经典科幻文学:《宇宙尽头的餐馆》第11章1
The Total Perspective Vortex derives its picture of the whole Universe on the principle of extrapolated matter analyses.
To explain – since every piece of matter in the Universe is in some way affected by every other piece of matter in the Universe, it is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole of creation – every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition and their economic and social history from, say, one small piece of fairy cake.
The man who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so basically in order to annoy his wife.
Trin Tragula – for that was his name – was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.
And she would nag him incessantly about the utterly inordinate amount of time he spent staring out into space, or mulling over the mechanics of safety pins, or doing spectrographic analyses of pieces of fairy cake. “Have some sense of proportion!” she would say, sometimes as often as thirty-eight times in a single day.
And so he built the Total Perspective Vortex – just to show her.
And into one end he plugged the whole of reality as extrapolated from a piece of fairy cake, and into the other end he plugged his wife: so that when he turned it on she saw in one instant the whole infinity of creation and herself in relation to it.
To Trin Tragula’s horror, the shock completely annihilated her brain; but to his satisfaction he realized that he had proved conclusively that if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.
The door of the Vortex swung open.
From his disembodied mind Gargravarr watched dejectedly. He had rather liked Zaphod Beeblebrox in a strange sort of way. He was clearly a man of many qualities, even if they were mostly bad ones.
He waited for him to flop forwards out of the box, as they all did.
Instead, he stepped out.
“Hi!” he said.
绝对透视旋涡是根据外推物质分析的原则，来获取关于整个宇宙的图景的。
不妨这样解释——因为宇宙中的每一块物质都以某种方式，受到宇宙中的其他某一块物质的影响，所以在理论上就存在着一种可能，可以推导出整个宇宙万物——每一颗恒星和每一颗行星的轨道，成分，以及它们的经济和社会历史模式，甚至推导出一小块小仙人松糕。
发明绝对透视旋涡的那个人之所以这么做，基本目的其实只是为了对付他自己的老婆。
崔因·特拉古托——这是他的名字——是一个梦想家、一个思想者、一个喜欢推理的哲人，或者，按他老婆的说法，是一个白痴！
她总是向他唠叨个不休，抱怨他花了太多时间盯着天空，或者仔细研究安全别针的机械结构，又或者对小仙人松糕进行光谱分析，“你总得知道个轻重缓急吧！”她会说，有时甚至在短短一天之内说上十八次。
所以，他建造了绝对透视旋涡——只是为了北她瞧瞧他的本事。
在旋涡的一端……他输入从一块小仙人松糕中外推出来的所有事实，而在另一端，他把老婆塞了进去。于是，当他启动机器时，她就在一瞬间看到了整个无限的天地万物，以及她自己和它的关系。
让崔因·特拉古拉感到惊恐的是，如此巨大的震撼彻底毁掉了她的脑子；而让他感到满意的是，他意识到自己已经最终证明了，如果生命存在于如此大尺度的一十宇宙中，那么，有一件事是它所绝对无法承受的：感知自己和宇宙的比例关系。
旋涡的门打开了。
透过他不具肉体的意识，伽古拉瓦所见到的情形让他感到相当沮丧。如果他能决定，他希望见到赞福德·毕博布鲁克斯表现出不同于其他人的状态。他显然是一个具有很多特质的人，即使其中大部分都并不太好。
他等着赞福德猛地摔出箱子，像以前所有的人那样。
然而，他却是走出来的。
“嗨！”他说。
