

The computer is revealed as being the planet Earth, with its pan-dimensional creators assuming the form of white lab mice to observe its running. This new computer will incorporate living beings into the " computational matrix" and will run for ten million years. When asked to produce the Ultimate Question, Deep Thought says that it cannot however, it can help to design an even more powerful computer that can. Deep Thought points out that the answer seems meaningless because the beings who instructed it never knew what the question was. It takes Deep Thought 7 + 1⁄ 2 million years to compute and check the answer, which turns out to be 42. In the radio series and the first novel, a group of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings demand to learn the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything from the supercomputer Deep Thought, specially built for this purpose.

The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything
