Aliens, Spaceships and other things make more sense than traffic, my phone, the supermarket and God.

“The Hithchikers Guide to the Galaxy” (1979) by Douglas Adam’s is a science-fiction/comedy franchise foloowing the misadventures of Arthur Dent, the last human in the universe, as he hitchhikes across the galaxy. Along the way, Arthur befriends Ford Prefect the alien, Marvin the paranoid android, creatures  familiar as mice and odd as the “Vogons.” Arthur’s story begins on Earth. 

When Arthur Dent’s house is about to be destroyed to replace it with a bypass, he doesn’t shout or beg the construction workers to stop. Rather, he lays flat on the mud before the bulldozer, politely refusing to stand.  

“This Bypass has got to be built and it's going to be built!” the city council worker tells Arthur, to which Arthur obviously answers: “Why’s it gotta be built?”. Well, that’s another obvious answer there: “It's a bypass. You’ve got to build bypasses.” 

 Arthur eventually stands and heads to the pub with his friend Ford Prefect who lets him know that the world will be ending in just a few minutes, and that he shouldn't worry about that house of his: it will all be gone soon enough.  

Something is wrong…Arthur heads to the pub with his friend Ford illustration by Matilda Wright

Ford is, to Arthur’s surprise, not of a human background. He’s from a small planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse and works as researcher for the wholly remarkable book, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Ford has been stranded on Earth for a few years now, but he's about to find a way out. 

 In the end, Arthur’s house isn’t bulldozed after all; the whole affair is interrupted by a race of aliens called Vogons bulldozing planet Earth to replace it with a hyperspatial bypass. Sadly, Earth was in the way, so obviously they’re building bypasses anyways. 

 Ford and Arthur hitchhike, leaving whatever rubble remains of Earth behind.  

 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a wonderfully absurd novel about a human, a book, lots of aliens, a paranoid robot, mice, and the answer to life, the universe and everything.  

 It’s a novel I think about while I sit in traffic.  

 They’ve been building this bypass near my house for years now - still, it’s nowhere near completion. Mexico City is like that a lot. Loads of huge, metropolis, traffic filled, hurried, miserable people cities are. They tear down houses, dig up huge holes seemingly just to create construction sites we can all complain about while we sit in traffic. Give us something to do, something to think about. I sit and wonder when the aliens will come and tear it all down, when they’ll finally inform us that this whole thing was just a joke or sadistic experiment, or both most likely.   

 Arthur Dent the human should be no less than horrified when he finds out that Planet Earth is, naturally, a supercomputer created by another supercomputer. The original supercomputer, named Deep Thought, was designed to come up with the answer for “The Ultimate question of Life, the Universe and Everything.” After a couple thousand years, the answer is ready and the universe takes a deep breath while Deep Thought prepares to deliver its answer so that everyone can get back to their business, finally knowing why we get up early, build bypasses and generally do anything, at all, ever. After calculating for thousands of years Deep Thought gives an answer to the question of Life, the Universe and Everything. That answer, of course, is 42, to which everyone unanimously replies: “huh? What?” 

The issue with Deep Thought's answer is that the hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings that built the computer did not think of the right question to ask. 42 is the answer, but what was the question in the first place?  

Enter Earth, built originally as a supercomputer that would, eventually, figure out that very question. Except now it's become a load of rubble and rocks floating around.  

Surely Arthur Dent the human would be horrified to discover his entire existence on Earth and the existence of everything he's ever known, loved, hated or cared about was just an experiment. But he’s not surprised: ‘well, you know” says Arthur thoughtfully, “all of this explains a lot of things. All through my life I've had this strange unaccountable feeling that something was going on in the world, something big, even sinister, and that no one would tell me what it was.” 

Meanwhile - Marvin the paranoid robot has a brain the size of a planet. He’s a robot that suffers from depression and extreme boredom, despite living in a pretty exciting environment. He’s scared, sad, bored and lives on a spaceship. The rest of us are the same I think (except for the spaceship, I assume) I may be paranoid. I may be living and breathing but watch with covered eyes from between my fingers. I’m no android, I’m no super intelligent being, but even if I was, I may be paranoid. Like Marvin. I may be scared, sad and bored too. Obsessively anxious, even as a robot.  

To Arthur, the world simply makes more sense if it's all some huge joke. An experiment. I remember the unfinished bypass from back home and the paranoia that follows everywhere I go, and I see where he's coming from. Maybe aliens and spaceships make more sense than traffic, construction, my phone, the supermarket, God etc. I may be paranoid.  

Now Arthur finds himself in the center of an intergalactic conflict. As the last human, Arthur should therefore understand Earth better than anyone; he's been living there his whole life, his brain was “an organic part of the penultimate configuration of the computer program (known as Earth).”  

The aliens, mice and miscellaneous creatures in power believe this means he must know the answer Earth was trying to calculate. They all question Arthur. 

Arthur doesn't know what to say. Even as an organic part of Earth, it all makes little sense to him: “He wasn’t aware of ever having felt an organic part of anything.” 

Just because he lives on earth, why would that mean he understands it? Arthur would quite like to go back home to his little, insignificant planet. He remembers where his day started: 

Arthur glanced around him once more, and then down at himself, at the sweaty disheveled clothes he had been lying in the mud in on Thursday morning. 

“I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle”, he muttered to himself.  

“I beg your pardon?” said the old man mildy. 

“Oh nothing.” said Arthur, “only joking.” 
 Like Arthur, I seem to be having some difficulty with my lifestyle, and I also find myself not understanding anything, at all, ever. Even the small things (coffee, mud, bathrobes) feel bizarre sometimes. I'm as paranoid as a robot, as anxious as a human.  

I like to think that all that stuff about aliens could be real, that there's a huge incomprehensible universe out there. That things are the way things are because the universe makes no sense, so why should anything, you know?