经典科幻文学:《生命 宇宙及一切》第1章4

That is, he would insult everybody in it. Individually, personally, one by one, and (this was the thing he really decided to grit his teeth over) in alphabetical order. When people protested to him, as they sometimes had done, that the plan was not merely misguided but actually impossible because of the number of people being born and dying all the time, he would merely fix them with a steely look and say:
A man can dream can’t he?
And so he started out. He equipped a spaceship that was built to last with the computer capable of handling all the data processing involved in keeping track of the entire population of the known Universe and working out the horrifically complicated routes involved.
His ship fled through the inner orbits of the Sol star system, preparing to slingshot round the sun and fling itself out into interstellar space.
Computer, he said.
Here, yipped the computer.
Where next?
Computing that.
Wowbagger gazed for a moment at the fantastic jewellery of the night, the billions of tiny diamond worlds that dusted the infinite darkness with light. Every one, every single one, was on his itinerary. Most of them he would be going to millions of times over.
He imagined for a moment his itinerary connecting up all the dots in the sky like a child’s numbered dots puzzle. He hoped that from some vantage point in the Universe it might be seen to spell a very, very rude word.
The computer beeped tunelessly to indicate that it had finished its calculations.
Folfanga, it said. It beeped.
Fourth world of the Folfanga system, it continued. It beeped again.
Estimated journey time, three weeks, it continued further. It beeped again.

也就是说，他要侮辱里面的每一个人。单独地，亲自地，一个一个地，还要（对于这一点他决定严守秘密）按照字母顺序。如果有人向他表示抗议——说这个计划不但完全是条邪路，而且，宇宙中的人每时每刻都在出生和死亡，也让这个计划变得根本不现实——时，他会冷酷地盯着他们，然后说：
“人总是可以有梦想的，对吧？”
因此他决定着手此事。他配备了一艘有着足够强大电脑的飞船，强大到可以处理已知宇宙中所有人口的相关数据，并能计算出那些复杂无比的相关路线。
他的飞船悄然越过太阳系的轨道，准备借着环绕太阳的力量，将自己抛入星际空间。
“电脑。”他说。
“在这儿。”电脑尖声答道。
“下一个在哪？”
“正在计算。”
哇布格对着夜空中那些奇妙的珠宝凝视片刻——那上百亿的、钻石屑一般的星球，闪耀在无垠的黑色背景之上。每一颗、任何一颗，都在他的行程里。其中大多数星球他得去上百万次。
他想象用自己的路线将天空中的小点都连了起来，就像小孩子做的连线游戏一样。他盼望着能够拼成一个在宇宙大多数语言里都非常非常粗鲁的单词。
电脑发出单调的哔哔声，表示它已经完成运算。
“佛方加。”它答道，哔了一声。
“佛方加第四星。”它继续说，哔了一声。
“预计行程，三周。”它又继续说，哔了一声。