“No, you listen to me, you see-through old bat,” said Zaphod leaping out of his chair, “A – thanks for stopping time and all that, great, terrific, wonderful, but B – no thanks for the homily, right? I don’t know what this great think I’m meant to be doing is, and it looks to me as if I was supposed not to know. And I resent that, right?
“The old me knew. The old me cared. Fine, so far so hoopy. Except that the old me cared so much that he actually got inside his own brain – my own brain – and locked off the bits that knew and cared, because if I knew and cared I wouldn’t be able to do it. I wouldn’t be able to go and be President, and I wouldn’t be able to steal this ship, which must be the important thing.
“But this former self of mine killed himself off, didn’t he, by changing my brain? OK, that was his choice. This new me has its own choices to make, and by a strange coincidence those choices involve not knowing and not caring about this big number, whatever it is. That’s what he wanted, that’s what he got.
“Except this old self of mine tried to leave himself in control, leaving orders for me in the bit of my brain he locked off. Well, I don’t want to know, and I don’t want to hear them. That’s my choice. I’m not going to be anybody’s puppet, particularly not my own.”
Zaphod banged the console in fury, oblivious to the dumbfolded looks he was attracting.
“The old me is dead!” he raved, “Killed himself! The dead shouldn’t hang about trying to interfere with the living!”
“And yet you summon me up to help you out of a scrape,” said the ghost.
“Ah,” said Zaphod, sitting down again, “well that’s different, isn’t it?”
He grinned at Trillian, weakly.