Ford... you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.
Ford... you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.
Patterns that Arthur knew, rough blobby shapes that were as familiar to him as the shapes of words, part of the furniture of his mind. For a few seconds he sat in stunned silence as the images rushed around his mind and tried to find somewhere to settle down and make sense...
Well, I mean, yes idealism, yes the dignity of pure research, yes the pursuit of truth in all its forms, but there comes a point I'm afraid where you begin to suspect that the entire multidimensional infinity of the Universe is almost certainly being run by a bunch of maniacs. And if it comes to a choice between spending yet another ten million years finding that out, and on the other hand just taking the money and running, then I for one could do with the exercise.
Here, for whatever reason, is the world. And here it stays. With me on it.
Perhaps I'm old and tired, but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied.
What does it matter? Science has achieved some wonderful things, of course, but I'd far rather be happy than right any day.
How many roads must a man walk down?
Please call me Eddie if it will help you to relax.
Who is this god person anyway?
I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed.
The bird that would soar above the plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings.
Would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?
I was created to fulfill a function and I failed in it. I negated my own existence.
The Heart of Gold fled on silently through the night of space, now on conventional photon drive. Its crew of four were ill as ease knowing that they had been brought together not of their own volition or by simple coincidence, but by some curious perversion of physics- as if relationships between people were susceptible to the same laws that governed the relationships between atoms and molecules
Zaphod marched quickly down the passageway, nervous as hell, but trying to hide it by striding purposefully.
I'd far rather be happy than right any day.
The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy also mentions alcohol. It says that the best drink in existence is the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, the effect of which is like having your brains smashed out with a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick.
If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.
The only person for whom the house was in any way special was Arthur Dent, and that was only because it happened to be the one he lived in.
In moments of great stress, every life form that exists gives out a tiny subliminal signal.
The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.
Anything that thinks logically can be fooled by something else that thinks at least as logically as it does.
In the beginning, the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry and has been wisely regarded as a bad move.
The Ultimate Answer to Life, The Universe and Everything is...42!
And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before--and thus was the Empire forged.
In the center lay the exploded carcass of a lonely sperm whale that hadn't lived long enough to be disappointed with its lot.
These creatures you call mice, you see, they are not quite as they appear. They are merely the protrusion into our dimension of vastly hyperintelligent pandimensional beings.
And for all the richest and most successful merchants life inevitably became rather dull and niggly, and they began to imagine that this was therefore the fault of the worlds they'd settled on.
In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.
They wouldn't even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal without orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters.
And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, one girl sitting on her own in a small cafe in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.
Look, would it save you all this bother if I just gave up and went mad now?
Time is not currently one of my problems. - Arthur Dent
As soon as Mr. Prosser realized that he was substantially the loser after all, it was as if a weight lifted itself off his shoulders: this was more like the world as he knew it.
Marvin was humming ironically because he hated humans so much.
Very deep. You should send that in to the Reader's Digest. They've got a page for people like you.
Do you find coming to terms with the mindless tedium of it all presents an interesting challenge?
Mc Donalds he thought. There's no longer any such thing as a Mc Donalds hamburger. He passed out. When he came around seconds later he found he was sobbing for his mother.
Was there a reason behind it? There would be no point in asking Zaphod, he never appeared to have a reason for anything he did at all: he had turned unfathomability into an art form. He attacked everything in life with a mixture of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence and it was often difficult to tell which was which.
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.
We are now cruising at a level of two to the power of twenty-five thousand to one against and falling, and we will be restoring normality just as soon as we are sure what is normal anyway.
Fifteen years was a long time to be stranded anywhere, particularly somewhere as mind-boggingly dull as Earth.
Obviously somebody had been appallingly incompetent and he hope to God it wasn't him.
We'll be saying a big hello to all intelligent lifeforms everywhere and to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys.
© 2020 Inspirational Stories
© 2020 Inspirational Stories