"The Babel fish," said The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy quietly, "is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest
thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy not from its carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious
mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic
matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain
which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand
anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which
has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.

"Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind\-bog\-gin\-gly useful could have evolved purely by
chance that some thin\-kers have chosen to see it as the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.

"The argument goes something like this: `I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, `for proof denies faith, and without faith I am
nothing.'

"`But,' says Man, `The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so
therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'

"`Oh dear,' says God, `I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanished in a puff of logic.

"`Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra
crossing.

"Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo's kidneys, but that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid making a
small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his best-selling book Well That About Wraps It Up For God.

"Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures,
has caused more and bloddier wars than anything else in the history of creation."

************

It is of course well known that careless talk costs lives, but the full scale of the problem is not always appreciated.

For instance, at the very moment that Arthur said "I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle," a freak wormhole
opened up in the fabric of the space-time continuum and carried his words far far back in time across almost infinite reaches of
space to a distant Galaxy where strange and warlike beings were poised on the brink of frightful interstellar battle.

The two opposing leaders were meeting for the last time. A dreadful silence fell across the conference table as the
commander of the Vl'hurgs, resplendent in his black jewelled battle shorts, gazed levelly at the G'Gugvuntt leader squatting
opposite him in a cloud of green sweet-smelling steam, and, with a million sleek and horribly beweaponed star cruisers poised to
unleash electric death at his single word of command, challenged the vile creature to take back what it had said about his mother.

The creature stirred in his sickly broiling vapour, and at that very moment the words I seem to be having tremendous difficulty
with my lifestyle drifted across the conference table. Unfortunately, in the Vl'hurg tongue this was the most dreadful
insult imaginable, and there was nothing for it but to wage terrible war for centuries.

Eventually of course, after their Galaxy had been decimated over a few thousand years, it was realized that the whole thing had
been a ghastly mistake, and so the two opposing battle fleets settled their few remaining differences in order to launch a joint
attack on our own Galaxy - now positively identified as the source of the offending remark.

For thousands more years the mighty ships tore across the empty wastes of space and finally dived screaming on to the first planet
they came across - which happened to be the Earth - where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was
accidentally swallowed by a small dog.

************

I said I’d pack.
I rather pride myself on my packing. Packing is one of those many things that I feel I know more about than any other
person living. (It surprises me myself, sometimes, how many of these subjects there are.) I impressed the fact upon George
and Harris, and told them that they had better leave the whole matter entirely to me. They fell into the suggestion with a
readiness that had something uncanny about it. George put on a pipe and spread himself over the easy-chair, and Harris
cocked his legs on the table and lit a cigar. This was hardly what I intended. What I had meant, of
course, was, that I should boss the job, and that Harris and George should potter about under my directions, I pushing
them aside every now and then with, “Oh, you!” “Here, let me do it.” “There you are, simple enough!” really teaching
them, as you might say. Their taking it in the way they did irritated me. There is nothing does irritate me more than seeing
other people sitting about doing nothing when I’m working. I lived with a man once who used to make me mad that
way. He would loll on the sofa and watch me doing things by the hour together, following me round the room with his eyes,
wherever I went. He said it did him real good to look on at me, messing about. He said it made him feel that life was not an
idle dream to be gaped and yawned through, but a noble task, full of duty and stern work. He said he often wondered now
how he could have gone on before he met me, never having anybody to look at while they worked.

Now, I’m not like that. I can’t sit still and see another man slaving and working. I want to get up and superintend, and
walk round with my hands in my pockets, and tell him what to do. It is my energetic nature. I can’t help it.
However, I did not say anything, but started the packing. It seemed a longer job than I had thought it was going to be; but
I got the bag finished at last, and I sat on it and strapped it.

“Ain’t you going to put the boots in?” said Harris. And I looked round, and found I had forgotten them. That’s
just like Harris. He couldn’t have said a word until I’d got the bag shut and strapped, of course. And George laughed
one of those irritating, senseless, chuckle-headed, crack-jawed laughs of his. They do make me so wild.
I opened the bag and packed the boots in; and then, just as I was going to close it, a horrible idea occurred to me. Had I
packed my tooth-brush? I don’t know how it is, but I never do know whether I’ve packed my tooth-brush.

************

He always reminds me of my poor Uncle Podger. You never saw such a commotion up and down a house, in all your life, as
when my Uncle Podger undertook to do a job. A picture would have come home from the frame-maker’s, and be standing in
the dining-room, waiting to be put up; and Aunt Podger would ask what was to be done with it, and Uncle Podger would say:

“Oh, you leave that to me. Don’t you, any of you, worry yourselves about that. I’ll do all that.”

And then he would take off his coat, and begin. He would send the girl out for sixpen’orth of nails, and then one of the
boys after her to tell her what size to get; and, from that, he would gradually work down, and start the whole house.

“Now you go and get me my hammer, Will,” he would shout; “and you bring me the rule, Tom; and I shall want the step-ladder,
and I had better have a kitchen-chair, too; and, Jim! you run round to Mr. Goggles, and tell him, ‘Pa’s kind regards, and
hopes his leg’s better; and will he lend him his spirit-level?’ And don’t you go, Maria, because I shall want somebody to
hold me the light; and when the girl comes back, she must go out again for a bit of picture-cord; and Tom! where’s Tom?
Tom, you come here; I shall want you to hand me up the picture.”

And then he would lift up the picture, and drop it, and it would come out of the frame, and he would try to save the glass,
and cut himself; and then he would spring round the room, looking for his handkerchief. He could not find his handkerchief,
because it was in the pocket of the coat he had taken off, and he did not know where he had put the coat, and all the 
house had to leave off looking for his tools, and start looking for his coat; while he would dance round and hinder them.

“Doesn’t anybody in the whole house know where my coat is? I never came across such a set in all my life - upon my
word I didn’t. Six of you! - and you can’t find a coat that I put down not five minutes ago! Well, of all the -”

Then he’d get up, and find that he had been sitting on it, and would call out:
“Oh, you can give it up! I’ve found it myself now. Might just as well ask the cat to find anything as expect you people to
find it.”

And, when half an hour had been spent in tying up his finger, and a new glass had been got, and the tools, and the ladder,
and the chair, and the candle had been brought, he would have another go, the whole family, including the girl and the charwoman,
standing round in a semi-circle, ready to help. Two people would have to hold the chair, and a third would help
him up on it, and hold him there, and a fourth would hand him a nail, and a fifth would pass him up the hammer, and he
would take hold of the nail, and drop it.