Douglas Adams - The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

In the grey pre-dawn light it let out an obscene roaring gurgle and sank for ever into the stinking depths.

When the sun came up that morning it shed its thin watery light over a vast area heaving with wailing hairdressers, public relations executives, opinion pollsters and the rest, all clawing their way desperately to dry land.

A less strong minded sun would probably have gone straight back down again, but it continued to climb its way through the sky and after a while the influence of its warming rays began to have some restoring effect on the feebly struggling creatures.

Countless numbers had, unsurprisingly, been lost to the swamp in the night, and millions more had been sucked down with the ship, but those that survived still numbered hundreds of thousands and as the day wore on they crawled out over the surrounding countryside, each looking for a few square feet of solid ground on which to collapse and recover from their nightmare ordeal.

Two figures moved further afield.

From a nearby hillside Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent watched the horror of which they could not feel a part.

“Filthy dirty trick to pull,” muttered Arthur.

Ford scraped a stick along the ground and shrugged.

“An imaginative solution to a problem I’d have thought,” he said.

“Why can’t people just learn to live together in peace and harmony?” said Arthur.

Ford gave a loud, very hollow laugh.

“Forty-two!” he said with a malicious grin, “No, doesn’t work. Never mind.”

Arthur looked at him as if he’d gone mad and, seeing nothing to indicate the contrary, realized that it would be perfectly reasonable to assume that this had in fact happened.

“What do you think will happen to them all?” he said after a while.

“In an infinite Universe anything can happen,” said Ford, “Even survival. Strange but true.”

A curious look came into his eyes as they passed over the landscape and then settled again on the scene of misery below them.

“I think they’ll manage for a while,” he said.

Arthur looked up sharply.

“Why do you say that?” he said.

Ford shrugged.

“Just a hunch,” he said, and refused to be drawn to any further questions.

“Look,” he said suddenly.

Arthur followed his pointing finger. Down amongst the sprawling masses a figure was moving-or perhaps lurching would be a more accurate description. He appeared to be carrying something on his shoulder. As he lurched from prostrate form to prostrate form he seemed to wave whatever the something was at them in a drunken fashion. After a while he gave up the struggle and collapsed in a heap.

Arthur had no idea what this was meant to mean to him.

“Movie camera,” said Ford. “Recording the historic movement.”

“Well, I don’t know about you,” said Ford again after a moment, “but I’m off.”

He sat a while in silence.

After a while this seemed to require comment.

“Er, when you say you’re off, what do you mean exactly?” said Arthur.

“Good question,” said Ford, “I’m getting total silence.”

Looking over his shoulder Arthur saw that he was twiddling with knobs on a small box. Ford had already introduced this box as a Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic, but Arthur had merely nodded absently and not pursued the matter. In his mind the Universe still divided into two parts-the Earth, and everything else. The Earth having been demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass meant that this view of things was a little lopsided, but Arthur tended to cling to that lopsidedness as being his last remaining contact with his home. Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matics belonged firmly in the “everything else” category.

“Not a sausage,” said Ford, shaking the thing.

Sausage, thought Arthur to himself as he gazed listlessly at the primitive world about him, what I wouldn’t give for a good Earth sausage.

“Would you believe,” said Ford in exasperation, “that there are no transmissions of any kind within light years of this benighted tip? Are you listening to me?”

“What?” said Arthur.

“We’re in trouble,” said Ford.

“Oh,” said Arthur. This sounded like month-old news to him.

“Until we pick up anything on this machine,” said Ford, “our chances of getting off this planet are zero. It may be some freak standing wave effect in the planet’s magnetic field-in which case we just travel round and round till we find a clear reception area. Coming?”

He picked up his gear and strode off.

Arthur looked down the hill. The man with the movie camera had struggled back up to his feet just in time to film one of his colleagues collapsing.

Arthur picked a blade of grass and strode off after Ford.

“I trust you had a pleasant meal?” said Zarniwoop to Zaphod and Trillian as they rematerialized on the bridge of the starship Heart of Gold and lay panting on the floor.

Zaphod opened some eyes and glowered at him.

“You,” he spat. He staggered to his feet and stomped off to find a chair to slump into. He found one and slumped into it.

“I have programmed the computer with the Improbability Coordinates pertinent to our journey,” said Zarniwoop, “we will arrive there very shortly. Meanwhile, why don’t you relax and prepare yourself for the meeting?”

Zaphod said nothing. He got up again and marched over to a small cabinet from which he pulled a bottle of old Janx spirit. He took a long pull at it.

“And when this is all done,” said Zaphod savagely, “it’s done, alright? I’m free to go and do what the hell I like and lie on beaches and stuff?”

“It depends what transpires from the meeting,” said Zarniwoop.

“Zaphod, who is this man?” said Trillian shakily, wobbling to her feet, “What’s he doing here? Why’s he on our ship?”

“He’s a very stupid man,” said Zaphod, “who wants to meet the man who rules the Universe.”

“Ah,” said Trillian taking the bottle from Zaphod and helping herself, “a social climber.”

The major problem-one of the major problems, for there are several-one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.

To summarize: it is a well known fact, that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.

And so this is the situation we find: a succession of Galactic Presidents who so much enjoy the fun and palaver of being in power that they very rarely notice that they’re not.

And somewhere in the shadows behind them-who?

Who can possibly rule if no one who wants to do it can be allowed to?

On a small obscure world somewhere in the middle of nowhere in particular-nowhere, that is, that could ever be found, since it is protected by a vast field of unprobability to which only six men in this galaxy have a key-it was raining.

It was bucketing down, and had been for hours. It beat the top of the sea into a mist, it pounded the trees, it churned and slopped a stretch of scrubby land near the sea into a mudbath.

The rain pelted and danced on the corrugated iron roof of the small shack that stood in the middle of this patch of scrubby land. It obliterated the small rough pathway that led from the shack down to the seashore and smashed apart the neat piles of interesting shells which had been placed there.

The noise of the rain on the roof of the shack was deafening within, but went largely unnoticed by its occupant, whose attention was otherwise engaged.