Misery, dejection. More misery and more dejection. He needed a project and he gave himself one. He would find where his cave had been. On prehistoric Earth he had lived in a cave, not a nice cave, a lousy cave, but… There was no but. It had been a totally lousy cave and he had hated it. But he had lived in it for five years which made it home of some kind, and a person likes to keep track of his homes. Arthur Dent was such a person and so he went to Exeter to buy a computer. That was what he really wanted, of course, a computer. But he felt he ought to have some serious purpose in mind before he simply went and lashed out a lot of readies on what people might otherwise mistake as being just a thing to play with. So that was his serious purpose. To pinpoint the exact location of a cave on prehistoric Earth. He explained this to the man in the shop. Why? said the man in the shop. This was a tricky one. OK, skip that, said the man in the shop. How? Well, I was hoping you could help me with that. The man sighed and his shoulders dropped. Have you much experience of computers? Arthur wondered whether to mention Eddie the shipboard computer on the Heart of Gold, who could have done the job in a second, or Deep Thought, or but decided he wouldn’t. No, he said. Looks like a fun afternoon, said the man in the shop, but he said it only to himself. Arthur bought the Apple anyway. Over a few days he also acquired some astronomical software, plotted the movements of stars, drew rough little diagrams of how he seemed to remember the stars to have been in the sky when he looked up out of his cave at night, and worked away busily at it for weeks, cheerfully putting off the conclusion he knew he would inevitably have to come to, which was that the whole project was completely ludicrous. Rough drawings from memory were futile. He didn’t even know how long it had been, beyond Ford Prefect’s rough guess at the time that it was “a couple of million years” and he simply didn’t have the maths. Still, in the end he worked out a method which would at least produce a result. He decided not to mind the fact that with the extraordinary jumble of rules of thumb, wild approximations and arcane guesswork he was using he would be lucky to hit the right galaxy, he just went ahead and got a result. He would call it the right result. Who would know? As it happened, through the myriad and unfathomable chances of fate, he got it exactly right, though he of course would never know that. He just went up to London and knocked on the appropriate door. Oh. I thought you were going to phone me first. Arthur gaped in astonishment. You can only come in for a few minutes, said Fenchurch. I’m just going out. 悲哀，沮喪。更多的悲哀和更多的沮喪。他需要一個計劃然後他就給了自己一個。 他要找到自己的洞窟在哪兒。 在史前地球時代他曾住在一個洞窟裏，不是什麼很好的洞，是個髒兮兮的洞，但是......沒有但是。那完完全全就是個髒兮兮臭烘烘的洞而且他討厭它。但是他在那裏住了五年或多或少是把那裏當家了，而一個人總是喜歡追尋家的蹤跡的。阿瑟.鄧特就是那樣的人，因此他去埃克賽特買臺電腦。 這就是他真正想要的，當然了，一臺電腦。但當他在簡單地甩出一沓現金去買一臺旁人可能誤會爲只是個玩具的東西之前，他覺得應該在頭腦中明確幾個嚴肅的目的。這就是他的嚴肅目的了。我要去查明史前地球的一個洞窟的精確位置。他對商店的人這樣解釋。 “爲了什麼？”商店的人問。 這是個麻煩的問題。 “算啦，跳過這步，”商店的人說，“怎麼做？” “這個，我正希望你能幫我呢。” 那個人嘆了口氣把肩放了下來。 “你對電腦的經驗多麼？” 阿瑟琢磨了一下是否要提到黃金之心上的艦載電腦艾迪，可以在一秒鐘內搞定事情的傢伙，或者是深思，或者是——但是最後決定不提了。 “沒有。”他說。 “看來這個下午會很有趣，”商店的人說着，但他只是在對自己這麼說。 最後不管怎麼說阿瑟還是買了那臺蘋果機。過了幾天他也裝上了一些天文學軟件，能標出恆星的運動，粗略繪出他在洞窟仰望夜空時所大致記住的星星在天空中的位置圖表，隨後在那上面忙了幾個星期，愉快地推遲了他知道最終不可避免會得出的結論——整個計劃就是個不折不扣的胡鬧。 根據記憶做出的草圖是沒意義的。他甚至不記得那是多少年前的事兒了，按照福特.普里弗克特的大致猜測是“好幾百萬年”而他就是搞不清數學。 儘管如此，最後他還是想出了一個轍至少能夠整出個結果。他決定不去管這樣一個事實：通過那些經驗主義做法，瘋狂的近似值還有神祕的臆測混合起來的超凡混亂，他最終會幸運地找到正確的銀河系。但他決定直接跑過去然後得到個結果。 他會把這個叫做直接結果。誰知道呢？ 恰好，通過那無數深不可測的宿命的偶然性，他得到了極端正確的結果，但是他當然是永遠不會知道這些的。他直接就跑到了倫敦然後敲了那扇合適的門。 “哦，我以爲你會先給我打電話的。” 阿瑟驚訝地張大了嘴。 “你只能進來待幾分鐘，”芬琪詩說，“我正要出門去。”
