From "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe":
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe is one of the most extraordinary ventures in the entire
history of catering.
It is built on the fragmented ruins of an eventually ruined planet which is enclosed in a vast
time bubble and projected forward in
time to the precise moment of the End of the Universe.
This is, many would say, impossible.
In it, guests take their places at table and
eat sumptuous meals while watching the whole of creation explode around them.
This, many would say, is equally impossible.
You can arrive for any sitting you
like without prior reservation because you can
book retrospectively, as it were, when returning to your own
time.
This is, many would now insist, absolutely impossible.
At the Restaurant you can meet and dine with a fascinating cross-section of the entire population of space and
time.
This, it can be explained patiently, is also impossible.
You can visit it as many times as you
like and be sure of never meeting yourself, because of the embarrassment this usually causes.
This, even if the rest were
true, which it isn't, is patently impossible, say the doubters.
All you have to do is deposit one
penny in a savings account in your own
era, and when you arrive at the End of
Time the operation of compund interest means that the fabulous cost of your meal has been paid for.
This, many claim, is not merely impossible but clearly insane, which is why the advertising executives of the star system of Bastablon came up with this slogan: "If you'
ve done six impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe?"
