Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy Part 21

Everything in the novel was inevitable, as everything in the supercontinuum containing the novel was inevitable.

And yet Simon had escaped from the novel.

Although not a member of the Warren Belch Society, Simon Moon was, of course, aware of the theory that there was a universe somewhere in which Bacon's major works were still attributed to somebody else. Simon, naturally, was not imaginative enough to conceive that in that universe Bacon had died of pneumonia while conducting experiments in refrigeration. In Simon's usual universe, the author of Novum Organum, The New Atlantis, King Lear Novum Organum, The New Atlantis, King Lear, etc., had lived on to discover the inverse-square law of gravitation, and Isaac Newton was remembered only as a somewhat eccentric astrologer.

In another novel, midway between the old universe and the new, Simon himself had been shot dead by a Chicago cop during the Democratic Convention of 1968. Over there, Bacon had been bold enough to admit publicly his high rank in the Invisible College (Illuminati) and had been beheaded by James I for heresy. In that universe, not just civilization, but all life on Terra, came to a very hideous end in 1984, because the President was constipated one day and made the wrong decision. Their technology was so advanced that half the solar system went nova along with Earth.

In the next universe Simon explored, we were saved because a red-haired Tantric Engineer named Babs Lashtal gave the Prez a first-cla.s.s Grade-A b.l.o.w. .j.o.b in the Oval Room at 10 A.M. A.M., relaxed his tense muscles, pacified his glands, soothed his frustrations, and inspired him to act relatively sane for the rest of the day. He did not push the b.u.t.ton, thereby preserving millions of species of living forms on Earth and thousands of microscopic species on Venus.

Babs Lashtal, of course, was regarded with contempt by all right-thinking people, who had no idea that they owed their lives to her skillful extraction of presidential spermatozoa by means of tender, gentle, gracefully rhythmic kissing, licking, and sucking of the presidential wand.

Even if they had known about it, the right-thinking people would still say Babs should be ashamed of herself.

The whole novel was rather didactic, Simon decided. It was written only to prove a point: Never underestimate the importance of a b.l.o.w. .j.o.b. It had been necessary to write such a novel because the people over there were so ignorant and superst.i.tious they still called Tantric Engineers "wh.o.r.es" "wh.o.r.es" and other degrading names. and other degrading names.

Every universe is inevitable; but there are as many universes as there are probability matrices. The Metaprogrammer chooses which which universe he will enter. universe he will enter.

There is a love that binds it all together, and that love is expressed in primate language as the love of a parent for a child, so Simon was not surprised to find Tim Moon pervading everything, or at least a kind of continuous Tim Moon potential that could be encoded again in another book or that could remain latent for long times, vaguely permeating every book. There were hundreds of thousands of other Wobs there, Frank Little and Joe Hill and Pat Murfin and Neal Rest and Big Bill Heywood and they were all singing like an outlaw Hallelujah Chorus: Though cowards cringe and traitors sneerWe'll keep the Black Flag flying here and Dad himself spoke to me, I swear it, saying, "Just tell them this, son: Capitalism is still nothing but a s.h.i.+t sandwich. The more bread you have, the less s.h.i.+t you've got to eat, and the less bread you have, the more s.h.i.+t you've got to eat. Tell them all." And yet that seems to mark the experience as brain-generated: the style is Simon-puer Simon-puer not not Tim-pater Tim-pater even if the idea is most certainly something old Tim Moon would want to communicate. A collaboration perhaps between the part of Tim Moon that lives on in Simon's memory banks and the part that lives eternally in the Mind of the Author of Our Being. even if the idea is most certainly something old Tim Moon would want to communicate. A collaboration perhaps between the part of Tim Moon that lives on in Simon's memory banks and the part that lives eternally in the Mind of the Author of Our Being.

"Hey, wait, before you turn the page and get into the next section, I want to say one more thing. Those faucets on the sink mean mean something. Every time I stare at them in deep meditation I almost remember something important. Two faucets on a sink, one saying H and one saying C. Remember H. C. That's important." something. Every time I stare at them in deep meditation I almost remember something important. Two faucets on a sink, one saying H and one saying C. Remember H. C. That's important."

The e e continues to fall. continues to fall.

THE GYPSY SWITCH.

The future exists first in Imagination, then in Will, then in Reality.-EVE HUBBARD In spring 1963, while a Mr. Oswald was ordering a Carcano-Mannlicher rifle through the mail, Hugh Crane was in Cambridge, meeting with a famous psychologist who had recently been ejected from Harvard for original research and poor usage of the First Amendment.

"It takes you beyond the body rapture of marijuana?" Crane asked.

"That's the least of it," said the psychologist. "It takes you into something like the parallel universe of science fiction. I'm beginning to think they're parallel neurological universes or different styles of head-games...."

"Games?" Crane said. Crane said.

"Life-scripts, novels," the psychologist suggested, trying other metaphors.

"I dig it," Crane said quietly. "How soon can I try this lysergic acid di-what's-it?"

"Diethylamide."

"How soon?" Crane repeated. "You've got a very willing guinea pig, Dr. Frankenstein."

Cary Grant had already told all the show-biz columnists that this magic chemical had changed his whole life for the better; Cagliostro, typically, went further and began urging its use on everyone. When the backlash struck he and the researcher who had initiated him and a few other researchers and a couple of famous poets and novelists were widely denounced as "high priests of the drug cult." He became a favorite topic for the Sunday supplements and the more ox-like men's magazines-any hack could make a lively story by rehas.h.i.+ng his pot arrests, his morals busts, the rumors about other s.e.xual oddities, his public advocacy of LSD and anarcho-atheism, his mantra, "There is no governor anywhere," and the increasingly popular speculation that his escapes were actually performed through black magic.

It was a disappointment to all the people who loved hating him when he suddenly married the screen's best known s.e.x G.o.ddess, Norma Nelson, and settled down to what appeared to be a very monogamous and un-newsworthy fidelity trip.

Norma herself was delighted that all those rumors about his sadism were obviously untrue. Their s.e.x life was quite normal, and the Ma.s.s of the Holy Ghost was performed without restraints. She discovered, also, the basic secret of his escapes: he never accepted a challenge at once, always jetting on "urgent business" to another part of the country and only taking languid notice of the wager, casually accepting it with total cool, a few days later. The interlude, she found, was spent in duplicating the conditions proposed and finding the gimmick that would work and the misdirection that would distract attention at the crucial moment. She also learned the essence of the okanna borra okanna borra, or "gypsy switch," which is the basis of almost all magic and most con games. The people who thought their own screws, bolts, and chains were used in Cagliostro's escapes were as mistaken as those who think the handkerchief with a hundred dollars that they give the gypsy for blessing is the same handkerchief that comes back to them.

She also learned what alchemy was all about. "I thought that was all superst.i.tion," she said once, pointing at his shelves of old books on the trans.m.u.tation of elements, the Ma.s.s of the Holy Ghost, the Cabala, and the elixir of life.

"We do it almost every night." He smiled. "You have the Cup and I have the Sword. Solve et coagula Solve et coagula, divide and unite-that's why I have to go down on you again at the end. The mystic number 210-that means us two two becoming becoming one one in the peak and the falling into the in the peak and the falling into the void. void. You've got the Triangle and I cause the physical manifestation within it." You've got the Triangle and I cause the physical manifestation within it."

"You mean it's all a code? Why did they have to hide it?"

"Those who didn't got burned at the stake," he said. "Read about the witches and the Knights Templar sometime."

He also began teaching her the Tarot. "Now, the Fool corresponds to aleph in Kabala, the ox, or bull-G.o.d Dionysus. But aleph is the path from Keser to Chokmah, and, therefore, the Holy Ghost or s.e.m.e.n. The Magus is beth, the house or temple-that is, the path from Keser to Binah, the womb ..."

"Do you really think you're going to live forever?" she asked him once.

"If not," he said, "I'll die trying."

WISE GUYS AND NEBBISHES.

When Simon Moon was appointed Chief of the Computer Section at GWB-666, he immediately junked all the personnel tests then in use and replaced them with a one-question test of his own devising based on the Vlad Enigma. Applicants were simply told the story of Vlad and the monks by an interviewer and asked which monk Vlad impaled. Those who said Vlad impaled the lying flatterer were cla.s.sified as nebbishes by Simon; they were the kind of fools who still, despite all evidence to the contrary, regarded government and those in authority as honest and just. They would tell the truth to superiors. They were hired at once. "An office full of Eichmanns and Calleys," Simon said proudly. "Not one of them will ever question an order or ask an embarra.s.sing question." He could program endless anarchy, and they would never suspect it, because he was above them in the pack hierarchy.

Those who said Vlad impaled the honest monk, on the other hand, were rejected for employment at GWB. Simon called them the Wise Guys and secretly arranged for a recruiter from the Discordian Society to contact them later. They didn't believe a d.a.m.ned thing government said or did, had heretical opinions on dozens of subjects, and usually smoked dope. They emphatically did not belong in a bureaucracy.

Sometimes Simon called the nebbishes h.o.m.o neophobia h.o.m.o neophobia and the wise guys and the wise guys h.o.m.o neophilia. h.o.m.o neophilia.

But that was in another novel. Simon didn't even know if he was still working with the Beast in this novel.

He was becoming identified with the form.

Some things remained constant under the transformation of the Knight move-Marvin Gardens still had his paranoia and his Vlad the Barbarian books, the missing scientists were still missing, Simon was still a mathematician (Mary Margaret had said so, at the party, even though he was only dimly there this time around).

But some things had altered considerably-Josephine Malik was Joseph Malik, F.D.R. Stuart was an editor instead of a revolutionary, Hubbard was President instead of Lousewart.

But all that was trivial. Simon got out his pen and began jotting, in the margins of Laws of Form Laws of Form, the important things he had learned in his out-of-book experience: 1. A novel, or a universe, is a Whole System.

2. Who we are, and what we do, depends on which novel or universe we are in. Every part is a function of the Whole.

3. It is very hard to remember the whole novel or universe because our horns won't fit the Simon stared at the page, losing the meaning of Mooning, forgetting the question itself as attention narrowed to this single page, this paragraph, this hotel room in New York on the morning of December 24, 1983, barely able to remember even a few pages back or a few pages ahead.

The window closed. The key was no key.

HAVEN'T YOU HEARD?

Man's inexorable though hardly remorseless drive to divinity is taking new, non-inst.i.tutionalized forms. This comes down to the simplest of propositions: the species must solve the problem of death very soon, blow itself up, or blow its mind.-ALAN HARRINGTON, The Immortalist The Immortalist When Norma became pregnant Cagliostro turned into the stereotype of an ideal husband, canceling bookings to be with her, joyously supporting her decision to employ natural childbirth, teaching her yoga to supplement the Lamaze conditioning techniques employed by her obstetrician. He filled her room with flowers-and with photographs of the moon. (Some of his occult studies were involved here, she realized.) One night the phone rang, and when Crane answered it Epicene Wildeblood purred, "I'm in Hollywood for a week and I guessed you might want to see me."

"You guessed wrong," Crane said. "Sorry. New trip this year."

Norma's labor began prematurely, and the doctor quickly discovered that the baby was in the breech position. After a few hours he realized this childbirth could never be natural. She accepted the ether and he performed a Caesarean, only to find the infant, in turning, had strangled on its umbilical cord.

"Oh, G.o.d," she said when she awoke and the doctor told her. "Oh, what a lousy G.o.d to make a world like this."

Cagliostro was caught by a gaggle of reporters coming out of the hospital. "How do you feel?" was the first question.

"How the h.e.l.l do you think I feel?"

"Where will the service be held?"

"There will be no religious service!" Cagliostro shouted, hopping into a cab. "Haven't you fools heard yet?-G.o.d is dead!" It made headlines, and inspired editorials. One editorial-"Bereavement Is No Excuse for Blasphemy"-came to the attention of a fourteen-year-old boy, John Disk, who was tormented by desires which his priests told him were evil.

When Cagliostro returned to the clubs his act had changed considerably. The mildly satirical patter between escapes had become bitingly mordant-"He's a new Lenny Bruce!"-and entirely centered around his declared philosophy of anarchism and atheism. The escapes themselves changed each night, because he explained them and showed how they were done as the climax of every performance.

"Now you know how I fooled you," he would say. "Try to figure out on your own how your congressmen and clergymen fool you. There is no restraint that isn't self-imposed: you are all absolutely free." you are all absolutely free."

The evening after the newspapers broke the story that he and Norma had joined Joan Baez in refusing to pay taxes, a drunk began heckling him during his act: "Why don't you go back to Russia, you Commie dope fiend!" That sort of thing.

"No man living hates socialism more than me," Cagliostro said intensely.

He and Norma were busted for possession of acid a few weeks later. "This is hard to fix," his lawyer told him. "You're too notorious now. The only chance I see is for you to vow to reform, lament the error of your ways, and promise to go on a lecture tour speaking to teenagers about the evils of drugs. Then maybe I can get you a minimum sentence. Maybe." Hugh's old friend, the Boston psychologist, was in exile in Nepal, having fled a thirty-year sentence in Texas; political offenders in general were having a rough time in the United States.

"I'll think about it," he said.

The very next week he led the show-biz contingent among the protesters at the 1968 Democratic Convention. A photograph of him being tear-ga.s.sed outside the Chicago Hilton is still reprinted whenever an article about him appears.

"You've had it," his lawyer told him. "As an officer of the court, I can't tell you what I really think. An unethical attorney, were he here, would frankly advise you and Norma to get the h.e.l.l out of the country."

But a change came over Unistat when Hubert Humphrey, the new President, withdrew all the troops from Vietnam and began granting amnesty to political prisoners. Cagliostro and Norma, in the midst of the return to liberalism, received suspended sentences for the acid, and he was not tried with the Chicago Nine for conspiring the convention riots. The IRS raided their bank account for the tax money instead of prosecuting them, and, by 1970, he was listed as one of ten top money-makers in show biz. His escapes were, the American Society of Magicians announced in an award, better than Houdini's; his habit of explaining each "miracle" after the performance only built up crowd interest for the next challenge.

b.u.mP IN THE NIGHT.

Sput Sputnik was sleeping alone at last. Visions of dollar signs danced in his head as he dreamed of a miniature sled full of barrels of beer. She nu it, he had it, Ra Hoor cooed it, right jolly old selves, but overall there was a smell of fried onions, because of janes chains gains clanking up and down again.

Sput turned in the bed, moaning slightly, as the brains danes chains came clanking back and forth again.

And there was a Russian spy named Igor Beeforshot, and there was Minor Boulevard and Major Stra.s.se, because every Pers.h.i.+ng comes to Gricks, but the chains mains pains were clanking in and out again.

Hoor's looking for you, cad! It was a wide house, a mason blanc, a cozy bianca, but still there were cranes cranes cranes flapping overhead again. So he sput the roavin ovamor and He was abruptly awake, in the dark, still hearing the chains. Something was b.u.mping and thumping at his door, something that seemed to be dragging chains behind it.

Sput was not into the S-M scene, and everybody in the mansion knew better than to come banging at his door when he was asleep. But still the thumping and the b.u.mping and the chain-rattling continued.

He was wide awake now, and he knew it was no dream. Something eldritch and unholy, right out of Gothic fiction, was banging at his bedroom door.

And then, for the first time in his life, he actually heard an eerie laugh eerie laugh, just like in the books, and It was actually coming through the door, walking right through solid wood, a greenish oldish spectral chain-rattling Thing.

"Jesus Nelly!" Sput gasped. This sort of goings-on only happened in books, not in real life.

"Sput Sputnik," came the hollow voice (right out of an echo chamber, he thought).

"Yes?" he breathed, wondering if his hairs were standing on end, too, in orthodox fas.h.i.+on.

"Sput Sputnik," said the Presence, "I am the Ghost of Christmas Past."

THE EYE-ON-THE-PYRAMID.

A biological breakthrough will force a new militancy, a new crusade. "Make the world safe for Immortality," will be the cry.-SEGERBERG, The Immortality Factor The Immortality Factor On May 1, 1976, Cagliostro and Norma were in Mexico City on a vacation. At lunch she held up a twenty-centavo piece and said, "Isn't that the same as the design on back of the dollar?"

"It's Masonic," he said. "The Mexican and American revolutionaries were both predominantly Freemasons."

"What does it mean, anyway-an eye floating above a pyramid?"

He started to explain about the Third Eye and the pineal gland, and then noticed that she wasn't listening.

"They're waiting for you," she said in a mediumismic voice.

John Disk, in 1984, read Cagliostro's notes on the next three days very carefully: "I refused to believe it. I put her to every possible test, whenever the voice spoke. Looking for evidence of autosuggestion and self-hypnosis, I found evidence of autosuggestion and self-hypnosis-naturally! I also found seventeen things I couldn't explain. Most central was the fact that the message, when I finally encouraged her, came in Enochian, a language which n.o.body understands since all we possess are the nineteen fragments received by Dee and Kelly in the seventeenth century. Yet she gave me nineteen new fragments, and translated them, and the grammar and vocabulary are consistent with the Dee-Kelly scryings. Even if she had studied the Dee and Kelly fragments (which she swears she hasn't), concocting new sentences in that unknown language would be beyond the power of any human brain or even of any known computer...." I also found seventeen things I couldn't explain. Most central was the fact that the message, when I finally encouraged her, came in Enochian, a language which n.o.body understands since all we possess are the nineteen fragments received by Dee and Kelly in the seventeenth century. Yet she gave me nineteen new fragments, and translated them, and the grammar and vocabulary are consistent with the Dee-Kelly scryings. Even if she had studied the Dee and Kelly fragments (which she swears she hasn't), concocting new sentences in that unknown language would be beyond the power of any human brain or even of any known computer...."

The nineteen fragments of Enochian, translated by Norma in the same trance in which the fragments arrived, became the nineteen chapters of The Aquarian Gospel. The Aquarian Gospel. Crane wrote in the introduction: Crane wrote in the introduction: "It is impossible to doubt that these are the communications of a superior intelligence. If the reader is, as I am [thank G.o.d!], an atheist, the ident.i.ty of that intelligence will pose severe mysteries. Is it interplanetary-or interstellar? A being leaping across Time from some more advanced future, or past [Atlantis]? Does it come from dimensions tangent to, but not identical with, our own? I propose no answer to these questions, but I am sure that this intelligence, or others like it, sent the messages which founded the great religions of the past, and that such communications are the foundation of the belief in beings called 'G.o.ds.' ..."

Norma was killed in an automobile accident the day the book was published. "What further proof do we need," a prominent clergyman wrote in his syndicated newspaper column, "that this foul and obscene 'revelation' comes from a source not divine, but diabolical?"

Crane's first-and only-failure to escape from a challenge box occurred one month later.

The eye operation came later that year. "I can save one," the doctor told him, "but not both."

"A blind magician is worse off than a deaf musician, and I'm not Beethoven," Crane said simply. "Do the best you can."

He retained the sight of one eye.

"Much as we are inclined to sympathize," the New York Daily News Daily News editorialized, "we do admit to a strong feeling that there is divine retribution in the tragedies befalling drug-cultist Cagliostro 'the Great.'" editorialized, "we do admit to a strong feeling that there is divine retribution in the tragedies befalling drug-cultist Cagliostro 'the Great.'"

The Aquarian Gospel was burned by a citizens' group in Cicero, Illinois, that week. was burned by a citizens' group in Cicero, Illinois, that week.

"These powers, whoever and whatever they are," Crane wrote-in unpublished notes which John Disk read years later, weeping-"are determined that I abandon all else and become no more than the servant who carries their message. To this end, they are taking away from me, one by one, all the things I love. Or, perhaps, I am merely in the terminal stages of a long-brewing paranoid psychosis?"

Hugh Crane celebrated his fourteenth birthday in 1938 by climbing into the bed of the family's black maid, Sophie Hage, who introduced him to Voudon. Voudon.

The group in Harlem at that time actually combined elements of Voudon Voudon and Masonry. Since and Masonry. Since Voudon Voudon was already a blend of European witchcraft and African magic, and Masonry is a mixture of elements from Rosicrucian mysticism and French revolutionary free thought, there were actually four traditions involved, and the Rite of Initiation was unique. Borrowed from the third degree of Masonry, it replaced Jubela, Jubelo, and Jubelum with the was already a blend of European witchcraft and African magic, and Masonry is a mixture of elements from Rosicrucian mysticism and French revolutionary free thought, there were actually four traditions involved, and the Rite of Initiation was unique. Borrowed from the third degree of Masonry, it replaced Jubela, Jubelo, and Jubelum with the Grand Zombi Grand Zombi, and, since marijuana was involved, the ordeal became as real as in those days when candidates knew they would be killed if they failed.

In a dark cellar on 110th Street, the Grand Zombi Grand Zombi demanded, "Reveal the Secret Word or I will kill you. Reveal the Secret Word and give up your quest for Truth and Power." demanded, "Reveal the Secret Word or I will kill you. Reveal the Secret Word and give up your quest for Truth and Power."

Hugh, repeating the formula taught him, replied, "Kill me if you must, but I will search again for Truth and Power as soon as I am reborn."

The Grand Zombi Grand Zombi, black face above a black robe, raised his sword. "Do you fear me now, mortal?" he screamed.

"I have eternity to work in," Hugh replied, according to rote. "Why should I fear?"