Did it span the miles majestically?
It spanned the miles majestically.
Did it stretch like a silver thread far out into the invisible mist?
Yes, said Marvin. Do you want to hear this story?
I want to hear your speech, said the mattress.
This is what I said. I said, “I would like to say that it is a very great pleasure, honour and privilege for me to open this bridge, but I can’t because my lying circuits are all out of commission. I hate and despise you all. I now declare this hapless cyberstructure open to the unthinkable abuse of all who wantonly cross her.” And I plugged myself into the opening circuits.
Marvin paused, remembering the moment.
The mattress flurred and glurried. It flolloped, gupped and willomied, doing this last in a particularly floopy way.
Voon, it wurfed at last. And it was a magnificent occasion?
Reasonably magnificent. The entire thousand-mile-long bridge spontaneously folded up its glittering spans and sank weeping into the mire, taking everybody with it.
There was a sad and terrible pause at this point in the conversation during which a hundred thousand people seemed unexpectedly to say “wop” and a team of white robots descended from the sky like dandelion seeds drifting on the wind in tight military formation. For a sudden violent moment they were all there, in the swamp, wrenching Marvin’s false leg off, and then they were gone again in their ship, which said “foop”.
You see the sort of thing I have to contend with? said Marvin to the gobbering mattress.
Suddenly, a moment later, the robots were back again for another violent incident, and this time when they left, the mattress was alone in the swamp. He flolloped around in astonishment and alarm. He almost lurgled in fear. He reared himself to see over the reeds, but there was nothing to see, just more reeds. He listened, but there was no sound on the wind beyond the now familiar sound of half-crazed etymologists calling distantly to each other across the sullen mire.