High on a rocky promontory sat an Electris Monk on a bored horse. From under its rough woven cowl the Monk gazed unblinkingly down into another walley, with wich it was having a problem.
The day was hot, the sun stood in an empty hazy sky and beat down upon the gray rocks and the scrubby, parched grass. Nothing moved, not even the Monk. The horse's tail moved a little, swishing slightly to try and move a little air, but that was all. Otherwise, nothing moved.
The Electric Monk was a labour-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder. Dishwshers washed tedious dishes for you, thus saving you the bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself; Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an icreasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe.
Unfortunately this Electric Monk had developed a fault, and had started to believe all kinds of things, more or less at random. It was even beginning to believe things they'd have dificulty believing in Salt Lake City. It had never heard of Salt Lake City, of course. Nor had it ever heard of quingigillion, which was roughly the number of miles between this valley and the Great Salt Lake of Utah.
The problem with the valley was this. The Monk curently believed that the valey and everything in the valley and around it, including the Monk itself and the Monk's horse, was a uniform shade of pale pink. This made for a certain difficulty in distinguishing any one thing from any other thing, and therefore made doing anything or going anywhere impossible, or at least difficult and dangerous. Hence the imobbility of the Monk and the boredom of the horse, which had had to put up with the lot of silly things in its time but was secretly of the opinion that this was one of the silliest
How long did the Monk believe these things ?
Well, as far as the Monk was concerned, forever. The faith which move mountains, or at least believes them against all the available evidence to be pink, was solid and abiding faith, a great rock against which the world could hurl whatever it would, yet it would not be shaken. In practice, the horse knew, twenty- four hours was ussualy about its lot.
So what of this horse, then, that actually held opinions, and was sceptical about things? Unusual behaviour for a horse, wasn't it? An unusual horse perhaps?
No. Although it was certainly a handsome and well-built example of its species, it was none the less a perfectly ordinary horse, such as convergent evolution has produced in many of the places that life is to be found. They have always understood a great deal more than they let on. It is difficult to be sat on all day, every day, by some other creature, without forming an opinion about them.
On the other hand, it is perfectly possible to sit all day, every day, on the top of another creature and not have the slightest tought about them whatsoever.
When the early models of these Monks were built, it was felt to be important that they be instantly recognisable as artificial objects. There must be no danger of their loking at all like real people. You wouldn't your video recorder lounging around on the sofa all day while it was watching TV. You wouldn't want it picking its nose, drinking beer and sending out for pizzas.
So the Monks were built with an eye for originality of design and also for practical horse-riding ability. This was important. People, and indeed things, look more sincere on a horse. So two legs were held to be both more suitable and cheaper than the more normal primes of seventeen, nineteen or twenty-three; the skin that the Monk was given was pinkish-looking instead of purple, soft and smooth instead of crenellated. They were also restricted to just the one mouth and nose, but were given instead an additional eye, making for grand total of two. A strange- looking creature indeed. But truly excellent at believing most preposterous things.
This Monk had first gone wrong when it was simply given too much to believe in one day. It was, by mistake, cross-connected to a video recorder that was watching eleven TV channels simultaneosly, and this caused it to blow a bank of illogic circuits. The video recorder only had to watch them, of course. It didn't have to believe them all as well. This is why instruction manuals are so important.
So after a hectic week of believing that war is peace, that good was bad, that the moon was made of blue cheese, and that God needed a lot of money sent to a certain box number, the Monk started to believe that thirty-five percent of all tables were hermaphrodites, and then broke down. The man from the Monk shop said that it needed a whole new motherboard, but then pointed out that the new improved Monk Plus models were twice as powerful, had an entirely new multy-tasking Negative Capability feature that allowed them to hold up to sixteen entirely different and contradictory ideas in memory simultanoesly withouth generating any irritating system errors, were twice as fast and at least three times as glib, and you could have a whole new one for less than the cost of replacing the motherboard of the old model.
That was it. Done.
The faulty Monk was turned out into the desert where it could believe what it liked, including the idea that it had been hard done by. It was allowed to keep its horse, since horses were so cheap to make.
For a number of days and nights, which it wariously believed to be there, forty-three, and five hudred and ninety-eight thousand seven hundre and three, it roamed the desert, putting its simple Electric trust in rocks, birds, clouds and a form of non-exisent elephant-asparagus, until at last it fetched up here, on this high rock, overlooking a valley that was not, despite the deep fervour of the Monk's belief, pink. Not even a little bit.
Time passed.
PREVOD DRUGOG POGLAVLJA " DIRK GENTLY'S HOLISTIC DETECTIVE
AGENCY ", PETE KNJIGE DOUGLAS ADAMSA.
Visoko na stenovitoj obali sedeo je Elektricni Kaludjer na ugnjavljenom konju. Ispod njegove prirodno zatalasane kapuljace Kaludjer je ukoceno gledao dole u drugu dolinu, sa kojom je imao problem.
Dan je bio vreo, sunce je stajalo na praznom maglovitom nebu i tuklo dole po sivom stenju i izdrljanoj, sasusenoj travi. Nista se nije pomeralo, cak ni Kaludjer. Konjev rep se malo pomerao, sibao lagano, pokusavajuci da pomeri malo vazduha, ali to je bilo sve. Osim toga, nista se nije kretalo.
Elekticni Kaludjer je bio pomocno sredstvo za rad, kao masina za pranje sudja, ili videorekorder. Masine za pranje posudja su lagano prale posudje za vas, spasavajuci vas zamlacivanja da ih vi perete, videorekorderi su lagano gledali televiziju za vas, spasavajuci vas gnjavljenja da je sami gledate; Elektricni Kaludjer je verovao u stvari umesto vas spasavajuci vas stvaranja sve veceg casnog posla da verujete u sve stvari koje svet od vas ocekuje da verujete.
Nazalost ovaj Kaludjer je razvio gresku, i poceo da veruje u sve vrste stvari, vise ili manje slucajno. Cak je poceo da veruje u stvari, sa kojima su imali probleme da veruju u Salt Lake City -ju. Nikada nije ni cuo za Salt Lake City, naravno. Niti je ikada cuo za kvingigilion, koliki je bio otprilike broj milja izmedju ove doline i Velikog Slanog Jezera u Utahu.
Problem sa ovom dolinom je bio sledeci. Kaludjer je trenutno verovao da je dolina, sve u dolini i oko nje, ukljucujuci samog kaludjera i njegovog konja, bilo u jedinstvenoj nijansi blago ruzicaste. Ovo je rezultiralo odredjenom poteskocom u razlucivanju bilo koje stvari, od bilo koje druge stvari, i naravno, radjenja bilo cega ili odlaska bilo gde nemogucim, ili u najmanju ruku teskim i opasnim. Odatle nepokretnost Kaludjera i dosadji- vanje konja, koji je trebao da se slozi sa puno sasavih stvari svojevreme- no, ali je potajno bio misljenja da je ovo jedno od najsasavijih.
Koliko dugo je Kaludjer verovao u ove stvari?
Pa, odkad je Kaludjer bio zabrinut, zauvek. Vera koja pokrece planine, ili barem veruje u njih uprkos raspolozivim dokazima da su ruzicaste, je bila solidna i istrajna vera, velika stena protiv koje svet moze bacati sta god hoce, ali ipak ne bi bila protresena. Prakticno, konj je znao, dvadeset cetiri casa je obicno previse za to.
Pa sta je onda od ovog konja bilo, da je trenutnog misljenja, i bilo skepticno oko toga? Neobicno ponasanje za konja, zar ne? Neobican konj mozda?
Ne. Uprkos tih predivnih i dobro izgradjenih primera njegovih osobina, on je bio nista manje nego savrseno obican konj, kao sto ih je evolucija stvorila na mnogim mestima gde je pronadjen zivot. Oni su uvek razumeli vise nego sto im je bilo dozvoljeno. Tesko je biti osedlan ceo dan, svaki dan, od strane drugog stvora, bez formiranja misljenja o njemu.
Sa druge strane, savrseno je moguce sedeti ceo dan, svaki dan, povrh drugog stvora nemajuci najmanjih misli o njemu uopste.
Kada su raniji modeli ovi Kaludjera napravljeni, osecali su da je vazno da oni budu trenutno prepoznatljivi kao vestacki objekti. Nije smelo biti opasnosti od njihovog izgleda uopste kao da su pravi ljudi. Vi nebiste hteli da vas videorekorder izlezava po sofi ceo dan dok gleda TV. Nebiste hteli da cacka nos, pije pivo i narucuje pice
Pa su kaludjeri bili napravljeni sa okom za originalni dizajn i takodje prakticnom konjo-jahacom mogucnoscu.Ovo je bilo vazno. Ljudi, i naravno stvari, izgledaju bezgresnije na konju. Pa su dve noge bile prikladnije i jeftinije nego normalnije primarno sedamnaest, devetnaest ili dvadeset i tri. Koza koju je Kaludjer imao je bila rozikasta umesto purpurne, meka i glatka umesto naborane. Takodje su bili ograniceni na jedan nos i usta, ali su zato imali dodatno oko, sto je cinilo veliki zbir od dva. Bas cudnoliko stvorenje. Ali stvarno izvanredno u verovanju u vecinu neverovatnih stvari.
Ovaj Kaludjer se prvi put pokvario kada mu je jednostavno dato da veruje previse samo u jednom danu. Bio je, greskom, prevezan na videorekorder koji je gledao jedanaest TV kanala istovremeno, sto je prouzrocilo pregorevanje bloka ilogickih kola. Videorekorder samo treba da ih gleda, naravno. Netreba da veruje u njih. Ovo je jedan od razloga zasto su uputstva za upotrebu tako vazna.
Pa je posle burne nedelje verovanja da je rat bio mir, da je dobro bilo lose, da je mesec napravljen od plavog sira, i da Bog treba veliku kolicinu novca koji treba poslati na odredjeni postanski broj, Kaludjer poceo da veruje da su trideset i pet procenata od svih stolova hermafroditi, i onda se pokvario. Covek iz kaludjerske radnje je rekao da je potreban ceo novi maderbord, ali onda naglasio da su novorazvijeni Kaludjer Plus modeli duplo jaci, imaju ceo novi multi-tasking modul negativnih mogucnosti, koji mu omogucava da drzi do sesnaest potpuno razlicitih i kontradiktornih ideja u memoriji istovremeno, bez generisanja iritirajucih sistemskih gresaka, duplo brzi, i najmanje triput protocniji, a mozete ga imati potpuno novog za cenu manju od potrebne za zamenu maderborda na starom.
To je bilo to. Uradjeno.
Neispravan Kaludjer je poslat u pustinju gde je mogao da veruje usta hoce, ukljucujuci i ideju da je s njim lose postupljeno. Dozvoljeno mu je da zadrzi svog konja, jer su oni bili jeftini za izradu.
Posle brojnih dana i noci, u kojima je promenljivo verovao da je tri, cetrdeset i tri, i pet stotina devedeset osam hiljada sedam stotina i tri, lutao je pustinjom, usadjujuci njegovu jednostavnu elektricnu veru u stenje, ptice, oblake i forme nepostojecih slonovskih asparagusa, dok se napokon nije dovukao ovde, na visoku stenu, pregledajuci dolinu koja nije, uprkos dubokoj cestitosti Kaludjerovog verovanja, ruzicasata. Cak ni najmanje.
Vreme je prolazilo.