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Douglas Adams' Starship Titanic
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The system, however, was not designed for human beings, and the Vac-U-Bus was supposed to be programmed to reject any living human who might fall into the tray. Clearly this was yet another area where compromises had been made. Leovinus knew, with a queasy tingle, that Brobostigon had become the victim of his own plot and would now be a condensed cube of detritus on its way to the ship's bilge.And now the full impact of the situation began to come home to the Great Man. Here he was - the Greatest Genius the Galaxy Had Ever Known - the day before the launch of his ultimate masterpiece, with an unfinished ship, a financial crisis (of which he had known nothing) and a dead project manager caught in the act of sabotage. This was not going to look good in the official biography.Meanwhile - where was Scraliontis? Crossa Brobostigon had said her husband had come to the ship to meet the accountant.Leovinus knelt beside the disfigured Titania, and lovingly slipped the silver shard into the nerve centre at the base of her skull. His hand shook as he realized the other artery was still missing; in fact - now he came to look - most of her brain was missing - how had he not noticed that before? Titania's brain! So delicate it was! The slightest shock or scratch could permanently injure it.With a ship of this sophistication you couldn't afford to have the nerve centre non-functional. There had been recent stories about a new phenomenon: a kind of high-tech metal fatigue that could afflict certain artifacts which had too high a density of logic systems built into them: SMEF. Spontaneous Massive Existence Failure. Leovinus knew it was theoretically possible if unlikely. He also knew that practically every molecule on the Starship Titanic was in some way part of the ship's logic system. If the thing were launched in its present state - who knew what catastrophe might follow?There was no time to lose. He must retrieve all Titania's missing parts and reassemble them before the unthinkable could happen.
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Douglas Adams' Starship Titanic
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The system, however, was not designed for human beings, and the Vac-U-Bus was supposed to be programmed to reject any living human who might fall into the tray. Clearly this was yet another area where compromises had been made. Leovinus knew, with a queasy tingle, that Brobostigon had become the victim of his own plot and would now be a condensed cube of detritus on its way to the ship's bilge.And now the full impact of the situation began to come home to the Great Man. Here he was - the Greatest Genius the Galaxy Had Ever Known - the day before the launch of his ultimate masterpiece, with an unfinished ship, a financial crisis (of which he had known nothing) and a dead project manager caught in the act of sabotage. This was not going to look good in the official biography.Meanwhile - where was Scraliontis? Crossa Brobostigon had said her husband had come to the ship to meet the accountant.Leovinus knelt beside the disfigured Titania, and lovingly slipped the silver shard into the nerve centre at the base of her skull. His hand shook as he realized the other artery was still missing; in fact - now he came to look - most of her brain was missing - how had he not noticed that before? Titania's brain! So delicate it was! The slightest shock or scratch could permanently injure it.With a ship of this sophistication you couldn't afford to have the nerve centre non-functional. There had been recent stories about a new phenomenon: a kind of high-tech metal fatigue that could afflict certain artifacts which had too high a density of logic systems built into them: SMEF. Spontaneous Massive Existence Failure. Leovinus knew it was theoretically possible if unlikely. He also knew that practically every molecule on the Starship Titanic was in some way part of the ship's logic system. If the thing were launched in its present state - who knew what catastrophe might follow?There was no time to lose. He must retrieve all Titania's missing parts and reassemble them before the unthinkable could happen.
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