Mostly Harmless - Douglas Adams [26]
“What shall we do with the copy?” the secretary would ask.
“Ah, put it out over the network. Got to have something going out there. I’ve got a headache, I’m going home.”
So the edited copy would go for one last slash and burn through the legal department, and then be sent back down here, where it would be broadcast out over the Sub-Etha-Net for instantaneous retrieval anywhere in the Galaxy. That was handled by equipment which was monitored and controlled by the terminals on the right-hand side of the room.
Meanwhile the order to disallow the researcher’s expenses was relayed down to the computer terminal stuck off in the upper right-hand corner, and it was to this terminal that Ford Prefect now swiftly made his way.
If you are reading this on planet Earth then:
A. Good luck to you. There is an awful lot of stuff you don’t know anything about, but you are not alone in this. It’s just that in your case the consequences of not knowing any of this stuff are particularly terrible, but then, hey, that’s just the way the cookie gets completely stomped on and obliterated.
B. Don’t imagine you know what a computer terminal is.
A computer terminal is not some clunky old television with a typewriter in front of it. It is an interface where the mind and body can connect with the universe and move bits of it about.
Ford hurried over to the terminal, sat in front of it and quickly dipped himself into its universe.
It wasn’t the normal universe he knew. It was a universe of densely enfolded worlds, of wild topographies, towering mountain peaks, heart-stopping ravines, of moons shattering off into seahorses, hurtful blurting crevices, silently heaving oceans and bottomless hurtling hooping rants.
He held still to get his bearings. He controlled his breathing, closed his eyes and looked again.
So this was where accountants spent their time. There was clearly more to them than met the eye. He looked around carefully, trying not to let it all swell and swim and overwhelm him.
He didn’t know his way around this universe. He didn’t even know the physical laws that determined its dimensional extents or behaviors, but his instinct told him to look for the most outstanding feature he could detect and make toward it.
Way off in some indistinguishable distance-was it a mile or a million or a mote in his eye?-was a stunning peak that overarched the sky, climbed and climbed and spread out in flowering aigrettes,1 agglomerates,2 and archimandrites.3
He weltered toward it, hooling and thurling, and at last reached it in a meaninglessly long umthingth of time.
He clung to it, arms outspread, gripping tightly on to its roughly gnarled and pitted surface. Once he was certain that he was secure, he made the hideous mistake of looking down.
While he had been weltering, hooling and thurling, the distance beneath him had not bothered him unduly, but now that he was gripping, the distance made his heart wilt and his brain bend. His fingers were white with pain and tension. His teeth were grinding and twisting against each other beyond his control. His eyes turned inward with waves from the willowing extremities of nausea.
With an immense effort of will and faith he simply let go and pushed.
He felt himself float. Away. And then, counterintuitively, upward. And upward.
He threw his shoulders back, let his arms drop, gazed upward and let himself be drawn loosely, higher and higher.
Before long, insofar as such terms had any meaning in this virtual universe, a ledge loomed up ahead of him on which he could grip and onto which he could clamber.
He rose; he gripped; he clambered.
He panted a little. This was all a little stressful.
He held tightly on to the ledge as he sat. He wasn’t certain if this was to prevent himself from falling down off it or rising up from it, but he needed something to grip onto as he surveyed the world in which he found himself.
The whirling, turning height spun him and twisted his brain in upon