We worked for weeks on the building, carrying buckets of concrete and steel rebar back up and down the ladders, and breathing in dust. But no matter how fast we worked, it wasn’t enough. The deadline came and went, and the white-hats argued on the phone every morning. Eventually, we were forced to start going back in time every night, putting up walls and crossbeams in the past, so they’d be ready the next day.
I objected to this at first, since working through time is against OSHA regulations, but you know how it is on a job-site. Dave pointed out to anyone who would listen that it was also against the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
“Listen, this is crazy,” he’d say as we worked through the night, lit by a moon that had already passed. “It’s the arrow of time. You can’t go backwards. It’s just not possible.”
It had something to do with entropy, Dave said. All physical matter constantly moves from a point of low entropy to a point of high entropy. That’s part of the reason why time only travels in one direction. That’s the arrow, Dave said.
We ignored him. We had work to do.
by Brian Minter