Chapter 3 third chapter

"Which one of you has a kettle?" Arthur asked as soon as he walked into the bridge, and was surprised when he finished asking: Trillian was yelling at the computer, asking it to talk to him; Ford was pounding on the computer; Zaphod Then he kicked it with his feet.What appears on the screen is an ugly yellow bump. He put down the empty glass he was holding and walked towards them. "Hello?" he said. At that moment, Zaphod threw himself on the polished marble tabletop, which concealed the instruments that controlled the regular photon drives.These instruments gradually took shape under his hands, and he found a place for manual operation.Pushing forward, pulling back, pressing down, all while cursing.The photon drive wobbled slightly, but stopped immediately.

"What happened?" Arthur asked. "Hey, did you hear that?" muttered Zaphod, now that he had jumped to the other side and started looking for the hand-operated mechanism of the infinite improbability drive, "this monkey actually talked!" The improbability driver let out two wails, then also stopped. "This is real history, man," said Zaphod, kicking the improbability drive, "a talking monkey!" "If you want to pick on me..." Arthur said. "Vogons!" Ford snapped. "We're under attack!" Arthur stuttered. "Then, what are you still doing? Let's slip away!"

"Can't move. The computer is jammed." "block?" "It claims all of its lines are engaged. There is no other power on board." Ford left from the computer terminal, wiped his forehead with his sleeve, and leaned against the wall helplessly. "There's nothing we can do about it," he said.His eyes stared blankly ahead, his lips twitching. Long before the destruction of the earth, when Arthur was a boy in school, he used to play football.He has never had any talent in this area, his specialty is only scoring own goals in important games.Whenever this happened, he always felt a strange tingling in his neck, which slowly crept up his cheeks and finally burned his brows.The images of mud and turf and a horde of foul-mouthed boys throwing them at him were suddenly vivid in his mind.

At this moment, a strange tingling sensation was slowly creeping up his cheeks along the back of his neck, and finally even his brows were burning. He opened his mouth to speak, but stopped. He spoke again, but stopped again. Finally, he finally opened his mouth. "Yeah," he said.He cleared his throat. "Tell me," he continued, and because his voice was so tense, the others all turned to look at him.He stared at the looming yellow blob on the screen. "Tell me," he repeated, "did the computer say something was hogging its wiring? Just curious to ask..."

All eyes were on him. "Um...uh, just a random question, really." Zaphod put out a hand and grabbed Arthur by the back of the neck. "What did you do to it, monkey?" he gasped. "Oh," said Arthur, "it's nothing really. I just remembered that, just a little while ago, it was trying to figure out how..." "what?" "Create a cup of tea." "That's right, guys," the computer yelled suddenly. "I'm currently working on this problem. Wow, this is a big, tough problem. Just wait a minute." Then it fell silent again, just in time to talk to It matched the suffocating silence with which the three pairs of eyes stared at Arthur Dent.

As if to ease the tension, the Vogons chose to open fire at this point. The spaceship began to vibrate and make a loud noise.Under the attack of a round of 30-level lethality and high-precision optical radiation artillery fire, the one-inch-thick force field shield around the hull was riddled with holes and crackled, and it seemed that it would not last long.According to Chief Ford's estimate, there are at most four minutes. "Three minutes and fifty seconds," he said after a while. "Forty-five seconds," he added the current most accurate time.He flipped carelessly with some useless switches, then gave Arthur a hard look.

"Just over a cup of tea, huh?" he said. "Three minutes and forty seconds." "Please, can you stop counting?" Zaphod growled. "Of course," replied Prefect Ford, "in three minutes and thirty-five seconds." Aboard the Vogon ship, Vogon Gerz was puzzled.In his reckoning, it should be a manhunt, a thrilling tussle between tractor beams, a showdown between the specially installed normally continuous-cycle subparticle accelerator and the Heart of Gold's infinite improbability drives.Instead, the normal continuous loop subparticle accelerator was lying around doing nothing, because the Heart of Gold was not activated at all.It stayed where it was, as if waiting for them to catch it.

Thirty levels of high-destructive and high-precision optical radiation artillery fire continued to pour on the Heart of Gold, and it still stopped there, enduring it. He checked every sensor on his console, trying to find out if the other party was hiding some tricks, but found nothing. Of course, he couldn't possibly know about that cup of tea. It was equally impossible for him to know how the people on the Heart of Gold spent the last three minutes and thirty seconds of their lives. Zaphod himself could not explain why the idea of ​​holding a seance came up at this moment. The subject of death is naturally in the air, but it is a subject that needs to be avoided rather than discussed endlessly.

Perhaps this is the reason: Zaphod sees the prospect of being reunited with his dead relatives, and fears them intensely.So he compared his heart to his heart, thinking that his deceased relatives were also afraid of reuniting with him, and maybe they could do something to postpone this reunion. Or, it was one of those weird thoughts that occasionally popped up from a dark area of ​​his mind that had been inexplicably locked down long before he became president of the galaxy. "You want to talk to your great-grandfather?" Ford asked hesitantly. "yes." "Does it have to be now?"

The spaceship continued to vibrate, making loud noises.The temperature is rising.The lights dimmed—energy that the computer didn't need to think about the tea was focused on the fast-collapsing shield. "Yes!" insisted Zaphod. "Listen, Ford, I think he has a way of helping us." "Do you really 'think' that? Be careful when you choose your words." "Then give me a suggestion, what else can we do." "Well, then..." "Okay, come around the center console. Right now, come on! Trillian, monkey, move." Everyone crowded around the center console in bewilderment, sat down, held hands, and felt very stupid.Zaphod turned off the light with his third hand.

Darkness enveloped the ship. Outside the cabin, the precision radiation artillery roared and roared, continuing to tear apart the protective shield. "Concentrate," whispered Zaphod, "and say his name silently." "What's his name?" Arthur asked. "Zaphod Beeblebrox IV." "what?" "Zaphod Beeblebrox IV. Focus!" "Fourth?" "Yes. Listen, my name is Zaphod Beeblebrox, my father's name is Zaphod Beeblebrox II, and my grandfather's name is Zaphod Beeblebrox III..." "what?" "The contraceptive and the time machine are malfunctioning. Now, focus!" "Three minutes," said Prefect Ford. "But why?" said Arthur Dent. "What are we going to do?" "Shut up," said Zaphod Beeblebrox. Cui Lien did not speak.What she thought was, what else could she say? The only light on the bridge came from two dim red triangles in one far corner.Marvin, the paranoid robot, sat slumped, oblivious to and ignored by everything around him, lost in his own private, unpleasant world. The four people gathered around the center console, nervously concentrating their thoughts, trying their best to ignore the violent vibration of the spaceship and the terrible whistling sound echoing in the cabin. They are concentrating. They are still concentrating. They are still continuing to concentrate. Time passed by second by second. Sweat formed on Zaphod's brow, first from trying to concentrate, then from frustration, then from embarrassment. Finally, with a yelp of rage, he withdrew his hand from Trillian and Ford's and poked at the light switch. "Oh, I almost thought you'd never turn on the light again," said a voice. "No, please don't turn it too bright, my eyes are not the same after all." The four of them shook in their seats.Slowly, they began to look around, but their heads were visibly trying to stay in place. "Tell me, who is bothering me at this hour?" A small, stooped, haggard man stood beside the ferns at the far end of the bridge.His hair was tied like a broom, and his small heads looked so old that they seemed to hold vague memories of the birth of the galaxy itself.One was drooping and dozing, while the other squinted at them with piercing eyes.If it is true that his eyes are not as good as before, then those eyes must have been diamond cutters back then. Zaphod stammered nervously for a moment.He gave two small nods of the head in a complicated way, the traditional gesture of Betelgeuse to show respect within the family. "Oh... well, hi, great-grandfather..." he said, taking a deep breath. The thin old man moved closer to them.He gazed at them in the dim light, and finally prodded his great-grandson with a bony finger. "Oh," he snapped, "Zaphod Beeblebrox, the last of our great line. Zaphod Beeblebrox Zero." "It's a lifetime." "Zero," argued the old man.Zaphod didn't like the sound of his voice.For Zaphod, the sound was always like fingernails on a blackboard, piercing, piercing in the depths of his soul. He stood up awkwardly from his seat. "Well, yes," he murmured, "well, you see, I'm really sorry about the flowers. I did mean to lay flowers at your grave, but you know, the wreaths in the store Just sold out..." "You simply forgot!" Zaphod Beeblebrox IV said decisively. "Can……" "Too busy. Never thinks of anyone else. That's how it is with living people." "Two minutes, Zaphod," whispered Ford in awe. Zaphod fidgeted nervously. "But, but I'm really going to give flowers," he said, "and to write to my great-grandmother, as soon as we get out of this..." "Your great-grandmother," said the haggard old man to himself. "Yeah," said Zaphod, "well, is she all right? You see, I'll go see her. But first we have to-" "Your 'deceased' great-grandmother and I are doing well," said Zaphod Beeblebrox IV harshly. "Oh oh." "Just disappointed in you, young Zaphod..." "Yeah, um..." Zaphod suddenly felt inexplicably unable to control this conversation anymore, and Ford's heavy breathing beside him reminded him that time was slipping away quickly every second.The noise and vibrations have reached horrific levels.In the darkness, he saw Trillian and Arthur's faces turned pale, their eyes unblinking. "Well, great-grandfather..." "We followed your every step and ended up feeling pretty discouraged..." "Yes, you see, as you can see now..." "Not to mention the embarrassment!" "Can you hear me say a few words...?" "I mean, what have you been doing with your life?" "I'm being attacked by a Vogon fleet!" Zaphod finally yelled.It was his only chance, though a little exaggerated, to express the basic point of view of the conversation. "It doesn't surprise me at all," said the thin old man, shrugging. "The thing is, you see, this is happening now," insisted Zaphod frantically. The ghostly ancestor nodded, picked up the cup that Arthur Dent had just brought in, and observed it with interest. "Well... great-grandfather—" "You know what," the ghost interrupted Zaphod, staring at him sternly. "The orbit of Betelgeuse 5 star is slightly abnormal?" Zaphod didn't know, and found it hard to relate the news to the current noise, the approaching death, and all the rest. "Well, no . . . you see," he said. "Swing me around in my own grave!" growled the ancestor.He slammed the glass down and pointed a dead-twig finger tremblingly at Zaphod. "It's all your fault!" he screamed. "One minute and thirty seconds," murmured Ford, resting his head limply on his hands. "Here, you see, great-grandfather, really, can you help us, because..." "Help?" The old man responded as if he was being asked to eat a skunk. "Yeah, help us, or something like that, right now! Otherwise..." "Help!" the old man repeated, like being asked to eat a tender skunk with French fries at a rave.He looked shocked and stayed there. "You wandered the galaxy all day, with your"—the ancestor waved his hand in full display of his contempt—"with these sleazy friends of yours, too busy to lay flowers on my grave Well, that's something even a robot made of plastic would remember. Of course it would make more sense to you, but you didn't do it. Too busy. Too trendy. Too atheistic—until you suddenly find yourself stuck in Some kind of predicament, so I suddenly became crazily concerned about me!" He shook his head—careful not to disturb the sleep of the other head, which was already restless. "Well, I don't know, young Zaphod," he went on, "I think I'll have to think about that." "One minute and ten seconds," Ford said blankly. Zaphod Beeblebrox IV eyed him curiously. "Why does this guy keep chanting numbers?" he asked. "These numbers," Zaphod replied succinctly, "is how long we'll be alive." "Oh," said his great-grandfather, muttering to himself, "doesn't work for me, no doubt about it." So he moved into a darker corner and started looking for something else to fiddle with. Zaphod felt he was on the verge of madness, and he wondered if he should take the step and go completely mad. "Great-grandfather," he said, "but it worked for us! We're alive, but now we're about to lose our lives." "it is good." "what?" "What use is your life to anyone? Whenever I think of what you have done with your life, one phrase comes into my head irresistibly, 'pig's ears,' worth nothing. " "But I was the president of the galaxy after all!" "Ha," muttered his ancestor, "what does this job mean to a Beeblebrox?" "What? At least the only president you know! The whole galaxy!" "Arrogant brat." Zaphod blinked in confusion. "Hey—well, what are you, man? I mean, great-grandfather." The little stooped old man strode up to his great-grandson and smacked him on the knee.The effect of this is to remind Zaphod that he is talking to a ghost, because he was knocked and felt nothing. "You and I know what it means to be President, young Zaphod. You know, because you've been; I know, because I'm dead, which gives me pretty good insight, Insightful. We have a saying here, 'Life is wasted while alive'." "Yeah," said Zaphod bitterly, "quite true. Quite profound. What I need right now is admonitions, like I need holes in my head." "Fifty seconds," grunted Prefect Ford. "Where did I go?" asked Zaphod Beeblebrox IV. "There's a lot of talk going on," said Zaphod Beeblebrox. "Oh yes." "This guy," Ford whispered to Zaphod softly, "can really help us?" "There's no one else who can help us anyway," whispered Zaphod. Ford nodded dejectedly. "Zaphod!" said the ghost suddenly, "you became President of the Galaxy for a purpose. Have you forgotten?" "Can we discuss this later?" "Have you forgotten?" the ghost insisted. "Yeah! Of course I forgot! I had to forget. When they got the job, they censored your brain, you know that. If they found out my mind was full of machinations, I would be reassigned immediately." Throw it in the street and get nothing but a big pension, a secretarial staff, a fleet, and two bad voices." "Oh," the ghost nodded in satisfaction, "you still remember it!" He paused for a moment. "Very good," he said.At this moment, the noise stopped. "Forty seconds," said Ford.He looked at his watch, tapped it twice, then looked up. "Hey, the noise has stopped," he said. The ghost's small eyes sparkled and blinked mischievously. "I've slowed time down for a while," he said. "Just long enough for you to understand what I'm saying. I hate that you're ignoring everything I have to say." "No, listen to me, you old guy who sees it all." Zaphod jumped up from his seat, "Number one... thanks for stopping time and all that shit. Great, It's great, it's just wonderful. But the second - I'm not going to thank you for the preaching, get it? I don't know what the great thing that I'm meant to do, it looks like I'm meant to not know .It makes me angry, see? "The old me knew that, the old me cared a lot about that. Well, everything was fine, except for one thing: the old me cared so much that he got into his own brain—and It's my brain -- lock the parts that know and care, because if I knew and cared, I couldn't do that. I can't be president and I can't steal this ship. It must It is a very important move. "But my old self wiped himself out, didn't it? By changing my brain. Well, it was his choice after all. But this new me now needs to make its own choices, and besides, Somehow, I now choose not to know and not to care about that big thing, whatever it is. That's what I asked for, and that's what I got. "Except for one thing, there are remnants of my old self that want to control who I am now, and he keeps some instructions in the parts of my brain that he locked down. Well, but I I don't want to know or hear these orders. It's my choice. I'm not going to be anybody's puppet, least of all my own." In a rage, Zaphod slammed his fist down on the console, completely oblivious to the stupefaction he evoked. "The old me is dead!" he growled. "He killed himself! Dead people shouldn't hang around and interfere with the living!" "But it was you who summoned me to help you get out of trouble," said the ghost. "Oh," said Zaphod, sitting down again, "that's two different things, isn't it?" He grinned slightly at Trillian. "Zaphod," said the ghost harshly, "there is only one reason I wasted energy on you, I suppose: energy is of no use to me for anything else after death." "Well," said Zaphod, "why don't you tell me what the big secret is? Tell me." "Zaphod, you have been president of the galaxy, just as Wilton Wanks was before you. You should know that the president is nothing. It is equal to zero. In the shadow behind you, there is another person, a Creatures, or something. He is the one who holds the ultimate power. That man, or creature, or something, you have to find him—the guy who actually controls the galaxy. Also, we doubt his The sphere of influence is not limited to that. Maybe the entire universe." "why?" "Why?" said the ghost in amazement. "Why? Look around you, man. Do you think this is normal to you?" "Okay." The old ghost glared at him. "I beg to differ. You're going to take this ship, this improbability-driven ship, where it's needed. You're going to do it. Don't expect you to escape your mission. The improbability field controls you , you are in its grasp. How does that sound?" He stood there, tapping on a terminal on Eddie, the ship's computer. "What is this thing doing?" "It's trying," said Zaphod with great restraint, "to make a cup of tea." "Excellent," said his great-grandfather, "I approve of it. Now, Zaphod," he said, wagging his finger at Zaphod, "I don't know if you can accomplish your mission, I Just know you can't escape it. But I've been dead for too long and I'm too tired to think about so many things. The main reason I'm here to help you now is that I can't stand you and your trendy friends My thoughts are so lazy. Do you understand?" "Yes, thank you very much." "Oh, and, Zaphod?" "Well, what?" "If you feel like you need help again later on, you know, if you're in any trouble and need someone to help you in a pinch..." "how?" "Please remember, don't look for me again." At this moment, a light came out from the skinny ghost's hand and shot on the computer.Then, the ghost disappeared without a trace, smoke billowed in the bridge, and the Heart of Gold made a leap in the dimension of time and space that could not judge the distance.