The Restaurant at the End of the Universe - Douglas Adams [45]
The Milliways Lunch Menu quotes, by permission, a passage from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The passage is this:
The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases.
For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question, “How can we eat?”, the second by the question, “Why do we eat?” and the third by the question, “Where shall we have lunch?”
The Menu goes on to suggest that Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, would be a very agreeable and sophisticated answer to that third question.
What it doesn’t go on to say is that though it will usually take a large civilization many thousands of years to pass through the How, Why and Where phases, small social groupings under stressful conditions can pass through them with extreme rapidity.
“How are we doing?” said Arthur Dent.
“Badly,” said Ford Prefect.
“Where are we going?” said Trillian.
“I don’t know,” said Zaphod Beeblebrox.
“Why not?” demanded Arthur Dent.
“Shut up,” suggested Zaphod Beeblebrox and Ford Prefect.
“Basically, what you’re trying to say,” said Arthur Dent, ignoring this suggestion, “is that we’re out of control.”
The ship was rocking and swaying sickeningly as Ford and Zaphod tried to wrest control from the autopilot. The engines howled and whined like tired children in a supermarket.
“It’s the wild color scheme that freaks me,” said Zaphod whose love affair with this ship had lasted almost three minutes into the flight. “Every time you try to operate one of these weird black controls that are labeled in black on a black background, a little black light lights up black to let you know you’ve done it. What is this? Some kind of galactic hyperhearse?”
The walls of the swaying cabin were also black, the ceiling was black, the seats—which were rudimentary since the only important trip this ship was designed for was supposed to be unmanned—were black, the control panel was black, the instruments were black, the little screws that held them in place were black, the thin tufted nylon floor covering was black, and when they had lifted up a corner of it they had discovered that the foam underlay also was black.
“Perhaps whoever designed it had eyes that responded to different wavelengths,” offered Trillian.
“Or didn’t have much imagination,” muttered Arthur.
“Perhaps,” said Marvin, “he was feeling very depressed.”
In fact, though they weren’t to know it, the decor had been chosen in honor of its owner’s sad, lamented and tax deductible condition.
The ship gave a particularly sickening lurch.
“Take it easy,” pleaded Arthur, “you’re making me space sick.”
“Time sick,” said Ford. “We’re plummeting backward through time.”
“Thank you,” said Arthur, “now I think I really am going to be ill.”
“Go ahead,” said Zaphod, “we could do with a little color about the place.”
“This is meant to be polite afterdinner conversation, is it?” snapped Arthur.
Zaphod left the controls to Ford to figure out, and lurched over to Arthur.
“Look, Earthman,” he said angrily, “you’ve got a job to do, right? The Question to the Ultimate Answer, right?”
“What, that thing?” said Arthur. “I thought we’d forgotten about that.”
“Not me, baby. Like the mice said, it’s worth a lot of money in the right quarters. And it’s all locked up in that head thing of yours.”
“Yes but—”
“But nothing! Think about it. The Meaning of Life! We get our fingers on that we can hold every shrink in the Galaxy up to ransom, and that’s worth a bundle. I owe mine a mint.”
Arthur took a deep breath without much enthusiasm.
“All right,” he said, “but where do we start? How should I know? They say the Ultimate Answer or whatever is Forty-two, how am I supposed to know what the question is? It could be anything. I mean, what’s six times seven?”
Zaphod looked at him hard for a moment. Then his eyes blazed with excitement.
“Forty-two!