Dear Diary,

    Today, I was minding my own business when Augustus Earle came up on deck. He's an old man and not too healthy, so I usually try to avoid him, especially when he sneezes since it sprays all about. When I saw him, I tried to dart behind some of the crates on deck, but he called out, "Hey you. Boy...."
   I peered out. (I'm not a boy, mind you, but that's how life on the Beagle is.)
   Augustus Earle came over to me and studied my face. "I got a job for you," he said.
   I told him I was busy.
   "You don't look busy," he said. "What I need is a model. You'll do just fine. Don't worry about your job... I'll speak to the captain about it."
   I sighed... There was naught I could do but follow him. Too bad, because if I didn't do my job, this meant that... He interrupted me, and proceeded to yell at someone who was tangled in the rigging. I sighed heavily, then slowly tried walk away as he yelled at Hilot for playing in the rigging.
   "And where do you think you're going?" he said as I started to head down into the cabin.
   "Uh, uh..." I started to respond, but had a strange lack of words at this moment. "Well 'uh' all you want, but I need someone." I had heard the rumors about how he contorts everyone, but then I considered getting a break from my job.
   "Yes sir, I was just going to go finish up." I gulped and hoped it wouldn't be too bad.
   "Well, come with me, and you can finish up later!" he said, and I had no choice but to go with him and pose. We went to his cabin, and he had me sit in a chair while he painted me. I sat still for what seemed like hours while he painted, and eventually he finished and I looked at the painting and...
   "My nose!" I yelled. Looking at the painting I saw my nose at least three times larger.
   "But it captures the inner you!" he protested, seemingly not noticing how he had destroyed my face, He then grabbed another brush and started rapidly stroking the painting once more, but when he shared his "master piece" not only was my nose larger then could possible be contained upon my face, but my ears now where strangely curved in indescribable ways. Annoyed beyond all reasonable thought, I ran up and stole his paintbrush, and attempted to fix his painting but only managed to make it worse. Now there were smudges all over my face, and spots of my hair were the wrong color. My nose was completely the wrong shape, and there were spots of paint in random places.
   Augustus Earle said "What have you done to my painting?!" and grabbed the brush, and shoved me out of the room. After being shoved from the room, I was sure as ever to make sure that painting never made it to shore. I used one of those conveniently place magic portals next to me, and appeared upside-down hanging over his back, and watched to my horror as he first started to fix the paint blobs, then ran out of his paint, and proceeded to paint my hair purple.
   "STOP!" I screamed, as I rushed toward the painting. This time, I grabbed the painting, and ran on deck with it, and tossed it over the edge of the ship. Then I quickly looked for somewhere to hide, and on my way to an empty barrel, I bumped into Hilot.
   "Um, Hello..." he said, carrying a roll of duct tape and quickly pulled me behind a barrel as we watched him run off with a pair of pants, seemingly made out of duct tape. Strangely disturbed by this, I proceeded to ask him questions about this. "Why did you make a pair of pants out of duct tape?" I asked. "And where did you get that tape anyway? It hasn't been invented yet" I said, as Augustus Earle ran on deck yelling about how boys didn't appreciate art.
   I'm not a boy! I thought to myself, but didn't say this out loud, because I didn't want him to find me.
   "Well, the duct tape here is holding the universe together," Hilot said getting a rather blank look from me. "Also, the pants he is waving around prevent the universe from collapsing."
   As Hilot finished his sentence, Earle ran back into his cabin yelled something along the lines of, "At last! Something to paint!"
   "I still donšt get it," I said. "I have two questions, 'Where did you get that duct tape, and what did Augustus Earle find to paint?'
   "The tape was from an alternate universe, and he is running off to paint the pants made out of parallel universe tape."
   I nodded blankly. "So... what does that have to do with you?" I asked.
   "Well to be completely honest, nothing, I just wanted to get that duct tape holds the universe together," replied Hilot.
   At that instant, Earle ran out of his cabin waving about a picture of pants. And because of that picture, the universe did not collapse. Nor did any parallel universes for that matter, but who cares about them? Ali, now giving Hilot a extreme blank look...

   (Not that the void of blankness can be described as extreme, for in all reality, the void has no means of expression, even if it did want to say; "Oh, no not again..." even if that mattered in the least, if not to prove that this is furtherly becoming impossible. Because we have now once again stumbled into a loop-hole, of which Hilot has already proved are the source of the timeline, and that whenever one of these is encountered, all ways to continue are blocked, forcing existence to create or remove events that will edit the flow of existence, in order to keep the universe from exploding. Now because this was a loop-hole, and every possible way to get out of it that was used before has been existed, the time space vortex would have to explode/implode. Now since we are all about to explode/implode, I should share with you one of my favorite phrases: Don't Panic.
   Now that you are most likely panicking, you may wonder, why haven't I exploded and/or imploded yet? Well good question! And the answer is that the universe can't decide weather to explode or implode. Therefore, regardless of whatever is done, the universe is stuck until it slips in favor of one or another way, of which would twist it back into itself being locked again, so in time it will return to being normal once it is sure what normal is anyway.)

   "Okay," I said, "What did that have to do with anything, besides The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?

   And yet, little did they know, Ali spoke all of this in an unchanging fashion due to the lack of a quote at the end of her sentence, of which also completely restored the universe. And so Aliaranel's writing turned very Hilotish, thanks to Hilot and Teresa helping her when she had a terrible case of Writer's block. And so, the universe ended, and because it could never end, so does this story, for now there is something that counts as both of our writing, and an on board role-play, and since the universe collapsed and rebuilt itself, nobody really cares.

~Aliaranel                                     
Junior Crew                            
Dr. MacCormick's Assistant    
and Keeper of the Plants. ~