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- Hitch Hikers Guide To The Net
- Episode 6
-
- (Flarg Brittashik is leading the crew of the Infinity down the contorted
- stairway toward the interior of Netrothea.)
-
- Martin: What an awful place, why do we bother to go on?
-
- Xaphod: Quiet!
-
- Flarg: Actually, he's right. One of the things we Netrotheans
- proved was that the Net does not actually exist. It
- therefore follows that nothing we do really matters at all.
-
- Arnold Lint:What?
-
- Flarg: Is that all you can say you mindless, facial emation!
-
- Rod: What do you mean "we don't exist"?
-
- Flarg: Well, first we approached the problem assuming that we were
- a unique Net. There is none other like us in the entire
- domain of space, right?
-
- Rod: Right . . .
-
- Flarg: Well, if we are alone, how do we know we are? Without
- another Net to tell us we are, we may not be. We could just
- be the figments of our imaginations. How do you KNOW that
- that cat over there does in fact have 5 legs? You see it,
- but what's to say that it is actually there. Do you follow?
-
- [********************************************************************
- What Flarg Brittashik was pointing out was the famed five-legged cat of
- Felix Major. The "The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Net" indicates that the
- myth of the five-legged cat was actually the result of the heavy
- drinking done on Felix Major. You see, the female of the species on
- Felix Major is covered with a blue slime which eventually dissolves her
- mate if contact is maintained for too long. Because of this, the men on
- Felix Major spend a lot of time in bars discussing the differences
- between being Kosher and being a Cannibal. They tend to drink an awful
- lot while discussing this topic. In their usually intoxicated state, it
- is not difficult to mistake a cat for having a fifth leg if viewed side
- ways (or as having one eye if viewed from the rear). The "The Hitch
- Hikers Guide To The Net" also points out that the favorite drink on
- Felix Major is called the 'Intesto-rout'. It is mixed as follows: Mix
- equal parts of gin, whiskey, rye, vodka, rum, bourbon, and brandy. Add a
- cup of beer that has been left in a gym locker for 3 days. To this add 5
- Ex-Lax pills, 1 Valium, 2 No-Doz, and half a lid of grass. Mix it well
- in a Hamilton Blech mixer. Now add a rotten egg, a decaying guppy, the
- spleen of 10 freshly killed frogs, and about a fist full of goat brains.
- Again mix it all up. To add a bit of zip to the mixture, add some
- Drain-O. Now put the whole mixture under a dead horse for 37 hours.
- After it has aged, filter it through the right kidney of a rabid llama
- and serve it in a slightly soiled bed pan with an olive. Felix Major,
- quite obviously developed quite a drunk driving problem. The solution
- arrived at was simple and logical. They simply ground up offenders and
- added them to 'Intest-rout's. Rumor has it that this extra ingredient
- gave the drink the full bodied taste it had always been lacking.
- *********************************************************************
-
- Arnold Lint:It's the old "Does a falling tree make a sound if there's no
- one there to hear" story, right?
-
- Flarg: Ooo! 'The falling tree makes no noise!' Aren't we the
- smart-behinded little cretins!
-
- Xaphod: No, you idiot! It means . . . uh . . .
-
- Flarg: Actually, he's quite correct. We were not happy with finding
- out that we may be alone, so we then assumed that there was
- the possibility for an infinite number of varied Nets.
-
- Gillian: How nice.
-
- Flarg: Yes, well, it now became apparent that our one little Net
- was entirely insignificant in the scope of things in
- general. Mathematically, our percentage of existence
- amounted to 1 over infinity, which is too small to even
- consider. Worse yet, since no other Net has ever contacted
- us, we may REALLY not exist after all. We could REALLY be
- mirages of the cosmic mind.
-
- Xaphod: Wow, that's heavy!
-
- Flarg: Quiet, you drugged out excuse to evacuate my stomach on the
- table!
-
- Rod: Go on already!
-
- Flarg: Well, after taking many heavy drugs, we finally arrived at a
- solid decision.
-
- Gillian: What was it?
-
- Flarg: We agreed that our existence was so insignificant that
- anything we did really wouldn't matter. Hence our national
- slogan changed to "Who Cares". After all, in light of
- everything I've revealed to you, it must be perfectly
- obvious that it just doesn't matter what you do or say on
- the Net.
-
- Arnold Lint:Boy, I hope the rest of the Net doesn't hear that.
-
- Flarg: Oh, they did. That's why they attacked us and wiped out most
- of Netrothea. They just couldn't accept that all the fuss
- they were making really didn't amount to a damn thing.
-
- [********************************************************************
- "The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Net" points out that the Netrotheans were
- somewhat renowned for exploding the faiths of others. Prior to their
- non-existence fetish, they published a series of treatises titled: "Who
- is this guy God anyway?", "Everything you always wanted to know about
- the benevolent Lord, but were afraid to ask.", and "Well, that's it for
- God." The Netrotheans had no fears of being wiped out for their bizarre
- views. They believed that since what we call 'death' is theoretically
- infinite, and what we call 'life' is so finite and miserable (what with
- everybody wearing digital watches and coveting thy neighbor's bits of
- green-dyed, processed plant matter), we must surely have gotten things
- backwards. They therefore had no problems dealing with the after-life.
- *********************************************************************]
-
- Xaphod: Wow, that's wild!
-
- Flarg: Now if you really want to blow your mind, consider this: If
- the Net doesn't really exist, do we exist? If we exist, what
- is the point of our existence? What is the medium of our
- communication if there really is no Net? What does it all
- mean?
-
- Arnold Lint:I don't know?
-
- Rod: That's obvious.
-
- Martin: I'm kind of relieved that nothing really exists. It's sort
- of reassuring to know that all the misery I've endured on
- the Net really doesn't affect anything anyway.
-
- Gillian: Quiet Martin. Don't you know what this all means! It means
- that the constant day to day struggle to keep up with the
- Net is all pointless. Posting news is futile, reading news
- is futile, thinking about news is futile - because where
- ever the news came from or goes to, what ever thought up the
- news - none of it exists - and neither do we!
-
- Rod: Yah, just think. We may have been posting news to a void!
-
- Xaphod: Wait a minute! We get replies to our news!
-
- Flarg: We thought of that too. But consider the odds against our
- actual existence. They could be considered random at best.
- The odds of other beings also existing comes down to the
- same random probability. It follows that any communication
- would have to be a random coincidence. Now, consider that
- the only communication we see is simply processed electrical
- impulses. Consider the quantity and speed of the impulses.
- The odds against them coming together in a logical
- combination are astronomically bad. It follows, then, that
- what we mistake for communication with other beings (which
- don't exist either) are simply galactic burps in our faces,
- if we existed.
-
- Xaphod: Wow!
-
- Flarg: Well, you wastes of space, I've got to go and kick my dog
- through a hedge.
-
- (With that Flarg disappears in a burst of purple smoke. When the smoke
- clears, only a can of "Putrina Rat Chow" remains.)
-
- ******************** End Of Part 6 ********************
-
- What other fantastic things (which don't exist) will be revealed on
- Netrothea (which also doesn't exist). To find out . . . Tune in next
- time (a bizarre concept, time) . . . same Net-time . . . same
- Net-channel.
-
- danielle