經典科幻文學:《 基本上無害 Mostly Harmless》 第3章2

The Earth with which we are here concerned, because of its particular orientation in the Whole Sort of General Mish Mash, was hit by a neutrino that other Earths were not.

我們現在所關注的那個地球，由於在全體各色總雜燴裏的方位特殊，結果就被一粒其他地球都沒碰上的中微子給擊中了。

A neutrino is not a big thing to be hit by.

中微子也算不上什麼神兵利器。

In fact it's hard to think of anything much smaller by which one could reasonably hope to be hit. And it's not as if being hit by neutrinos was in itself a particularly unusual event for something the size of the Earth. Far from it. It would be an unusual nanosecond in which the Earth was not hit by several billion passing neutrinos.

事實上，如果你在設想自己會被什麼玩意兒擊中的話，基本上你很難想出幾個比它還小的東西。再說對於地球這樣大體積的物體，讓個把中微子打到，這事兒本身也實在算不上稀罕。正好相反，假如哪十億分之一秒裏它沒被幾十億路過的中微子擊中，那才真叫怪呢。

It all depends on what you mean by 'hit', of course, seeing as matter consists almost entirely of nothing at all. The chances of a neutrino actually hitting something as it travels through all this howling emptiness are roughly comparable to that of dropping a ball bearing at random from a cruising 747 and hitting, say, an egg sandwich.

當然了，這其實完全取決於你對“擊中”定義的理解，因爲我們不是已經說過，充滿了世界的基本是空氣。試想，一粒中微子在那麼一大片挺淒涼的虛無裏頭飛啊飛啊，它當真擊中什麼東西的機率能有多大？那幾率，大概就跟你坐在一架波音747上，隨便往底下扔個球，然後砸中，比方說，一塊雞蛋三明治差不多吧。

Anyway, this neutrino hit something. Nothing terribly important in the scale of things, you might say. But the problem with saying something like that is that you would be talking cross-eyed badger spit. Once something actually happens somewhere in something as wildly complicated as the Universe, Kevin knows where it will all end up – where 'Kevin' is any random entity that doesn't know nothin' about nothin'.

無論如何，這粒中微子擊中了什麼東西。你可能會說，從全局的角度看這恐怕沒什麼太要緊的。可講這種話的問題在於，你嘴裏吐的全是斜眼野豬的唾沫。在宇宙那麼複雜到恐怖的地方，一旦有什麼事真的發生了，凱文才知道它最後會鬧成什麼樣——這裏的“凱文”是指任意一個對啥都啥也不知道的個體。

This neutrino struck an atom.

這個中微子擊中了一個原子。

The atom was part of a molecule. The molecule was part of a nucleic acid. The nucleic acid was part of a gene. The gene was part of a genetic recipe for growing… and so on. The upshot was that a plant ended up growing an extra leaf. In Essex. Or what would, after a lot of palaver and local difficulties of a geological nature, become Essex.

這個原子是一個分子的一部分。這個分子是一個核酸的一部分。這個核酸是一條基因的一部分。這條基因又是一份遺傳配方的一部分，它會成長爲……結果就是，一株植物最後多長出片葉子。地點是埃塞克斯郡。或者說，是那個在經過了沒完沒了的廢話以及當地許多地理學性質的困難之後將會變成埃塞克斯郡的地方。

The plant was a clover. It threw its weight, or rather its seed, around extremely effectively and rapidly became the world's dominant type of clover. The precise causal connection between this tiny biological happenstance, and a few other minor variations that exist in that slice of the Whole Sort of General Mish Mash – such as Tricia McMillan failing to leave with Zaphod Beeblebrox, abnormally low sales of pecan-flavoured ice-cream and the fact that the Earth on which all this occurred did not get demolished by the Vogons to make way for a new hyperspace bypass – is currently sitting at number 4,763,984,132 on the research project priority list at what was once the History Department of the University of MaxiMegalon, and no one currently at the prayer meeting by the poolside appears to feel any sense of urgency about the problem.

那植物是株三葉草。它及其高效地拋開了自己的負擔，或者換個說法，自己的種子，結果很快就變成了世上佔統治地位的三葉草品種。這一微不足道的生物事件與存在於那片全體各色總雜燴中的其他幾件小事——例如崔茜卡.麥克米倫沒能隨同贊福德.畢博布魯克斯離開地球，美洲山核桃口味冰淇淋奇低的銷量以及這一切的發生地，地球，並沒有爲了修建新的超空間通道的緣故給毀掉——這幾件事情之間存在着一種精確的因果關係，它們眼下正端坐在曾經馬克希姆佳倫大學歷史系的研究清單上，位列第4號，第763號，第984號和第132號；而游泳池旁大家正在參加祈禱會，對這一問題的緊迫性似乎都沒有多大感受。