Chapter 26 Chapter Twenty-Four

The flying car passed through the cold darkness silently, drawing a solitary gleam of light in the dark night of Mangrass.Arthur's companion seemed deeply lost in his own thoughts.Arthur tried several times to start a conversation, but he simply asked Arthur if he was okay, and then fell silent again. Arthur tried to gauge how fast they were going, but the darkness outside the car window was so complete that he couldn't see anything to refer to.The ride was so soft and light that he almost thought they weren't moving at all. Later, a small bright spot appeared in the distance, and it became much larger in just a few seconds. Only then did Arthur realize that this light source was heading towards them at a very high speed, so he wanted to do it. It is clear what kind of aircraft this is.He stared for a long time, but couldn't see any clear outlines.Suddenly, he gasped, as the car they were riding in the air sank suddenly, the car headed toward the ground, and it felt like the car was about to crash.Their relative speed was incredible, and Arthur barely had time to let it out before it was over.The next thing he noticed was a hazy silver all around.He shook his head vigorously before he noticed a black spot shrinking rapidly behind them.After a few seconds, he finally realized what had happened.

They had plunged headlong into a tunnel underground.That extremely high speed is their own, a high speed relative to a fixed hole in the ground.The spot of light just now was the mouth of the creek, the entrance of the tunnel.That fuzzy silver is the walls around the tunnel.Apparently, they were heading straight into the tunnel at hundreds of miles an hour. He closed his eyes in fright. After a long time, he couldn't judge, he finally felt that the speed of the speeding car had slowed down a little, and after a while, they began to slide slowly and were about to stop smoothly. He opened his eyes.They were still in the silver tunnel, crossing what appeared to be a junction of many tunnels coming together.They ended up in a small room made of bent steel.There are also several tunnels leading here.At the far end of the room Arthur saw a huge halo, faint but irritating.It was irritating because it played a little trick with Arthur's eyes, so that it couldn't be focused exactly on it, and couldn't tell whether it was near or far.Arthur guessed (and was terribly wrong) that it might be ultraviolet light.

"Earthlings," said the old man, "we have now penetrated deep into the heart of Magrath." "How do you know I'm from Earth?" Arthur asked curiously. "You will gradually understand these things." The old man said softly, "At least," there was a hint of doubt in his voice, "it is clearer than they are now." He continued: "I need to remind you that the room we're going to enter next doesn't actually exist on our planet. It's a little too... big. We're going through a door into a huge hyperspace realm. Maybe you're a little uneasy."

Arthur snorted nervously. Slartibartfast pressed a button, then added uncertainly, "Actually, I'm nervous, too. Sit tight." The speeder rushed straight forward into the halo.Suddenly Arthur had a clear idea of ​​what infinity looked like. Actually it's not infinite.Infinity looks flat and meaningless.To look up at the night sky is to look at infinity—the distance is vast and therefore meaningless.The room that the spaceship enters could be anything, but it's never infinite, it's just very, very big, so big that it feels infinite, even bigger than infinity itself.

Arthur felt dizzy.The aerial vehicle was going at top speed, and they passed through the open space, throwing back the door they had just entered, and became an invisible hole in the dimly glowing wall behind them. that wall. That wall negates all imagination—first lure it, then defeat it.The wall is so impossibly large and transparent that its top, bottom and sides are barely caught by sight.The dizzying shock of facing it could kill a man. The wall is extremely flat.What appears to be extending straight to the sides is actually curved, but this can only be measured using the most advanced laser measuring equipment.After a distance of 13 light seconds, its end will connect.In other words, the wall encloses a hollow space three million miles in diameter filled with unimaginable light.

"Welcome," said Slartibartfast, as the vehicle appeared as a speck, moving imperceptibly through this unimaginable space at three times the speed of sound, "Welcome," he said, " Come to our factory." Arthur stared at him in a surprised panic.Ahead of them, beyond a distance that Arthur could not judge or even guess, a strange set of suspended objects lined up in space: spheres that cast huge shadows, surrounded by fine patterns of metal and light. "Here," said Slartibartfast, "is where we make most of our planets." "You mean," said Arthur, trying to form his words, "that you're re-activating the place now?"

"No, no, my God, no," the old man explained, "no. The current galaxy is not rich enough to pay for our products. We have been awakened to accept an extraordinary commission, some... very Special clients from another dimension. What's ahead of us...you might be interested." Arthur looked in the direction of the old man's finger, and finally made out the floating structure he was pointing at.Among so many structures, only it has signs of activity, although this sign is more of a subtle feeling than something that can be touched. At this moment, an arc of light flashed through the structure, illuminating some relief-like patterns in the darkness within.The patterns were known to Arthur, rough, speckled forms, as familiar to him as words, like part of the memory of his mind.For a few full seconds, he sat there quietly, Ding with these images running wild in his head, trying to find a place to settle down and make sense.

One part of his brain told him that he was very familiar with what he saw and knew exactly what these patterns represented; at the same time, another part strongly denied such ideas and prevented him from thinking further in this direction. go down. The light flickered again.This time there was no doubt. "Earth..." Arthur murmured. "Oh, it should actually be Earth-Two," said Slartibartfast cheerfully. "We're making a copy of our original blueprint." There was a short silence. "You want to tell me," Arthur said slowly, trying to control himself, "that you ... made the earth?"

"Oh, yes," said Slartibartfast, "you've been to a place... Norway, I suppose?" "No," said Arthur, "I haven't been." "What a pity," said Slartibartfast, "that belonged to me. It was my winning entry, you know. What a lovely winding coastline. I was so sad to hear it was destroyed .” "You feel bad?" "Yes. But it's better in five minutes. What a shocking mess." "What?" said Arthur. "The mouse is angry." "Is the mouse angry?" "Oh, yes," said the old man gently.

"Yeah, well, I'd like dogs and cats and platypuses to do the same, but..." "Oh, but they didn't pay, understand? Didn't they?" "You see," said Arthur, "wouldn't it save you a lot of time if I gave up now and went crazy?" For a moment, the air vehicle flew in an awkward silence.Then the old man patiently tried to explain all this to Arthur. "Earthlings, the planet you live on is ordered, paid for, and managed by rats. It was built with a purpose, but 5 minutes before it fulfilled that purpose, it was destroyed. So we're building another one."

There was only one word in Arthur's mind. "Rats?" he said. "Exactly, earthlings." "Look, excuse me, are we talking about the little, gray, furry, crazy-cheese-obsessed creature that scares women into screaming at tables in early '60s soap operas?" Slartibartfast coughed politely. "Earthlings," he said, "sometimes it's really hard to get used to the way you talk. Remember, I've slept for five million years inside this planet called Mangrass, so I don't know anything about what you're talking about." Talking about an early 60's soap opera. These creatures you call rats, lo and behold, they're not what you seem to be. They're some super-intelligent pan-dimensional beings who just happened to enter our dimension. All that cheese The screaming and screaming are just superficial." The old man paused and frowned sympathetically. "I'm afraid they are experimenting on you." Arthur thought for a second, and the expression on his face brightened. "Oh no," he said, "I've finally found the source of the misunderstanding now. It's not like that. You see, what you're seeing is actually an experiment on them. They're often used in behavioral science studies, Pavlovian stuff. All sorts of tests can be done with rats. Natural learning processes can be analyzed by learning to ring a bell, run a maze, etc. We can learn a lot about ourselves by observing their behavior... " Arthur's voice trailed off. "Great..." said Slartibartfast, "I have to admire it." "What?" Arthur asked. "How cleverly they hide their own natures, and how cleverly they direct your minds. And from time to time deliberately go the wrong way in a maze, deliberately gnaw off the wrong cheese, and even die of myxoma for no reason. If these were well-calculated strategies, the cumulative results are astonishing." He paused for a moment... Bu. "You see, Earthlings, they are indeed extremely intelligent, super-intelligent pan-dimensional beings. Your planet and your own human beings actually form the matrix of an organic computer, running a 10-million-year research Procedure… let me tell you the whole story. It might take a while." "Time," said Arthur weakly, "is not a problem at all compared with what I have now."