‘Enjoy Breathe-o-Smart!’

“好好享受聪明呼吸！”

‘OK, so what if the Breathe-o-Smart breaks down or goes wrong or something?’

“OK，那么聪明呼吸瘫痪了或者出故障之类，怎么办？”

‘Ah! One of the smartest features of the Breathe-o-Smart is that it cannot possibly go wrong. So. No worries on that score. Enjoy your breathing now, and have a nice day.’

“啊！聪明呼吸系统最聪明的特征之一就是它永远不可能出故障。恩，所以这方面也无需担心。现在好好享受你们的呼吸，祝你们过的愉快。”

(It was, of course, as a result of the Great Ventilation and Telephone Riots of SrDt 3454, that all mechanical or electrical or quantum-mechanical or hydraulic or even wind, steam or piston-driven devices, are now required to have a certain legend emblazoned on them somewhere. It doesn’t matter how small the object is, the designers of the object have got to find a way of squeezing the legend in somewhere, because it is their attention which is being drawn to it rather than necessarily that of the user’s.

（很显然，正是由于SrDt 3454通风与电话大暴动，我们现在才有了这项法令，要求无论机械的电子的量子力学的或者水利的甚至风力的，蒸汽的，活塞驱动的设备，全部都要找个地方刻上一篇文字。无论那东西多小，设计者都得想办法把这篇文字挤进去，因为反正它要提醒的与其说是顾客不如说是设计者自己。

The legend is this:

这篇文字是这样的：

‘The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.’)

可能出故障的东西和不可能出故障的东西相比较，最主要的区别是当一个不可能出故障的东西出故障的时候我们最后通常会发现它根本无法理解或者修理。）

Major heat waves started to coincide, with almost magical precision, with major failures of the Breathe-o-Smart systems. To begin with this merely caused simmering resentment and only a few deaths from asphyxiation.

高温天气出现了，聪明呼吸系统的大故障也发生了，时间刚好一致，像变魔术似的，几乎分毫不差，当然刚开始的时候，故障的结果不过是高涨的怨愤和寥寥几例窒息死亡。

The real horror erupted on the day that three events happened simultaneously. The first event was that Breathe-o-Smart Inc. issued a statement to the effect that best results were achieved by using their systems in temperate climates.

真正的恐怖发生于三大事件同时发生的那一天。第一个事件是聪明呼吸系统发表了一项声明，指出气候温和的地方使用他们的系统可以获得最佳使用效果。

The second event was the breakdown of a Breathe-o-Smart system on a particularly hot and humid day with the resulting evacuation of many hundreds of office staff into the street where they met the third event, which was a rampaging mob of long-distance telephone operators who had got so twisted with having to say, all day and every day, ‘Thank you for using BS&S’ to every single idiot who picked up a phone that they had finally taken to the streets with trash cans, megaphones and rifles.

第二件事件是，在这个特别湿热的日子，一个聪明呼吸系统发生瘫痪，导致数百办公室职员紧急疏散，他们在街上遇到了第三个事件：一大群暴跳如雷的长途电话接线员，由于日复一日被迫对每一个拿起话筒的蠢货说“感谢您使用BS&S”，终于忍无可忍，操起垃圾桶，扩音器和来复枪上了街。

In the ensuing days of carnage every single window in the city, rocket-proof or not, was smashed, usually to accompanying cries of ‘Get off the line, asshole! I don’t care what number you want, what extension you’re calling from. Go and stick a firework up your bottom! Yeeehaah! Hoo Hoo Hoo! Velooooom! Squawk!’ and a variety of other animal noises that they didn’t get a chance to practise in the normal line of their work.

接下来是好几天的血腥大屠杀，城里的每一扇窗户，不管防不防导弹，全被砸地粉碎，通常还伴随着“别占着线，混蛋我才不管你想接哪个号，也不管你是从哪个分机打来的！来根烟花塞屁眼里去吧你！耶耶耶哈哈！嚯嚯！喂噜噜噜！呱呱！”之类的喊声，此外还要加上其他各种平时工作中派不上用场的动物型噪音。

As a result of this, all telephone operators were granted a constitutional right to say ‘Use BS&S and die!’ at least once an hour when answering the phone and all office buildings were required to have windows that opened, even if only a little bit.

最后的结果就是，接线员们为自己争取到了一项权利，在接电话的时候，每工作一个小时就有至少一次机会对顾客说“用了BS&S，然后去死！”而所有的办公大楼都必须安装可以打开的窗户，哪怕只能打开一点点也好。