“Mephi? It is from Mephisto. You remember, there on the rock, the figure of the youth? Or, no. I shall explain it to you in your own language and you will understand better: there are two forces in the world, entropy and energy. One leads into blessed quietude, to happy equilibrium, the other to the destruction of equilibrium, to torturingly perpetual motion. Our, or rather your ancestors, the Christians, worshipped entropy like a God. But we are not Christians, we.⁠ ⁠…”

At that moment a slight whisper was suddenly heard, a knock at the door, and in rushed that flattened man with the forehead low over his eyes, who several times had brought me notes from I-330 . He ran straight to us, stopped, panting like an air-pump, and could say not a word, as he must have been running at top speed.

“But tell me! What has happened?” I-330 grasped him by the hand.