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April 22, 2023 - October 11, 2025
This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time.
‘Ford,’ he said, ‘there’s an infinite number of monkeys outside who want to talk to us about this script for Hamlet they’ve worked out.’
‘Why? I can only guess. But I do know who the bastard was.’ ‘You know? How do you know?’ ‘Because they left their initials burnt into the cauterized synapses. They left them there for me to see.’ Ford stared at him in horror and felt his skin begin to crawl. ‘Initials? Burnt into your brain?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Well, what were they, for God’s sake?’ Zaphod looked at him in silence again for a moment. Then he looked away. ‘Z. B.,’ he said quietly.
‘Simple. I got very bored and depressed, so I went and plugged myself in to its external computer feed. I talked to the computer at great length and explained my view of the Universe to it,’ said Marvin. ‘And what happened?’ pressed Ford. ‘It committed suicide,’ said Marvin and stalked off back to the Heart of Gold.