The constant stream of noise appears to be a form of Mostali and turns out to be one message repeated over and over again. I have written it down verbatum. I have capitalised where the creature shouts.
The creature attempts to make hand signals constantly while talking. I believe that these signals would be identical on every pass of the message were it not for the poor state of repair of the creatures limbs. To my eyes it appears the creature, which displays no emotions, is trying to indicate to the listner the emotional state of whoever gave it the original message.
<NILBERG BEGINS>
Start of message
To: WorldMachine.Mostal.Iron.Workhouse9392.RedGold.Workunit0171
From: WorldMachine.Mostal.Iron.Workhouse9392.RedGold.Workunit6171
Re: ORDER, CHAOS AND DISORDER
Greetings.
I have found my mind taken up with The Prisoner's theory of Entropy which caused such a stir at the council meeting last meta-work-cycle.
I had wished to find some basis to refute the vile thing and so have considered it at length. During this process certain strange images have appeared in my mind during those break periods that require me to bring my conciousness down. I have examined these images during my conciousness-up-but-non-work periods in the hope that they would lead me to flaw in the theory, but they have not.
While I have failed in my aim I have found that my conclusions are somewhat different to The Prisoner's. Unfortunately I can not take much cheer from them and would be very happy if you, valued supervisor, would negate both theories.
THE REFUTED 'ENTROPY' THEORY The Prisoner describes the twin states of Order and Disorder. He shows that the act of creating order requirs work; work uses energy and produces heat which increases the total amount of disorder. Thus when order is produced it is localised and produced at the expense of greater overall disorder. This he calls Entropy.
According to his theory the trend is for order to give way to disorder and for usable energy to become scarce.
You will recall how shocked we all were at the council when this theory was produced. For a man of The Prisoners standing to publicly state that Order gives way to Chaos was seen as an act of willfull and public heresy and he was immediately scheduled to be deconstructed-for-reuse.
THE REPLACEMENT 'CHAOS' THEORY My problem with the theory comes from its handling of Chaos.
Much of our horror came from the assertion that order tended to disorder which we took to be the same as saying that order tends to chaos - but such is not the case.
Chaos is a third state. It is not disorder but anti-order. Between them they make up triangle where all three points are infinately seperated from each other.
The differences between chaos and disorder are a bit difficult for us to see. Later I explain how I picture the three states but first I want to talk about how both Order and Chaos have changed over time.
HOW ORDER HAS CHANGED We have all considered how order has changed as time has passed. In the beginning everything was perfect because the machine functioned perfectly. By stages this flawless order got less and less perfect: gods fell out, people fought, empires fragmented. As life teach us: things fall apart.
HOW CHAOS HAS CHANGED
Consider the following excerpt from the book of Fortune (GDv2#339):
> On the wider issue of sophistication increasing over time in
> Glorantha, I've always assumed this to be so. Clearly it is
> true of Chaos. Compare the brute force of the initial chaos
> incursion with the simple deceit of Nysalor and the complex
> deceptions of the Lunar Empire. Chaos keeps on trying it on,
> and each time it gets more subtle about it.
So Chaos is slowly getting more structured. If we take what Sandy says as true then Law (or at least non-chaos)is getting more disorganised.
This is the nature of entropy in Glorantha: everything tends towards a third point called disorder. Both sustainable order (lots of things as much like each other as possible) and sustainable chaos (lots of things as much UNlike each other as possible) decrease and you get disorder instead.
The trend is for order _and_ chaos to give way to disorder and for usable energy including _mana_ to become scarce.
Here then is the big picture:
THE BIG PICTURE
BIG BANG
In the begining was raw disorder(1). There is a moment of big
bang and out comes perfect primal order and immediately
seperates out into the runes or the elder gods or what have
you. However at the same time an equal amount of anti-order
is also created which is primal chaos.
THE VIBRANT BUBBLE OF ORDER
In the first instance order was in its purest form. At its most
atomic level
The world formed out of the order as it went through
successive stages of seperation into more smaller and more
specialised groupings(2). This bubble of order divides
and divides cell-like while floating in the sea of raw
chaos just like many of surface myths say.
THE BOILING SEA OF CHAOS
To start with this sea exhibits pure and perfect
chaoticness (3) it is broken into an infinite
number of pieces and they are all infinitely different
from every other piece. In an effort to be different
from themselves they constantly change form and nature.
However a process is at work amoungst these pieces; a
process that mirrors the division of the world of
order. (4)
ORDER VS CHAOS - ENTROPY <nilberg jerks silently 18 seconds>
THE STAGNANT SLURRY OF DISORDER While we can accept that in Order, Chaos and disorder there are three three completely seperate states it is difficult for us to understand the difference between disorder and chaos. Perhaps this is because we sit solidly in the Order corner of the triangle. It may be that a truely chaotic being sees little difference between order and disorder (which he would think of as dischaos).
These are the pictures-that-appear-during-conciousness-down-time that I refered to at the start of this message. To begin to see disorders place picture it thus:
Order delights in opposing chaos. Chaos delights in opposing order. Disorder just is.
Both order and chaos are full of energy seeking new forms to represent their ideals. Disorder is empty and stagnant.
Order loves to arrange things into tidy sections of black and white. Chaos hates this and throws out wild multicoloured patterns. But disorder neither loves nor hates and in its final mixing everything is reduced to a brown featureless slurry.
CONCLUSION The good news is that the sea of chaos that lies outside the walls of reality is not infinite - there is an amount exactly equal to that within the bubble of order. Nor is order shrinking and chaos growing, rather as the two mix and try to overcome each other both shrink and disorder grows.
This is also the bad news. Both order and chaos decrease and the featureless stagnant slurry of disorder grows. Mana is used up making magic harder to do and viable effects become smaller. The world becomes mundane.
I forsee disorder as the final state of the machine. A cosmic greyout when order and chaos have fully mixed and all useable mana has been consumed.
NOTES (1) - I was going to say that there was a seething pool of raw disorder. But disorder doesnt seeth. Chaos seeths, disorder just lies there in a mess.
(2) - Note that from the begining the pattern has been for big blocks of high order to break down into smaller blocks. So it would not suprise me if the same thing happens on a human social scale with third big second age empires breaking down into smaller more specialised third age kingdoms.
(3) - 'pure and perfect chaoticness'. I postulate such a state must exist but that it could only be conceptualised by a chaotic being.
(4) - Consider the walktapus. This is a highly chaotic being. As a being of chaos it throws off the laws of the machine. Yet it spawns true to its kind - each child bearing the same differences - each is a walktapus and each breaks the laws that control how much matter a creature must consume to increase its size, multipy or heal from its wounds. In this we see the changes that chaos has undergone, a level of likeness has gradually crept in.
A PERSONAL NOTE As a result of my concentration on the strange images that have come to me a number of disturbing changes have happened to my mental processes. This culminated in an unrequested closedown of consiousness at the height of the end-of-meta-cycle-review-and-long -term-planning-meeting. When my conciousness came back up I found that it had spawned a conviction that repair to the world-machine was pointless.
I would not be suprised if you have noticed a decrease in the quality of my work as this has affected my ability to concentrate.
I would be greatfull if we could meet soon. I will explain these pictures in greater detail and, once you have had time to analyse them you can explain to me where my theories are wrong.
End of message
<NILBERG ENDS>
I'm off to bed now,
Howl LongShirt.
Powered by hypermail