Chapter 33 Chapter Thirty-Three

In the woods about a mile away, Arthur Dent heard Sir Ford approaching, and hastily began to concentrate on what he was doing. What he's doing is rather strange, and it goes like this: Carve out a huge square out of a large, flat piece of rock, and divide it into 169 smaller squares, 13 on each side. Next he gathered a collection of small, flat stones, each with a letter carved on it: Two surviving Aboriginal men sat morosely on the edge of the rock as Arthur Dent tried to explain it to them Strange concept represented by the stone. So far, the natives haven't done too well.They try to eat some of them, bury others, and throw the rest away.But in the end, Arthur managed to get one of them to place two stones in the grid he had carved.This rate of progress is even slower than yesterday, and the intelligence of the aborigines seems to be declining rapidly just like their spirit

To encourage them to continue, Arthur himself placed a few letter blocks into the grid, and then encouraged the natives to add more stones. Things are not going so well, Standing by a nearby tree, Ford watched quietly, "No," said Arthur, with extreme frustration in his voice, to a scrambling native, "you see, O counts as ten points, it's part of a word, and the word is worth three times as much, so... see , I already explained the rules to you No, no, put down that jawbone OK, let's start again. Concentrate this time:" Bucket leaned his elbows on the tree and rested his head on his hands.

"What are you doing, Arthur?" he asked quietly. Arthur looked up in surprise.He suddenly had a feeling that what he had done might be a little stupid. He only knew that when he was a child, this game had a great impact on the development of his intelligence and taught him like a god.But then the situation was not the same as it is now, and more precisely, the situation in the future will be different then. "I'm trying to save these cavemen from playing Scrabble," he said. "They're not cavemen!" "But they look like cavemen." Ford didn't bother anymore,

"I see," he said. "It's a laborious job," said Arthur wearily. "The only word they know is 'woah,' and they can't spell it." He sighed and sat back. "What are you trying to achieve?" asked Ford. "We've got to encourage them to evolve! Evolve!" Arthur yelled angrily, hoping that his weary sigh and anger would help counteract the feeling that he was doing something stupid, but alas. can't do it.He jumped up. "Those idiots who came here with us, a world that they passed on, can you imagine," he said. "Imagine," said Ford, raising his eyebrows, "we don't need to imagine. We've seen it,"

"But..." Arthur waved his arms back and forth in despair. "We've seen," said Ford, "that there's no escape." Arthur kicked at a rock. "Have you told them what we found?" he asked. "Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh," said Ford, clearly not concentrating. "Norway," said Arthur, "Slatibartfast's signature left in the glacier. Did you tell them?" "What's the point?" said Ford. "What does it mean to them?" "Meaning," said Arthur, "meaning? You know what it means, and it means that this planet is Earth! This is my home! This is where I was born!"

"Once," said Ford. "Well, it will be." "Yeah, two million years from now. Why don't you tell them that? Go up to them and say, 'Excuse me, I just wanted to point out that in two million years I'll be born just a few miles from here ...and see what they'll say. They'll tie you to a tree and set you on fire." Arthur listened sullenly. "Let's face it," said Ford, "those fellows over there are your ancestors, not these poor creatures here." He walked over to the ape-men listlessly fiddling with stone letters, waving his hands.

"Never mind Scrabble, Arthur," he said, "it's not going to save humanity, because the species isn't going to be human. The human race is sitting by a mountain mocking a rock right now, making documentaries about themselves .” Arthur could not help cringing a little. "We're definitely still able to do something," he said.A terrible sense of loneliness and desolation overwhelmed him.Here he is, on Earth, but Earth has lost its future in a random terrible catastrophe, and now seems to be losing its past: "No," said Ford, "we can't do anything about it. It's not changing the history of the planet, you see, that's the history of the planet itself. Take it or not, but it's true: Golga Flynn It was your ancestors. Two million years later, they were wiped out by the Vogons. History never changes, it's just like a jigsaw puzzle, piece by piece. Life is amazing, isn't it,"

He picked up the letter Q and threw it into a distant privet bush, hitting a little rabbit there.The rabbit was terrified and ran until it was attacked and eaten by a lone fox who got caught in a bone and suffocated on the bank of a creek before being washed away gone. Over the next few weeks, Prefect Ford set aside his pride and began a relationship with a girl.She was a personnel officer when she was aboard Golga Flintham.Later, she died by drinking water from a pond polluted by the corpse of a dead fox, much to Ford's heart.There is only one lesson that can be drawn from this story, and that is that one should never throw the letter Q into a privet bush, but unfortunately there are times when such behavior is unavoidable.

As most of the really important things in life tend to go unnoticed, this chain of events, too, was completely ignored by Prefect Ford and Arthur Dent.At this moment, they were sadly watching a native man frowning and fiddling with other letters. "Poor caveman," said Arthur. "they are not" "what?" "Oh, nothing," said Ford. The poor creature let out a miserable howl, and slammed his fist down on the rock. "It's kind of a waste of time for them, isn't it?" said Arthur. "Woo, woo, woo," the aborigine muttered, and slammed his fist on the rock again: "In the process of evolution, they will definitely be defeated by the phone sanitizers."

"Ming wa, woo, woo," the natives yelled in unison, continuing to pound the rocks with their fists. "Why does he keep hitting rocks?" said Arthur. "I think maybe he wants you to keep playing Scrabble with him," said Ford. "He's pointing at the letters." "Spell it out again—'dwldiwdc' comes out poor guy, I keep telling them there's only one g in that string of letters." The native smashed the rock again. They looked over his shoulder. Their eyes widened. From the jumbled pile of letters, eight were drawn out and arranged in a clear straight line.

They spell two words. These two words are: "420." "Goohoo, oooh, oooh," the native explained.Angrily, he brushed the letters away, then walked to a nearby tree and gathered with his companions. Ford and Arthur stared at him.Then, they looked at each other. "Is that what I think it means?" they both asked each other at the same time. "Yes." They both said at the same time. "42," said Arthur. "42," said Ford. Arthur ran up to the two natives. "What do you want to tell us," he cried, "what does it mean?" One of the natives rolled over on the ground, kicked his legs in the air, then rolled back and fell asleep. Another climbed up a tree and threw horse chestnuts at Prefect Ford.Whatever they wanted to say, they've said it. "You know what that means?" Ford said. "Not sure." "42 is the number given by 'Deep Thought', and it is the ultimate answer." "yes." "Earth is a computer designed and built by 'Deep Thought' to study the questions to which this ultimate answer corresponds." "We think so." "Organic life is part of the computer matrix," "If you want to say that," "Here's what I said: it means that these natives, these ape-men, are an integral part of the computer program, and we and the Golga Flinthams are not." "But the Neanderthals are going extinct, and the Golga Flinthams will apparently replace them." "Exactly, so you must be able to see what it means." "what," "Look up!" said Prefect Ford. Arthur looked around. "The planet is not doing well right now," he said. I was stunned for a while, "However, it must have calculated something," he said embarrassingly, "because Marvin once said that he can see that problem, which is printed in your brainwave network.,, "But…" "It could be the wrong question, or a variant of the right one. But if we can find it, it might give us a clue. I don't see how we can do that, though," They were morose about it for a while.Arthur sat down on the ground and began to pull weeds, but he soon found that this was not something that could prevent him from concentrating on others.He can't count on the grass, the trees don't look like they'll work, the mountains look like they'll go nowhere, the future looks like a narrow road that can only be passed through, Ford fiddled with his sub-ether sensors.It's still silent.He sighed and put it aside. Arthur picked up an alphabet stone from his homemade Scrabble board.It's a "T".He sighed and put it back again.When it was put back, the letter next to it was 'I'. They spelled 'it', and he picked up the next two stones and threw them out. An 's' and an 'H' came out of a strange Coincidentally, the word thus obtained expressed exactly what it was like to think about the present. He stared at it for a moment. He didn't do it on purpose, it was just a random accident. His mind slowly hung up. In first gear, start. "Ford," he said suddenly, "you see, if a question is imprinted on my brainwave network and I'm not aware of it, it must be somewhere in my subconscious mind." "Yeah, I think so:" "There must be some way to bring this subconscious to the surface." "Oh, enough?" "Yes, by introducing random causes controlled by the subconscious mind." "How to do it?" "For example, taking Scrabble letters out of an opaque bag:" Ford jumped up. "Smart!" he said.He ripped his towel out of his backpack, tied a few knots, and turned it into a bag, "It's insane," he said, "absolutely bullshit. But we're going to do it anyway because it's smart bullshit. Come on, come on." The sun passes humbly behind the clouds.Sad little raindrops fell. They pooled the remaining letters, poured them into bags, and shook them: "There," said Ford, "close your eyes and take them out. Quick, quick, quick." Arthur closed his eyes and reached into the stone-filled towel.He made the sum, then took four and gave them to Ford.Ford lined them up on the floor in the order they were handed to him. "w," read Ford, "H, A, T...whm, what!" He blinked. "I think it's going to work!" he said. Arthur took out 3 more and handed them to him. "D, O, Y...D0y0. Oh, maybe it still won't work," said Ford. "This is the next three." "O, u, G...D0y called g probably doesn't make any sense." Arthur took two out of the bag.Ford laid them out. "E, T, doyDugn...doyouget, you got it!" yelled Fred. "It works! Surprisingly, this trick really works!" "There are more!" Arthur excitedly took out the letters at the fastest speed. "I, F," said Ford, "Y, O, u, M, u, L, T, I, P, L, Y what you get, if you multiply by... s, I, x6B, Y... you get What, if you multiply by 6, multiply s, E, v, E, N7 by 6" He paused, "Again, what's the next letter?" "Well, that's all," said Arthur, "that's all there is to it." He sat down, puzzled. He touched the tied towel again, and indeed there were no more letters in it. "That's all I mean,'" asked Ford. "And that's all." "7 times 6.42." "That's it. That's all in there."