經典科幻文學:《銀河系漫遊指南》第31章1

Chapter 31
It is of course well known that careless talk costs lives, but the full scale of the problem is not always appreciated.
For instance, at the very moment that Arthur said "I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle," a freak wormhole opened up in the fabric of the space-time continuum and carried his words far far back in time across almost infinite reaches of space to a distant Galaxy where strange and warlike beings were poised on the brink of frightful interstellar battle.
The two opposing leaders were meeting for the last time.
A dreadful silence fell across the conference table as the commander of the Vl'hurgs, resplendent in his black jewelled battle shorts, gazed levelly at the G'Gugvuntt leader squatting opposite him in a cloud of green sweet-smelling steam, and, with a million sleek and horribly beweaponed star cruisers poised to unleash electric death at his single word of command, challenged the vile creature to take back what it had said about his mother.
The creature stirred in his sickly broiling vapour, and at that very moment the words I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle drifted across the conference table.
Unfortunately, in the Vl'hurg tongue this was the most dreadful insult imaginable, and there was nothing for it but to wage terrible war for centuries.
Eventually of course, after their Galaxy had been decimated over a few thousand years, it was realized that the whole thing had been a ghastly mistake, and so the two opposing battle fleets settled their few remaining differences in order to launch a joint attack on our own Galaxy — now positively identified as the source of the offending remark.
For thousands more years the mighty ships tore across the empty wastes of space and finally dived screaming on to the first planet they came across — which happened to be the Earth — where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog.
Those who study the complex interplay of cause and effect in the history of the Universe say that this sort of thing is going on all the time, but that we are powerless to prevent it.

第三十一章
一句漫不經心的話也許會付出生命的代價，這一點當然是衆所周知的，但人們通常並沒有認識到這個問題的實質。
比如，就在阿瑟說“看來我的生活方式碰到了相當大的困難”這句話的那一瞬間，在時空閉合體的構造上打開了一個反常的蟲洞，把他這句話帶到了在時間上很早很早以前、在空間上幾乎是無限遠的一個銀河系中，在那裏，奇怪而好戰的生物們正處在一場可怕的星際戰爭一觸即發的邊緣。
敵對的兩位領導人正在舉行最後一次會面。
一陣恐怖的沉默籠罩着會議桌。維爾赫格的司令官穿着華麗的飾有寶石的戰鬥服冷冷的盯着蹲坐在他對面、籠罩在一團綠色的氣味香甜的水汽中間的古格旺特的領袖。在他身後是上百萬艘可怕的全副武裝的星際巡洋艦，只等他一聲令下就會釋放出電子化的死亡。他要求這個卑鄙無恥的傢伙收回曾經說過的辱罵他母親的話。
這傢伙在他那團酷熱的水汽中搖晃着，就在此時，那句“看來我的生活方式碰到了相當大的困難”飄過會議桌。
不幸的是，在維爾赫格的語言中，這代表了所能想象到的最嚴重的侮辱。沒有別的任何辦法能迴應這句話，除了發動延續幾個世紀的可怕的戰爭。
最終，在他們的銀河系經歷了數千年的大規模殺戮之後，人們才意識到整件事情居然是出於一個驚人的誤會。於是戰爭雙方的艦隊拋棄了分歧，聯合起來對我們自己的銀河系發動了一次攻擊——現在已經可以斷定這裏就是那句罪魁禍首的話的來源地。
又經過了數千年，這支龐大的艦隊穿越太空，最後來到了他們所碰上的第一顆銀河系的行星——恰好是地球——在這裏，由於嚴重的尺寸誤算，整個攻擊艦隊不巧被一隻小狗吞進了肚子。
那些研究宇宙歷史上因果之間複雜的相互作用的人聲稱，這一類事情永遠都會發生，我們根本無力預防。