"There is no problem," said Deep Thought with magnificent ringing tones. "I am simply the second greatest computer in the Universe of Space and Time."
"But the second?" insisted Lunkwill. "Why do you keep saying the second? You're surely not thinking of the Multicorticoid Perspicutron Titan Muller are you? Or the Pondermatic? Or the ..."
Contemptuous lights flashed across the computer's console.
"I spare not a single unit of thought on these cybernetic simpletons!" he boomed. "I speak of none but the computer that is to come after me!" Fook was losing patience. He pushed his notebook aside and muttered, "I think this is getting needlessly messianic."
"You know nothing of future time," pronounced Deep Thought, "and yet in my teeming circuitry I can navigate the infinite delta streams of future probability and see that there must one day come a computer whose merest operational parameters I am not worthy to calculate, but which it will be my fate eventually to design."
Fook sighed heavily and glanced across to Lunkwill.
"Can we get on and ask the question?" he said.
Lunkwill motioned him to wait."What computer is this of which you speak?" he asked."I will speak of it no further in this present time," said Deep Thought. "Now. Ask what else of me you will that I may function. Speak."
They shrugged at each other. Fook composed himself.
"O Deep Thought Computer," he said, "the task we have designed you to perform is this. We want you to tell us ..." he paused, "... the Answer!"
"The answer?" said Deep Thought. "The answer to what?"
"Life!" urged Fook.