It has been said about this series of books that it can be inconsistent and contradictory. Jeff is going ask Bryan to clarify some of the questions he had after reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
This has been a Froods for Thought production.
It has been said about this series of books that it can be inconsistent and contradictory. Jeff is going ask Bryan to clarify some of the questions he had after reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
This has been a Froods for Thought production.
Hey Jeff how are you I'm doing great Brian how are you well I'm puzzled puzzle well let's see if we can figure out this puzzle and put it all back together yes we're going to be doing an episode that's going to try and explain things from this book I've always heard that this book has had a lot of inconsistencies and contradictions there you go but I never really noticed them until I read it over and over and over making notes and then all of a sudden I started to notice a few things and since you were the one that has thrown out a lot of these questions then you right end as you've already assumed some of them will be speculative but some of them are actually I think pretty well explained in the book do you think will become Canon well somebody's Cannon are personal Cannon episodes that we've been doing have been named after the nearest holidays so I guess this one must be our Saint Patrick's Day bonus episode okay that works for me love it I decided to make it official with a little limerick this this this this episode will not have the NSFW okay I'm ready so let's let's see if I can get this out correctly there once was a remarkable book so inside its Pages we did look we debated discussed and we swore and we cussed at some of the Liberties it took terrific how was your own Limerick yeah that was my own Limerick better than the first poem you wrote that's another episode buddy there's no cross-posting here all this is called foreshadowing questionable Answer 1 I am going to start with the first thing that didn't make any sense to me when I was making my notes on the book when they fight was on his way to the launching of the Heart of Gold he had his speech with him and in his boat in the wind some of the pages of a 5-speed clutch fluid way into the water while they were collected by an eagle who used it to build its unique paper mache nest and the problem with it they said is that the baby eagles could not break out of the nest I've never seen the nest that any bird has had to break out of no matter what it was made of so I didn't know since it's not an egg he did make an egg he made a nest why did he make the nest that was totally in closed and how did the egg get in there there's so many questions about unnest it doesn't have an opening oh okay all right well let start with the quote from the book cuz this one is just a slight misunderstanding I think of what's written in the book okay so some of the parts of the The Narrative just to make it a little shorter but the quote says Pages 1 and 2 have been salvaged by a damn Agron Frank rested eagle and the pages were used to create the virtually impossible nest and it was virtually impossible for a newly hatched baby eagle to break out of it and then later it says the Democratic from the eagle had heard of the notion of the survival of the species but wanted no truck with that now I'm pretty sure you're familiar with this term but just to give you a little bit of an idea the word truck is an anglicized version of a French word for the word barter in other words the French word for the word barter is track troc and the term in this are the phrase in this sentence means that he would have no trade with or later on it became he will have nothing to do with so the statement is that the eagle understood the notion of the survival of the species but he didn't want to have anything to do with that so he created it's impossible to get out of nest because he did Which has eggs ever hatched and got out of the nest that was the whole make his species extinct exactly that make better sense and that was ready to make any sense but that yes I do remember reading all of that line I thought of the didn't want to have any truck with it as having nothing to do with it but I thought that was more of a joke than the reason that he decided to end his his species there's an easier way of just not laying any eggs simpler version right except that it is funny to think about an eagle going through all that mental harangue just to end is home right now in propagating species is a good segue into our next question questionable answer to it was said that Ford's father both father and Uncle Ford that means his mother is either his father's sister or his father's brother's wife is there another option or which is it well again the answer is what you've already stated yes it's if he could have slept with his sister or he could have slept with his brother's wife however it's pretty clear that we don't understand the biology of Beetlejuice Ian propagation because he later on you'll remember that forward comes into the heart of gold and the first thing he explains to Arthur is that he and zaphod are semi cousins that they share three of the same mothers so who knows how Beetlejuice see in this become babies okay now I do want to look this because I was looking for that phrase in the book and I think it's just the radio show well the the part about being semi cousins is in the book but the thought about being one of the start having shared the three of the same mother's you're right. May not be in the book itself I was looking for sharing 3 of the same mothers or something like that and I could not find that and that's and that's probably true but he does mention semi cousins so if we make an extension that we he's just that Adams is just not relating the additional part of the story is I don't know I don't know it's up to you how you view that one we clearly don't have any idea how they reproduce call to explain and I think that's why he dropped it out of the book The set my cousins is pretty soon bold because you know for me well that's I can buy some my cousin more than I can buy Share three of the same mothers they also have more yes yes and it could be you know how to how do we know how do we know but you also know that there are other ways to gain mother's what maybe that's it they this whole time you know people could all be considered mother so it is it is possible questionable answer 3 I've mentioned this before in passing and we've discussed it a little bit but we never came up with definitive answers and that is in regards to the Babel Fish which translates people's brain waves so you can understand what they're saying by knowing kind of what they're thinking but that doesn't explain why you are able to understand the speech of robots and computers and able to read signs like teleporter in that type of thing so do you have reasoning for that yeah I actually do and it does take just a tiny bit of explanation I think so the Babel Fish I think the book explains this the best of all the things we listen to but from the book it says it feeds on brain wave energy Flip book it says it feeds on brain wave energy received not from its carrier but from those around it and here's the important part it absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brain wave energy to nourish itself with it then excrete since the mind of the carrier a telepathic Matrix form by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from speech centers of the brain which has supplied them so what I'm saying here or what I'm going to say here is the Babel Fish is not listening it's not using auditory feedback in order to understand language it is scanning brainwave patterns and or mental frequencies now it's a tiny bit of a stretch to assume that a computer can have mental frequencies but we have heard and and we listen to Marvin describe how the doors have annoyed him because they have this precognition and they have this ability to be happy with their perform services and that annoys him so he's picking up these frequencies mental frequencies from the air are from the another computer so it is a bit of a stretch to assume that the Babel Fish can do this with computers but it's not suggesting that it's creating an auditory input and output it's absorbing all frequencies of brain wave energy and providing a bridge through the form of a matrix back into the brain of the carrier so although it only points out in the book the function of the auditory response where they can hear and understand and understand other languages but it doesn't specifically say that the eyes are not affected in the other sensory items are not affected cuz it does say all mental frequencies right and it does specifically say that it involves language and language comes in spoken and written and not other non-verbal type of forms so what I got out of what you answered is that it's not picking up the brain wave patterns of the person who happens to be speaking that you're listening to it's picking up the brainwave patterns of everybody in the vicinity using that it means if anybody can read it he can read it because he's into their brain wave Matrix and it's decoding the language because he's looking at it so alright I can accept that answer if you think about it I mean I don't know about you and maybe it's just me but whenever I look at the sign I'm usually singing a song about it in my head or repeating it in some sing song fashion so I literally interpret the sign that I visually see with an auditory mental stimulus well I don't do that and I'm going to guess that have your you're in the minority oh come on how many times have you been playing that dictating when you're driving down the road exit Route 42 all right questionable answer for when Arthur was explaining that he beds a fight at a party he called at a fancy dress party in the UK it's what we call a costume party so if 1 oz first red fancy dress as a kid I thought they meant like black tie but it does not mean black tie it means costume party so if Ian at a fancy dress party he met her at a costume party and Ford said it would have to be wouldn't it and to me he's implying that a costume party is the only place that has a 5:00 would be inconspicuous on Earth with an extra head and an extra arm so then why did Arthur say when he was saying he's already met him that he had the two arms in the one head at the time Ryden and this is a really interesting question what I have for the answer is it's not directly from the book well there's one part of it that is directly from the book but as you know we're going to review some of the other parts of the story and you know the TV show the movie those kind of things TV show dealt with it having two heads at the party The second head look like a paper mache creation and I suppose if they 5 is at a fancy dresser costume party he could have done that with his second head so that it didn't look real but I don't know why then Arthur would say he only have one head that doesn't make sense you're right the movie gave us the idea that the heads are actually retractable if you remember but again doesn't say that in the right again and I know I'm going all over the place and we're kind of trying to concentrate on the book here but the radio show implied that safe I'd had the third arm installed after he meant trillion the book wasn't necessarily say that it does he have the third arm install to improve his ski boxing but it doesn't really say when that particular thing happened I will agree the book only says that he visited Earth Incognito therefore we have to assume that he did something to hide his second head or and third arm whatever Incognito can be defined as and I will completely use the radio series which came first if he doesn't actively change what happened it's acceptable and so the radio series actually says he grew the third arm and it took him six months to do it after he met trillion so he would not have had arm when he visited the costume party so that's absolutely a valid answer. I had one is a little bit more difficult and when I was thinking about it as I'm writing this question the only thing that I came to the conclusion of is because it was two heads Arthur just assumed one of them was fake because it was a costume party right right I agree with you that sounds like the kind of thing that would happen to create an incognito persona it says in the book that trillion said that Ford and Arthur were picked up in the same sector in which zaphod picked her up zed zed 9 plural z alpha Ford and Arthur had jump 6 light years from Earth in the vogon ship before they were ejected off of the ship so how were they picked up in the same sector I think you and I have had conversations about this before so you have a pretty clear idea how this is possible but the answer is euclidean geometry actually and I do a lot of fun haha oh no no you're going to live through this whole exclamation I promise you since you wrote this question I spend some time with my wife who you know is a mathematician she's a school teacher in and knows math really well so as Sheldon with today I did the math first though I want to say that the whole idea of this sector the zed zed 9 Pearls at Alpha was really just for Adams to say it was way far away from damaging impact on the other side of the universe OK Google the use of ZZ was designed to imply that was clearly they were on the a a side of the AC are the 10 side actually and the other side of the universe would be as easy and in relative terms okay so yeah so this is how these things work out it's interesting that even though he created this as a random set of variables it does actually have a logic to it that can make these things work right so if you think about and I'm not going to get into the specific math here but I'm just going to give you the overarching approach here but because they choose a z z coordinate you can understand it this way when you add the 10 digits to the ZZ 2 the 26 letters of the alphabet you get 36 okay which 36 can then correspond to 360 degrees of a circle 10 degrees per coordinate value okay so when you think of the galactic center of the universe as to having two circles one is to just plain galaxy in the galaxy galaxy horizontal plane and one is in the vertical plane to circles at Ninety Degrees from each other okay then you have the beginning some Number would represent 10 degrees of the circle then you think of the subscript which when you say it out loud zz9 it's a little confusing what that means with the 9 is actually a subscript in this particular case and when you take the nine and think of that as you might think of the layers of an onion where the center is this the lowest number and it expands out from the center in a layer this is the layer at which the coordinate system parts are the coordinates of the system are it's in the subscript of 9 okay we don't really know because we haven't got a full Factor here but as it turns out with the Galaxy it's not as tall as it is white so the subscript of 9 we don't really know how thick while we do know it when do the math how thick that onion layer is right okay but each layer goes further out from the center so it's the 9th layer of the globe okay and then the second set of ZZ further defines the sections down into again another 36x * 2 and finally you have the alpha which represents a division of 24 sections all right so when you do all of the math what you're describing their essentially is a conical or hockey puck shaped section that's approximately 45 light-years across so it's easy to imagine that Earth and Barnard's star where was it where they had to I'm sorry Starfall within that same 45-year section okay and I thought this is really fascinating to sit down and figure out but I was really bummed because when I figured it out when we figured out that it was approximately 45 years I thought to myself a man wouldn't have been cool if it was 42 would have been it would have been has it been more more evidence that it is the real answer it's fascinating Chevy Chase set on Saturday Night Live when he was portraying Gerald Ford I understood there was to be no math oh there was a lot of Matthew I thought the answer was going to be something like because it's a big sector that's great questionable answer 6 when the Heart of Gold was being manually control to evade the missiles it went upside down and they all ended up on the ceiling unable to reach the controls so what happened to the artificial gravity that had them walking on the florist through all the other space travel and acceleration that they have done this is a great question and I have to tell you that the answer this question is kind of fun in my mind but there is no television show or movie that I've ever seen that gets space travel correct they all make assumptions in cuz we live on earth and we have gravity in our feet go towards the center of the Earth are going to assume that we're going to accept any kind of space travel that allows for or creates an artificial gravity on the ship okay and that's what they that's what they've done here and then that's what you know you're kind of referring to but as it turns out one of the things that I really make on TV is a TV show called The the expanse have you seen any of them exactly I mean they get a lot more of the space travel Concepts correct whereas other TV shows don't even bother to try to get it correct they all wear magnetic shoes which keeps them oriented on the floor during their walking sequences you can always hear the click click click of the shoes you know engaging with the metal surface you know they have people turned it 90 degrees and walking so there that one is the closest to reality that I've seen in fact they also do a pretty exciting things when they do scenes where they have to accelerate the pace all strap themselves into a chair and then they boost their bodies with chemicals of some sort I'm not sure what they are but they're up there likes pumping liquid into their veins in my Boost their bodies with chemicals of some sort I'm not sure what they are but they're they're like pumping liquid into their veins and muscles and that kind of stuff to keep their body from crushing do for the because of the inertia of the of the movement that they're involved with especially the flipping back and forth of the spaceship answer here we're not pretending like Adams is trying to make space travel real in his mind as long as we were talking about the expanse mention one other thing about that show is that when I was watching it there was this part that's uplifting and it's just like this this great big moment that they have that uses the dumbest line if it was ever taken out of context so if you just if you look like what was the what was the best line of this episode and you took it out of context and you said it was just this you say oh come on how could you write a show words that would be the best line in the show but if you haven't guessed which one it is cuz I believe I was not ever talk about the expanse really it's when the belter captain goes spin the drum which was how they created Earth gravity in space with a rotating because people can't heal without gravity which was another thing that I found to be completely a wonderful about that show in the detail that they put into it yeah it really does set a new standard for space travel Appetit answer your question here what I'm going to say is it in this particular sequence they have begun The Descent on to magrathea I believe you would agree that that's what's happening here right yes so now they are not they are no longer subject to the gravity our lack of gravity in space they are subject to the gravitational pull of the planet and in addition they've been making random changes to their Direction and velocity so they're ending up on the ceiling has to do with the direction that they're traveling in and the velocity at which they are traveling so it's not necessarily that the artificial gravity gave out it's that they're now in a new environment within the gravitational pull of the planet and therefore they are being affected by their velocity and direction okay so I don't know that the initial the inertial are the internal gravity of the ship failed but it is pretty interesting and if it had failed they would have been floating around at first and then definitely thrown up against the floor or ceiling or the wall as their velocity changed in directions to in response to their trying to evade the missiles yes I'll listening to your answer it's I think what came into my head a little bit a little bit differently than the way you answered it because I like how you go into like great detail where I do lowest common denominator answer because when I wanted to write the question I wanted to make sure that I wanted to know what all the variables were and it does so I am absolutely sure that it says they are on their descent into make tortilla dough in my head kind of what you said was when they go from zero gravity to being affected by Planet gravity do you get the Antigravity or the gravity artificial gravity will shut itself off because you don't need artificial gravity once you're in the gravitational field of a planet it so if they got close enough to the planet to switch off the artificial gravity then when they flipped upside down there are going toward the center of the planet whichever to her orientation that the shaman so that's kind of what I gleaned from your answer awesome questionable answer 7 all right here's here's a tougher one least in my mind cuz I didn't really have anything but but a cheat on this the control cabin of the Heart of Gold was described as improbability proof earlier in the book but then when Arthur hit the infinite improbability drive button save them from the magrathea missiles it's at the inside of the control cabin was redecorated with a fetchingly redesigned interior which means it Carrier which means it was part of the improbability field how was the improbability proof cabin affected by the improbability drive as you know I work with computer programmers all the time so when I thought about this particular question it came clearly obvious to me that as they were doing the construction the engineer's could never have anticipated or did not anticipate the use of the improbability drive without the setting of coordinate therefore they could not have made the cabin of the ship completely in probability proof if they hadn't considered or understood the effects of pushing the drive button without coordinates so due to the lack of forethought the cabin wasn't shielded for that type of activation and then what's interesting to me is that I will also add here in this is little bit on the fancy side but that may also explain why it merely redecorated itself rather than did something totally improbable as improbable as that is yes semi in Prattville or if you prefer and you wanted to get fancy the engineer's did anticipate this kind of activation and they program the cabin to redecorate itself under those circumstances that is one of them so basically it comes down to user error or it was program to do it exactly I'm and user error seems to be the more, and more, and thought of my head but I did think it was funny that they could have understood that and I don't want to go into this here because I didn't let you prepare for it but this was something that went through my mind when I was reading the book over and over is in that whole scene when they're all flip upside down and everything he could reach the button they couldn't get to any other controls but he could get to the improbability drive button and I'm having great difficulties in my mind trying to figure out why this control cabin would have that button there wherever it was I can't even imagine where I like just on the wall probability drive there you go remember this exactly correctly or not but it seems to me that the pushing the button was early before they ended up on the ceiling but maybe I'm wrong I don't know know know they were flipped upside down because manual controls to evade the missiles and in all of their turns and rolls they ended up on the ceiling and then they couldn't use the manual controls anymore because they couldn't reach him cuz they were on the ceiling in the manual controls were up above them the only thing he could reach was the improbability drive button and I'm just trying to figure out that whole layout in my head yeah I don't know maybe it's in the center of the room in a low point or High Point how to fix color like the ending buzzer of Ninja Warrior or maybe Arthur was the only one who was strapped himself into receipt before everything started see bruises arm then someone banged into him you wasn't strapped in questionable answers 8 through 11 of all of the things that make me scratch my head the B that makes me scratch my head the most involves the mice and there's couple of different questions but I want to State some facts out of the book of what it says because then the questions make more sense so the mice said that they orchestrated the trip to magrathea we know the plans were on display at Alpha Centauri for fifty Earth years so it is possible that they could have known of the impending destruction of her however Frankie and Benji say that it was lucky that they left Earth for their vacation Work was destroyed so there they are implying that they had no idea that the Earth was going to be destroyed it was just a lucky chance that they left on their vacation when it was destroyed third the automated defense system shot at them implying that their arrival was not expected so the mice didn't call ahead to magrathea and say hey we need a new Earth we're on our way don't shoot at us and then for the mice left Earth with trillion 6 months ago and arrived at magrathea the day after the Earth was destroyed so that is stated in the book my first question is going to be even if they knew of the impending destruction of Earth and we know that they didn't why would the mice choose to go back to the store to buy a new one instead of doing what they needed to do to stop the destruction of Earth okay so to unpack some of this I'm going to go back a little bit first off that I want to say is that as to your first question about them knowing that the plans were on display at Alpha Centauri for fifty years and they could have known about the possible destruction a you've already told us and we it's already pretty clear in the book that they did not know about the destruction of the earth prior to it happening but the other thing that I wanted to point out is we know here that the destruction of the Earth was coordinated by a mysterious group we don't know anything about life group in this book OK Corral therefore they would have gone to some trouble the group would have gone to some trouble to make sure that the plans for the destruction of the earth did not come to light they would have taken a great deal of effort to hide or at least misdirect the information so that it could not be found but putting them in the cellar in a disused lavatory in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet Alpha Centauri we have to make an assumption that because these plans were clandestine they had to be hidden so we would not assume that Frankie or Benji or the rest of the mice could have known about it okay okay so then you're saying that they did not know about it so the first question is a moot question because they could not possibly have known about it right but I have an additional answer to that so I'm going to go to the second part of your question which was they left on vacation at this point might have been off the planet for six months because they had finished their particular job and left the planet early for a quick holiday yes and while they were there they decided to head home let me know when they left the Earth that's how they got with trillion and they've been manipulating trillion to get back to magrathea okay so that is what they're implying in this particular area or question okay here's what I think is interesting thing the third question the automated defense system okay wasn't a question it was a book fact write a book back okay so here's my response to that there is no way that Benji or Frankie the mice could have known or even anticipated when they were going to arrive at Niagara Sia because they were going along for the ride with Trillium and as we've already Define they were manipulating her in order to get to magrathea okay okay when Marty says I think the system just takes the occasional potshot just to relieve the monotony that also is the answer to why the automated defense system fired at them they there is no way that's lartey or anyone on the planet could have known when the Heart of Gold was going to arrive because it wasn't programmed it wasn't planned for okay right set up that was a fact that I wanted to make clear that nobody knew they were coming right they couldn't know they could know what he knew about that nobody knew about the destruction of Earth nobody knew that they were coming yes absolutely that's all by first four points were all basically to set up that nobody knew it was going to happen and nobody knew that they were coming all right yeah here is the that I know we're going to point by Point here but I I think it's kind of important because it sets up a different question which I will ask here in a few minutes okay now for your fourth question you said the mice left the Earth or fourth part of that 1/4 The Earth are fourth part of that they left six months ago and arrived at Magothy of the day after the Earth was destroyed okay Frankie and Benji are described they are panda mentionable beings with their projection in our universe as mice so in our universe they are only mice okay they cannot influence things in this universe beyond what they can do as mice okay now I'm ready to answer your first question which you've already answered because we we we know that they did not know about the destruction of Earth okay but no no no I haven't answered the first one yet well it says here why would the buy shoes to go back to the store to buy a new one instead of doing what they needed to do to stop it okay we've answered most of those questions already they didn't know about the destruction of Earth they couldn't have stopped it even if they wanted to okay and so so my final part is why with them I choose to go back to the store and buy a new one okay all right so here is what I'm thinking or here's what I get from the story as I've read it okay as far as we know the only place in our universe that these mice exist is on Earth they could not have generated any influence on the rest of the universe due to their limited projection as mice okay. Could not have had an influence on other things happening in the universe necessarily okay but as to the question of why would they buy a new one well when all of the mice were killed on Earth by its destruction the people of that univer of Czar of that Dimension would have known when it occurred because they would have seen all of these projected beings were no longer there or no longer existed right so they knew of the destruction of Earth and that is when they ordered Earth Mark 2 yes so what are you saying question question is since the mice just arrived and arrived unexpectedly how was the earth Mark to already halfway completed since they could have only known about this destruction of the earth 1 day ago right and I love this question so anyway also have when did they start building it why did they start building it and also will throw in their the program was to run for 10 million years but the Earth is thought to be 4.5 billion years old so why is there that discrepancy you're going to love this answer I'm sure if I will okay so here it goes you ready I'm ready it takes the magrathea ins 6 days to create a planet yes you got it 7 days and a planet is done and you know that he even talks about the fact that all we haven't even planted the fake dinosaur bones yet so as far as the human beings were on the planet how could they possibly know about the how old the planet in fact was there still I mean I'm not saying there is any debate about how old it is but the fact is that my answer is they build planets in 7 Days actually 6 of rest on the seventh I like that answered still he does a half done so maybe that you know they're putting in some overtime well happy know if they're the builders they're always going to overprojected under-deliver that's that's true so they literally had had one day to start working on the planet and then and he does describe the slide he defines a planet as coming to life so it's just getting started in the process and it's only had one day to start building its planet and then the last question that I have is that when the mice were leaving they decided that they needed to manufacture a question that sounds good they have been on Questionable answer 12 and then the last question that I have is that when the mice were leaving they decided that they needed to manufacture a question that sounds good they have been on the chat show circuit debating the question for ten million years so why have they only now started to think of what the possible answers could be and in all of those possibilities there has to be one that rises to the top has the most and so we are why haven't they been able to come up with an answer by now that sounds good right so again this is a great question but I also there's there's a couple of assuming facts that we don't know clear leave Ben's you and Frankie are of the latest generation of their beings to be on the planet and working with Earth to control its Destiny we have no idea what the lifespan of these individuals are I mean we can assume they have a similar lifespan to us you know 100 years or whatever they're in the what Millions generation after the creation of the earth we we really don't have any idea how long these two individuals Benji and Frankie have been debating an answer I mean they started at some point in their adulthood and they've continued till now and they only they do you say in the book they're just recently contacted by the 3D chat shows and they want us to come on and talk about the answer so I haven't really thought in their mind that they weren't going to get an answer cuz I didn't know the planet was going to be destroyed so until the destruction of the earth they could not have been creating an answer they may have been speculating on what one might be. That's what I figured they've had two event right right but if they chose one of their pre discussed speculated answers I think they would think of themselves as too self-serving and Their audience would not think of it as genuine oh so they've already discussed on some chat shows possible answers so all of those they can't use correct cuz they already divulge those as speculation because that would be the point of building these computers if they could just figure it out themselves right exactly sir but now I have a question and I didn't have a you for it so I'm sure you're sure you're going to wonder what this one is so it all starts at the beginning of your question about mice go K-O-K we know the story from Marty and the discussion between Magic thighs and a broom handle about the creation of deep thought and then the secondary creation of the earth okay yes deep thought was a computer created by these pan dimensional beings yes and we seen in their projector screens and on their sellotape whatever it was those interactions with deep thought so my question is why on Earth that was supposed to be a joke did they create the Earth in a dimension that was not their own that doesn't make any sense to me the only answer that comes off the tip of my brain tip of my brain the first thought that comes to me about that question is that they did not want to have any undue influence over it at all so by projecting themselves as mice and the only influence they could have over the program was it that of a mouse there is no way that they could mess up the program by checking on it or influencing it if it was in the dimension where they couldn't do anything right exactly you know and then I think that's a brilliant answer I mean that's got to be the answer but it just seems so odd to me to go to all this trouble and struggle to end make that it another dimension where obviously they get the hose in the end because the planet gets destroyed by the folks that live within that Dimension if you lived in a dimension and you had this computer that was going to produce the most Horton's information ever in the history of Do you know people with mess with it from your dimension if they could find a way to influence it to make it better for them it would be influenced so by the dimension that was inaccessible then nobody could mess with it for selfish reasons right and that that answer in itself is one of the reasons why I feel pretty confident about the mice being just a small Cog in the wheel here they had no control over the destruction or or any of the other parts of the earth events that take place you know other than what they could control in their Laboratories so their influence in our Dimension was Tiny and only affected the Earth right also when he was talking about how the mice were controlling people with you know what do we say running down the maze the wrong way eating the wrong bit of cheese suddenly dropping dead from myxomatosis or something yes yes exactly when I first thought about it I was like well why would these mice kill themselves but remembering that they are only projections into the universe and the ending of the mice in the lab is not the ending of a being it's just a projection from the other dimension it makes it more palatable it does and that and that's another point that kind of angles me just a tiny bit about this is that it does say in the book that Benji and Frankie needed to get back to magrathea in order to return to their dimension so that part kind of makes me wonder to because if they are just projections and they can turn themselves off in our Dimension and just returned to their own that that's doesn't correspond quite as nicely as other ways how did you enjoy looking up all of these answers or creating all of these answers yes I really enjoyed it I thought it was really fun to look at the data that we had within the book I have to admit that it's difficult to separate the different stories from the different sources and stick only to the book here to get an answer it it was fascinating to look back and there are things that he will say corrects as things go on when he realizes do this this was a dead end I got to not do this I need to change it because then we can go on one more answering these questions it has to be just from this book or I hope we'll do this for every book so for every book in the series I hope to do this segment immediately after the release of that discussion on the book and four answers for all of the other books you can obviously refer to the previous boy unless there is something in that book that directly contradicts what happened in the first block yeah exactly okay Jeff say goodbye to the great folks out there goodbye great folks out there