Now what's important to me here is that fourteen thrice is forty-two, the holy number of the mystery of Life, the Universe, and Everything (praise be to Majikthise).
From exile to deliverance, Forty-Two generations.
Anyway, set that aside.
Consider, please, computer output.
It isn't accurate, it's not great. We think it's astounding resolution on a good monitor because it's the best we've made so far. But look at the radioactive box required.
Some computers, though, don't put out that kind of visual representation.
Imagine if your CPU's method of interface was to print every line of dialogue. (As I recall, there was a time ....)
What I'm getting at is that there's as many ways to manifest your data set as ... well? It's one of the reasons I like to look at the Universe as a computer program. Stars, black holes ... they're merely manifestations of the data. The Universe itself is homogenous. Its manner of expressing itself ... now that is its own beautiful thing.
So the computer equals 42.
Nobody's equipped to translate it. And that's where video games come in. I have a baseball game and an American football game in which the ball can be representationally twenty feet from a player, and disappear into their mitt or hands. A frame-by-frame confirms this. Now, the computer didn't decide to violate the pseudo-physics of its programming universe, but the method of representation--that is, the manner of manifestation of the data set--isn't that great, so this single-frame skip of 20 feet, or of impossible physics to make the bat reach the baseball, or whatever, is merely an inaccuracy of the output system; it's the difference, essentially, between a second hand on an analog watch and marking 1/100's with a digital stopwatch.
Thus Forty-Two is the data. It repeatedly manifests itself in ways that escape human perception. Earthling humans, not necessarily the intended recipients of the output, are not equipped to analyze the data in terms of its relation to the formula or question. Do you recall that bit at the beginning of Hitchhiker's Guide and the almost-identical portion in So Long and Thanks for all the Fish? Re-read them. They mention two manifestations of the data set. One is a man nailed to a tree, the other is a young woman in a cafe.
It may or may not be helpful to mention that I've been musing lately on theological limitations. I accidentally stumbled across what is likely an old argument, based on a limited construction that there is no God because God died officially on the cross. (Committed suicide; when Jesus asked, "Why hast thou forsaken me?" just who the hell was he talking to? He was God.)
But, cha-ching! The program attains its result and manifests itself in terms of the period from Babylonian exile to the arrival of God as Jesus called Christ. Forty-two generations, shown to anyone who transcends human perception within time. But the answer bounces around in the megaprocessors, seeking a way to be understood until finally, the program officially completes in a communicable representation, and once again tries to spit itself out, but for the end of the world.
So the joke, as such, would be this: That the computer had finished its program 2000 years before being destroyed, and that it was subject to the limitations of its Creators (communication's an interesting issue with Adams, y'know). Therefore, God died on the cross, the course of the answer's first expression having come to an end, but nobody told the people that God (the equation, formula, question, &c.) was dead (finished, realized, queued and cached, &c.). So the people run around for two bloody millennia--literally bloody, English declarations aside--failing to actualize the data set. Essentially, carrying around the knowledge but not knowing how to tell anyone. And then they figure it out, and die before they can tell anyone. It is very possibly a perfect comedy device, clasically speaking.
