Happy Vertical People Transporters is the brand name for the lifts in the Hitchhiker's Guide offices. As designed by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, they are meant to be sentient (enough to argue with) and have "defocused temporal perception". The latter concept is intended to enable the lifts to see far enough into the future to arrive at a floor before a potential passenger realises they wanted a lift, thus saving them from having to wait around and make friends like they would have to do normally.