Phase One: Five more minutes

It is very well known across the universe that the mice who run Sol 3 are arrogant beings. When they heard of the Galactic Council's plans to demolish the planet to make room for a hyperspace bypass, they shrugged their higher-dimensional shoulders, causing contortions in their Earthly bodies that made the scientists they were studying rush to their notepads.

"They'll be late," they squeaked to each other. "Workmen always are."

But they weren't. At the date and time appointed by the Council, the Vogon deconstructor fleet hung in Earth's sky the same way bricks don't.

The mice knew of the efficiency of the Vogons, yet they still believed that they would fire late. Meanwhile, a young man who was not from Guilford at all dragged his pajama-clad best friend under a hedge and pressed the button on his Electronic Thumb.

On the surface of the planet, humanity begged and reasoned with the Vogons, getting, as ape-descendants would, nowhere. The scientists the mice were watching started to get scared; this is when several of the mice started to worry that they would not get the Question after all.

Then, suddenly, the Earth fell silent. The Vogon fleet captain tapped his instruments, wondering whether something had gone wrong. The mice watched their scientists even more intensely.
Every man, woman, and child on the planet closed its eyes for a brief moment. When they opened them, nothing had changed.

Then they all spoke in unison.

"What do you get if you multiply six by nine?"

The mice were stunned. (So were the Vogons, but I'll get back to them.) "The question," one squeaked."

"Six by nine?" another whispered.

"But that's-" a third said. "Oh sod it, the experiment's been corru-"

Then the Vogons recovered from their shock and fired.

Phase Two: Uncorrupted

Two million years ago, something strange happened. A bright light streaked across the sky and hit one of the closer stars.

The memory persisted in the ape-descended human race, long enough for some of them to evolve enough to invent telescopes. The light, they found, had fallen on the planet Mars, and if you looked hard enough, some scientists said, you could just make out the remnants of some sort of machine.

Other scientists thought these scientists were idiots, and insisted that those were only natural rock formations caused by repeated collisions with rocks in space.

Later on, telescopes got better, and someone thought he saw a rock formation that looked like a silver bathtub. But no one paid any attention to him.

And the computations proceeded as the mice had ordered. Then, one day, the Vogons came, exactly as they had been scheduled to do. The mice responded thus: "Sod it all, they're early."

On the surface of the planet, humanity begged and reasoned with the Vogons, getting, as ape-descendants would, nowhere. The scientists the mice were watching started to get scared; this is when several of the mice started to worry that they would not get the Question after all.

Then, suddenly, the Earth fell silent. The Vogon fleet captain tapped his instruments, wondering whether something had gone wrong. The mice watched their scientists even more intensely.
Every man, woman, and child on the planet closed its eyes for a brief moment. When they opened them, nothing had changed.

Then they all spoke in unison. They spoke the Question, the Ultimate Question, the Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.

For a moment, the mice were gleeful. Then the universe, very softly and politely, imploded.

High above Earth, Arthur Dent was just coming to terms with being on an alien spaceship when he felt very strange. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them it was dark.

He had the feeling he'd said something very important. He wasn't sure what, though if he racked his brains he thought he heard billions of people saying "Pick a number, any number."

It was dark, and he was alone. "Ford?" he whispered, then said it again louder.

It was quite literally infinitely improbable that they would be rescued, since there was no longer any universe. Therefore, twenty-nine seconds later, to everyone's surprise, Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect were rescued by the Heart of Gold.