經典科幻文學:《生命 宇宙及一切》第1章3

Don’t give me that! snapped the alien. It marched up the ramp, through the hatchway and disappeared into the ship. The ship sealed itself. It started to make a low throbbing hum.
Er, hey! shouted Arthur, and started to run helplessly towards it.
Wait a minute! he called. What is this? What? Wait a minute!
The ship rose, as if shedding its weight like a cloak to the ground, and hovered briefly. It swept strangely up into the evening sky. It passed up through the clouds, illuminating them briefly, and then was gone, leaving Arthur alone in an immensity of land dancing a helplessly tiny little dance.
What? he screamed. What? What? Hey, what? Come back here and say that!
He jumped and danced until his legs trembled, and shouted till his lungs rasped. There was no answer from anyone. There was no one to hear him or speak to him.
The alien ship was already thundering towards the upper reaches of the atmosphere, on its way out into the appalling void which separates the very few things there are in the Universe from each other.
Its occupant, the alien with the expensive complexion, leaned back in its single seat. His name was Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged. He was a man with a purpose. Not a very good purpose, as he would have been the first to admit, but it was at least a purpose and it did at least keep him on the move.
Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged was indeed, is one of the Universe’s very small number of immortal beings.
Those who are born immortal instinctively know how to cope with it, but Wowbagger was not one of them. Indeed he had come to hate them, the load of serene bastards. He had had his immortality thrust upon him by an unfortunate accident with an irrational particle accelerator, a liquid lunch and a pair of rubber bands. The precise details of the accident are not important because no one has ever managed to duplicate the exact circumstances under which it happened, and many people have ended up looking very silly, or dead, or both, trying.
Wowbagger closed his eyes in a grim and weary expression, put some light jazz on the ship’s stereo, and reflected that he could have made it if it hadn’t been for Sunday afternoons, he really could have done.
To begin with it was fun, he had a ball, living dangerously, taking risks, cleaning up on high-yield long-term investments, and just generally outliving the hell out of everybody.
In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn’t cope with, and that terrible listlessness which starts to set in at about 2.55, when you know that you’ve had all the baths you can usefully have that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the papers you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o’clock, and you will enter the long dark teatime of the soul.
So things began to pall for him. The merry smiles he used to wear at other people’s funerals began to fade. He began to despise the Universe in general, and everyone in it in particular.
This was the point at which he conceived his purpose, the thing which would drive him on, and which, as far as he could see, would drive him on forever. It was this.
He would insult the Universe.

“少給我來那套！”外星人沒好氣地說。它回到舷梯，跨進艙門，閃進了飛船。飛船自動合上了，開始發出低低的轟鳴。
“嗯……嘿！”阿瑟叫道，他不知所措地奔向飛船。
“等一下！”阿瑟大叫，“這是什麼！什麼！等一下！”
飛船升空了，好似把它自己的重量像抖落積雪一樣抖在了地上，輕盈地浮了起來。它詭異地滑進夜空。它穿過雲層，照亮了雲層，轉瞬間又消失了，只留下阿瑟站在空曠無垠的大地上成爲一個渺小的、手舞足蹈的黑點。
“什麼？”他喊着，“什麼？什麼？嘿，什麼？回來告訴我啊！”
他又跳又跺直到雙腿都開始顫抖，他不停叫喊直到肺都開始絞痛了。沒有人回答他。沒有人聽見他，跟他說話。
外星飛船此時已以閃電般的速度到達大氣層的最外緣，即將進入真空。真空，就是將宇宙中那相當稀少的事物相互隔開的東西。
飛船的主人，那位有着尊貴肌膚的外星人，正躺在它的單人椅裏。他的名字叫做“無極長命”哇布格。他是個有目標的人。雖然不是個非常好的目標，而他也很大方地承認這一點，但至少他有個目標。並且，至少他可以以此爲由，繼續生活下去。
“無極長命”哇布格曾是——正確來說，一直是——宇宙中極少數長生不死的生物之一。
天生就不死的生物，本能地知道如何對付這個問題。但哇布格不在他們之列。實際上，他很討厭他們——那幫安詳的雜種。他是在一場不幸的事故中變成長生不死的。那場事故跟一個無理數粒子加速器、一份流質午餐和一對橡皮筋有關。事故的具體過程並不重要，因爲沒人能再模擬出當時的狀況。很多人試過，他們最後都把自己搞成了白癡，要不就是死了，要不就兩者兼得。
哇布格閉上雙眼，表情疲憊而煩悶，打開飛船上的音響放點輕爵士，想着，如果不是因爲星期天下午的話，他應該能忍下來，真的能。
剛開始是很快樂，他過得精彩無比，活得驚險刺激，冒過種種風險，在高回報長線投資中大發橫財，總之就是比誰都活得久。
到後來，他再也不能忍受的，便是像這樣的星期天下午。2點55分時襲來的、可怕的百無聊賴，當你發現你已經把一天之內能洗的澡都洗了，當你再怎麼用力盯着報紙上的文字都沒辦法讀進去、也不願意使用它說的那些革命性的高科技除草機，當你死死瞪着鐘的指針、他們無情地指向四點鐘，說明你的靈魂正該進入冗長黑暗的下午茶時間了……
於是他開始覺得膩煩。在參加別人葬禮時、曾經露出的愉快笑容，也漸漸不再出現。總體上講，他開始鄙視整個宇宙；具體來說，他鄙視裏面的每一個人。
這便成了他制定目標的出發點，成爲激勵他的東西，也就是——在他自己看來——永遠激勵他的東西。那就是：
他要侮辱整個宇宙。