42. INT. PLANET CATALOG, MAGRATHEA
Zaphod is sleeping on a golden floor. Ford and Trillian's feet and legs are shown standing next to him.
TRILLIAN: Zaphod! Wake up!
ZAPHOD: Mmmmmmwwwwwerrrr?
FORD: Hey, come on, wake up.
ZAPHOD (Muttering): Just let me stick to what I'm good at: Sleeping.
FORD: Do you want me to kick you?
ZAPHOD: Would it give you a lot of pleasure?
FORD: No.
ZAPHOD: Nor me. So what's the point? Stop bugging me.
Zaphod turns over and curls up. Cut to a medium shot of Ford and Trillian.
TRILLIAN (Angry): Oh, here, let me! Hi-yaaaah!
Trillian kicks Zaphod. Zaphod pops up.
ZAPHOD: Ow! That's not in the script!
Wide shot showing Zaphod, Ford and Trillian standing what looks like a solid gold landscape. It looks perfectly smooth from horizon to horizon. A huge green catalog number hangs in the air.
ZAPHOD: Is this really all made out of gold? Cool!
FORD: Don't get excited. It's only a catalog.
TRILLIAN: When Ford and I came around a while ago we shouted and yelled till somebody came, and then carried on shouting and yelling till they got fed up and put us in their planet catalog to keep us busy till they were ready to deal with us. This is all Sens-O-Tape.
ZAPHOD (Bitterly): That's not fair! You wake me up from my own perfectly good dream to show me somebody else's.
FORD: We didn't wake you earlier because the last planet was knee-deep in fish.
ZAPHOD: Oh, man, I miss all the good stuff!
In the sky a huge sign appeared, replacing the catalog number. It says, Whatever your tastes, Magrathea can cater for you. We are not proud.
In a moment the scene vanishes around them, and is replaced with a springtime meadow dotted with cows. More cows are dropping out of the sky on parachutes, landing on the ground, and running around laughing.
ZAPHOD: Ow! My brains!
FORD: You want to talk about it?
TRILLIAN: You've gotta be kidding, right?
ZAPHOD: Sure. Listen, whatever happened to my mind, I did it. And I did it in such a way that it wouldn't be detected by the Government screening tests. And I wasn't to know anything about it myself. Pretty crazy, right?
The other two nodded in agreement.
ZAPHOD: So I reckon, what's so secret that I can't let anybody know I know it, not the Galactic Government, not even myself? And the answer is I don't know. Obviously. But I put a few things together and I can begin to guess. When did I decide to run for President? Shortly after the death of President Yooden Vranx. You remember Yooden, Ford?
FORD: Oh, yeah, Yooden, what an ultracool guy! (To Trillian): He was a friend of ours, a freighter captain who taught us how to have a really wild time! He later became President of the Galaxy because it was, like, the coolest job he could possibly find.
43. The Narrator describes the office of President of the Imperial Galactic Government, and what it means to be the President.
42 Cont. INT. PLANET CATALOG, MAGRATHEA
ZAPHOD: And just before Yooden died, he came to see me. He told me about the Heart of Gold. It was his idea that I should steal it, and the only way I could do that was if I was President.
FORD: Are you telling me that you set yourself up to become President of the Galaxy just to steal that ship? Why? What's so important about having it?
ZAPHOD: Dunno. I think if I'd consciously known what was so important about it and what I would need if for it would have shown up on the brain screening tests and I would never have passed. I think Yooden told me a lot of things that are still locked away.
FORD: So you think you went and mucked about inside your own brain as a result of Yooden talking to you?
ZAPHOD: He was a heck of a talker!
TRILLIAN: You mean to say that you don't have any inkling of the reasons for this at all?
ZAPHOD: No, I don't seem to be letting myself into any of my secrets. (Zaphod's other head): I can understand that. I don't trust myself, either.
While Zaphod's heads argue about trust issues, the springtime meadow vanishes and a tall Magrathean man appears before them. He says:
MAGRATHEAN MAN: The mice will see you now.
44. INT. SLARTIBARTFAST'S OFFICE, MAGRATHEA
SLARTIBARTFAST: Here, I found the recording. Watch this.
The wall viewer comes back to life.
In the same but now very ancient-looking viewing room as was shown before, two severely-dressed men sat and waited. These two are also played by Dr. Honeydew and Beaker, although they are made up to look somewhat different.
LOONQUAWL (Played by Dr. Bunsen Honeydew): The time is nearly upon us. Seventy-five thousand generations ago, our ancestors set this program in motion, and in all that time we will be the first to hear the computer speak.
PHOUCHG (Played by Beaker): Meep meep!
LOONQUAWL: Never… never again will we wake up in the morning and think, “Who am I?”. “What is my purpose in life?”. “Does it really, cosmically speaking, matter if I don’t get up and go to work?” For today we will finally learn, once and for all, the plain and simple answer to all these nagging little problems of Life, the Universe, and Everything!
PHOUCHG: Shhh!!
There is a pause while ancient computer panels and consoles come to life. A soft low hum comes from the communication channel.
DEEP THOUGHT: Good day.
LOONQUAWL: Good day, Deep Thought. Do you have ...
DEEP THOUGHT: An answer for you?
LOONQUAWL: Yes.
DEEP THOUGHT: Yes, I have.
LOONQUAWL: There really is one?
DEEP THOUGHT: There really is one.
LOONQUAWL: To everything? To the great question of Life… the Universe… and Everything?
DEEP THOUGHT: Yes.
LOONQUAWL: And are you ready to give it to us?
DEEP THOUGHT: I am. Though I don’t think you’re going to like it.
LOONQUAWL: It doesn’t matter, we must know it!
DEEP THOUGHT: You’re really not going to like it.
PHOUCHG (Angry): Meep meep meep!
LOONQUAWL: Tell us!
DEEP THOUGHT: Alright. The answer to everything…
LOONQUAWL: Yes?
DEEP THOUGHT: Life, the Universe, and Everything…
LOONQUAWL: Yes?
DEEP THOUGHT: Is…
LOONQUAWL: Yes?
DEEP THOUGHT: Is……
PHOUCHG: MEEEP!
DEEP THOUGHT: Forty-two.
PHOUCHG: Meepy-meep?
LOONQUAWL: We’re going to get lynched, you know that.
DEEP THOUGHT: It was a tough assignment.
LOONQUAWL (Angry): Forty-two? Is that all you've got to show for seven and a half million years' work?
DEEP THOUGHT: I checked it very thoroughly and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is.
LOONQUAWL: B- b- but it was the Ultimate question, the question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
DEEP THOUGHT: Exactly. Now that you know that the answer to the Ultimate question of Life, the Universe, and Everything is Forty-two, all you need to do now is find out what the Ultimate Question is.
LOONQUAWL: Alright. Can you please tell us the Question?
DEEP THOUGHT: The Ultimate Question?
LOONQUAWL: Yes.
DEEP THOUGHT: Of Life… the Universe…
LOONQUAWL: …and Everything.
DEEP THOUGHT: …and Everything?
LOONQUAWL: Yes.
DEEP THOUGHT: Tricky…
LOONQUAWL: But can you do it?
DEEP THOUGHT (Long pause): No.
PHOUCHG: Meep meep!
LOONQUAWL: Oh no!
DEEP THOUGHT: But I'll tell you who can.
LOONQUAWL: Who? Tell us, tell us.
DEEP THOUGHT: I speak of none, but the computer that is to come after me. A computer, whose merest operational parameters I am not worthy to calculate, and yet I will design it for you. A computer which can calculate the Question, to the Ultimate Answer. A computer of such infinite and subtle complexity that organic life itself will form part of its operational matrix. And it shall be called… the Earth.
LOONQUAWL: Oh. What a dull name.
The wall viewer blinks out.
SLARTIBARTFAST: So there you have it. Deep Thought designed it, we built it, and you lived on it.
ARTHUR: And the Vogons came and destroyed it five minutes before the program was completed.
SLARTIBARTFAST: Yes. Ten-million years of planning and work gone, just like that. Well, that’s bureaucracy for you.
ARTHUR: You know all this explains a lot of things. All through my life I’ve had this strange, unaccountable feeling that something was going on in the world… and no one would tell me what it was.
SLARTIBARTFAST: No, that’s just perfectly normal paranoia, everyone in the universe has that.
ARTHUR: Well perhaps it means that ...
SLARTIBARTFAST: Maybe. Who cares? Perhaps I’m old and tired, but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is say “hang the sense of it” and just keep yourself occupied. Look at me, I design coastlines, I got an award for Norway. Where’s the sense in that? None that I’ve been able to make out. I’ve been doing fiords all my life, for a fleeting moment they become fashionable and I get a major award. In this replacement Earth we’re building they’ve given me Africa to do, and of course, I’m doing it will all fjords again, because I happen to like them. And I’m old fashioned enough to think that they give a lovely baroque feel to a continent. And they tell me it’s not equatorial enough… what does it matter? Science has achieved some wonderful things of course, but I’d far rather be happy than right any day!
ARTHUR: And are you?
SLARTIBARTFAST: No. That’s where it all falls down of course.
ARTHUR: Pity, it sounded like quite a good lifestyle otherwise.
P.A. VOICE: Attention please, Slartibartfast. Would Slartibartfast and the visiting Earth creature please report immediately, repeat, immediately to the work’s reception area.
Slartibartfast jumps.
SLARTIBARTFAST: I must say, as far as the mice go, their take on management relations is absolutely shocking. Every time they give me an order I just want to jump on a table and scream!
45. NARRATOR: 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 Dent said, “Pity, it sounded like quite a good lifestyle otherwise” 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 distance galaxy where strange and war-like beings were poised on the brink of frightful interstellar battle. The two opposing leaders were meeting for the last time, and 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 vapor and at the very moment the words “I seem to be having this 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. Eventually of course, it was realised 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 galaxy - now positively identified as the source of the offending remark. For thousands more years the mighty starships tore across the empty wastes of space and finally dived screaming on to the planet 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 are powerless to prevent it. “It’s just life,” they say.
46. INT. HALLWAY, DEEP INSIDE MAGRATHEA
SLARTIBARTFAST: Come, you are to meet the mice. Your arrival on the planet has caused considerable excitement. It has already been hailed, so I gather, as the third most improbable event in the history of the Universe.
ARTHUR: What were the first two?
SLARTIBARTFAST (Carelessly): Oh, probably just coincidences.
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