This tale takes place in a world which exists in an argon bubble in chromium, inhabited by a civilization of pneumatically-powered machine men, who gain their life energy from spouts from which argon under higher pressure can recharge their reservoirs. One of them, a scientist who has discovered that their brains and memories are active patterns of argon currents within their heads, is faced with the apparent problem that all their mechanical clocks are now running more rapidly. Indeed, it appears that everything is running more rapidly.
He invesigates, and discovers that what is actually happening is that the pressure differential between the master reservoir of argon and the atmosphere in the chromium bubble is being equalized. As the pressure differential drops, the life processes of the machine men have less available energy and thus slow down. It is not that the clocks are running faster, it is that the people are running slower.
Since their life and memories depend on drawing work from the pressure differential, this equalization will ultimately mean the utter extinction of their race and civilization. The story is in the form of a first-person narrative, the scientist writing it down so that successors from some hypothetical other world may know of him and his race, and their lives.
The central concept of the story is the doom of entropy. We humans live in a vastly larger and more complex Universe than do the machine-men (who, despite their confinement, have managed to construct a high civilization), but we are equally sentenced to ultimate death by entropy. We never learn who created the machine men, or why (their forms, as described, seem exceedingly improbable to have evolved rather than been invented). But then again, the origins of our own Universe are equally obscure.
If their world is an experiment, it might be judged a cruel one.
Then again -- so might OURS.
This is an awesomely effective and thought-provoking short story that, to me, exemplifies the best potential of philosophical science fiction. It reminds me of some of Arthur C. Clarke's best work -- not so much in style, but through intellectual scope. It is a story which I shall remember forever.
"The central concept of the story is the doom of entropy. We humans live in a vastly larger and more complex Universe than do the machine-men (who, despite their confinement, have managed to construct a high civilization), but we are equally sentenced to ultimate death by entropy."
ReplyDeleteSo, do you finally get the point I've tried to get you to understand?
And, if you do, it's too bad I didn't think to direct your attention to that story (which I read when it was relatively newly written).
I've understood that humanity is sentenced to ultimate death by entropy since I learned about thermodynamics as a pre-teen. However, I do not believe that this makes either human life or human civilization meaningless. Among other things, "ultimate" can be a very long time away -- in the case of the heat-death of even just one Universe, a matter of many billions of years (according to most theories, we're still living in the early morning of our Universe). And recent discoveries (particularly the Great Attractor and the implications of string theory) strongly imply that our Universe is neither alone nor incapable of interacting with others.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, even if human life and civilization are ultimately doomed, that doesn't mean that there must be a God or other supernatural entity or entities to save us from this doom. It would simply mean that we were ultimately doomed. Why do you imagine that Existence has to be kind to us?
As to the issue of morality, I disagree with your fundamental assumption that if a moral code does not provide success across infinite time that it is of no value. A moral code need merely be adequate to the demands of mutual survival in the cultural moderate term in order to be valuable and hence worth keeping.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, the premise that morality is worthless unless either endorsed by an omnipotent being or useful for an infinite amount of time is an excellent example of "the best being the enemy of the good." You demand a perfect justification and cause for morality, instead of one which is merely adequate and sufficient.
Reality does not contain moral perfection. It does, however, contain plenty of moral excellence.