"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.
