“Are you familiar with the concept of entropy?” 2 asked. Of course, there was no reply from the four walls that boxed him in the confessional. He had told 3 he needed to make his daily Reconciliation before he retired for the night. Not being a Catholic, she hadn’t recognized the term for confession until he’d explained it to her.
“Entropy is more in the realm of physics than mathematics, but I always had greater aims than just being a math teacher. I wanted to be a great researcher, a pioneer, a mad fucking scientist… an Einstein or Hawkins. A Carl Sagan or Michio Kaku would do. But one’s dreams break down, don’t they, because that’s entropy for you.
“Entropy is a measure of disorder, and entropy follows what you call an ‘arrow of time,’ which means like time it can only go one way — toward greater entropy. The infamous second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of a closed system will never decrease, but will increase whenever possible. A macrostate is made up of microstates, and it’s vastly more likely for a macrostate to contain a greater than lesser number of microstates. That’s why it’s so much more likely you’ll have a bad hand in poker than a straight flush. Like I say, entropy leads inevitably to increased entropy. And so one’s ambitions, one’s hopes and aspirations, tend to have this way of breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces until they become irretrievable. So compromised they’re unrecognizable.
“So I may never become a great scientist. I may have to be content holding onto my chiseled down little math teacher pebble for dear life. But I pray to the God beyond all physics that I can hold onto what’s left of the dreams I had for me and 3. I can’t tell her, can I, that when I found out the truth about her it was a major blow.” He laughed out loud. “Ah… let’s not talk about major blow right now. The thing is, I was both kind of dismayed and excited at the same time. On a purely sexual level. On a freaky wild, I’ve-never-visited-this-exotic-country-before level. But in terms of forming a relationship with this wom… this person. In terms of marrying this person, and introducing her to my son and my family and the world as my wife… my feelings are more conflicted than I’ve let on. I still want to be with her. I still hope we can build something. But… but…” He broke off and sighed, words failing him as he had passed from the halls of science to the jungles of emotion.
“The thing is,” he mumbled, in a faraway voice, “I can’t remember if I discovered the truth about her up in that storage room on the third floor, or just a short time ago in the mess hall.” He shook his head like a dog casting off water. “But what am I saying… of course I discovered it in the storage room. How could we have made love without me noticing a little something like that?” Again he was reminded of the drugs they’d all been taking. Again, reminded of his resolve to no longer take them.
“There’s negative entropy, called negentropy, but that’s not a reversal of entropy — it’s just a measure of organization, sort of the complement to entropy. But can you imagine if we could manipulate that ‘arrow of time’… if entropy could be reversed, toward greater and greater order and unity? If we could control that — control time, control physics — then we’d be God ourselves.” His voice was growing faraway again, sluggish as his eyelids grew weighted. “We could become whatever we wanted to be, and fulfill all our dreams and potential. We could become the whole that we never otherwise seem able to attain…”
6 didn’t look forward to sharing the men’s dormitory with 2 tonight, after their heated exchange, but he didn’t fancy the alternative of dragging his sleeping bag elsewhere to set up camp. The series of rooms they had been using for dorms, showers, toilets, and the laundry were all close in vicinity to the banquet hall, and all had been swept clean before their arrival. Most of the other rooms in this complex appeared to have dusty, chalky, debris-pebbled floors. And truth be told, he found the place eerie, and the proximity of the other test subjects — yes, even including 2 — to be comforting.
But as he turned in early for the night and slipped into his sleeping bag wearing just his boxer shorts, he hoped he fell asleep before 2 came in to join him. He wasn’t normally one to back down, but getting into a fight wasn’t worth losing four thousand dollars.
The room was warm, its sole radiator giving off heat, and the material of the greenish sleeping bag was thick but light. He thought he’d be successful in cozily drifting off before 2 showed up. He lay on his back, contemplating the tiles in the ceiling. Some of them were missing, leaving empty black gaps. For all he could tell, that was the night sky behind them — or the infinity of space.
Already growing drowsy, he felt that he could hear the faint sifting/hissing sound of falling snow against the building’s roof and windows. But that was impossible in here, he knew. Still, it was a soothing kind of white noise, perhaps created by his own mind to accompany him to sleep.
Slumber was about to take hold, but 6 never did sleep on his back, so he rolled onto his left side. In so doing, he saw the figure step out of the graffiti.
It was in the shape of a man, but without clothes, without features, entirely obsidian as if the person had been dipped in glistening black oil. Elastic black strands connected the back of the figure, from head to feet, to the painted wall. It took one slow step forward, and some of the strands stretched thinner and disconnected. The faceless black face turned in 6’s direction.
He screamed, screamed shrilly, and thrashed madly to kick himself out of his sleeping bag, which suddenly seemed like more of a straitjacket. The eyeless figure took another slow-motion step across the room toward him.
6 managed to get free, scrambling to his feet. The wet-looking walking silhouette had taken a third step, and the last of the stringy tar tethering it to the wall had snapped, when 6 bolted from the room still shrieking.
3 and 5 met him in the hallway. He crashed into them, nearly bowling them both over, and as they held onto 6 to both calm him down and hold themselves up, he looked back over his shoulder with wild eyes.
“What is it?” 5 asked, unconsciously digging her nails into his arms.
“Someone in my room!” 6 panted. “Someone walked out of the wall!”
“What?” said 3.
6 babbled in Spanish — “Fantasma!” — but then swallowed and tried again. “A ghost! A fucking ghost — in there!” He pointed toward the open doorway to the men’s sleeping room.
“Come on,” said 3, breaking away from them and striding toward the room purposefully.
6 cried, “Don’t!”
“Wait!” 5 called. Though terrified, she started after 3.
If there truly had been an apparition, it would be gone when she looked, 3 thought. Wasn’t that the teasing and fickle way ghosts operated? And yet she still had to see for herself…
It was still there.
There was no longer an upright, human-shaped figure stepping across the room. Instead, what 3 and — close on her heels — 5 encountered was a barely anthropomorphic form lying on the floor. This mostly shapeless mass at best resembled a human being bound tightly in a black plastic garbage sack, and as if imprisoned thus and running out of air, the cocoon-like form was squirming and thrashing on the floor in a frenzy. When 6, having mustered his courage, came up behind the two women, he was oddly reminded of himself when he had been struggling to free himself of his sleeping bag.