经典科幻文学:《生命 宇宙及一切》第1章3

Don’t give me that! snapped the alien. It marched up the ramp, through the hatchway and disappeared into the ship. The ship sealed itself. It started to make a low throbbing hum.
Er, hey! shouted Arthur, and started to run helplessly towards it.
Wait a minute! he called. What is this? What? Wait a minute!
The ship rose, as if shedding its weight like a cloak to the ground, and hovered briefly. It swept strangely up into the evening sky. It passed up through the clouds, illuminating them briefly, and then was gone, leaving Arthur alone in an immensity of land dancing a helplessly tiny little dance.
What? he screamed. What? What? Hey, what? Come back here and say that!
He jumped and danced until his legs trembled, and shouted till his lungs rasped. There was no answer from anyone. There was no one to hear him or speak to him.
The alien ship was already thundering towards the upper reaches of the atmosphere, on its way out into the appalling void which separates the very few things there are in the Universe from each other.
Its occupant, the alien with the expensive complexion, leaned back in its single seat. His name was Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged. He was a man with a purpose. Not a very good purpose, as he would have been the first to admit, but it was at least a purpose and it did at least keep him on the move.
Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged was indeed, is one of the Universe’s very small number of immortal beings.
Those who are born immortal instinctively know how to cope with it, but Wowbagger was not one of them. Indeed he had come to hate them, the load of serene bastards. He had had his immortality thrust upon him by an unfortunate accident with an irrational particle accelerator, a liquid lunch and a pair of rubber bands. The precise details of the accident are not important because no one has ever managed to duplicate the exact circumstances under which it happened, and many people have ended up looking very silly, or dead, or both, trying.
Wowbagger closed his eyes in a grim and weary expression, put some light jazz on the ship’s stereo, and reflected that he could have made it if it hadn’t been for Sunday afternoons, he really could have done.
To begin with it was fun, he had a ball, living dangerously, taking risks, cleaning up on high-yield long-term investments, and just generally outliving the hell out of everybody.
In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn’t cope with, and that terrible listlessness which starts to set in at about 2.55, when you know that you’ve had all the baths you can usefully have that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the papers you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o’clock, and you will enter the long dark teatime of the soul.
So things began to pall for him. The merry smiles he used to wear at other people’s funerals began to fade. He began to despise the Universe in general, and everyone in it in particular.
This was the point at which he conceived his purpose, the thing which would drive him on, and which, as far as he could see, would drive him on forever. It was this.
He would insult the Universe.

“少给我来那套！”外星人没好气地说。它回到舷梯，跨进舱门，闪进了飞船。飞船自动合上了，开始发出低低的轰鸣。
“嗯……嘿！”阿瑟叫道，他不知所措地奔向飞船。
“等一下！”阿瑟大叫，“这是什么！什么！等一下！”
飞船升空了，好似把它自己的重量像抖落积雪一样抖在了地上，轻盈地浮了起来。它诡异地滑进夜空。它穿过云层，照亮了云层，转瞬间又消失了，只留下阿瑟站在空旷无垠的大地上成为一个渺小的、手舞足蹈的黑点。
“什么？”他喊着，“什么？什么？嘿，什么？回来告诉我啊！”
他又跳又跺直到双腿都开始颤抖，他不停叫喊直到肺都开始绞痛了。没有人回答他。没有人听见他，跟他说话。
外星飞船此时已以闪电般的速度到达大气层的最外缘，即将进入真空。真空，就是将宇宙中那相当稀少的事物相互隔开的东西。
飞船的主人，那位有着尊贵肌肤的外星人，正躺在它的单人椅里。他的名字叫做“无极长命”哇布格。他是个有目标的人。虽然不是个非常好的目标，而他也很大方地承认这一点，但至少他有个目标。并且，至少他可以以此为由，继续生活下去。
“无极长命”哇布格曾是——正确来说，一直是——宇宙中极少数长生不死的生物之一。
天生就不死的生物，本能地知道如何对付这个问题。但哇布格不在他们之列。实际上，他很讨厌他们——那帮安详的杂种。他是在一场不幸的事故中变成长生不死的。那场事故跟一个无理数粒子加速器、一份流质午餐和一对橡皮筋有关。事故的具体过程并不重要，因为没人能再模拟出当时的状况。很多人试过，他们最后都把自己搞成了白痴，要不就是死了，要不就两者兼得。
哇布格闭上双眼，表情疲惫而烦闷，打开飞船上的音响放点轻爵士，想着，如果不是因为星期天下午的话，他应该能忍下来，真的能。
刚开始是很快乐，他过得精彩无比，活得惊险刺激，冒过种种风险，在高回报长线投资中大发横财，总之就是比谁都活得久。
到后来，他再也不能忍受的，便是像这样的星期天下午。2点55分时袭来的、可怕的百无聊赖，当你发现你已经把一天之内能洗的澡都洗了，当你再怎么用力盯着报纸上的文字都没办法读进去、也不愿意使用它说的那些革命性的高科技除草机，当你死死瞪着钟的指针、他们无情地指向四点钟，说明你的灵魂正该进入冗长黑暗的下午茶时间了……
于是他开始觉得腻烦。在参加别人葬礼时、曾经露出的愉快笑容，也渐渐不再出现。总体上讲，他开始鄙视整个宇宙；具体来说，他鄙视里面的每一个人。
这便成了他制定目标的出发点，成为激励他的东西，也就是——在他自己看来——永远激励他的东西。那就是：
他要侮辱整个宇宙。