Færie Cake

"Ah, there you are," said the voice  suddenly  in  Zaphod's  ear, "excuse  me  leaving  you  like  that,  it's  just  that I have a

terrible head for heights. 

At least," it added wistfully, "I  did have a terrible head for heights."

Zaphod looked around slowly and carefully, just to see if he  had missed  something  which might be the source of The Voice. All he saw, however, was the dust, the rubble and the towering hulks  ofthe encircling buildings.

"Hey, er, why can't I see you?" he said, "why aren't you here?"

"I am here," said the voice slowly, "my body wanted to  come  but it's  a  bit  busy  at  the moment. Things to do, people to see."

After what seemed like a sort of ethereal  sigh  it  added,  "You

know how it is with bodies."

Zaphod wasn't sure about this.

"I thought I did," he said.

"I only hope it's gone for a rest  cure,"  continued  the  voice, " the  way  it's  been  living  recently  it  must  be on its last elbows."

"Elbows?" said Zaphod, "don't you mean last legs?"

The  Voice  said  nothing  for  a  while.  Zaphod  looked  around

uneasily.  He  didn't  know  if it was gone or was still there or

what it was doing. Then the voice spoke again.

"So, you are to be put into the Vortex, yes?-

"Er, well," said Zaphod with a very poor attempt at  nonchalance, "this  cat's  in  no hurry, you know. I can just slouch about and take in a look at the local scenery, you know?"

"Have you seen the local scenery?" asked The Voice of Gargravarr.

"Er, no."

Zaphod clambered over the rubble, and rounded the corner  of  one of the wrecked buildings that was obscuring his view.

He looked out at the landscape of Frogstar World B.

"Ah, OK," he said, "I'll just sort of slouch about then."

"No," said Gargravarr, "the Vortex is ready for you now. You must come. Follow me."

"Er, yeah?" said Zaphod, "and how am I meant to do that?"

"I'll hum for you," said Gargravarr, "follow the humming."

A soft keening sound drifted through the air, a pale,  sad  sound that  seemed  to  be  without  any  kind of focus. It was only by listening very carefully that  Zaphod  was  able  to  detect  the direction  from which it was coming. Slowly, dazedly, he stumbled off in its wake. What else was there to do?

The Universe, as has been observed before, is an unsettlingly big place, a fact which for the sake of a quiet life most people tend to ignore.

Many would happily move to somewhere rather smaller of their  own devising, and this is what most beings in fact do.

For instance, in one corner of the Eastern Galactic Arm lies  the large forest planet Oglaroon, the entire "intelligent" population of which lives permanently in one fairly small  and  crowded  nut tree. In which tree they are born, live, fall in love, carve tiny speculative articles in the bark on  the  meaning  of  life,  the futility  of  death  and the importance of birth control, fight a few extremely minor wars, and  eventually  die  strapped  to  the underside of some of the less accessible outer branches.

In fact the only Oglaroonians who ever leave their tree are those who  are  hurled  out  of  it  for the heinous crime of wondering whether any of the other trees might  be  capable  of  supporting life at all, or indeed whether the other trees are anything other than illusions brought on by eating too many Oglanuts.

Exotic though this behaviour may seem, there is no life  form  in the  Galaxy  which  is  not in some way guilty of the same thing, which is why the Total Perspective Vortex is as  horrific  as  it is.

For when you are put into the  Vortex  you  are  given  just  one

momentary   glimpse   of  the  entire  unimaginable  infinity  of

Creation, and somewhere in it a tiny little marker, a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, which says "You are here."

The grey plain  stretched  before  Zaphod,  a  ruined,  shattered

plain. The wind whipped wildly over it.

Visible in the middle was the steel pimple  of  the  dome.  This,

gathered  Zaphod,  was  where  he  was  going. This was the Total Perspective Vortex.

As he stood and gazed bleakly at it, a  sudden  inhuman  wail  of terror  emanated  from  it as of a man having his soul burnt from his body. It screamed above the wind and died away.

Zaphod started with fear and his blood seemed to turn  to  liquid helium.

"Hey, what was that?" he muttered voicelessly.

"A recording," said Gargravarr, "of the last man who was  put  in the  Vortex.  It  is  always played to the next victim. A sort of prelude."

"Hey, it really sounds bad ..." stammered  Zaphod,  "couldn't  we maybe  slope  off  to  a party or something for a while, think it over?"

"For all I know," said Gargravarr's ethereal voice, "I'm probably at  one. My body that is. It goes to a lot of parties without me. Says I only get in the way. Hey ho."

"What is all this with your body?" said Zaphod, anxious to  delay whatever it was that was going to happen to him.

"Well, it's ... it's busy you know," said Gargravarr hesitantly.

"You mean it's got a mind of its own?" said Zaphod.

There was a long and  slightly  chilly  pause  before  Gargravarr

spoke again.

"I have to say," he replied eventually, "that I find that  remark

in rather poor taste."

Zaphod muttered a bewildered and embarrassed apology.

"No matter," said Gargravarr, "you weren't to know."

The voice fluttered unhappily.

"The truth is," it continued in  tones  which  suggested  he  was

trying  very hard to keep it under control, "the truth is that we

are currently undergoing a period of legal  trial  separation.  I

suspect it will end in divorce."

The voice was still again, leaving Zaphod with no idea of what to

say. He mumbled uncertainly.

"I think we are probably not very well suited,"  said  Gargravarr

again  at  length,  "we  never  seemed to be happy doing the same

things. We  always  had  the  greatest  arguments  over  sex  and

fishing.  Eventually  we  tried to combine the two, but that only

led to disaster, as you can probably imagine.  And  now  my  body

refuses to let me in. It won't even see me ..."

He paused again, tragically. The wind whipped across the plain.

"It says I only inhibit it. I pointed out  that  in  fact  I  was

meant  to  inhibit it, and it said that that was exactly the sort

of smart alec remark that got right up a body's left nostril, and

so we left it. It will probably get custody of my forename."

"Oh ..." said Zaphod faintly, "and what's that?"

"Pizpot," said the voice, "My name is Pizpot Gargravarr. Says  it

all really doesn't it?"

"Errr ..." said Zaphod sympathetically.

"And that is why  I,  as  a  disembodied  mind,  have  this  job,

Custodian  of the Total Perspective Vortex. No one will ever walk

on the ground of this planet. Except the victims of the Vortex  -

they don't really count I'm afraid."

"Ah ..."

"I'll tell you the story. Would you like to hear it?"

"Er ..."

"Many years ago this was  a  thriving,  happy  planet  -  people,

cities  shops, a normal world. Except that on the high streets of

these cities there were slightly more shoe shops than  one  might

have  thought  necessary. And slowly, insidiously, the numbers of

these shoe shops were increasing.  It's  a  well  known  economic

phenomenon  but  tragic to see it in operation, for the more shoe

shops there were, the more shoes they had to make and  the  worse

and more unwearable they became. And the worse they were to wear,

the more people had to buy to keep themselves shod, and the  more

the  shops  proliferated,  until  the  whole economy of the place

passed what I believe is termed the Shoe Event  Horizon,  and  it

became  no  longer  economically possible to build anything other

than shoe shops. Result - collapse, ruin and famine. Most of  the

population  died out. Those few who had the right kind of genetic

instability mutated into birds - you've seen one of  them  -  who

cursed  their feet, cursed the ground, and vowed that none should

walk on it again. Unhappy lot. Come,  I  must  take  you  to  the

Vortex."

Zaphod shook his head in bemusement and stumbled  forward  across

the plain.

"And you," he said, "you come from this hellhole pit do you?"

"No no," said Gargravarr, taken aback, "I come from the  Frogstar

World C. Beautiful place. Wonderful fishing. I flit back there in

the evenings. Though all  I  can  do  now  is  watch.  The  Total

Perspective  Vortex  is  the  only  thing on this planet with any

function. It was built here because no  one  else  wanted  it  on

their doorstep."

At that moment another dismal scream  rent  the  air  and  Zaphod

shuddered.

"What can do that to a guy?" he breathed.

"The Universe,"  said  Gargravarr  simply,  "the  whole  infinite

Universe. The infinite suns, the infinite distances between them,

and yourself an invisible dot on  an  invisible  dot,  infinitely

small."

"Hey, I'm Zaphod Beeblebrox,  man,  you  know,"  muttered  Zaphod

trying to flap the last remnants of his ego.

Gargravarr made no reply, but merely resumed his mournful humming

till  they  reached the tarnished steel dome in the middle of the

plain.

As they reached it, a door hummed open in the side,  revealing  a

small darkened chamber within.

"Enter," said Gargravarr.

Zaphod started with fear.

"Hey, what, now?" he said.

"Now."

Zaphod peered nervously inside. The chamber was  very  small.  It

was  steel-lined  and  there was hardly space in it for more than

one man.

"It ... er ... it doesn't look like any kind of  Vortex  to  me,"

said Zaphod.

"It isn't," said Gargravarr, "it's just the elevator. Enter."

With infinite trepidation Zaphod stepped into it. He was aware of

Gargravarr being in the elevator with him, though the disembodied

man was not for the moment speaking.

The elevator began its descent.

"I must get myself into  the  right  frame  of  mind  for  this,"

muttered Zaphod.

"There is no right frame of mind," said Gargravarr sternly.

"You really know how to make a guy feel inadequate."

"I don't. The Vortex does."

At the bottom of the shaft, the rear of the  elevator  opened  up

and  Zaphod stumbled out into a smallish, functional, steel-lined

chamber.

At the far side of it stood a  single  upright  steel  box,  just

large enough for a man to stand in.

It was that simple.

It connected to a small pile of components and instruments via  a

single thick wire.

"Is that it?" said Zaphod in surprise.

"That is it."

Didn't look too bad, thought Zaphod.

"And I get in there do I?" said Zaphod.

"You get in there," said Gargravarr, "and I'm afraid you must  do it now."

"OK, OK," said Zaphod.

He opened the door of the box and stepped in.

Inside the box he waited.

After five seconds there was a click, and the entire Universe was there in the box with him.

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, anidiot.

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.

"Beeblebrox ..." gasped Gargravarr's mind in amazement.

"Could I have a drink please?" said Zaphod.

"You ... you ... have been in the Vortex?" stammered Gargravarr.

"You saw me, kid."

"And it was working?"

"Sure was."

"And you saw the whole infinity of creation?"

"Sure. Really neat place, you know that?"

Gargravarr's mind was reeling in astonishment. Had his body  been with  him  it  would have sat down heavily with its mouth hanging open.

"And you saw yourself," said Gargravarr, "in relation to it all?"

"Oh, yeah, yeah."

"But ... what did you experience?"

Zaphod shrugged smugly.

"It just told me what I knew all the time. I'm a really  terrific

and great guy. Didn't I tell you, baby, I'm Zaphod Beeblebrox!"

His gaze passed over the machinery which powered the  vortex  and suddenly stopped, startled.

He breathed heavily.

"Hey," he said, "is that really a piece of fairy cake?"

He ripped the small piece of confectionery from the sensors  with which it was surrounded.

"If I told you how much I needed this," he  said  ravenously,  "I wouldn't have time to eat it."

He ate it.