经典科幻文学:《宇宙尽头的餐馆》第2章5

At that precise moment Zaphod Beeblebrox was in his cabin swearing very loudly. Two hours ago, he had said that they would go for a quick bite at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, whereupon he had had a blazing row with the ship’s computer and stormed off to his cabin shouting that he would work out the Improbability factors with a pencil.
The Heart of Gold’s Improbability Drive made it the most powerful and unpredictable ship in existence. There was nothing it couldn’t do, provided you knew exactly how improbable it was that the thing you wanted it to do would ever happen.
He had stolen it when, as President, he was meant to be launching it. He didn’t know exactly why he had stolen it, except that he liked it.
He didn’t know why he had become President of the Galaxy, except that it seemed a fun thing to be.
He did know that there were better reasons than these, but that they were buried in a dark, locked off section of his two brains. He wished the dark, locked off section of his two brains would go away because they occasionally surfaced momentarily and put strange thoughts into the light, fun sections of his mind and tried to deflect him from what he saw as being the basic business of his life, which was to have a wonderfully good time.
At the moment he was not having a wonderfully good time. He had run out of patience and pencils and was feeling very hungry.
“Starpox!” he shouted.

此时此刻，赞福德·毕博布鲁克斯正在他的房间里大声咒骂。两个小时以前，他说他们很快就会到宇宙尽头餐馆美美地吃上一顿，可现在已经过去了整整两个小时。所以他冲飞船的电脑狠狠地发了一通火，怒气冲冲地离开控制室，冲向自己的房间，一路大声咆哮，扬言要用铅笔和本子将非概率系统计算个明明白白。
黄金之心号的非概率驱动系统使它成为现有飞船中最强有力的一艘，也是最无法预测的。它无所不能，你会确确实实地看到，无论你要求它做的事有多么不可思议，最终都会成为现实。
偷走它时，他还是总统，应邀参加它的启用典礼。除了喜欢之外，他自己都弄不明白自己为什么要偷走它。
他也弄不明白自己为什么要当银河系的总统，除了觉得这件事很好玩之外。
他不知道，这些理由之外其实还存在着更好的理由，只是它们被埋藏在他两个大脑中的一块黑暗区域里，被锁得死死的。他希望能把这块被锁闭的黑暗区域清除掉，因为它们不时会短暂地浮现出来，在他的思想中那些明亮的、欢快的区域里投下奇怪的念头，试图使他偏离他所认定的人生基本方向，即，寻欢作乐。
此刻，他的感觉一点儿也不欢乐。他已经用完了所有耐心，还有所有铅笔，他已经饥肠辘辘了。
“混蛋！”他叫道。