Hilda, like many on Planet Hy Man, had seen Earth on her H-Pad, and she had no desire to be there.
She huffed and grunted with her knees about her chest. She tried to free her backside, then gave up with a flop and looked around the empty room as run down as the Courtyard of Greatness and as out-of-date as Legless’s chat-up lines.
There was a Victorian photograph of a pier on the wall, a whiteboard with the day and a smiley face beside it, a plastic flower arrangement on a nest of tables, and, next to the TV blaring the news, a dark cabinet filled with Victorian china dolls, board games, and a selection of tattered Stephen King paperbacks.
There was an air of beige about it.
A middle-aged woman with a Margaret Thatcher hairdo sprayed to the max appeared. She slid a plate of biscuits on
