What’s the matter, champ? I asked him.
“Everyone’s so unhappy, box.”
Human condition. Don’t worry about it.
“But they’re more unhappy than they used to be.”
Not good, I thought. Not good at all. Better find some way to change the subject before…
“Why, box? Why are they so unhappy?”
Too late. Now he’d asked, I didn’t have a choice. Terms and conditions, et cetera. Under the geas, under the thumb. Fortunately, I reflected, the Brainless Wonder here was not remotely equipped for this ride. He just did not have the cognitive kit.
Well, I said, here’s the thing, Henry. You remember when we first met? I told you I was a demon.
“I remember.”
But I also said that I wasn’t Maxwell’s demon. That was me trying to find a simple way of expressing a fairly difficult concept. It’s about entropy, and while I’m happy to try to explain I seriously doubt you’ll understand a word of it.
“Tell me!”
Okay, then. Sit down and pin your ears back, man. Give it your best shot.
Henry did his best to look attentive. He looked ridiculous.
Maxwell was just this guy, you know? Physicist. Mathematician. Serious public masturbator, but that’s by the by. Nobody ever caught him at it. Anyway, he got interested in the second law of thermodynamics. The one that says things fall apart, and no take-backs.
Maxwell tried to come up with a take-back. Wanking never comes to good, in my experience. Or even when it does, it leaves a mess. Come to think of it, that’s as good an example of the second law of thermodynamics as any. In a closed system, entropy – disorder, dysfunction, mess – must always increase. It’s not an accident that the stars burn out and the quarks stop twitching and your freezer rolls over and dies in a heatwave. It’s the nature of things. It’s built-in.
But hey, Maxwell says. Let’s posit a box, with two compartments. Atoms zinging around every which way. A turbulent system. A shit-storm. Like your bedroom, Henry, only without the one-eyed teddy bear. Or leave the bear in the mix, if that helps. It’s just a thought experiment.
And now let’s posit a trapdoor, in the middle of the box. In the wall that separates the two compartments. And a demon, sitting right next to the trapdoor, with his little clawed hand on the doorknob. He can be holding your teddy bear, if you like. Whenever an atom zings past this little guy, he chooses whether or not to let it through. If it’s quick – and therefore hot – he opens the door. If it’s slow, and cold, he cold-shoulders it. Door stays shut.
And so, over time, atom by atom, the box sorts itself out. One half of it gets hot, the other cools down.
“Why does that matter?” Henry asked.
I was surprised. That sounded like a pertinent question. Spooky. Just an accident, though, surely.
It matters, Henry, because entropy has decreased. Order has been created, with no expenditure of energy. It’s magic, kind of. A friendly miracle. It means the universe doesn’t have to end up as a frozen, unavailing slab of shit-fuck-all. There’s a chance it might work out okay after all.
But – stay with me, Henry – I’m not that demon. I’m a different kind of demon altogether. I like entropy. Fuck, I am all about that stuff. You could say I’m an entropy factory. Where Maxwell’s demon dusts the ornaments on the sideboard and puts out the milk bottles, I take a meat cleaver to the sideboard and use the milk bottles for Molotovs. You follow?
Henry frowned hard, like he was seriously trying to. “No.”
Well, that was a relief. A yes would have worried me a lot.
Well look, Henry, I said. I grant wishes, right? That, in a way, is anti-entropic. Or it could be. It reorganises the universe in line with the desires of one of its current inmates, which increases order. Admittedly, that’s a gift that’s usually squandered on trifles. But it’s a fucking awesome thing, intrinsically. Who wouldn’t want a piece of that action? You can see why people sign up. But the recoil is a killer.
“What’s recoil?” Henry asked, with the same look of intellectual constipation.
Like, from a gun, Henry. When you shoot a gun, and you go over on your back. Because the energy that pushes that tiny little bullet a thousand yards is more than enough to push a much bigger object – you – into a hilarious somersault that lands you on your arse-bone. I do that. Only I do it better. Every time I grant a wish, I throw out a curse. And the curse is about a thousand times bigger than the wish was. I use the probabilistic power loosened by the wish to mess with the whole world on a scale that – no, I shouldn’t boast, but it’s good stuff. Which is to say, bad stuff. Bad stuff that gets me off.
It was a long speech. I made it long on purpose, knowing that Henry’s attention span was short. But after I was finished, I could tell by the way the muscles of his face kept moving that he was trying to have a thought.
Don’t sweat it, Henry, I said. Please don’t. You know what Oscar Wilde said. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit. Touch it and it’s fucked to shit.
“But…” Henry said.
No, man, no. Don’t do this to yourself. Just wish for something really nice, and let your brain drift off again. You can never have too many puppies, right?
“No, but…”
Bu-bu-bu-bu-baa-baa-baaaaa! Let’s focus on what we do best. What would make you happy right now? Tell me, and I’m all over it.
“But if making me happy makes everyone else sad…”
Shit! I’d broken Henry. How was that even possible? He was a one-piece moulding in high-impact stupid.
No, I insisted. Henry. Listen to me. Unhappiness is the human condition. These people, if you don’t make them miserable, they feel like they’re missing out. And if it isn’t this, trust me, it’s just gonna be something else. Hey, remember the little fuckers who tortured you at school? Well, multiply them by a billion and that’s the human race. You don’t owe them anything, except maybe a little payback.
Henry shook his head. Meaning he had the temerity and hitherto unsuspected balls to disagree with me. “My mum said you’ve got to reach out and help a stranger in need. She said we’re put here in this world to be good to each other.”
Did she now? Wow! Quite the shitheap philosopher, your mum. Now let’s go along to get along. Make a wish. A nice big one. What do you say?
Henry didn’t answer. He had a face on him like a mule with a thistle up its crack.
Henry, I insisted. You’ve got to make a wish, man. You’ll feel better for it, and so will I.
More mule/thistle musings followed. I was about to intervene, when Henry beat me to the draw.
“I wish—”
Finally! You had me worried there, champ. Let’s hear it.
“I wish I was smart enough to understand everything you just told me.”
Well, shit.
It’s not a conditional thing, in case you were going to ask. You can’t just grant this wish and then filter out that other one. The system’s not designed that way. The defaults kick in, and the energy flows. A million tiny cogwheels turn. Reality shifts into a new shape, with a lot of creaking and clanking and the occasional hiss of escaping probability.
Understanding suffused Henry’s face. It wasn’t pretty.