經典科幻文學:《宇宙盡頭的餐館》第11章1

The Total Perspective Vortex derives its picture of the whole Universe on the principle of extrapolated matter analyses.
To explain – since every piece of matter in the Universe is in some way affected by every other piece of matter in the Universe, it is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole of creation – every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition and their economic and social history from, say, one small piece of fairy cake.
The man who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so basically in order to annoy his wife.
Trin Tragula – for that was his name – was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.
And she would nag him incessantly about the utterly inordinate amount of time he spent staring out into space, or mulling over the mechanics of safety pins, or doing spectrographic analyses of pieces of fairy cake. “Have some sense of proportion!” she would say, sometimes as often as thirty-eight times in a single day.
And so he built the Total Perspective Vortex – just to show her.
And into one end he plugged the whole of reality as extrapolated from a piece of fairy cake, and into the other end he plugged his wife: so that when he turned it on she saw in one instant the whole infinity of creation and herself in relation to it.
To Trin Tragula’s horror, the shock completely annihilated her brain; but to his satisfaction he realized that he had proved conclusively that if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.
The door of the Vortex swung open.
From his disembodied mind Gargravarr watched dejectedly. He had rather liked Zaphod Beeblebrox in a strange sort of way. He was clearly a man of many qualities, even if they were mostly bad ones.
He waited for him to flop forwards out of the box, as they all did.
Instead, he stepped out.
“Hi!” he said.

絕對透視旋渦是根據外推物質分析的原則，來獲取關於整個宇宙的圖景的。
不妨這樣解釋——因爲宇宙中的每一塊物質都以某種方式，受到宇宙中的其他某一塊物質的影響，所以在理論上就存在着一種可能，可以推導出整個宇宙萬物——每一顆恆星和每一顆行星的軌道，成分，以及它們的經濟和社會歷史模式，甚至推導出一小塊小仙人鬆糕。
發明絕對透視旋渦的那個人之所以這麼做，基本目的其實只是爲了對付他自己的老婆。
崔因·特拉古託——這是他的名字——是一個夢想家、一個思想者、一個喜歡推理的哲人，或者，按他老婆的說法，是一個白癡！
她總是向他嘮叨個不休，抱怨他花了太多時間盯着天空，或者仔細研究安全別針的機械結構，又或者對小仙人鬆糕進行光譜分析，“你總得知道個輕重緩急吧！”她會說，有時甚至在短短一天之內說上十八次。
所以，他建造了絕對透視旋渦——只是爲了北她瞧瞧他的本事。
在旋渦的一端……他輸入從一塊小仙人鬆糕中外推出來的所有事實，而在另一端，他把老婆塞了進去。於是，當他啓動機器時，她就在一瞬間看到了整個無限的天地萬物，以及她自己和它的關係。
讓崔因·特拉古拉感到驚恐的是，如此巨大的震撼徹底毀掉了她的腦子；而讓他感到滿意的是，他意識到自己已經最終證明了，如果生命存在於如此大尺度的一十宇宙中，那麼，有一件事是它所絕對無法承受的：感知自己和宇宙的比例關係。
旋渦的門打開了。
透過他不具肉體的意識，伽古拉瓦所見到的情形讓他感到相當沮喪。如果他能決定，他希望見到贊福德·畢博布魯克斯表現出不同於其他人的狀態。他顯然是一個具有很多特質的人，即使其中大部分都並不太好。
他等着贊福德猛地摔出箱子，像以前所有的人那樣。
然而，他卻是走出來的。
“嗨！”他說。