If you enjoy these please feel free to contact me and say hello. I
can be reached at Sun via the Arpanet or the USENET. My email addr-
esses are:
{ucbvax, decwrl, allegro}!sun!dbercel!toto
or
dbercel@sun.com or dbercel@sun.arpa
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