经典科幻文学:《 基本上无害 Mostly Harmless》 第12章7

He pulled his newly acquired credit card from his pocket, slid it into a crack where the window met its surrounding frame, and did something a rocket would not have been able to do. He wiggled it around a bit. He felt a catch slip. He slid the window open and almost fell backwards off the ledge laughing, giving thanks as he did so for the Great Ventilation and Telephone Riots of SrDt 3454.

他从口袋里掏出不久前到手的信用卡，把它插进玻璃与窗框交汇处的缝隙，迅速完成了一枚导弹没法完成的壮举。他前后左右地轻轻扭动信用卡。他感到一个挂钩脱开了。他把窗户拉开，哈哈大笑，差点翻到窗户底下去。

The Great Ventilation and Telephone Riots of SrDt 3454 had started off as just a lot of hot air. Hot air was, of course, the problem that ventilation was supposed to solve and generally it had solved the problem reasonably well up to the point when someone invented air-conditioning, which solved the problem far more throbbingly.

福特.长官应该感谢的是SrDt 3454通风与电话大暴动。SrDt 3454通风与电话大暴动的起因很简单，不过是许许多多的热气。热气当然是通风应该解决的毛病，而且通常说来它都把这个问题解决得比较令人满意，直到有人发明了空调。空调解决这个问题的方式当然要帅得多了。

And that was all well and good provided you could stand the noise and the dribbling until someone else came up with something even sexier and smarter than air-conditioning which was called in-building climate control.

这一切当然都很好很不错，只要你受得了它嗡嗡直响滴水吧嗒，于是就有人发明了比空调还要性感还要机灵的东西，它名叫室内气候控制系统。

Now this was quite something.

说起来，这可是个了不得的玩意。

The major differences from just ordinary air-conditioning were that it was thrillingly more expensive, involved a huge amount of sophisticated measuring and regulating equipment which was far better at knowing, moment by moment, what kind of air people wanted to breathe than mere people did.

跟寻常普通的空调相比，它最大的不同就是贵得让人毛骨悚然，而且涉及数量巨大，奥秘精深的测量与调节装备。它们在任何时刻都比那些个一般人更能了解人类想要呼吸什么样的空气。

It also meant that, to be sure that mere people didn’t muck up the sophisticated calculations which the system was making on their behalf, all the windows in the buildings were built sealed shut. This is true.

这还意味着，为了确保那些个一般人不会搅乱系统为他们做出的精妙计算，楼里的所有窗户都必须封死。没错，就是这样。

While the systems were being installed, a number of people who were going to work in the buildings found themselves having conversations with Breathe-o-Smart systems fitters which went something like this:

系统安装好以后，几个到大楼里上班的人发现自己跟聪明呼吸系统调试器之间有了这样的对话：

‘But what if we want to have the windows open?’

“可如果我们想把窗户打开怎么办？”

‘You won’t want to have the windows open with new Breathe-o-Smart.

“有了新的聪明呼吸系统，你们不会想开窗户的。”

‘Yes but supposing we just wanted to have them open for a little bit?’

“没错，可假设我们就是想把窗户打开那么一点点呢？”

‘You won’t want to have them open even for a little bit. The new Breathe-o-Smart system will see to that.’

“你们连一点点都不会想把窗户打开的，新的聪明呼吸系统可以确保这一点。”

‘Hmmm.’

“唔。”