Chapter 12 Chapter Twelve

Ford fell into the air wrapped in a big cloud of glass shards and chair legs, and this time, as before, he didn't really think through the problem, he just went with the feeling and bought some time.He knows what to do now.Every time there was a major crisis, Ford always let his past flash before his eyes. What to do next. The ground was coming toward him at thirty feet a second.However, he thought to himself, it would not be too late to deal with it when it arrived.There is always a priority. Ah, this is not coming.his childhood.It was tedious, and he had seen it several times before.One image after another flashed by.Boring days on Betelgeuse 5.Zaphod Beeblebrox as a child.Yes, he knew all of this.Wish I had a fast forward button in my head too.His seventh birthday party, the first towel he got.hurry up.

He was falling in a circle, and at this altitude the air outside the room was cold and choking in his lungs.Try to avoid swallowing broken glass as well. Every Star Trek in the early years.Oh, for heaven's sake, this shit looks like a travel documentary shown before the movie starts.Start working on The Guide. what! It was those days.They came to Bwinelli Athor in Fanara, and worked in a hut - of course, after the Riktanagas and Dongquitians turned the place upside down Before.Half a dozen young people, a few towels, a few ultra-advanced digital devices, and most importantly, many dreams.No, what matters is lots and lots of Fanara rum.Or if you're going for absolute precision, it's definitely those Jacks old wines that matter most, then Fanara's rum and Atholl where the local girls love to hang out on the beach.Of course, those dreams are also very important.What happened to them?

In fact, Ford doesn't remember much of their content, but those dreams seemed to be very, very important at the time.And it definitely doesn't include such a high-rise building that he fell from upstairs.The original team split up and it all started from there.Some of them settled down and became more and more greedy, while he and a few others stayed out, hitchhiking around, gradually alienating themselves from the heart of the Guide.Meanwhile, The Guide relentlessly morphs into a corporate nightmare, complete with a construction monster to live in.What dreams are there here?Ford thought of the group lawyers who took up half the building, and the group "staff" who took up the first few floors, plus all the assistant editors and their secretaries and their secretary's lawyers and their secretaries—that is, Say the lawyer's secretary -- and worst of all, the accounting and marketing department.

He almost wanted to just keep falling.A middle finger to this bunch of bastards. Now he happened to be passing the seventeenth floor, the cradle of the marketing department, where groups of drunks were arguing furiously about what color to use for the cover of the Guide, and were always absolutely right about their hindsight.If they looked out the window now, they would see Ford Prefect falling beside them, knowing that he was going to die and still thinking of giving them the middle finger, these guys would be surprised. Sixteen floors.Assistant Editor.asshole.Did they have a good time cutting his manuscript?He investigated a planet for fifteen years, but they chopped it down to a few words, "basically harmless".Give them the middle finger too.

Fifteen floors.Logistics management, God knows what.All of them drive big cars.That's probably what it's for.he estimated. Fourteen floors.personnel department.He had strong suspicions that they had planned his fifteen years of exile as a way to turn the Guide into a dictatorship (or, more accurately, a dictatorship—don't forget the lawyers). Thirteen floors.Ministry of Research and Development. Wait, thirteen floors. Right now he has to think a little faster because the situation is becoming a bit urgent. He suddenly remembered the display panel in the elevator.There is no 13 on it.He didn't pay much attention at that time, because after staying on such a primitive planet as the earth for fifteen years, Ford had long been accustomed to the local people's superstition of 13, and he was no stranger to buildings without a thirteenth floor.But here too it doesn't make sense.

He flicked past the windows on the thirteenth floor, noticing naturally that all the windows were opaque. What is going on in there?He began to recall everything Howl had said.A brand new multi-dimensional "Guide", spread in an infinite number of universes.When Hal told it, the idea seemed like a pipe dream of the marketing department with the support of the accounting department, and it made no sense.But if it doesn't stop at the daydream stage, it will definitely become a very weird and very dangerous trick.what happened?On the tightly sealed thirteenth floor, what is behind his dark window?

Ford felt his curiosity soar, and with it, his panic.As far as his relationship is still on the rise, the above is the complete list.By any other measure, he was falling rapidly.If he wanted to get out of the current situation alive, he should really start to use his brain. He glanced down.About a hundred feet below, there was a commotion in the crowd.Some have begun to raise their eyes expectantly to make room for him.Even the exciting, intense and extremely stupid monster hunting game has temporarily come to a standstill. He really didn't want to let them down, but he hadn't noticed before that Colin was two feet below him.Colin had evidently been happily by his side the whole time.Waiting for Ford to decide what to do with himself.

"Colin!" Ford yelled. Colin didn't answer, Ford went cold, and then he realized that he hadn't told Colin that his name was Colin. "Come here!" cried Ford. Colin flew to him, and he enjoyed the descent very much, and hoped that Ford would do the same. Without warning, Colin's world turns dark when Ford suddenly wraps a towel around it.It felt that it was sinking a lot, and it was both excited and happy about the challenge that Ford brought to itself.Just not sure if I can handle it, nothing else. The towel hangs on Colin.Ford clutched at the seam of the towel and hung his head.When it comes to towels, some wanderers think they should be made weirder, sewing all kinds of gadgets and secret tools into the towels, even computer equipment.Ford was a purist, and he liked to keep things simple and clear.His towels are ordinary, and they come from an equally ordinary home improvement store, and they even have blue and pink flowers printed on them.Although he kept trying to use chemical and physical methods to deal with it, the flowers still refused to fade.There were a few wires sewn into the towel, a little bit of a flexible writing stick, and one of the corners was dipped in some nourishing fluid, which he could suck in an emergency, but nothing else. , it's just an ordinary and simple towel, you can use it to wipe your face.Ford made only one real modification to it, and that was at the suggestion of a friend: He reinforced the seams.

Ford clutched the towel like a madman. They are still falling, but the speed has begun to slow down. "Up, Colin!" he yelled. no response. "Your name," cried Ford, "is Colin. So when I say 'Up, Colin!', I want you, Colin, up. Get it? Up, Colin!" Still no response.Or there was a reaction, but it was just Colin's muffled groans.Ford was anxious.They were falling very slowly now, but it was the individuals gathering beneath his own feet that made Ford anxious.The native, friendly, furry-hunting kind were spreading out, and the big, stout, bull-necked slug-types were coming out of what people commonly call air with missile launchers on their shoulders.Speaking of air, as all seasoned galactic wanderers know, it's not really empty, it's full of intricate interdimensional objects.

"Up!" roared Ford again. "Up! Colin, up!" Colin whimpered and strained desperately.Now they are more or less settled in mid-air.Ford felt like his fingers were going to break. "superior!" They didn't move. "Up, up, up!" A slug is about to fire a missile at him.Ford couldn't believe his eyes, he was dangling in mid-air, clutching a towel, while a slug was about to hit him with a missile.He couldn't think of any other tricks.Now Ford is getting really nervous. In situations like this in the past, he'd usually relied on the advice the Guide gave him, no matter how glib and furious it was, but now wasn't the time to reach into the bag.And it seemed that the Guide had ceased to be his old buddy and ally and had become a source of danger instead.For heaven's sake, he's hanging out of the Guide building right now, his life threatened by those who seem to have ownership of the building.He recalled vaguely the dreams they had had in Bwinelli Athor, where had they all gone?They should have let it go.They should have stayed there, on the beach, loving the fine women and eating fish for food.He should have thought when they first started hanging the grand piano over the kraken pool in the vestibule that it was all going to end badly.Ford began to feel utterly weak and miserable.His fingers were gripping so tightly they were on fire, and his ankle was still aching.

Oh, thank you so much, Ankle, he thought bitterly.Thank you for bringing up your troubles at a time like this.I guess you want to wash your feet warmly and get comfortable, huh?Or you at least want me to... He has an idea. The heavily armed slug had the missile launcher on its shoulders.According to the design of the missile, it should hit any moving object it encounters. Ford tried not to sweat, he could feel his hand slipping from the seam of the towel. He moved his uninjured foot, scratching the heel of the injured foot with his toes. "Go up, to hell!" Ford muttered helplessly to Colin.The robot is happily working hard, but it just can't get up.Ford continued to deal with his heels. He tried to judge the timing, but it wasn't really necessary.Just do it.Anyway, there is only one chance.Now that he's half the shoe loose and his sprained ankle feels better, that's a good thing, right? He kicked the heel with the other foot.It slipped off his foot.About half a second later, a missile burst out of the gun, met the shoe that had fallen in its path, and went straight for it, exploding with a burst of satisfaction and achievement. All this happened about fifteen feet above the ground. The main force of the explosion is downward.A second ago, there was a team of infinitely handsome company executives standing in the elegant square with a rocket launcher on their shoulders, and they stepped on large clean stone slabs, all of which were from the alabaster quarry in Quabra cut out.But now there's just a hole in there, full of disgusting bits and pieces. The explosion created a cloud of hot gas that hurled Ford and Colin into the sky.Ford's eyes darkened, and he tried desperately to hold Colin, but failed.He tumbled helplessly up, reached the apex of the parabola, stopped for a moment and then began to fall.He fell and fell and fell, and suddenly he hit Colin hard, and the guy was still going up. He hugged the round little robot tightly.Colin spun wildly, spinning toward the Guide's office building, happily trying to control his body to slow down. As they circled each other, Ford's stomach wobbled with nausea, and then, undiminished, everything stopped abruptly. Ford found himself slumped dazed on the windowsill. His towel fell by him and he reached out to grab it. Colin was floating up and down just inches away from him. Ford looked around through a bruised, bloodstained, panting fog.The window sill was only about a foot wide, and he himself sat vigilantly on it, a full thirteen floors above the ground. Thirteen floors. He knew they were on the thirteenth floor because the side windows were dark.He was distraught.He had bought those shoes on the East Side of New York at an exorbitant price.For this reason, he also wrote a special review, talking about the great pleasure brought by wearing good shoes.Of course, the article is not in the torrent of information.This damn life. And now one of the shoes is gone.He jerked his head up and turned his gaze to the sky. If that planet hadn't been destroyed, this matter wouldn't have been so tragic, and now he couldn't do it again if he wanted to get another pair. Yes, since possibilities branch off into infinity, there are of course an infinity of Earths out there; but really, a really good pair of shoes, and you really think you'd be able to do that by messing around in interdimensional space/time. Did it find a stand-in? Ford sighed. Oh, well, he still thinks more about the good.At least it saved his life it didn't.At least for now. He's on the thirteenth floor of a building, sitting on a foot-wide ledge, and he's really not sure if the situation is worth the heroic sacrifice of a good pair of shoes. He looked dizzily into the darkened window. It was dark and still inside, like a tomb. No, it's ridiculous to think so.He's been to a lot of great parties in the grave. Did he notice something moving?Ford wasn't so sure.He seemed to see a strange, fluttering shadow.Maybe it's just blood trickling down the eyelashes.He wiped the blood away.God, he wished he had a farm somewhere with some sheep and stuff.He looked in the window again, trying to figure out what that thing was, but he had the feeling—so common in today's universe—that what he was seeing was some kind of optical illusion, that it was just The eyes were playing tricks on him. Is there some kind of bird in there?They cordoned off the whole floor and put black windows with anti-missiles just to hide this?Someone's nest?There was indeed something flapping its wings inside, but it was more like a bird-shaped hole in space than a bird. He closed his eyes, anyway, he had wanted to close them for a while.He began to wonder what to do next.jump?Climb?He didn't think he could figure out how to get in through the window.Well, that's right, when it was hit by a missile earlier, the anti-missile glass didn't seem to be really anti-missile, but that missile was launched at a super-close range. When it was originally designed, the engineers probably didn't consider this situation.So, that doesn't mean he can wrap a towel around his fist and smash it.Who cares, he tried anyway and hurt his hand.Of course, he was in a position where it was not easy to use his strength, which was good, otherwise the injury might be quite serious.After the attack on Frogstar, the entire building of The Guide was rebuilt, solidly fortified then, and it is now probably the most heavily armored publishing company in the industry.However, Ford thought to himself, since it was a system designed by the company committee, there must be some weaknesses.He's already found one, hasn't he?When the engineers designed the windows, they didn't expect someone to fire missiles at close range from inside the building, so the windows didn't hold up. So, if someone is sitting on a window sill outside a building, what behaviors would engineers not anticipate? He rummaged for a second or two, and then it occurred to him. What they didn't expect was that there would be a man like him on the windowsill.Only a complete idiot would sit here, so he won a round.One of the most common mistakes people make when designing idiot smart devices is to underestimate the ingenuity of the idiot. He took out the credit card he had acquired not long ago from his pocket, inserted it into the gap where the glass meets the window frame, and quickly accomplished a feat that a missile could not accomplish.He gently twisted the credit card back and forth, side to side.He felt a hook come loose.He pulled the window open, laughed so hard that he almost fell under it. Ford Prefect should be thankful for SrDt 3454 Ventilation and Telephone Riot. SrDt 3454 The cause of the ventilation and telephone riots is simple, but a lot of heat.Heat, of course, is what ventilation is supposed to solve, and it usually did quite satisfactorily until someone invented air-conditioning.The way the air conditioner solves this problem is of course much more handsome. That's all well and good of course, as long as you can stand it humming and dripping, so someone invented something sexier and cleverer than an air conditioner called an indoor climate control system. Speaking of which, this is an amazing thing. Compared with ordinary air conditioners, its biggest difference is that it is horribly expensive and involves a huge amount of mysterious and profound measuring and adjusting equipment.At any moment, they know better than those ordinary people what kind of air humans want to breathe. It also meant that all the windows in the building had to be sealed to make sure those ordinary people didn't mess with the delicate calculations the system was doing for them.That's right, that's it. After the system was installed, several people who went to work in the building found themselves having this conversation with the smart breathing system debugger: "But what if we want to open the windows?" "With the new smart breathing system, you don't want to open the windows." "Yes, but suppose we just want to open the window just a little bit?" "You don't want to open the windows even a little bit, the new smart breathing system ensures that." "Well." "Enjoy smart breathing!" "OK, so what should I do if the smart breath is paralyzed or malfunctions?" "Ah! One of the smartest features of the Smart Breathing System is that it can never fail. Well, so there's no need to worry about that. Now enjoy your breath and have a good day." (Obviously, it is precisely because of SrDt 3454 Ventilation and Telephone Riot that we now have this decree requiring all equipment, whether mechanical, electronic, quantum mechanical or hydraulic or even wind, steam, and piston-driven Find a place to engrave a text. No matter how small the thing is, the designer has to find a way to squeeze this text in, because anyway, what it wants to remind is not so much the customer as the designer himself. This text is like this: The main difference between things that can fail and things that can't fail is that when something fails that can't fail we usually end up finding that it can't be understood or repaired at all. ) The hot weather came along with the big failure of the smart breathing system, the timing was just right, as if by magic, almost exactly, although at the beginning, of course, the result of the failure was only a high level of resentment and a few deaths from suffocation . The real horror occurred on a day when three major events happened simultaneously.The first event was a statement from Smart Breathing Systems stating that their system works best in mild climates. The second event was the paralysis of a smart breathing system on this particularly hot and humid day, prompting the evacuation of hundreds of office workers who encountered a third event in the street: a horde of berserk long-distance telephone operators, One day I was forced to say "Thank you for using BS&S" to every idiot who picked up the microphone, finally couldn't bear it anymore, grabbed the trash can, megaphone and rifle and took to the street. Days of bloodshed ensued, with every window in the city, missile-proof or not, smashed to pieces, usually accompanied by "Don't hold the line, bastard I don't care which number you want to pick up" , and it doesn’t matter which extension you’re calling from! Get a firework up your ass! Yay yah ha! Whoo hoo! Hey lol! All kinds of animal-type noises that are not useful in daily work. The end result is that operators have earned themselves the right to say to a customer at least once per hour of work while answering the phone, "Use BS&S and die!" and all office buildings must Install windows that open, even just a little. There was another unexpected result: a dramatic drop in the suicide rate.In the dark age of smart-breathing dictatorship, all kinds of eager and nervous executives had to jump in front of the train or stab themselves with a knife. Now they can easily climb up the windowsill of their office and think when they want to go down. Jump down whenever you want.More often than not though, they climb up, look around, take a second or two to gather their thoughts, only to realize that they really just need some fresh air and a new perspective, and maybe a farm , raise a few sheep. Another completely unexpected result: Sir Ford, stranded on the thirteenth floor of a building with super-thick armor, all equipped with only a towel and a credit card, was able to escape through a window that should be anti-missile. Get into a safe zone. He let Colin in as well, closed the window neatly, and started looking for the bird thing. The question he had in mind about those windows was this: because they were originally designed to be unbreakable and then turned into windows that could be opened and closed, they would actually be easier to break through than windows that were designed to be opened and closed in the first place much. Hoho, life old man is really interesting.Ford smugly smug, and then he suddenly realized that the room he had worked so hard to get into was boring. He froze in place in shock. Where did that strange thing with flapping wings go?That strange chain of events, like a great long-planned conspiracy, finally got him into this strange and equally mysterious room-but what was there to spend so much trouble on? The room, like the others in the building today, was decorated in a tasteful, disgusting shade of gray.Several icons and paintings hang on the walls.Most of them were meaningless in Ford's eyes, but he soon found an interesting sketch that clearly looked like a poster of some kind. . There's a bird-like logo on it, and a tagline, "MK 2: The most amazing spectacle in the universe. Coming soon to your plane." No other information. Ford looked around again, his attention gradually drawn to Colin: the ridiculously happy security robot was now huddled in a corner, chattering and looking frightened. That's weird.Ford thought.He glanced across the room, wondering what had caused Colin's reaction.He found something on a workbench that he hadn't noticed before. It is black, round, about the size of a butter plate, with rounded arcs on the top and bottom, so it looks like a small lightweight frisbee. Its surface appears to be completely flat, without gaps or features. It does nothing. Then Ford noticed something written on it.strangeness.What was obviously nothing a second ago suddenly appeared now, and there didn't seem to be any significant transition between the two stages.There is only one frightening message on it: panic There hadn't been any marks or crevices on his surface before.There is now.They are growing. panic. The Guide Mk 2 says so.Ford began to do as the other party said.He had just remembered why those slug-like creatures seemed familiar.Their hue was indeed the Guide's corporate gray, but in every other respect they were Vogons.