Steam

Solomon lumbered into the steamy room. David hadn't shown up yet so Solomon took off his backpack and sat down in front of the table. He wiped an inch of slippery soot from the surface with his arm, clearing a spot for him to write. The table shook at the cacophonous bellow of David's steam bike outside the window. Gravel blasted up by the studded tires drew fresh scars in the glass panes. Two minutes later David trudged into view, hair sopping wet, with plumes of steamy vapor rising from his soot-encrusted clothes. He spat a mouthful of grit into the floor and sat down across from Solomon. "Like a chip?" Solomon offered, fishing a limp sodden potato chip from the bowl in front of him. It tore apart, and Solomon plunged his fingers in to fish it out, trying futilely to separate the potato from the gravel. "No thanks, I just had some steamed kale" replied David, shaking the murky water from his tangled mane onto the chips. "All right, let me give you the story" began Solomon. "It started like this. In the middle of conquering New Vaporia, King Pistonio interrupted an alien invasion, which has triggered their wrath upon our kingdom of Turbineilles. Consequently Pistonio has asked us to redesign the steam car factory for weapons production. Here, let me sketch the factory in its current layout for you." Solomon removed the cap from his pen allowing thick billowing clouds of steam to escape and fill the room, blocking out all the light. The pen whizzed into action with a jack-hammer rattling, spraying David's face with a speckled display of ink. Solomon waited for the mechanism to heat up, then proceeded. "The perimeter has a U shape, like this." He ran the needle-sharp stylus over the page, tearing the limp paper and wadging it up in a crumple. He tried to piece it back together with chain-link brass tape, but this only made the problem worse. "Perhaps we could go there now and you could show me" David suggested helpfully. "Sure, let's do that!" Solomon coughed through clouds of amorphous undulating vapor. They went outside and hopped on David's steam bike. It was a marvel of technology and art. The exquisite brass-plated gears rolled over each other in perfect harmony, turning chemical energy to swift, linear motion in a kind of elegant dance. Or rather, it could have done that if the whole thing weren't covered in a thick gelatinous ooze, marked and scratched from grit, sand and the occasional projectile sledge hammer, and tragically equipped with a noisy, shaking, belching steam turbine, the heat from which warped and deformed the mechanism from its manufacturing specifications with startling enthusiasm. David and Solomon both wore goggles, helmets and thick leather coats to protect themselves from the onslaught of engineering. They rode into the heart of the city's manufacturing district. Massive rotating shafts carried power from the coal generating plants to the jigsaw puzzle of factories. These phallic symbols of industry, progress and raw, untamed power walled in David and Solomon on either side. Just under two miles form this mess a man named Benjummun Frankly was busy preparing a kite and a key in a way that would transform the industrial jungle beyond recognition, but for now that was just a far-off wisp of steam in the sunset. Against all odds they finally reached the factory, where they arranged a meeting with King Pistonio. "Let me tell you what the real question is" said Pistonio steamily. "Steam is the blood in the veins of our society. But where does the steam come from?" "From burning coal" answered David. "Exactly. But where does the coal come from? From organic matter, whose energy comes from the sun. It's one big orgy of thermodynamics. But the real question is, how did we end up in a low entropy state? Does it derive from the Big Bang, or was it a random fluctuation?" "Well, since low-entropy is by definition unlikely..." David thought allowed. "Ah, but you've forgotten the anthropic principle" the King pointed out femptoseconds before the aliens blew up the building and everything in sight. "Since then philosophers have debated whether it is appropriate to measure that interval in femptoseconds, given that the prefix fempto was not adopted until some decades later." KMFE was explaining to EKA. "But we know what the real moral of the story is." "How can you have a moral to a story that ends with a nihilistic discussion followed by demolishing everything in sight?" KMFE held his teacup in between their faces and let faint wisps pass before their eyes. "Steam, EKA. It's all about steam."