The event takes place in Perpetuum Mobile

A fact is constantly recurring and therefore predictable. An event, on the other hand, occurs unexpectedly and disrupts the order of facts. Our relationships and habits are no longer what they used to be. The same thing constantly returns in the order of facts. An event, on the other hand, is a rupture in the order of facts. Placing fact and event at opposite poles has become a habit. Thinking based on binary oppositions loves to pit things against each other. It fails to grasp that fact and event do not conflict, let alone exclude one another, but rather are intertwined and can transform into one another when the time and place are right. Because the things we define as facts don't always return in the same way. Each time they recur, a difference, however small, emerges, and even if we don't notice it—a consequence of our perceptual inadequacy—things change. What we define as facts are never immune to events. A series of micro-events, beyond our awareness, befall things, and eventually, facts become events: "I've changed so much that I didn't recognize you" (Oscar Wilde). The facts that turn into events not only disrupt their own memories, they also disrupt the memories of others.

But events also become accustomed. After a while, events become facts, and order is reestablished. The order of facts is the order of memorization, of habits. Once a person becomes accustomed, they soon become a fact among facts, and as long as they insist on remaining a fact, they will maintain their current order. In the order of facts, object and subject can switch places. Does Sisyphus carry the rock, or does the rock carry Sisyphus? It's indistinguishable. Subjects and objects are parts of a perpetually mobile machine, a machine designed to operate indefinitely after the initial motion is given. If let go, Sisyphus and the rock could repeat the same motion indefinitely. But after a while, a kind of discomfort and restlessness emerges in the body, what Locke calls "uneasyness" and physicists call entropy. Some might even call this sinking in comfort. On the surface, everything is going well, but the restlessness of the parts is reflected in the machine, and it slows down. And the force that gave the perpetuum mobile its initial motion must be reactivated and exerted upon the restless parts that were slowing down the machine's operation. The machine may continue to operate regularly for a while, but the restlessness within the body is increasing, and the machine's operation becomes erratic. There is no choice but to apply constant and even more intense force to the parts.

The machine's owner is by no means a violent or sadistic person. He designed his machine to run smoothly, without expending energy. After giving the Perpetuum mobile its first movement, he steps aside and, as programmed, expects Sisyphus to tirelessly carry the ever-falling boulder up the hill. But he was wrong; he assumed Sisyphus was a being composed solely of consciousness and failed to consider the possibility of an unconscious. The restlessness in a being, what Locke calls "uneasyness," stems from micro-perceptions in the unconscious that cannot be fully perceived. He senses something happening, but cannot articulate it; he is restless. "Even when it stands still, even when its conscious perception is well-framed, this means that something is swarming: small perceptions, small appetites that nudge fluid small perceptions… that is the situation" (Deleuze). And when these small perceptions rise to the level of consciousness and become perceptible, consciousness changes, and we can no longer speak of facts, but of events. The moment Sisyphus, conceived as an ordinary phenomenon, says, "I am another," it becomes an event. The event takes place in the perpetuum mobile, and the machine no longer functions as before.

When he hears that Lisa has invented a perpetuum mobile, Homer's father's reaction is, "In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics" (The Simpsons). He doesn't want to be a constantly recurring phenomenon of the machine. Those who obey the laws of the machine cannot transform; they are prevented from becoming events. They have hope: the machine might change hands, and perhaps its new owner might free them from the prison of events in which they are imprisoned. But this is impossible; the machine is composed of events, and it is its nature to generate unrest. Becoming an event is inevitable.