[ WP ] You Discover that The Answer to the Universe is in fact 41 ...

They ’ d labored for millions of years. They had the answer all along, 42; What they needed was the Question. Five minutes before the great computer spit out the Question, it had been destroyed. So they were stuck with 42. 
 
 On an almost completely unrelated tangent, the week before the world ended Jaguar motors in a fit of misguided environmentalism had unveiled a brand new car that ran on a variety of farm related products, corn, wheat, soy, but not potatoes. They had stupidly called it *Agra-Jag*. Stupid name the car thought to itself as the booth babes rubbed their evening dress-clad buttocks over its curved metal skin. Coincidentally, Arthur Dent, whose name is not important, was also at the London car show, looking for a sandwich. Arthur had inadvertently spilled his sugar drink on Agra-Jag ’ s hood shorting out some electronics. Before long smoke started rising from beneath the car ’ s hood. 
 
 “ Unbelievable ” thought the car as the beautiful girls were replaced by flames. “ I just got here and that bastard kills me again ”. 
 
 Earth was destroyed shortly thereafter, the Question lost forever. 
 
 On another planet across the galaxy, in an algebra classroom, the teacher had an epiphany. The universe was equal to 41. He puzzled over the epiphany for a brief second while adolescents stared at him before he charged ahead explaining why X was important. 
 
 After class, he sat behind his wooden desk and pondered his epiphany. He knew the solution; everyone knew the solution. **The Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe and Everything ** was equal to 42. He went up to the chalk board and wrote down his epiphany: 
 *The Universe = 41* 
 Then recalling the Solution, he wrote below it: 
 *Life + The Universe + Everything = 42* 
 Then doing what he did best, algebra, he simply removed The Universe from the equation and subtracted 41. He was left with: 
 *Life+Everything=1* 
 He twisted his lip and then wrote hesitantly below: 
 *Everything = ∞? * 
 These were unknown waters he was treading upon, and he wasn ’ t feeling particularly celestial. He shook his head and quickly erased the last line; infinity was calculus, infinity was heresy. 
 Still, algebra did provide him with some footing here. He quickly rearranged some terms so now he had: 
 *Life -1 = -Everything* 
 He sighed, relieved to be away from the heresy of infinity. He stared at what he had. It was good, but not quite complete. 
 He struggled for ages before deciding to champion on. He would tackle infinity, he would stare into its dark eyes and conquer it. He steeled himself, dug deep into the recesses of his mind, recalled those dark days finding limits in calculus and carefully wrote: 
 
 *X+∞=∞* 
 *X+-∞=-∞* 
 
 He tried in his mind to rotate the infinities to make them much more palatable 8s, but nothing doing, they were stuck in their infernal horizontal orientations. 
 
 With shaky hands he approached the board, he glanced around, as if the gods of algebra would strike him down for writing the heresy and carefully rewrote: 
 
 *Everything = ∞* 
 
 He quickly retreated to algebra and, contrary to years of math education, treated infinity as just another variable. 
 
 *-1+Life=-∞* 
 
 He smiled, he was almost there. Damn the algebra gods. 
 
 *Life = -∞* 
 
 He frowned, something didn ’ t seem quite right. He rearranged the terms ended up with: 
 *-Everything = Life* 
 *The Universe = 41* 
 
 His frown slowly eased, in fact he almost smiled as he put down the chalk.
