Acho que você está misturando duas histórias curtas: "Limiting Factor" , primeiro publicado em Startling Stories , novembro de 1949 e "As Respostas" aka "... e a verdade o tornará livre " de Future Science Fiction , março de 1953 (disponível no site Internet Archive ), ambos por Clifford D. Simak . "O universo que acabou de acontecer" é uma citação exata da última história, onde aparece em uma impressão de computador.
"Limiting Factor" possui planetas contrastantes como a Terra e um computador de tamanho mundial, "um grande que cobre um planeta do tamanho da Terra para a profundidade de vinte milhas":
First, there were two planets looted of their ores, mined and gutted and left there naked for the crows of space to pick.
Then there was a planet with a faery city, a place of glass and plastic so full of wondrous beauty that it hurt one's throat to look.
But there was just this one city. There was no other sign of habitation on the entire planet. And the city was deserted. Perfect in its beauty but hollow as a laugh.
Finally, there was a metal planet, third outward from the Sun. Not a lump of metallic ore, but a planet with a surface—or a roof—of fabricated metal burnished to the polish of a bright steel mirror. And it shone, by reflected light, like another Sun.
A história é contada do ponto de vista de exploradores humanos que descobrem que a máquina do mundo é um computador alienígena:
It was an oblong card, very ordinary-looking, and it had holes punched in it in irregular patterns.
Scott held it in his hand, and his hand was shaking.
"I trust," said Griffith bitterly, "that you're not disappointed."
"Not at all," said Scott. "It's exactly what I thought we'd find."
They waited.
"Would you mind?" said Griffith finally.
"It's a computation card," said Scott. "An answer to some problem fed into a differential calculator."
"But we can't decipher it," said Taylor. "We have no way of knowing what it means."
"We don't need to decipher it," Scott told him. "It tells us what we have. This machine—this whole machine—is a calculator."
"Why, that's crazy," Buckley cried. "A mathematical—"
Scott shook his head. "Not mathematical. At least not purely mathematical. It would be something more than that. Logic, more than likely. Maybe even ethics."
"As respostas" é sobre uma visita a um único planeta parecido com a terra com uma cultura humana pacífica e um computador do tamanho de uma sala que responde a duas questões profundas:
"In just a little while," he said, "you will understand why we are simple people."
He swung the door wide open and stepped to one side so that David might walk in ahead of him. The place was one large room and it was neat and orderly. There was some dust, but not very much.
Half of the room was filled to three quarters of its height with a machine that gleamed in the dull light that came from some source high in the roof.
"This is our machine," said Jed.
And so it was gadgetry, after all. It was another machine, perhaps a cleverer and sleeker machine, but it was still a gadget and the human race were still gadgeteers.
"Doubtless you wondered why you found no machines" said Jed. "The answer is that there is only one, and this is it."
"Just one machine!"
"It is an answerer," said Jed. "A logic. With this machine, there is no need of any others."
"You mean it answers questions?"
"It did at one time," said Jed. "I guess it still would if there were any of us who knew how to operate it. But there is no need of asking further questions."
"You can depend on it?" asked David. "That is, you can be sure that it tells the truth?"
"My son," Jed said soberly, "our ancestors spent thousands of years making sure that it would tell the truth. They did nothing else. It was not only the life work of each trained technician, but the life work of the race. And when they were sure that it would know and tell the truth, when they were certain that there could be no slightest error in the logic of its calculations, they asked two questions of it."
"Two questions?"
"Two questions," Jed said. "And they found the Truth."
"And the Truth?"
"The Truth," Jed said, "is here for you to read. Just as it came out those centuries ago."
He led the way to a table that stood in front of one panel of the great machine. There were two tapes upon the table, lying side by side. The tapes were covered by some sort of transparent preservative.
"The first question," said Jed, "was this: 'What is the purpose of the universe?' Now read the top tape, for that is the answer."
David bent above the table and the answer was upon the tape:
The universe has no purpose. The universe just happened.
"And the second question . . ." said Jed, but there was no need for him to finish, for what the question had been was implicit in the wording of the second tape:
Life has no significance. Life is an accident.
"And that," said Jed, "is the Truth we found. That is why we are a simple people."