Master of Chaos

Arthur turned to Ford-he hadn't quite got this place worked out in his mind.
"Look, surely," he said, "if the universe is about to end...don't we go with it?"
Ford gave him a three-Pan-Galactic-Gargle-Blaster look, in other words, a rather unsteady one.
"No," he said, "look," he said, "as soon as you come into this dive you get help in this sort of amazing force-sheild temporal warp thing. I think."
"Oh," Arthur said. He turned his attention back to a bowl of soup he'd managed to get from the waiter to replace his steak.
"Look," said Ford. "I'll show you." He grabbed at a napkin off the table and fumbled hopelessly with it.
"Look," he said again, "imagine this napkin, right, as the temporal Universe, right? And this spoon as a transductional node in the matter curve..."
It took him a while to say this last part, and Arthur hated to interupt him.
"Thats the spoon I was eating with," he said.
"All right," said Ford, "imagine this spoon"-he found a small wooden spoon on a tray of relishes-"this spoon"-he found it rather tricky to pick up-"no, better still, this fork..."
"Hey, would you let go of my fork?" snapped Zaphod.
"All right," said Ford, "all right, all right. Why don't we say... why don't we say that this wineglass is the temporal Universe..."
"What, the one you've just knocked on the floor?"
"Did I do that?"
"Yes."
"All right," said Ford, "forget that. I mean...I mean, look, do you know-do you know how the Universe actually began for a kick-off?"
"Probably not," said Arthur, who wished he'd never embarked on any of this.
"All right," said Ford, "imagine this. Right. You get this bath. Right. A large round bath. And its made of ebony."
"Where from?" said Arthur. "Harrod's was destroyed by the Vogons."
"Doesn't matter."
"So you keep saying."
"Listen."
"All right."
"You get this bath, see? Imagine you've got this bath. And it's ebony. And its conical."
"Conical?" said Arthur. "What sort of..."
"Shhh!" said Ford. "Its conical. So what you do is, you see, you fill it with fine white sand, all right? Or sugar. Fine white sand and/or sugar. Anything. Doesn't matter. Sugars fine. And when it's full, you pull the plug out...are you listening?"
"I'm listening."
"You pull the plug out, and it all twirls away, twirls away you see, out of the plughole."
"I see."
"You don't see. You don't see at all. i haven't got to the clever bit yet. You want to hear the clever bit?"
"Tell me the clever bit."
"I'll tell you the clever bit."
Ford thought for a moment, trying to remember what the clever bit was.
"The clever bit," he said, "is this. You film it happening."
"Clever," agreed Arthur.
"You get a movie camera, and you film it happening."
"Clever."
"Thats not the clever bit. This is the clever bit, I remember now that this is the clever bit. The clever bit is that you then thread the film in the projector...backward!"
"Backward?"
"Yes. Threading it backward is deffinitely the clever bit. So then, you just sit and watch it, and everything just appears to spiral upward out of the plughole and fill the bath. See?"
"And thats how the universe began, is it?" said Arthur.
"No," said Ford, "but its a wonderful way to relax."