What Entropy Means to Me

by George Alec Effinger

  He did not sleep that night. As the white sky broke up after the rain, pulling apart like cotton to show the cheerless stars, he got again to his feet. The River ran harder now under the burden of the day's rain, and Dore followed it further. The grassy meadowland soon began to broaden to his left and to his right, across the River. After a short while he noticed that he was crossing a great, wide plain that stretched to the distant horizon, featureless except for the River. Shortly before the next dawn he camped beside the water and slept through the hottest part of the day. He awoke in the late afternoon and continued his journey, hungry and weary.

  Soon Dore observed that the River itself was changing. The great River was somewhat narrower now, as streams split from it and went off at nearly perfect right angles. I suppose these streams always cut through the opposite bank, or, if they did intersect Dore's line of march, that he found some way of crossing them without entering the water itself. Then again, it's possible that he felt that as soon as the water left the main channel of the River it lost its holy nature.

  In any event, these streams seemed to happen more and more frequently, and as a consequence the River became smaller. When it had shrunk to about the size that it is as it circles past the faraway house of our First family, it poured into a huge, beautiful, elliptical lake. The lake was set into the grassland like a polished stud in a velvet garment. It was perfectly still; no wind rippled its mirror surface. At what appeared to be the foci of the ellipse were two small islands, covered with shrubbery and trees. The tall, slender, white trees were the first that Dore had seen in days. He addressed a tentative prayer to the swollen section of the River, and the implied swelling of its holiness.

  At the farther end the shoreline was broken by five small rivulets which ran out of the lake and diverged quickly. Dore studied them for some time and finally decided that they all must be from the original sacred River, and they all must lead where he had to go. Either he chose to follow the largest of the streams or he chose the nearest.

  The undergrowth grew denser. The dry needle grass gave way to bushes and tall, delicate ferns, to tough climbing vines and creepers, then to the deciduous growths, the micha and the oaks, and finally to Dore's beloved dense, dark woods. The stream that he followed gurgled pleasantly, without the rushing roar of the River. Dore could see smooth, moss-covered stones through the shallow water. He heard the singing of cicadas and katydids. He felt at home again, but he knew he couldn't go on much longer.

  The brook tumbled over logs and squeezed past boulders. Water spiders made their profane, gliding way on its surface. Unless, being born to the water, they were holy in their own right; in that case Dore addressed a line of prayer to them, too. From the right another of the five streams arched through the trees, joining the one Dore followed and making a larger creek. In a short while they split around a jagged chunk of stone and went on separately. Dore made his choice. Further on two streams joined his, splitting later into two parts. Dore chose again. The streams wound through the forest, meeting and dividing in confusing combinations. Dore became increasingly convinced that it was unnecessary to differentiate among them; he followed the branch that looked nicest at the time. The rivulets continued on, making their roughly parallel courses through the woods.

  Toward evening Dore stopped at the edge of a precipice. The stream leaped over the edge, splashing holiness on Dore and on the dead leaves of the forest floor. He could see that there were four other streams that spilled together: As they fell they mixed again to form the River, reborn in its virgin purity. Dore climbed slowly down the face of the cliff, stepping carefully on the wet, slick rocks. It was dusky and difficult for him to see below. The roar of the waterfall grew louder, echoing from the walls of the canyon into which he was climbing, making him slightly dizzy.

  He clung for a moment on a narrow ledge. He paused, gasping for breath and feeling the weakness in his arms and legs. His head was pressed close to the mossy wall. He felt something touch his foot: rodent? reptile? He glanced down.

  A hand was grasping his ankle.

  Dore's throat felt dry, his head buzzed with fear. He nearly lost his grip on the rocks in his panic.

  "Take it easy," a voice said. "There's a wider one just below you. Kneel on the ledge that you're on, grab hold of the edge, and let yourself down. You'll have to swing in pretty far, but I'll steady you. There's plenty of room here for both of us."

  Dore did as he was told. He let go and landed on a wide shelf of rock. A young man about his own age was sitting at the far end. The man gestured, smiling, and Dore sat down, too. He looked over the edge: blackness so deep that it stifled even the rumbling of the falling water.

  "Make yourself comfortable," said the man. "It's not bad here, better than you might think. I've been here for quite a while, and you're the first person that's happened by; I guess you know how hard the trip is. It'll be nice having someone to talk to."

  "Who are you?" asked Dore.

  "Well, who are you? You're the stranger here, you know."

  "My name is Dore, and I am the eldest male of the First family of Home."

  "Well, that's very funny. In that case, you're my son. Hello. I haven't seen you since you were that high. How have you been?"

  "Are you my Father?"

  "Yes. How have you been?"

  "I have come to look for you. I never expected to really find you."

  "It's fantastic, all right. How are you?"

  "Fine," said Dore. "And you?"

  "All right, I guess."

  "You . . . you are Our Father?"

  The man laughed. "I'm your father, at least. I think. With that mother of yours I was never certain. By the way, how is Sue Ann?"

  "Sue Ann?"

  "Your mother, boy. How is she? Oh, never mind; I can see that you got her brains."

  "You're really Our Father? I mean, I've been searching for you all this time, and you —"

  "Yes, you idiot. What's the matter? You want a signed affidavit or something? Who else you know would be sitting on this ledge Ommming out of sheer boredom for the last thirty years?"

  "Why are you no older? You look as you must have when you first went down the River."

  Dore's father shrugged, then pointed off the ledge into the darkness. "Down there," he said, "the Well."

  "The Well'?"

  "Yes. The Well of Entropy."

  The two of them were silent for a while, listening to the murmurings from the darkness, each lost in his own amazed thoughts.

  Finally Dore said, "What about the Well of Entropy?"

  "Down there is the entropic center of Home at least, and possibly the universe. Everything that falls down there becomes more and more dissociated, tending to the primal chaotic state. Matter is destroyed as the electrons constituting that matter slow and stop. When the electrons stop spinning and the atoms fall apart: no more matter, just randomly distributed, wasted energy. Up there, where you came from, is the River, the symbol and essence of divinity on this planet. God is the ultimate Order, the embodiment of organization. The River and the Well are the two poles of existence; I suppose that it is necessary for the River to have its source from the Well to make the cycle complete. Someday someone will explore the River upstream as we have done in this direction."

  "But going upstream is sacrilegious."

  "Let me decide that. Anyway, this ledge is halfway between them, tending neither toward destruction or synthesis. Everything here stays exactly the same. We don't need food or water, and time is meaningless. Sit back, pull up a rock. It's kind of boring."

  "What?" said Dore. His mind was stunned by the impact of all these new ideas. "How do you know what's down there?"

  "I climbed down about a year after I first arrived. I didn't have anything else to do."

  "How did you survive? Weren't you subject to the forces of entropy, too?"

  "No. I suspected that staying in the curtain of the falling water would protect me. Enough of the water was being annihilate
d so that I had little trouble climbing down. Besides, I didn't want to go very far. Pretty soon the rocks go, too, and you're left scrambling around on metaphysics."

  "What did you see? What could there be? Is it Heaven?" asked Dore.

  "Caverns, son. Caverns, measureless to man. Mind-bending panoramas of sinuous rills, senses-stunning spots of greenery, and the ultimate in brain-warping romantic chasms."

  "Was your brain warped?"

  "No," the young man said slowly, "I got the hell out of there." Dore's father stood up and walked to the rim of the shelf. "I want to go up the cliff again. I want you to come with me. We're going to fill that hole with rocks. We can go up there and push down all the rocks and logs we can find. Block it up. Back the River up so there will never be any death for anything. We can do it!"

  Dore watched him, frightened by his father's tone. "No, we can't. It's impossible. You can't overload entropy. Besides . . . besides, there are certain forces in this universe that shouldn't be tampered with; I believe that entropy is one of them."

  "If you won't help me," the other man said, raging, "I'll do it myself! You can't get back up by yourself; I know, I've tried. You can't climb those rocks against the flow of entropy. Two of us, together, might be able to do it. Those cosmic forces of yours play by different rules here. You can't make it alone; I'll leave you down here. I'll turn time back on for you and you can starve!"

  "Look, if I don't help you, you won't get up there, either. You just said so. And when you turn time back on, if you could, won't you suddenly age all those years that you've lost? You'll be an old man. You'll never make it back to the house."

  "What makes you think I'm going back to the house? I wouldn't go back there if . . . That lousy mother of yours. We wouldn't be here in the first place if she hadn't gotten us into debt so far we'd never see daylight. Every time I had us settled she'd trot out her charge cards and get us snowed under. We had to keep running until we ran here. The first thing I did was put the old icepick to her frontal lobes. This is my Home. I made certain that making your wife into a vegetable was strictly within your rights. Then I stuck her out on her silly throne so I wouldn't have to listen to her valve clatter all night. She had the coldest ass in bed you ever saw. I'm not going back there."

  Dore was silent once more. Finally he stood up too, and went to the edge. He knelt; he swung his feet over and searched for a secure footing.

  "What are you doing?" Our Father screamed.

  "I'm going down there. I'm looking for my Father. He wouldn't be just sitting up here raving. Not Our Father. You're an imposter and a liar."

  "Get back up here! You can't leave me like this!" The man grabbed Dore's wrists and pulled, scraping Dore's arms raw on the rock wall.

  "All right, let go," said Dore. "Let go or I'm coming up and beat you to jelly. You're mad."

  "You don't know what you're doing!"

  Dore gazed at him through the gloom. Our brother's eyes were steady, as steady as his voice. "I think I do," he said.

  The man grappled furiously. Dore jerked both arms in an attempt to pull free. His right foot slipped, and he fell out over the chasm, held only by his Father.

  Dore cursed. "Let me go," he said. "Swing me into the wall and I can grab hold. Then let me go or well both go over."

  "No," the other man said, "I can't. I can't let you fall and I can't let you go down there voluntarily." He had dropped to his knees when Dore slipped, and now he tried to stand again. He rose, bent at the waist, and as he moved closer to the edge to pull Dore up, our brother swung himself into the cliff. The older man was forced down again, but this time he lost his balance. He toppled over the brink, never letting go of Dore's wrists.

  "AIIEEEE!" they screamed as they fell to their doom.

  Well, it wasn't a grass dragon after all. Plummeting to certain death with Our Father. My brother, the Kalp, has informed me of our family's dissatisfaction with my Procopian account. He has added, moreover, his own personal disapproval. This won't be the official version, I guess. (Tere also told me, smiling that puffy grin of his, he told me that he would be inclined to go easier on me if I were reclined to go easier on him. I told him that I already had a heavy date down the road, which was, of course, a lie.)

  Our Mother is gone, he said, and her memory is holy to us (Like hell it's holy to him; he was measuring his hyperbolic bottom on her throne last night. Not Our Father's. Her's). The remarks I made about her were profanity of the worst sort. I don't know exactly where I did get them (maybe Our Father is around and transmitting?), but at worst they are creative reportage. Anyway, our family doesn't see it that way. I've already finished packing. I'm honored to have the task of going out to find Dore and Our Father and bringing them back. I'm taking Tere's place. The Kalp's been wondering how he was going to work this. But I don't get the wallet of bread and cheese even. Certainly not a sword: I'm not old enough.

  I thought they left Earth because of things like censorship. Ah, Utopia!

  I also go without the blessing and various rites that are exquisitely Melithiel's, the princess from down the road. I'll miss that. My brothers are always standing around and joking about her. She must be really something. I'd probably like our material better, anyway. (That's just sour grapes. How would I know?) Last night Joilliena came to my room. She was one of the few who would talk to me after the meeting. She wanted to come with me, but I said (rather nobly), "No," I said, "stay and finish your education. If you're in school, stay in school. If you're out and want to get back in, call your State Office of Education Opportunities. I will send for you when I get settled." Of course she cried. I never know what to do.

  This morning my little brother Jelt knocked on the door. I shouted to him, so that he wouldn't come in and embarrass Joilliena. I said, "What do you want?"

  "Beware the plant men and the great white apes at the end of the River," he said. I don't know what he meant; I don't read his books.

  Lalichë was with him, of course. When she spoke she sounded as if she were crying. "This is for you, Seyt," she said. "Be careful." She pushed a piece of white paper under my door. I smiled sadly, thinking it was another of her magic charms. It had a red heart drawn in crayon, and shaky letters that said, "We love you, Seyt."

  I thanked them and they went away. Then I got up and brushed my teeth. Joilliena was still asleep and I left before she woke. It was so romantic that I nearly wept. I kissed her cheek, and she smiled in her dreams. Her hair spilled over the pillow like a wave of amber. Lovely, lovely.

  I won't worry about any plant men. But I will watch out for the Ship of Fools. And those Rhinemaidens, guarding their refound horde of magic gold, as delightfully depicted by Richard Wagner in his opera Götterdämmerung. What real dangers there will be, I cannot say. I don't know. The River I see over there, and the River I described for Dore probably won't be the same. (If they are, I'm already lost.) But, as Fluellen says to Gower in William Shakespeare's immortal play Henry V, "There is a river in Macedon, and there is also moreover a river at Monmouth. . . . But 'tis all one; 'tis alike as my fingers is to my fingers, and there is salmons in both."

  That is in the seventh scene of Act Four.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1972 by George Alec Effinger

  Cover design by Open Road Integrated Media

  ISBN 978-1-4976-0543-5

  This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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  New York, NY 10014

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