Fondly dedicated to Jordan Kintz, who referred to me as a meanie in his review of Fifty Pickles and a Large Fish
FIVE MINUTES
Marvin was inescapably bored. In the space of five
minutes, he had; calculated the exact combination of the object in
his immediate surrounding necessary to create a bomb which would
explode the entire universe; gotten annoyed at Zaphod for chewing his
ice; attempted to twiddle his thumbs for a bit; and complained loudly
about how you would think they would have given him a pair of thumbs
which he could twiddle or even any thumbs at all.
"It's the
principle of the thing," he was saying. "Not that you human have
any principles anyways."
Marvin sighed and returned to the bomb
thought. That had seemed to him to be a slightly less miserable
thought than no thumbs. But he was wrong. It was just as depressing
as all the other thoughts that had crossed his mind and these
thoughts generally committed a long, drawn out suicide to take their
minds off how miserable they were. Marvin sniggered meanly at how
confused the concept of thoughts having minds would make these
humans.
It was quite a simple concept.
Not that anyone cared.
I
mean, he thought. What was their explanation for the mind being able
to think several billion thoughts at once? It hurt Marvin's brain
to think at their level. He told them so.
They were yelling and
screaming about something remarkably--trivial. "Marvin, you
have to -----------! We're going to -------!"
Marvin tuned
them out, humming loudly to himself. He noticed that his prosthetic
leg was on fire.
"Isn't that totally miserable," Marvin
remarked. "A robot with a prosthetic leg."
They yelled a
little louder.
"Well. I suppose if I'm the only one here who's
smart enough to put out a fire when it's consuming a ship you
happen to be on, I'd better do it. I suppose."
Now they were
nodding enthusiastically and waving their arms about and looking
idiotic.
Marvin honestly could not understand human stupidity.
How
depressing.
THE END