經典科幻文學:《銀河系漫遊指南》第21章1

On the surface of Magrathea Arthur wandered about moodily.
Ford had thoughtfully left him his copy of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy to while away the time with. He pushed a few buttons at random.
The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a very unevenly edited book and contains many passages that simply seemed to its editors like a good idea at the time.
One of these (the one Arthur now came across) supposedly relates the experiences of one Veet Voojagig, a quiet young student at the University of Maximegalon, who pursued a brilliant academic career studying ancient philology, transformational ethics and the wave harmonic theory of historical perception, and then, after a night of drinking Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters with Zaphod Beeblebrox, became increasingly obsessed with the problem of what had happened to all the biros he'd bought over the past few years.
There followed a long period of painstaking research during which he visited all the major centres of biro loss throughout the galaxy and eventually came up with a quaint little theory which quite caught the public imagination at the time. Somewhere in the cosmos, he said, along with all the planets inhabited by humanoids, reptiloids, fishoids, walking treeoids and superintelligent shades of the colour blue, there was also a planet entirely given over to biro life forms. And it was to this planet that unattended biros would make their way, slipping away quietly through wormholes in space to a world where they knew they could enjoy a uniquely biroid lifestyle, responding to highly biro-oriented stimuli, and generally leading the biro equivalent of the good life.
And as theories go this was all very fine and pleasant until Veet Voojagig suddenly claimed to have found this planet, and to have worked there for a while driving a limousine for a family of cheap green retractables, whereupon he was taken away, locked up, wrote a book, and was finally sent into tax exile, which is the usual fate reserved for those who are determined to make a fool of themselves in public.
When one day an expedition was sent to the spatial coordinates that Voojagig had claimed for this planet they discovered only a small asteroid inhabited by a solitary old man who claimed repeatedly that nothing was true, though he was later discovered to be lying.
There did, however, remain the question of both the mysterious 60,000 Altairan dollars paid yearly into his Brantisvogan bank account, and of course Zaphod Beeblebrox's highly profitable second-hand biro business.
Arthur read this, and put the book down.
The robot still sat there, completely inert.
Arthur got up and walked to the top of the crater. He walked around the crater. He watched two suns set magnificently over Magrathea.
He went back down into the crater. He woke the robot up because even a manically depressed robot is better to talk to than nobody.
"Night's falling," he said. "Look robot, the stars are coming out."
From the heart of a dark nebula it is possible to see very few stars, and only very faintly, but they were there to be seen.
The robot obediently looked at them, then looked back.
"I know," he said. "Wretched isn't it?"

在曼格拉斯的表面上，阿瑟鬱悶地走來走去。
細心的福特特意把自己的《銀河系漫遊指南》留給他打發時間。他隨便按下幾個鍵。
《銀河系漫遊指南》是一本編輯得相當不均衡的書，裏面包含了大量的章節，其內容僅僅在當時的編輯看來似乎還不錯，值得選入。
其中之一（就是阿瑟現在剛剛翻到的）是想像的關於維特。沃佳吉格的經歷。他是一個馬克希姆佳倫大學的年輕學生，從事着一項聰明人的學術事業，研究古代語言學、轉換生成規則，以及歷史感知和諧波理論。然而，一天晚上，他和贊福德·畢博布魯克斯喝了幾杯泛銀河系含漱爆破藥，於是他開始越來越爲一個問題所困擾，這個問題就是過去這些年來他買的所有圓珠筆最後都怎麼樣了。
接下來就是一段長時間的艱苦研究。在這段時間內他拜訪了整個銀河系中所有主要的圓珠筆遺失中心，最後終於得出一個很有些離奇的理論，當時還引起了公衆極大的興趣。他認爲，在宇宙中的某個地方，和所有居住着人形生物、爬行類生物、魚形生物、直立樹形生物以及具有超級智慧的藍色陰影的行星一樣，還存在着一顆全部由圓珠筆形生命形式佔據的行星。所有無人看管的圓珠筆都會通過空間中的蟲洞無聲無息地滑向這顆星球，他們知道在這個世界裏自己能享受到一種獨一無二的圓珠筆形生命狀態，享受到一種完全平等的美好生活。
這些說法作爲一種理論還是相當令人愉快的，但最後維特。沃佳吉格突然宣佈自己已經找到了這顆行星，並且已經在那裏工作了一段時間，爲一個廉價的綠色可回收圓珠筆家庭當司機，駕駛一輛豪華轎車。於是，他被帶走關押起來，寫了一本書，最後遭到放逐——這是那些決心當衆出乖露醜的人通常的下場。
有一天，一支探險隊被派往沃佳吉格宣稱的那顆行星所在的位置，他們只發現了一顆小行星，上面孤零零地住着一個老人，不斷反覆宣稱一切都不是真的。當然，後來才發現他在撒謊。
這個事件最後仍舊存有疑問。第一點是：神祕地每年存入他在勃蘭蒂斯沃根銀行賬戶的那6萬牽牛星元，第二點當然就是贊福德·畢博布魯克斯所從事的利潤高昂的二手圓珠筆生意。
阿瑟看完這些，隨手把書放下了。
機器人仍舊坐在那兒，一副遲鈍的樣子。
阿瑟站起身來，爬到環形山頂端。他沿着環形山走着，看見兩顆太陽正壯觀地沉入曼格拉斯的地幹線。
他回到坑底，喚醒了機器人。畢竟，與一個狂躁的機器人說說話總比沒人交談強。
“天快黑了。”他說，“你瞧，機器人，星星已經出來了。”
處在暗黑星雲的中心，能看見的星星很少，而且很微弱，不過它們確實在那兒，可以看見。
機器人順從地看了星星一眼，然後重又垂下頭。
“我知道，”他說，“悲慘啊，對嗎？”