Chapter 7 Chapter VII

His house is still there. How and why the house was there, he did not know.He had planned to just come back and have a look, and then ask the owner of the tavern to borrow a bed for the night when the tavern was gone.But the house is all right there. He hastily took the key from under a stone frog in the garden, and went in, for the telephone was ringing at home, which was surprising. He heard the ringing vaguely on the way back, and ran all the way back immediately after realizing the source of the ringing. There was an intimidating amount of junk mail on the doormat, making opening the door a struggle.Arthur later discovered that among the mail blocking the door, there were fourteen identical letters asking him to apply for a credit card he already held; seventeen identical letters asking him to apply for a credit card he did not hold. and thirty-three identical letters, saying that in today's complex world, Arthur knew exactly what he wanted and where he wanted to go, and was therefore chosen as "one of the best of taste and discernment". Star" and demanded that he buy an ugly purse and a dead kitten.

He struggled to squeeze through a door slightly ajar, stumbled past a pile of wine offers that no connoisseur would miss, slid past a pile of beach house vacation leaflets, stumbled He bumped up the dark stairs into his bedroom to the phone, which stopped ringing. Panting, he fell onto his cold, musty-smelling bed.The whole world clearly wanted to revolve around him, and Arthur gave up trying to stop them and lay down for a while. The world went happily around for a while and then quieted down a bit, so Arthur reached for the bedside lamp.He didn't think the lights would come on.To his surprise, the lights came on.This thing is a bit difficult to understand.Every time he pays his electricity bill, the power company will shut off his power, as if the power company will forget to cut off the power supply to him only if he doesn't pay, and it seems only reasonable.Obviously, giving them money will only make them think of you.

The room hadn't changed since he'd left it, that is to say, uncomfortably shabby, but a thick layer of dust had covered it, which made it look a little more comfortable.Half-read books and magazines were kept together with piles of half-worn towels.A sock dropped in a half-drunk cup of coffee.The half-eaten sandwich was about to turn into something else, and Arthur didn't want to know what it was.Throw a lightning bolt on this pile of things, he thought, and you'll start the process of evolution. Only one thing in the room was different from before. For a moment he didn't see what the different thing was, for it was covered under a filthy layer of dust.But soon his eyes stopped on it.

It's next to a battered TV - the one that can only watch TV university classes because it switches itself off whenever you use it to watch something more interesting. It is a box. Arthur propped himself up on his elbow and stared at it. It was a gray box with a dull glow on it.The box was square, more than a foot long on each side, and was tied with a gray ribbon tied in a pretty bow at the top of the box. He got up from the bed, walked over, and touched it in surprise.Whatever it was, it was clearly wrapped as a present, neat and beautiful, waiting for him to open it. Carefully he took the box back to the bed, dusted off the top, and unfastened the straps.The upper part of the box is a lid with a frill tucked into the box.

He opened the box and looked inside. Inside was a glass ball, encased in fine gray tissue paper.He took it out carefully.It's not a real ball, it has a hole in the bottom.Arthur turned it over and saw that the mouth was actually the top, with a broad border.This is a tank, a fish tank. The aquarium was made of the finest glass, perfectly transparent, yet had a peculiar silver-grey color, as if crystal and slate had been mixed in with it. Arthur turned it slowly with his hands.It was one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen, but he was at a loss for it.He looked inside the box, there was nothing but those tissues.There is nothing outside the box either.

He turned it over again.very beautiful.Very delicate.But it's a fishbowl. He tapped lightly with the nail of his thumb, and the fish tank gave out a deep and beautiful harmony, which lasted longer than expected, and finally the sound weakened, but the feeling did not dissipate, but drifted into another world, such as A deep dream about the sea. Arthur reached in and turned it over again, this time the light from the dusty bedside lamp shone at another angle, and some fine lines appeared on the surface of the fish tank.He raised the fish tank, adjusted the angle against the light, and saw small and clear writing on the glass.

"Goodbye," it read, "Thank you..." There is no more behind.He blinked, completely confused. For five full minutes, he turned the tank over, held it up to the light from different angles, tapped it to hear the mesmerizing sound, and pondered the meaning of the words, but to no avail.Finally he stood up, filled the fish tank with tap water, and put it back on the table next to the TV.He shook his head and swung the Babel fish out of his ear, and the fish writhed and fell into the tank.He doesn't need Babel fish anymore, except to watch foreign movies. He went back to bed again and turned off the light.

He lay still.He absorbed the darkness around him, slowly relaxed his limbs, his breathing became slow and regular, and his brain gradually went blank.He couldn't sleep at all. The weather was bad tonight, it was raining.The actual rain clouds have actually left and are now focusing on a roadside cafe outside Bournemouth, but the sky they pass has become infected, covering itself with dank pleated clouds , doesn't seem to know how to behave otherwise. The moon is also hanging wet in the sky.It now looks like a wad of paper fumbled in the hip pocket of jeans just out of the washing machine, and it takes a long time with an iron to figure out whether it's a shopping list or a five-pound note.

The wind was blowing gently, like a horse wagging its tail that hadn't decided its mood yet.Somewhere the clock struck midnight. A skylight creaked open. The frame of the skylight was a bit rotten, and the hinges had been painted, so the skylight was a little sticky, and I had to shake it and talk to it softly when I opened it, but in the end the skylight opened. A shadow found a stick holding the window up, and with difficulty slipped through the open slit. He stood there silently looking at the sky. The shadow was nothing like the creature that had stormed the house frantically more than an hour earlier.Gone was his battered robe, splattered with mud from a hundred different worlds, and spiced with junk food from a hundred nasty spaceports; his messy, tangled hair was gone; Gone was the knotted mustache with an entire ecosystem in it.

Now there was a serene and relaxed Arthur Dent, hair trimmed and washed, chin clean-shaven, and only his eyes that showed that whatever the world was doing to him, he was very Hope it ends there. The eyes were different from the last time he had seen the same sight from here; the brain that processed what the eyes saw was also different.Not surgery, but new experiences that constantly change them. Now the night seemed to have life, and he himself seemed to merge into the surrounding dark land, to be a part of it. He could feel the water flow in the distant bend of the river, the undulation of the mountains beyond his vision, and the thick tangled rain clouds staying somewhere to the south as if he felt the slight tingle of his own nerve endings. .

He could also experience the sensation of a gently trembling tree, a feeling he hadn't expected.He knew it was good to stick his toes in the dirt, but he never thought it would be this good.He even felt an almost inappropriate euphoria stretching all the way from the New Forest to him.Must try this summer, he thought, and see what it's like to grow leaves on your body. In the other direction he experiences another sensation, he becomes a sheep frightened by a flying saucer in exactly the same way as frightened by anything else it has ever seen, for such animals Having seen very little in their own lives, they are not only afraid of the sunrise in the morning, but also surprised by all the green objects on the ground. Arthur was surprised to find that he felt that the sheep had been startled by the sunrise this morning, had been startled the same way the previous morning, and had been startled by a bush the day before.He could go back and forth, but that wouldn't be very interesting, because all it said was the sheep being startled again by something that had scared it the day before. He left the sheep, letting his consciousness spread out like ripples.He felt the existence of other consciousnesses, hundreds of thousands of consciousnesses spread like a network, some were very sleepy, some were sleeping, some were frighteningly excited, and one was broken. One is broken. He passed it quickly, trying to feel it again, but it eluded Arthur like another identical card in a flop matching game.He was thrilled because he knew instinctively who this consciousness belonged to, or at least who he wanted it to belong to.Instinct is very useful once you know what it is you wish for, it tells you that it is exactly what you imagined it to be. He knew instinctively that this consciousness belonged to Fanny, and he wanted to find her; but he couldn't.After being nervous for a long time, he found that he had lost this magical new ability, so he stopped searching deliberately and let his consciousness wander freely again. He felt the rupture again. He lost it again.This time, no matter what his instincts told him to believe it was Fanny, he wasn't so sure—maybe this time it was another broken consciousness.This one is equally broken, but feels like a more general break, deeper, not a single consciousness, maybe not even a consciousness at all.This one is different. He allowed his consciousness to spread far and wide, slowly rippling, penetrating, and sinking into the earth. Now he lived through the life of the earth, drifting with its countless pulses, penetrating the web of its life, heaving with its tides, turning under its weight.That rupture, that shattering ache that recedes in the distance, keeps reappearing. Now he flew over a land of light; that light was time, and the alternation of day and night its tides.The break he felt, the second break, stretched across the land of light in front of him, like a hair across the continent of dreams conjured up by the life of the earth. Suddenly he had come upon it. He danced dizzily above the broken edge, where the ground below him receded from him, a bottomless precipice.He writhed frantically, clawed aimlessly, fluttered, twirled, and fell in this terrifying space. On the other side of that jagged chasm lies another land, another time, a world earlier in time.It's not a break, it's just not connected: these are two different earths.he woke up. A gust of cold wind brushed the sweat from the fever on his brow.The nightmare is over, he thought, and he is back to himself now.His shoulders slumped, and he wiped his eyes lightly with the tips of his fingers.In the end he was sleepy and tired.He was going to think about what all that meant tomorrow, if it meant anything at all, and now he was going to bed.In his own bed, in his own sleep. He was surprised to see his own house in the distance.The house was silhouetted black in the moonlight, and he could make out the dull shape.He looked around and found himself about eighteen inches above the rose bush of his neighbor, John Unsworth.Those roses were very carefully cared for and pruned for winter.The roses were all strapped to some sticks and tagged.Arthur wondered what he was doing here.He also wondered what was holding him up at this height, and when he found nothing holding him up, he fell awkwardly to the ground. He stood up, patted the ashes off his body, limped back to his house with his sprained foot, took off his clothes and fell on the bed. The phone rang again while he was asleep.The bell rang for fifteen minutes and caused Arthur to turn over twice.However, the bell never woke him up.