each other in the yin-yang symbol, a perfect heat engine that defies the second law of thermodynamics.
For more than a century, theoreticians and experimenters labored to find a satisfying way to reconcile the demon with the laws of thermodynamics, and they finally reached the conclusion that the key is the information possessed by the demon. The system of demon plus container must increase in entropy because the demon must erase old information in order to record new information.
If dragons are indeed Maxwell’s demons, converting information into heat, then it follows that to do what they do, they must erase information.
No one ever said that the information erased must be inside the dragon’s own brain.
Have you ever wondered why so many dragon-whisperers retire young with dementia, their brains like Swiss cheese? Or why dragons are always attracted to places with lots of people, books, inventions, novelty? Or why every major advance in our use of dragon energy has been accompanied by a revolution, a massive forgetting of traditions, of folklore, of history?
I think dragon breath is powered by mass amnesia, by the erasure of memories, both painful and joyous. In our grand dragon-powered metropolises, books decay, collective memory rots. Dragon-whisperers, closest to the dragons, also bear the brunt of such damage.
I know, I know. You want to hand me a tinfoil hat now and book me on Teddy Patriot’s show. But try, just try for a moment: Isn’t there just the slightest chance that I’m right?
Ever since we became addicted to dragon energy, wars have become less frequent, and former enemies quicker to let bygones be bygones. Forgetfulness isn’t the same as forgiveness, but it helps.
As our civilization has grown ever more complex, have we created new forms of pain, and the need to forget grown more convoluted? Maybe that is why the little dragons have appeared, a kind of adaptive radiation in response to the lush, entropic jungle of our multiplying desires.
If dragons destroy, they do so in the name of creation.
Friends tell me that I’ve mellowed out and grown more philosophical in the past year. I don’t know about that … but the little dragons sure are cute.
INGRID
My daughter was a good mother, or she tried to be. But she was always kind of dreamy, had trouble making and sticking to plans. She tried to make it in California after high school as an artist, but she didn’t have much luck—she told me that the critics who supposedly had the ear of the dragons never seemed to respond to anything she did—and had to come back. After she and Ron had Zoe, things got harder. But anyone could see how much they loved one another.
[The camera moves into the upstairs hallway, around a corner, into a part of the house rarely seen by outsiders. Framed pictures of dragons line the walls: watercolors, oils, pastels, markers, pencils. Some show a mature style and are signed by Julie. Others, more childish, are signed by Zoe. There’s one showing a mother and a little girl as stick figures, riding a powerful winged dragon together. The dragon has bright blue eyes, like the spinning light on top of police vehicles.]
They ran into money problems, and Ron and Julie separated. Every time I went over, the house was a mess. Julie started drinking to make herself feel better. When that stopped working, she turned to something stronger to stop the pain.
Zoe, just seven then, woke up that night, probably from the sirens of police cars responding to the killing of the man down the road—he was Julie’s dealer. Zoe went into her mother’s room and found Julie not moving, her body rigid.
She called me, and all she could get out through the sobs was “Mama’s lips are blue! They’re blue!” I called 911. By the time they got to the house, it was too late.
When Zoe lived with me, she’d have nightmares all the time, but she wouldn’t talk about them. For a while, she drew pictures of dragons, the way her mother and she used to do, but she would never use the color blue. I tried to get her help, but she wouldn’t go to the therapists. “They’ll try to make me forget,” she used to say. “I don’t want to.”
There are many forms of addiction, and one of the most insidious is a helpless devotion to the pain of memory, a self-imposed punishment to be chained to a jagged shoal made up of one moment in time. Her memory of Julie on that night—grief, betrayal, rage, guilt—dominated her life. It was a scar that consumed everything, one that she couldn’t help but pick at again and again.
Oblivion isn’t solace, but sometimes healing does require erasure, as does forgiveness.
ZOE
Alexander thinks that the dragons came to Mannaport first because of our pain.
I don’t think that’s true. Like I said, there’s nothing special about Mannaport. We have an average amount of heartache and grief, of abandonment and betrayal, no more and no less.
But the little dragons are special. They can’t be harnessed to do useful work, at least not the way the adults want. But just because a scalpel can’t be used to chop down a tree doesn’t mean that it can’t help.
I made this bowl of cranberry sauce for Yegong, and I’ll bring it over later. See how I put blueberries in it? Not quite the same shade as its eyes, but it’s the best I can do. Blue is such a pretty color.
Author’s note: For more on Maxwell’s demon and the thermodynamic properties of information erasure, see Charles H. Bennett, “The Thermodynamics of Computation—A Review,” International Journal of Theoretical Physics 21, no. 12 (1982): 905–40.
First of all and last of all
And gnawing at the root
Beside the wall, beneath the hall,
In darkness absolute.
Far below feasts and fighting
Far from the folk of Earth
Relentless in her biting
At courage, love, and mirth.
The deepest dragon coils and curls
Nose twitches, ears flick
Through all the noise of all the worlds
She
