經典科幻文學:《宇宙盡頭的餐館》第22章1

Arthur woke up and instantly regretted it. Hangovers he’d had, but never anything on this scale. This was it, this was the big one, this was the ultimate pits. Matter transference beams, he decided, were not as much fun as, say, a good solid kick in the head.
Being for the moment unwilling to move on account of a dull stomping throb he was experiencing, he lay a while and thought. The trouble with most forms of transport, he thought, is basically one of them not being worth all the bother. On Earth – when there had been an Earth, before it was demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass – the problem had been with cars. The disadvantages involved in pulling lots of black sticky slime from out of the ground where it had been safely hidden out of harm’s way, turning it into tar to cover the land with, smoke to fill the air with and pouring the rest into the sea, all seemed to outweigh the advantages of being able to get more quickly from one place to another – particularly when the place you arrived at had probably become, as a result of this, very similar to the place you had left, i.e. covered with tar, full of smoke and short of fish.
And what about matter transference beams? Any form of transport which involved tearing you apart atom by atom, flinging those atoms through the sub-ether, and then jamming them back together again just when they were getting their first taste of freedom for years had to be bad news.
Many people had thought exactly this before Arthur Dent and had even gone to the lengths of writing songs about it. Here is one that used regularly to be chanted by huge crowds outside the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Teleport Systems factory on Happi-Werld III:
“Can you hear a dull stomping throb?” said Ford Prefect.
Arthur span round and wobbled uncertainly. Ford Prefect was approaching looking red eyed and pasty.
“Where are we?” gasped Arthur.

阿瑟醒過來，但他馬上對此懊悔不已，他以前也有過宿醉的經歷，卻從來沒有達到這般程度，這一次真是來了個猛的，來了個空前絕後的，現在他認定，物質傳送光束可不是一件好玩的東西，怎麼說呢，簡直就像頭上捱了結結實實的一腳
此時-他感到自己的脈搏單調地怦怦亂蹦，所以不想移動，只是躺在原地，思考着：他想，大部分形式的傳送工具都有一個根本問題，它們中沒有一種的好姓能抵銷所有那些由它帶來的用擾。對地球來說——當地球還存在的時候，在它爲了給一條新的超空問通道騰出地方來而被毀滅掉之前－－在汽車上，這些弊病包括，從地下抽出大量本來安安生生隱藏着的黑色黏稠物，把它變成覆蓋大地的瀝青、瀰漫在空中的煙霧，再將廢棄物I匾倒人大海。所有這些，似乎遠遠超過了汽車所帶來的好處，即能夠更快地從一個地方到達另一個地方——尤其是當你所到達的地方，由於這種傳送造成的影響，很可能已經變得與你所離開的地方極其相似，同樣覆蓋了瀝青、瀰漫着煙霧，而且沒有多少魚。
那麼，物質傳送光束呢，它的工作原理是先把你撕裂成原子，然後通過亞以太來投送這些原子，再在它們多年來頭一次嚐到自由的滋味的時候，把它們重新組裝起來。任何形式的傳送工具，只要採取這種原理，絕對不會是什麼好玩意兒。
在阿瑟·鄧特之前，已經有許多人認真地思考過這個問題了，甚至到了就這個問題創作了一批歌曲的程度。下面就是其中的一首。位於哈皮一維爾德三號星上的天狼星控制系統公司傳送系統工廠門外曾經經常性地聚集着一大羣人，口裏吟唱着這首歌：
“你能聽到有什麼在單調地砰砰亂蹦的聲音嗎？”福特，長官說，
阿瑟轉過身，立足不穩地搖晃着。福特長官正朝這邊走過來，看上去眼睛紅紅的，面色蒼白。
”我們這是在哪兒？”阿瑟喘息着問。