Ultimate Question

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Thanks to the calculations of Deep Thought we all know the answer to the ultimate question of life, the Universe and everything is 42. But what is the question?

[edit] After The Answer

It was realised soon after Deep Thought revealed the answer to Phouchg and Loonquawl that something wasn't right. '42' seemed a little, well, pathetic for seven and a half million years of work. Deep Thought quickly pointed out that the problem was that no-one actually knew what the question was; if they did then the answer would make a lot more sense and perhaps Phouchg and Loonquawl wouldn't get lynched by the massing crowds outside after all. Unfortunately Deep Thought was not powerful enough to calculate the question, but he was able to create a computer dedicated to finding the question. This computer was the Earth.

[edit] Searching For The Question

Due to the difficulty in finding the question, the Earth needed such infinite and subtle complexity that organic life itself formed a part of the program. The Earth was to be a planet teeming with life which the planet builders of Magreathea started building as soon as Deep Thought had finalised the plans. Then the program started, a program which would take ten million years to run.

Unfortunately for the hyperintelligent pan-dimensional beings who were financing all this the Vogons decided to destroy the Earth to make way for a hyperspace bypass a few minutes before the program was complete. Attempts to retrieve the answer from the only human being who was on the Earth when the Vogons arrived that hadn't been turned into dust were unsuccessful; apparently the human in question, Arthur Dent, was rather selfishly fond of his brain and wouldn't allow it to be removed.

However the answer was eventually extracted from Arthur Dent's brain, without the use of sharp cutting implements. Whilst marooned on Earth two million years before he was born, Arthur managed to find the answer with the help of Ford Prefect using a set of home made Scrabble tiles. The answer encoded in Arthur's brain was:

What do you get if you multiply six by nine?

Note: if you are currently thinking that in base 13 6 x 9 = 42 which is 54 in base 10 then the author recommends you leave your computer immediately and do something else with your life before you realise how truly sad it really is.

[edit] The Ultimate Cock Up

After ten million years of calculation involving much anguish and suffering for the life forms living on the Earth the Ultimate Question has never been found. Arthur and Ford found their way to Earth on a Golgafrinchan ship which promptly crashed, stranding the entire useless middle third of Golgafrinchan society on Earth. The Golgafrinchans soon replaced the native people of the Earth, thus ruining the program and leaving the Ultimate Question unknown.

This however maybe a good thing; many philosophers theorise that if both the Ultimate Question and the Ultimate Answer were ever to be found at the same time then the Universe would disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and strange. Some philosophers conject that this has already happened.