Thine Motherly figure was accepted into a most prestigious university to complete her research on single atoms and the complex relations between the electron fields and the nucleus. You truly have not seen her in a couple of days, for she is deep into her investigation and for the moment cannot be bothered with other trivial things as making your food or kissing you goodnight- she hired the extremely overbearing nanny for that. After struggling for nearly two years in a row with different methods and different approaches from particle accelerators to a little mishap with a battering ram and some sulfuric acid, for her own amusement, she did not come unto anything concrete. She exhausted her scientific repertoire, and still found everything ensuingly more complex. Hope withered deep in her foundations with every sigh that followed a failed routine.

But then, something happened… By chaotic chance or preordination in the long causal chain that defines this universe, she finally started to make small developments on that one fatidic day. Her head swivelled with exhaustion, overrun with the dizzy anticipation that discovery injects in the blood stream in the form of adrenaline and another coctail of hormones and chemicals. She wiped off her forehead with a trembling hand, advancing in a massive equation from a model that seemed to deliver results. Oh, the good things that would come out of this discovery. She saw a massive chain of events in her eyes: unraveling the complexities of quantum field physics, of vacuum, and in turn solving the one-body, two-body, and three-body problem! In her eyes flashed a long sequence of Eurekas in the wake of her single finding. If she can only get the experiment right. Her hands trembled, for all pointed in that inevitable discovery, that beautiful finding, that ravenously wanted solution that could topple down endless barriers. The glory of it all!!!! 

But just then, as your mother moved to complete the experiment and claim victory over the complexities of the vacuum, the tectonic plates direclty under her feet shook with ravaging might, opening a hole several metres wide that sucked your mother and her entire experiment unto oblivion, into the centres of the world where all is hot and there is no life sustained. Your mother fell with a deep, elongated wail that was al-together evanescent in the nightly noises.

“WHY?????!!! FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY AND GOOD… WHYYYYYYY???!!” you release into the open air at the brink of the abyss that swallowed your beloved mother, with tears drizzling down your red cheeks filled with sorrow and plight. And whilst explanations exist in numbers akin the unnending mutations that genes have undergone since the beginning of life on Earth, the only de facto solution that truly applies is 42

Your mother wins in a most renowned sweepstakes a trip to several Caribbean islands, aboard a marvellous, state-of-the-art intercontinental cruiser. It is one of those sweepstakes that promises in blatant letters “many will enter, few will win,” as a caveat emptor, foreboding your close-to-nil chances of winning; yet somehow, by the many whims of the wise universe, she finds herself packing for the adventure of her life: two full weeks of relaxation and sunbathing, in a spectacular paradise that many would kill for, or in fact, have to pay large amounts of monetary currency for. Her voyage is entirely free, and as such, your mother makes her way unto the pier, where roaring and almost envious individuals contemplate her and wish her luck. The ship is shining new, and everything seems in place; a ship at hand to bear her hence unto better days.

The cruise is scheduled to pass over several Caribbean islands, with beautiful sun settings and sun risings, each bearing at hand something magnificent, that her enclosed world never had the chance of contemplating. The boat swims steadily, pushing many tonnes of water on its wake, unto that promised land of adventurous wonders. It is the spectacle of nature that compelled her unto the rails every single night, when the sun was to hide away behind the veil of salt water and the sky was to turn a dark tone of navy blue, the starts were to ignite their switches and glisten in eternal beauty millions and millions of kilometres away. Your mother could breathe that clean open-sea air, clutching the rails as the only form to stay firmly planted on the boat ground, ere she flew away amid the vast sky. She took a deep breath just as the sun dove as is its wont into hiding and marking the evening, with a broad smile on her face.

By a staggering coincidence, the Earth became flat and the boat tilted in direction of the bottomless void of outre space, wherein your mother slipped off the rail and floated adrift to die millions of kilometres away. The Earth returned to its round state once again, and bore the ship back to you, bereft of your mother.

“WHYYYY????????? BY THE CURSE OF MARY MALONE AND HER NINE BLIND ILLEGITIMATE CHILDREN… WHYYYYY??” you cry a deafening roar of despair and ruin, when the sound waves carry the message of your mother’s fate unto your ears. And while reasons are as numerous as grains on the beaches of this world, the sole pertaining explanation is 42

Your mother trains ardently for nearly fifteen years (almost to the point of neglecting you, but not quite) in the best swimming clubs and associations of the country, positively determined to enter the Olympics and win, in spite of everything, a gold medal in at least one discipline. And wouldn’t you know? She actually manages to be in such condition that she is drafted for the nation’s swimming olympic team. She takes a plane, entirely radiant and at the same time fully concentrated on what is to be her duty- nay, her obligation to herself and her kin. You yourself swell with pride and sentiments of glory that seem to walk with your mother.  At long last, she is in the olympics, the oldest athlete to ever take part in the games at some formal competition instead of being just another adornment in ceremonial procedures. She is ready…

The pool churns at ease from one side to the other, and like the water your mother feels coherent and light, able and flexible, slender and powerful. She begins to stretch, flexing her muscles and warming up to the rather cold water. Her eyes are quickly covered by the waterproof goggles you gave her ere she stepped on the plane on her way to the olympics, and her hair is contained in a quaint rubber hat, sporting the name of the nation she proudly represents. All the hopes and dreams seem to be embodied in her frame, in her swimming equipment, and in her goggle-covered eyes that flick with fury. At the beckoning of a loud siren, she steps unto the starting block, announcing that the Individual Medley is to begin at a moment’s notice. Her whole body seems to constrict with pressure and the tension of the moment, as she leans down ready to leap into the water. And then…. BANG, she jumps into the pool with ferocity and grace, and her head soon emerges to the surface, at all speed.

Your mother trails behind at third place on butterfly, and you begin to feel a very human fear that she is to lose. She remains in this position for the duration of backstroke. Another swimmer passes her on breast stroke, and you cannot help but feel worried. Your mother is focused, however, fully aware of what she has to do. Freestyle is her province… it is her time. For the last one hundred metres, she triggers her most potent swimming. The water lifts itself in perfect harmony with her body, and seems to filter her at an amazing speed, past the third and second-placed swimmers. The last twenty-five metres are nearly ended, and she is still not first place. Borne out of her conviction and spirit, she picks up an ever mighty pace, and in a breathtaking moment she wooshes past the leading swimmer, claiming first place for her own… There are only five metres to complete, just one more stroke…

Just as her hand is one precise milimetre away from the slippery pool wall, a 150 kilogram sumo wrestler is borne into existence thirty five metres on top of your mother’s position, and drops at a constant velocity of 2 to the power of 2,263 kilometres per hour, serial crushing her and sinking below pool ground, to their utter deaths.

“WHYYYYYYYYYY??? WHYYYYY??????” you let our a roaring cry after overcoming the bewilderment, feeling your mother’s aspirations for gold and her own life slip away with your bitter tears. And while reasons float adrift like hydrogen particles in the continuum of space, the most pertinent explanation is 42.

Your mother wins in a simple game of cricket a comfortable amount of forty pounds sterling, and by inductive reasoning she determines the best way to make proper use of them is to buy herself a marvelous dinner in that new fancy restaurant on Drury Lane. She fashions herself quite lavishly, absolutely determined to make that particular dinner worhty of remembrance, undimmed before the breaking of the world. She goes out to the garage, and takes a smell of the windblown trees in the clear night. The sky itself seems to compliment her dress and accesories, borne of good taste. The car gleans, producing a marvelous vision of her, sparkling with the dim moonlight. Once on the road, traffic seems to make way, so doing as to ensure this marvelous lady and her newly-won forty pounds sterling make it to the new fancy restaurant on Drury Lane.

She at last finds seating in the fancy new restaurant on Drury Lane, and orders a most becoming plate of octopus bathed on black olive sauce, garnished with vegetables she cannot even pronounce but knows are beyond recall and renown… they are that good. A waitress is quick to bring her wine, the best glass the season produced. Everything in the universe seems to conspire in her favour, and she is aware of this as soon as the waitress returns with a delicious, fragrant plate containing the octopus bathed with the purple sauce, ever so tenderly. Dizzy with anticipation, your mother grips the fork and the knife, cutting a slight piece of her meal, and is quick to bring it to her mouth… As soon as the piece of meat touches her tounge, she is swallowed by a vortex ripped out of the fabric of space, and happens to arrive more than a thousand years before her time, just in front of King Leonidas’s kick. She is smitten with a violent blow into a bottomless pit, which turns out to have a bottom filled with hardened faeces that are quick to break her neck.

WHYYY??? BY MY MOTHER’S UNFINISHED PLATE, WHYYYY??? You exclaim in sheer horror, ripping apart your shirt, shouting so hard the neighbours have to call the police once again. Like water drops that make up the ocean, reasons float in cohesion and numbers vast. Yet the most becoming of the case is of course 42.