(Blottisham’s dining room: charts pinned to walls, diagrams of “energy flow,” and labeled soup bowls. Candles flicker; a faint aroma of mild exasperation lingers. Guests enter cautiously.)
Blottisham
Welcome! Tonight, I will teach the universe how to behave.
No more tepid soup. No more heat spontaneously wandering. Entropy will obey my clearly drawn arrows!
Quillibrace
It depends what you mean by “teach.”
Elowen
And what you mean by “obey.”
Blottisham
I mean: obey. I have charts, diagrams, and a laser pointer.
(He brandishes a pointer like a sword. A guest flinches.)
The Soup Demonstration
Blottisham
Observe! Soup bowl A will cool at precisely 0.02 degrees per minute unless I intervene. Soup bowl B will not surpass 98°C without my express permission!
Quillibrace
Ah, yes. Intervention. How… relational.
Elowen
Or… you might notice that both soups are simply exploring available configurations. Some continuations are overwhelmingly probable — independent of any pointer.
Blottisham
Nonsense! If I do not exert authority, the laws themselves will rebel!
Quillibrace
The laws do not rebel. They are statements about constraint space. The soups are merely following what is easiest given those constraints.
Blottisham
Constraint space?! Now you are speaking in riddles. Riddles do not cool soup!
(Soup A sloshes slightly — as predicted by “constraint space.” Blottisham glares.)
The Ice Cube Experiment (Again)
Blottisham
Next: ice in water. If the ice does not melt exactly as instructed, I shall call the universe to account!
Elowen
Or, alternately, you may note that the ice and water configurations simply have far more accessible continuations where the ice melts than where it unmelts.
Blottisham
Far more accessible continuations?! I will not stand for probabilistic handwaving in my dining room.
Quillibrace
Consider it a teaching moment: the universe has no need of your approval. It merely keeps doing what is cheap.
Blottisham
Cheap! My tea is spilling! My perfectly calibrated diagrams are useless!
Elowen
It is… perfectly consistent. Just not with your sense of control.
Dinner Service Chaos
(Dinner arrives. Plates are warm, then slightly cool. The roast refuses to remain evenly rare. Gravy spreads into puddles of increasing “relational availability.” Blottisham’s annotations grow frantic.)
Blottisham
See! Even the roast defies me! I demand that the gravy maintain perfect separation until I say otherwise!
Quillibrace
It depends what you call separation.
Elowen
The gravy is simply following the gradient of available configurations. It’s… very cooperative, actually. Just not in the way you intend.
Blottisham
The universe is conspiring against me. I see it clearly now.
Quillibrace
Or you might notice: it’s just doing the overwhelmingly probable thing. No conspiracy required.
Elowen
And the wine? Still obeys relational availability. No spillage, only abundance.
Blottisham
I… I cannot teach reality. It is relentless. It is perfectly indifferent. And yet… and yet… somehow elegant.
(He sits, dejected but contemplative. Guests quietly sip wine and eat food, marvelling at how little Blottisham actually controls.)
Closing Notes
Quillibrace
You see, Elowen: effort expended does not guarantee outcome.
Elowen
Indeed. But the lesson is deliciously instructive.
Blottisham
I shall never forgive the universe for its combinatorial temerity.
(He stabs at his notes. Soup sloshes. Ice melts. The roast continues its unguided trajectory. The universe remains unmoved.)
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