The Ultimate Question and Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything
Created | Updated Jun 22, 2006
Obligatory Precautions
As with any discussion of Life, the Universe, and Everything, it is essential that one must distinguish which Life, which Universe, and which Everything we are referring to in the Whole Sort of General Mish Mash. The easiest way to establish which Universe this entry refers to is to determine which Tricia McMillan the Universe contains. In this case, we refer to the Tricia McMillan who was picked up by Zaphod Beeblebrox at a party in Islington, didn't go back for her bag, keeps her brunette hair and British accent, is lovingly nicknamed Trillian, travels with Beeblebrox throughout the galaxy in the stolen Heart of Gold, and isn't forcibly married to the President of the Algolian Chapter of the Galactic Rotary Club.
It is also important that we determine that this universe is not the same as our universe. A strange and difficult man named Prak, just before his death by washing his hands at the whole business, was able to tell the Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing But the Truth. In addition to many things about frogs, he was able to tell Arthur Dent (a person who will figure largely into the Ultimate Question) that knowledge about the Answer and the Question of the same universe is impossible without the complete destruction of that universe. Therefore, it is possible that 42 is not the Ultimate Answer and/or that the Ultimate Question is not the Ultimate Question of our Universe.
The Ultimate Answer
The Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything, was computed by a great computer known as Deep Thought. After millions of years of computing, it finally decided that the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything was 42. Thus, Deep Thought and the good folks of Magarathea created the Earth, a supercomputer which would use living things in its very computation matrix to discover the Ultimate Question.
The Ultimate Question
One cannot talk about the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything without including a partial history of the Earth. The Earth was created to find the question, and it was so vast and full of life that it often was mistaken for a planet. This was the case when the Class B Golgafrinchans, a group consisting of documentary filmmakers, hairdressers, and other undesirables, crash-landed upon it early in the computation period and, in short, cocked up the whole thing. With the possible exception of the dolphins, only two living creatures which were born and bred on Earth survived its destruction by a Vogon Constructer Fleet, and, as they were descended from the Golgafrinchans rather than from the original human lifeforms, they were, like the earth, cocked up. The mock-Ulimate-Question within Arthur Dent's mind was What do you get when you multiply six and nine? This was the state of the question when the Earth was destroyed five minutes before readout, and so while it is possible that some derivative of 6x9 is the Ultimate Question, it is unlikely because the Golgafrinchans were complete kneebiters.
So the question remains: what is the Ultimate Question?
The Entrant's Theory
While there are many theories concerning the Ultimate Question, this entry only concerns my theory. The only explanation is that I think my theory is right and all other theories are wrong. So there.
Consider this: the greatest computer in the world, while notably intelligent, isn't completely faultless. It continued its computations long after the Golgafrinchans killed all native human lifeforms. It is, therefore, not unreasonable to assume that, as is their thought process, the Golgafrinchans took the computations in a every direction except the correct one. 2
So if the Earth didn't really know what Life, the Universe, and Everything were all about, then who did? The answer, of course, is Arthur Dent.
Arthur knew virtually all significant moments in the Earth's computations. He learned of its creation from Slartibartfast and Magrathea, he found out about its great cock-up while with the Golgafrinchans, he was witness to the first destruction of Earth, he was the first to realize that his Earth had been replaced by a parallel Earth, and he was present at the final destruction of all possible Earths by the Grebulons. In addition, he has encountered all forms of Life by repeatedly encountering the reincarnating Agrajag and Wowbagger, the Infinitely Prolonged, he has saved the Universe from destruction from Krikkit, and he has just about experienced Everything in between.
So the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything must revolve around Arthur Dent, the only person to experience Life, the Universe, and Everything at its most extreme.
There is only one question concerning Arthur Dent where the answer is undoubtedly, beyond a shadow of a doubt, 42: At what number on a certain street in New York City is the club Stavro Mueller Beta?3 Some have argued that such a mind-bendingly important Riddle should yield a more generalised Question which deals less with Dent and more with the Whole Sort of General Mish Mash, and so a popular variation of this Question is Where does it all end?
Life, the Universe, and Everything can all be observed in Arthur Dent's final moments in Stavro Mueller Beta: Life in the form of Agrajag, the creature who is killed one more time in Stavro Mueller Beta, indirectly because of Arthur Dent; the Universe in the encountering of, for lack of better terms, parallel universes; and Everything in the final destruction of the Bird, the Guide Mk II, the only thing able to percieve EVERYTHING.
The final issue comes back to the previously mentioned Prak: Did Arthur know the Ultimate Question and the Ultimate Answer simultaneously? The short answer: no. The longer answer: probably not.
Arthur and all possible Earths were destroyed just when Arthur realized that he was in Stavro Mueller Beta. Therefore, he had no time to connect this to the Ultimate Question. This is observed in the fact that, after destruction of all Earths, all other parts of the Universe continued existing, contrary to what Prak said would happen if anyone knew both the Question and the Answer simultaneously.
As a final observation, it is notable that Prak, he who knows the Truth and the Whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth, laughs at Arthur Dent so much. Perhaps if we knew as much as he knew, we would understand a lot more.