Question (spoilers)
If they want to know the real question fast then why not build Earth 2 and get it to read Aurther's brain?
"28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds that is when the world will end." Frank, Donnie Darko
Actually, that's what the mice were planning on doing... except they wouldn't need an Earth II. They were just going to analyze his removed brain ("Diced!"). It is why Slartibartfast was told the new Earth wouldn't be needed.
And later on we find out that even that wasn't needed. Marvin was able to read the question off of his brain wave patterns by just looking at him. Although Arthur later theorized the question in his head must had been wrong since the B-Arc crash landed onto Prehistoric Earth and muxed up the computations.
But in all honesty, I'm sure it didn't bugger anything up... After all, if the computations were that sensitive, wouldn't the mice not had touched the planet themselves, or maybe they'd had put up a massive blockade around the solar system if it was that touchy. Plus it seemed that Marvin had the question in the third book (although that is debated too). Eh. No biggy anyway. On the whole, the issue doesn't distract the story, in my opinion.
And yes, I am now rambling.
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According to Earth 1,
the Ultimate Question to Life, the Universe, and Everything is....
"What do you get when you multiply six by nine?"
That's because the Ark with the middlemen killed off the Neanderthals, which were the original program created by Deep Thought.
"What do we do now?"
"Enjoy it..."
The question can't be known if you have the answer, they're mutually exclusive.
shareI always understood the question to actually have somewhat of a philosophical property to it. At the end of the mini series after pulling out of the Scrabble pieces, Arthur says "I always said that there was something fundamentally wrong with the universe."
shareYeah, the Ark corrupted the Earth program by killing off the cavemen, so in the end, the question (in Arthur's brain) turned out completely wrong. Ergo, everything on the Earth after the crash (Arthur's universe) is completely wrong.
"What do we do now?"
"Enjoy it..."
Could it be that the later three books take place in something even more bizare then the universe of the first two? I've read the other 4 since starting this thread and thats my current interpritation.
"28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds that is when the world will end." Frank, Donnie Darko