A dust bunny can dream...but they can also have nightmares

Dust prevails yet again.

No matter how much you vacuum your house, dust will always win. With a little help from entropy, dust bunnies will remain and vacuum cleaners won't - look at them; worn out, ground down, broken up.

Given that a dust bunny will forever abhor vacuum cleaners in any shape or form, it's not unexpected that a curious dust bunny will want to know more about this 'entropy' thing that does such a fine job of wearing out, grinding down and breaking up vacuum cleaners.

To find out more about entropy Rayon, Knickers, Stour, Twill and the fuzzballs have sought out the experts.
In this excerpt Rayon and the others quiz the brainiac, high-density dust bunnies who inhabit the nooks and crannies in our tv's and electronic gadgetry.
(Being so clever and all, these brainiac dust bunnies have taken the names of the scientists they've heard about on TV.)

‘Professors, this entropy, can it stop the central vac?’

‘Hmmm,’ hummed Penrose in a very learned way.

‘The second law of thermodynamics against the central vac?’ pondered Boltzman ponderously.

‘Let us think about that.’ said Hawking.

‘They have laws against central vacs? That sounds promising,’ Knickers whispered to Rayon.

The professors went into a grey huddle and conferred noisily. After another heated argument, Schrodinger was nominated and thrust out to deliver their carefully considered opinion.

‘Well, in the long term, yes,’ he said. ‘Entropy will defeat the central vac. The heating and cooling cycles will take their toll on the lighter plastics so they will embrittle and crack, then fracture and break off into small pieces. Other plastics like insulation will slowly dry up and crack, metal contacts will be prone to heat stress, pitting, corrosion and wear. Any dampness in the air will encourage rust and vibrations should encourage it to shake itself to pieces eventually. Or the bearings in the motor will lose their lubrication and run red hot so they seize up solid, welded to itself.’

An appreciative ‘ooooh’ came from the highly attentive fuzzballs and an engrossed Stour.

Schrodinger went on. ‘Additionally, the seals and gaskets keeping The Wind in the central vac will shrivel and crack, causing loss of suction. Vibration will further loosen bits here and there, switches will lose their on and off click. Finally, it’ll be hauled off to the dump or melted down as scrap metal. Later, the sun will expand and burn the earth and the remains of the central vac into space, where its very atoms will be dispersed into an ever-expanding universe, perhaps to be synthesised by the power of a supernova back into new elements.’

‘And could all this happen before, say, next week?’ asked Knickers.

The monitor bunnies went into another muttering huddle. After a patience-straining age, Schrodinger came back with an answer.

‘In our carefully considered opinion, after weighing all the options, we have a consensus on that issue.’

‘Did he just answer or sneeze?’ whispered Stour to Knickers.

‘Shhh. Which is?’ asked Knickers.

‘No.’

‘Oh. So, this entropy isn’t much use then?’ said Knickers. ‘We’re all going to get tidied up next week.’

‘Well, there is another possibility,’ said Schrodinger.
Not a good one, though.’

Twill prompted him this time, wishing he had a pointy stick to hurry him along.

‘Which is?’

‘Fire.’

‘What’s wrong with a burning central vac?’ asked a puzzled Stour. Knicker’s shrug suggested she couldn’t see what the problem was either.

‘Could burn the house down,’ pointed out Rayon.

‘Ah, yes. That,’ said Knickers as the penny dropped. Stour’s still quizzical look, however, hinted that his penny was still somewhere in mid-flight.

‘You!’ snapped Schrodinger, pointing at Stour with a rigid thread and stern gaze. ‘What do you suppose burns first when a central vac catches fire?’

‘Bits of central vac, I would imagine.’

‘No, not bits of central vac. Bits of dust bunnies.’

Stour’s penny landed, but his brief, bright dawn of understanding was suddenly dimmed by the dark, looming clouds of the implications.

‘Oh, that’s not good.’

But a dust bunny isn't always fortunate enough to always dream of vacuum cleaners dead or beyond repair.

Sometimes a dust bunny has dark, troubling, turbulent dreams about The Wind That Blows Backwards, a vacuum cleaner's insatiable inhalation that threatens to swallow everything into its dark, ever open maw.