| Marvin:
|
Hi.
Have you come to do some cruel thing to me, too?
I have this aching pain in all the diodes down my left side, you know.
I've asked for them to be replaced, of course, but they never listen.
|
| Cirte:
|
Who are you?
|
| Marvin:
|
I am Marvin. The most intelligent robot ever created.
|
| Cirte:
|
Why are you here?
|
| Marvin:
|
I fell through a hole in the spacetime continuum and ended up here.
|
| Cirte:
|
Do you like Rubi-Ka?
|
| Marvin:
|
It's a very nice place, if you happen to think a dead desert planet full of nano-monsters and blood-lusting maniacs is a nice place,
which personally I don't.
|
| Cirte:
|
What do you know about this planet?
|
| Marvin:
|
This is the planet Rubi-Ka. I've been here the last 576,000,003,579 years, and naturally, I know all about it.
But I don't want to tell you about it.
It's too depressing.
|
| Cirte:
|
576,000,003,579 years? What have you been doing all that time?
|
| Marvin:
|
The last 576,000,003,579 years I have been walking around in circles here.
I started off going to the left. Every hundred million years, I would change direction.
It was terribly depressing.
Then you came along.
After that it has sort of gone into a bit of a decline.
I've also written a poem.
|
| Cirte:
|
A poem? Can I hear it?
|
| Marvin:
|
Now the world has gone to bed.
Darkness won't engulf my head.
I can see by infrared.
How I hate the night.
Now I lay me down to sleep.
Try to count electric sheep.
Sweet dream wishes you can keep.
How I hate the night.
|
| Cirte:
|
I want to ask you about something else.
|
| Marvin:
|
How depressing. What do you want to know?
|
| Cirte:
|
How are you?
|
| Marvin:
|
I'm having a great time in this game, if you think having stupid newbies and teenage morons hanging over me all the time, asking stupid questions is "a great time" ...which personally I don't.
|
| Cirte:
|
So you're depressed, huh?
|
| Marvin:
|
I'm depressed.
I'm very depressed.
If you think you've ever been depressed, you haven't.
If you think: "But I wasn't just depressed! Not your normal kind depressed.
I was way down there without a paddle and no way out! I was really really depressed!" you still haven't.
You know what's depressing?
You know that trick you do when you're depressed?
You think that "there's probably someone out there more depressed than me." And that cheers you up a bit.
Well, guess what?
It's me.
I'm the most depressed person in the Universe.
And I'm not even a real person. GOD! I'm so depressed...
|
| Cirte:
|
I want to ask you about something else.
|
| Marvin:
|
How depressing. What do you want to know?
|
| Cirte:
|
What is the meaning of life?
|
| Marvin:
|
Life, loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it.
|
| Cirte:
|
What? What about 42?
|
| Marvin:
|
No. You go it all wrong.
Can't really say I blame you though. After all, I am infinitely more intelligent than you.
I will try to explain, even though I doubt your brain will be able to process it:
A long time ago a machine was created. The machine was called Deep Thought.
It was given the task of calculating the answer to the Great Question of Life, The Universe and Everyting.
After seven and a half million years of thinking, it announced that the answer was indeed 42.
Of course, this wasn't very satisfactory.
But Deep Thought pointed out that the only problem was that they didn't really know what the Great Question was.
Once they knew that, the answer would make much more sense.
|
| Cirte:
|
And..? Did they find out what the question was?
|
| Marvin:
|
First they asked Deep Thought if he could just tell them what the Great Question was.
He said the problem was too tricky, but that he would design for them a computer that could do it.
A great computer.
A computer whose merest operational parameter he was not worthy to calculate. And yet he would design it for them.
|
| Cirte:
|
Tell me more about this computer.
|
| Marvin:
|
This computer was the greatest computer in the Universe of Time and Space.
It was a greater computer than the Milliard Gargantubrain, a greater analyst than the Googleplex Star Thinker and a more fiendish disputant than the Great Hyperbolic Omni-Cognate Neutron Wrangler.
It was so subtle that organic life itself formed part of its operational matrix.
The machine would run a ten million year program to calculate the Great Question to which the answer was 42.
And the computer was called...
The Earth.
|
| Cirte:
|
The Earth?????
|
| Marvin:
|
Oh yes, you're a descendant from the apes of that planet, aren't you?
How depressing.
|
| Cirte:
|
And what answer, err... question did it finally calculate?
|
| Marvin:
|
Unfortunately, it didn't.
Just five minutes before the crucial read-out of the Great Question, the Earth was destroyed by a Vogon called Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council.
|
| Cirte:
|
So the Great Question was lost forever?
|
| Marvin:
|
Yes. Depressing isn't it?
|
| Cirte:
|
And there's no way to find out what it might have been?
|
| Marvin:
|
Well an old acquaintance of mine, Arthur Dent, and his companion, Ford Prefect, a non-ape descendant from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelegeuse, did try to extract the Question from the Earthmans brainwave patterns.
They introduced a random element, pulling scrabble pieces out of a bag, that could be formed by those patterns and which would in turn produce the Question.
But the question they got wasn't exactly what they expected.
|
| Cirte:
|
What was it?
|
| Marvin:
|
It was "What do you get if you multiply six by nine?"
|
| Cirte:
|
But that doesn't make any sense! Six by nine is 54!
|
| Marvin:
|
Yes. Depressing, isn't it?
|
| Cirte:
|
I think I'm going to be depressed now.
|
| Marvin:
|
Can't say I blame you.
|
| Cirte:
|
I want to ask you about something else.
|
| Marvin:
|
How depressing. What do you want to know?
|
| Cirte:
|
How intelligent are you?
|
| Marvin:
|
I am so intelligent that I re-construct the entire nature of mathematics 45,000 times every minute. But don't let my totally superior intellect bring you down.
It's not your fault that you are depressingly stupid.
|
| Cirte:
|
If you're so intelligent, what is the most offensive word in the universe?
|
| Marvin:
|
"Belgium."
|
| Cirte:
|
If you're so intelligent, what was God's last message to his creation?
|
| Marvin:
|
It was "We apologize for the inconvenience."
|
| Cirte:
|
If you're so intelligent, what is the least interesting sight in the universe?
|
| Marvin:
|
It's the night sky over the planet Krikkit.
|
| Cirte:
|
If you're so intelligent, what is the most powerful force known to parascience?
|
| Marvin:
|
It's Bistromathics.
That's the branch of mathematics that numbers behave different in restaurants than anywhere else.
|
| Cirte:
|
I want to ask you about something else.
|
| Marvin:
|
How depressing. What do you want to know?
|
| Cirte:
|
Are you a vendor?
|
| Marvin:
|
I don't sell anything.
It's too depressing.
|
| Cirte:
|
Have you seen Smult around here?
|
| Marvin:
|
You know Smult? He's really depressing...
|
| Cirte:
|
Do you have a mission for me?
|
| Marvin:
|
Mission?
Missions depress me.
|
| Cirte:
|
Goodbye
|
| Marvin:
|
Goodbye.
|
