(A lecture hall packed with students, academics, and the mildly curious. A huge blackboard, charts, and a precarious pointer. Blottisham strides to the front with grave purpose.)
Blottisham
Ladies and gentlemen! Today I will teach you thermodynamics as it must be. Energy flows, entropy increases, and the arrow of time marches forward — as the universe commands!
Quillibrace
Depends what you call “commands.”
Elowen
Or marches.
Slide 1: Energy Flows
Blottisham (pointing at a diagram of a melting ice cube)
Observe! Heat flows from hot to cold. Disorder increases. There is no escaping the law!
Elowen
Observe, yes. But the ice isn’t “flowing” toward cold. It is simply in a configuration whose continuations overwhelmingly favor melting.
Blottisham
“Overwhelmingly favor”? This is subversive! The laws demand it!
Quillibrace
No, only the constraints do. The rest is availability.
Blottisham
Availability! I refuse! The universe must obey!
(The ice melts anyway. The audience nods politely.)
Slide 2: Entropy
Blottisham
Entropy is disorder! Disorder, I say! Bold, underlined, italicised!
Elowen
Entropy is not disorder. It is the ease with which configurations can continue.
Blottisham
Ease… ease… nonsense! My slide refuses to convey reality correctly!
Quillibrace
Depends what you call “correctly.” The slide behaves exactly as availability allows.
(Blottisham glares at the blackboard. Chalk smudges in all the “wrong” places.)
Slide 3: Arrow of Time
Blottisham
Time moves forward! The past is fixed. The future is open. Entropy ensures it!
Elowen
Time does not move. There is no “push.” Only the slope of constraint availability.
Blottisham
Slope?! I cannot teach a slope! Students are gasping! The law itself is insulted!
Quillibrace
Or perhaps, the students are simply observing the overwhelmingly probable sequence of configurations.
(Blottisham slams the pointer down. It wobbles precariously on the desk. Students remain seated. Nothing “collapses.”)
Slide 4: Energy Conservation
Blottisham
Energy is lost! Heat dissipates! Batteries drain! Engines fail!
Elowen
Energy is never lost. Only redistributed. Some configurations become astronomically hard to marshal.
Blottisham
Astronomically hard? That is absurd. I cannot even make a diagram correctly!
Quillibrace
It depends what you mean by “correct.”
(Blottisham mutters incoherently while the diagrams subtly rearrange themselves according to combinatorial availability.)
Audience Interaction
Student 1
Sir, is the universe really conspiring to contradict your lecture?
Blottisham
Conspiring? No! It… it merely refuses to obey my will!
Elowen
Precisely. And in doing so, it is perfectly lawful — and rather elegant.
Student 2
So nothing actually forces entropy or time?
Blottisham
Forces?! No, you misunderstand. I… I meant…
Quillibrace
You meant nothing. Nothing does. The rest is just structure and availability.
(Blottisham collapses into his chair, pointer clattering to the floor. Students quietly take notes.)
Closing
Blottisham
I have failed to teach reality. I have failed to enforce laws. I am… undone.
Elowen
Yet, you have taught something far more subtle: that the universe operates through relational gradients, not metaphysical edicts.
Quillibrace
And that combinatorial inevitability trumps authority, even in thermodynamics.
(The audience applauds politely. Blottisham glares at the applauders, feeling both defeated and strangely enlightened. The lecture continues to exist, entirely indifferent.)
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