so far succeeded with relocating teaspoons and ballpoint pens.

Young, Pete    Pete Young is a talented engineer, working for SCT. Took over from Old Pete when that worthy was blown up in the tragic accident that took out the original SCT Plank of directors (See ‘Into the Fourth Universe’).