(A grand seminar room. Charts, diagrams, and scattered notebooks litter the table. Three stern-looking scholars sit across from Blottisham — all quietly, utterly unimpressed. Quillibrace and Elowen are present, smirking.)
Blottisham
Ladies and gentlemen of the panel! I present my “Corrected Thermodynamics Textbook”!
Here, every law is clarified. Entropy is explicit. Energy flows exactly as it ought. The arrow of time is enforced.
Scholar 1
Enforced?
Blottisham
Yes! By the laws themselves!
Elowen
By “enforced,” do you mean overwhelmingly probable configurations?
Blottisham
No! By the universe!
Quillibrace
Depends what you mean by “universe.”
Entropy Under Scrutiny
Scholar 2
Your statement on entropy — “it increases because disorder is inevitable” — appears inconsistent. Can you justify this without appealing to metaphysical pushing?
Blottisham
Of course! Disorder… I mean, it is inevitable because the laws say so!
Scholar 3
The laws? Or merely combinatorial availability?
Blottisham
Both!
(The scholars exchange a look. Blottisham falters.)
Elowen
It is overwhelmingly likely that broken cups stay broken. That does not require law or intention. Only constraint and availability.
Blottisham
Availability! I will not! It sounds like… like… witchcraft.
Quillibrace
Or, if you prefer, probability dressed as tea.
Energy and Conservation
Scholar 1
Your chapter on energy claims it is “lost to disorder.”
Blottisham
Yes! Engines fail, stars die, heat dissipates!
Scholar 2
And yet you also claim conservation?
Blottisham
Yes. That is… that is… I confess I do not see the contradiction!
Elowen
The contradiction is only apparent. Energy is redistributed. Some gradients become expensive to access. Nothing is lost.
Blottisham
Expensive… in what currency?
Quillibrace
Combinatorial availability.
Blottisham
Combinatorial… Oh, woe is me!
The Arrow of Time Examined
Scholar 3
And your arrow of time? You suggest it is an emergent slope of constraints rather than a fundamental push.
Blottisham
Yes! It points forward because… because… I do not know! But it must!
Quillibrace
Or, more clearly, it points in the direction where continuations are cheap.
Elowen
The arrow is a gradient, not an agent.
Blottisham
Gradient?! I have been undone by a slope.
(He collapses slightly into his chair, clutching his pointer.)
Panel Verdict
Scholar 1
It appears your textbook cannot exist in the way you imagined.
Scholar 2
Every chapter collapses into relational availability before a single sentence is finished.
Scholar 3
Reality will not be coerced.
Blottisham
I… I tried. I tried to enforce the laws…
Elowen
You did enforce something. You enforced a fine appreciation of combinatorial inevitability.
Quillibrace
And learned, perhaps painfully, that the universe cannot be bullied into metaphysical neatness.
Blottisham
Painfully… indeed.
(Blottisham slumps. The scholars nod politely. Quillibrace sips quietly. Elowen smiles.)
Closing Reflection
Blottisham has learned a terrible and beautiful truth:
Attempting to “correct” reality in prose is itself a live demonstration of relational availability.
Some sentences form easily. Others refuse to exist. Effort alone cannot bend combinatorial probability.
Reality, elegantly indifferent, continues to behave as it always has — entirely consistent, entirely relational, utterly unswayed by Blottisham’s insistence on metaphysical enforcement.
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