diff --git a/readme.md b/readme.md
index 647e18f..040b91a 100644
--- a/readme.md
+++ b/readme.md
@@ -4,6 +4,38 @@ This is a plain markdown file containing a few lines
 of text. It is part of a project guiding you through your
 first few steps with the version control system Git.
 
+## The number 42
+
+In "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", 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. It takes
+Deep Thought 7½ million years to compute and check the answer, which
+turns out to be 42. Deep Thought points out that the answer seems
+meaningless because the beings who instructed it never actually knew
+what the Question was.
+
+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. This new computer will incorporate living beings into the
+"computational matrix" and will run for ten million years. It is
+revealed as being the planet Earth, with its pan-dimensional creators
+assuming the form of white lab mice to observe its running. The
+process is hindered after eight million years by the unexpected
+arrival on Earth of the Golgafrinchans and is then ruined completely,
+five minutes prior to completion, when the Earth is destroyed by the
+Vogons to make way for a new Hyperspace Bypass. In "The Restaurant at
+the End of the Universe", this is revealed to have been a ruse: the
+Vogons had been hired to destroy the Earth by a consortium of
+psychiatrists, led by Gag Halfrunt, who feared for the loss of their
+careers when the ultimate question became known.
+
+Lacking a real question, the mice decide not to go through the whole
+thing again and settle for the out-of-thin-air suggestion "How many
+roads must a man walk down?" from Bob Dylan's song "Blowin' in the
+Wind".
+
+
 ## References
 
 - https://missing.csail.mit.edu/2020/version-control/