經典科幻文學:《生命 宇宙及一切》第7章1

Chapter 7
The Bistromatic Drive is a wonderful new method of crossing vast interstellar distances without all that dangerous mucking about with Improbability Factors.
Bistromathics itself is simply a revolutionary new way of understanding the behaviour of numbers. Just as Einstein observed that time was not an absolute but depended on the observer’s movement in space, and that space was not an absolute, but depended on the observer’s movement in time, so it is now realized that numbers are not absolute, but depend on the observer’s movement in restaurants.
The first non-absolute number is the number of people for whom the table is reserved. This will vary during the course of the first three telephone calls to the restaurant, and then bear no apparent relation to the number of people who actually turn up, or to the number of people who subsequently join them after the show/match/party/gig, or to the number of people who leave when they see who else has turned up.
The second non-absolute number is the given time of arrival, which is now known to be one of those most bizarre of mathematical concepts, a recipriversexcluson, a number whose existence can only be defined as being anything other than itself. In other words, the given time of arrival is the one moment of time at which it is impossible that any member of the party will arrive. Recipriversexclusons now play a vital part in many branches of maths, including statistics and accountancy and also form the basic equations used to engineer the Somebody Else’s Problem field.
The third and most mysterious piece of non-absoluteness of all lies in the relationship between the number of items on the bill, the cost of each item, the number of people at the table, and what they are each prepared to pay for. (The number of people who have actually brought any money is only a sub-phenomenon in this field.)
The baffling discrepancies which used to occur at this point remained uninvestigated for centuries simply because no one took them seriously. They were at the time put down to such things as politeness, rudeness, meanness, flashness, tiredness, emotionality, or the lateness of the hour, and completely forgotten about on the following morning. They were never tested under laboratory conditions, of course, because they never occurred in laboratories not in reputable laboratories at least.

第七章
意館數學驅動，是一項全新的星際遠距離穿越技術，它避免了非概率因數所帶來的危險性。
意館數學驅動是一種革命性的思維方式，即對於數字行爲的全新理解方式。就好比愛因斯坦發現，時間不是絕對的，它決定於觀察者的空間運動；空間不是絕對的，它決定於觀察者的時間運動。同樣地，人們現在認識到，數字不是絕對的，它決定於觀察者在餐廳的運動。
第一個非絕對數字，是預留座位的人數。它會隨着前三個訂餐電話的內容而變化，而與實際到場的人數沒什麼聯繫，也與中途從演出/比賽/派對/特約音樂會過來的人數沒什麼聯繫，也與那些看到某個人來了而離開的人數沒什麼聯繫。
第二個非絕對數字，是約定的到達時間，如今已被公認爲最古怪的數學概念之一。它是個互斥可逆數。這個數，其實只有在它作爲別的數時才存在。換句話說，約定的到達時間，就是任何一位客人都不會在那時到達的時間。互斥可逆數如今在數學的多個分支學科發揮重要作用，包括統計學、會計學等，同時也爲“別人的問題作用場”提供基本算法。
第三個、也是最神祕的非絕對性現象，存在於以下四者的相互關係之中：帳單上的條目數，每一條目的費用，餐桌上的人數，以及每人準備付的錢數（真正帶了錢的人數，只是這個問題下面的一個亞現象）。
如此繁雜（而又時常發生）的大問題，卻在多少個世紀裏完全不爲人知。這是因爲，沒人重視它。人們總是將其歸結爲禮貌、粗魯、小氣、炫耀、疲倦、激動或是遲到的結果，並在第二天早上徹底忘了這件事。他們從未在實驗室條件下測試過，當然，這些問題從不在實驗室發生——至少不會在聲譽良好的實驗室發生。