. . .

Jane sleeps. She goes to school. Then she comes home. She invites a young girl named Emily over. Then she and Emily play.

“Ew,” says Jane, looking at Johnny Pancake. “I think he’s going bad.”

Emily grins a little. Emily’s been taught by a dwarf-smith. She’s a girl with superior knowledge! “You know,” she says, “food doesn’t have to go bad like that.”

“Oh?”

“The reason food goes bad,” Emily says, “is the entropy. But if you feed the food, that balances the entropy out!”

“That’s true!” Jane realizes. “It’s adding energy usable for work from outside the system!”

<< – 5 –

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