Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy Part 32

Clem sat down at his desk and spread out a large piece of paper. He drew an elaborate scroll around it and printed at the top, "COTEX RESERVE SYSTEM." He made it a cas.h.i.+er's check to the Treasury of Unistat for ten million dollars, to be repaid at the prime interest rate of 15 percent. He then decorated another piece of paper, making it a Unistat National Bond, payable to the Cotex Reserve System for ten million dollars, thereby giving CRS the credit to loan ten million to Unistat.

He then switched the pieces of paper around on the desk. Cotex Reserve seemed to be ten million dollars ahead, and yet Unistat owed them them ten million plus 15 percent interest per year. ten million plus 15 percent interest per year.

("You can't do that. There is no such thing as a magic wand.") Clem laughed hysterically. He remembered Simon Moon trying to explain Spencer Brown's Laws of Form Laws of Form to him: "To cross again is not to cross." Inflation, deflation, recession, depression: they were all like Nasrudin's patent office. to him: "To cross again is not to cross." Inflation, deflation, recession, depression: they were all like Nasrudin's patent office.

Clem knew he was in the state where synchronicities occur, so he went to his bookcase, picked a volume at random, and stuck his finger in, looking for the Message that would turn the whole experience into a full-scale Satori.

He was in The Nature of the Physical World The Nature of the Physical World by Sir Arthur Eddington, and the sentence he had found was: by Sir Arthur Eddington, and the sentence he had found was: We have certain preconceived ideas about location in s.p.a.ce which have come down to us from apelike ancestors.

Clem Cotex laughed for nearly fifteen minutes. The next time he met Blake Williams, he unleashed his Illumination in an aphorism that he was convinced would, for once, startle the seemingly unflappable anthropologist.

"Money is the Schrodinger's Cat of economics," Clem said, waiting for some sensational reaction.

"Oh," Williams said quietly, "you've noticed that too?"

Dr. Horace Naismith had founded the First Bank of Religiosophy in Bad a.s.s, Texas, because he wanted to be sure n.o.body in the Establishment would take it seriously.

It was his plan to undermine the Federal Reserve System without their noticing what was happening.

Everything in Bad a.s.s was considered too absurd and repugnant for serious consideration. Bad a.s.s Towns.h.i.+p and the whole of Bad a.s.s County were a source of national embarra.s.sment.

Bad a.s.s had been founded by descendants of the famous Jukes and Kallikak families, carriers of virulent idiocy genes, together with a few Snopeses who had been driven out of Mississippi for unnatural acts.

The Bad a.s.s School Board banned not only Evolution and s.e.x Education, but non-Euclidean geometry, the metric system, cultural anthropology, and all history texts written outside Texas.

Despite the President, the Supreme Court, Congress, the TV networks and Jack Anderson, the Bad a.s.s County Line still bore the traditional sign: DON'T LET THE SUN SET ON YOU IN BAD a.s.s, n.i.g.g.e.r. All roads leading to Bad a.s.s Towns.h.i.+p were littered with the decomposing bodies of murdered civil rights workers.

Everybody in Unistat was profoundly ashamed of Bad a.s.s and wished it were part of some other country. They never realized that, to the rest of the world, Unistat looked like Bad a.s.s County.

President Fuller, the man whose money ideas had inspired Dr. Naismith, was the only President in the history of Unistat to resign from office.

He had resigned only three months after taking office, and he did it on the radio. "I simply can't find any way to do anything socially useful here," he said with that innocent sincerity that had charmed the voters into electing him. "I listened to some well-meaning friends and ran for this office," Fuller went on, "and I now realize I was a perfect d.a.m.ned fool. The synergetic interlock or real time vectors in Universe cannot be augmented from here."

The people-and, even more, the other politicians-were outraged. They called Fuller a mugwump and wanted to punish him. Unfortunately, the only way to punish a politician is to refuse to vote for him, and Fuller was no longer a politician and refused to run for any office, so they had to be satisfied with just calling him a nut.

That was in the 1930s, and everybody forgot about Fuller until the 1960s, when it turned out that his hobby-odd geometries-had a lot of practical applications.

But still n.o.body took Fuller's money theories seriously, except Dr. Naismith, and Eve Hubbard, who had run for President in 1980 on the Libertarian Immortalist ticket ("An End to Death and Taxes!").

There was another President of Unistat who resigned, actually, but he "only" (as they say) existed in a novel. This was a science-fiction thriller set in a parallel universe and was called Wigner's Friend. Wigner's Friend. It was about the worst possible President the author, a Harvard professor named Leary, could imagine. It was about the worst possible President the author, a Harvard professor named Leary, could imagine.

The President in Leary's book, called Noxin, was a monster. He got the country into totally unnecessary wars without the consent, and sometimes even without the knowledge, of Congress. He lied all the time, compulsively, even when it wasn't necessary. He put wiretaps on everybody-even on himself. (Leary, a psychologist, claimed this bizarre fantasy, which smacked of satire, was possible, for a certain type of paranoid mind.) He used the FBI and the IRS to hara.s.s every citizen who resisted this tyranny. He not only took bribes, but even had a team of enforcers who extorted "campaign" money from corporations under threat of turning the IRS on them. His political enemies all died in a series of strange a.s.sa.s.sinations that couldn't be explained. When Congress started investigating his crimes, he betrayed his own co-conspirators one by one. (Leary, a psychologist, claimed this bizarre fantasy, which smacked of satire, was possible, for a certain type of paranoid mind.) He used the FBI and the IRS to hara.s.s every citizen who resisted this tyranny. He not only took bribes, but even had a team of enforcers who extorted "campaign" money from corporations under threat of turning the IRS on them. His political enemies all died in a series of strange a.s.sa.s.sinations that couldn't be explained. When Congress started investigating his crimes, he betrayed his own co-conspirators one by one.

Noxin even misappropriated government money to fix up his house, and cheated on his income tax.

The book was a runaway best-seller, because it had a taut, suspenseful plot and because Unistaters could congratulate themselves on not being dumb enough to ever elect such a President.

Naismith, despite his Texas accent, was no imbecile; he had his finger on part part of what was really going on. of what was really going on.

The Federal Reserve did create money out of nothing. So did all the other banks.

The laws of Unistat allowed this, by permitting banks to issue loans up to as much as eight times the amount they had in deposits. Every time a bank made a loan on money they didn't actually have, they were creating creating money. money.

Most of the people who knew about this (aside from the bankers) went paranoid worrying about it. This was because they did not realize how much of their Reality was created in similarly occult ways.

The Federal Reserve made it possible for other banks to loan what they didn't have. The Fed "guaranteed" "guaranteed" the credit of the banks. the credit of the banks.

The Fed was able to make this guarantee because it had lots of credit itself, in the form of government bonds.

The government bonds were good because they were guaranteed by loans from the Fed.

The loans from the Fed were guaranteed because the government gave them bonds.

And this was safe, because the bonds (remember) were guaranteed by the Fed.

That's why Clem Cotex laughed for half an hour when he finally figured out the Unistat economy.

The Communists had inst.i.tuted this monetary policy because it made virtually all commerce dependent on money that didn't exist.

The Communists had abandoned pure Marxism in 1904 and were now following a system based partly on Marx and partly on traditional shamanism.

The whole Communist movement had secretly been taken over, in 1904, by General E. A. Crowley, the famous explorer. Crowley had learned a lot from the tribal shamans in the "backward" parts of the world he frequented. Chiefly, he had learned that the universe is created by the partic.i.p.ation of its partic.i.p.ants.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was hand-picked by General Crowley to manage the Communist takeover of Unistat. Crowley picked Roosevelt chiefly because of his radio voice. The agreement was simple: Crowley would keep Roosevelt supplied with women-"That crip Casanova never gets enough," he was soon complaining-and Roosevelt, in turn, introduced Nasrudin's magic wand to political economy.

Even though many clear-sighted, patriotic citizens saw through Roosevelt and warned, repeatedly, that he was leading the country to communism, the majority paid no heed to these voices of reason. They were charmed by Roosevelt's radio voice, as Crowley had predicted.

Actually, Roosevelt kept before him, every time he spoke on radio, a large sign with a wise saying attributed to the man who won the Bad a.s.s Hog Calling Contest in 1923. The sign said: YOU'VE GOT TO HAVE APPEAL AS WELL AS POWER IN YOUR VOICE. YOU MUST CONVINCE THE SWINE THAT YOU HAVE SOMETHING FOR THEM.

Unfortunately, Roosevelt was a.s.sa.s.sinated by a disgruntled office seeker in 1937.

The Communists found an equally loyal servant in 1948, however, in the famous General Douglas MacArthur, who was a military genius with one fatal flaw: he had an ego so large that only by contemplating the mathematical definition of infinity could anything so limitless be imagined.

MacArthur completed the Communization of Unistat in return for having his picture put on pennies, nickels, dimes, dollars, postage stamps, paintings in every public place, G.I.-issue condoms, the ceilings of barber shops, Mount Rushmore, the Sistine Chapel frescoes (advising G.o.d during the Creation), all government doc.u.ments, the chief balloon in all Macy's parades, in place of the test pattern on TV screens, marriage licenses, dog licenses, and in various other places that he thought of from time to time.

A brave and patriotic senator, Joseph R. McCarthy, attempted to expose MacArthur's government, which was staffed entirely by card-carrying Communists. (The Communists carried cards because, with so many conspiracies going on at the time, it was the only way they could identify themselves to one another.) The senator was smeared by the press, censured by his colleagues, and hounded to an early grave.

"Ike" Eisenhower, a popular Western film star of the period, contributed to McCarthy's demise by making a national tour supporting the President.

"I don't know anything about politics or military strategy," old "Ike" would tell audiences, his face full of stupid sincerity. "But I know General MacArthur is a smart man and a tough man and can outfox the Commies every time."

Like almost everybody else, "Ike" thought the Communists had taken over Russia, not Unistat.

One of the most insidious things the CIA Communists did when they took over Unistat was to change the Const.i.tution.

The original Const.i.tution, having been written by a group of intellectual libertines and Freemasons in the eighteenth century, included an amendment which declared: A self-regulated s.e.x life being necessary to the happiness of a citizen, the right of the people to keep and enjoy p.o.r.nography shall not be abridged.

This amendment had been suggested by Thomas Jefferson, who had over nine hundred Black concubines, and Benjamin Franklin, a member of the h.e.l.l Fire Club, which had the largest collection of erotic books and art in the Western world at that time.

The Communists changed the amendment to read: A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms shall not be abridged.

All doc.u.ments and textbooks were changed, so that n.o.body would be able to find out what the amendment had originally said. Then the Communists set up a front organization, the National Rifle a.s.sociation, to encourage the wide usage of guns of all sorts, and to battle any attempt to control guns as "unconst.i.tutional."

Thus, they guaranteed that the murder rate in Unistat would always be the highest in the world. This kept the citizens in perpetual anxiety about their safety both on the streets and in their homes. The citizens then tolerated the rapid growth of the Police State, which controlled almost everything, except the sale of guns, the chief cause of crime.

THE BACHS' BOX The Wilhelm Friedemann Bach Society was in the same downtown Was.h.i.+ngton building as the Warren Belch Society and the Invisible Hand Society, but Clem Cotex never thought much about them. He a.s.sumed, as did everybody else who noticed the name on the building directory, that the W. F. Bach Society was just a group of musicologists.

Nothing could have been further from the truth.

They were also trying to find out "what the h.e.l.l is really going on."

This odd fraternity had named themselves after W. F. Bach not just for his music, which was superb, but for his effrontery, which was even more superb. Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, one of the twenty children of Johann Sebastian Bach, did not have the easy and immediate success of his brothers, Johann Christian Bach and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. In fact, because he was original and because he had to compete with the other three Bachs (already well established in the esteem of music lovers), Wilhelm Friedemann was neglected for a long time and might have ended his days in poverty and obscurity. But W. F. Bach was not the sort of man to take defeat easily. He hit on a plan which caused his music to be played everywhere, and made him quite a bundle of Deutschmarks, even though people were still saying he was the least important of the Bachs.

Wilhelm Friedemann had simply sold his compositions, one by one, as newly discovered work by his father, J. S. Bach.

Of course there had been art forgers and music forgers and even novel forgers both before and after W. F. Bach, but he had raised the philosophical ante on the bothersome question "If a work of art cannot be distinguished from a masterpiece, is it not a masterpiece?" or, in the vernacular, "How important is a Potter Stewarting signature signature, anyway?"

The original members of the W. F. Bach Society were people who had owned some magnificent Van Goghs back in the 1960s. Then one traumatic day, they did not own any Van Goghs at all. They owned El Mirs.

El Mir was the most talented painting forger of that time. His Van Goghs, Cezannes, and Modiglianis were totally indistinguishable from "the real thing," whatever that is. It was widely believed, after El Mir was exposed by another forger named Irving, that many masterpieces still still hanging in museums were El Mir's work. Indeed, El Mir insisted on that, regarding it as the cream of the jest. hanging in museums were El Mir's work. Indeed, El Mir insisted on that, regarding it as the cream of the jest.

Some said that these El Mirs still hung in museums because the experts had not yet found any way to distinguish them from "real" art. Others said that the experts, once aware of El Mir's work, could could distinguish it from Van Gogh's or Cezanne's or Modigliani's, but distinguish it from Van Gogh's or Cezanne's or Modigliani's, but would would not do so, because they had authenticated the fakes originally and did not want anybody to know that they had been fooled. not do so, because they had authenticated the fakes originally and did not want anybody to know that they had been fooled.

Blake Williams, Ph.D., had purchased a very fine El Mir, under the impression it was a Van Gogh, after the great success of his popularized book on primate psychology, How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes. Williams was then in the midst of his first phase synthesizing General Semantics and Zen Buddhism, and he immediately recognized what was really really going on when identifiable El Mirs were everywhere falling in value after the great Expose. going on when identifiable El Mirs were everywhere falling in value after the great Expose.

It was a glitch, he decided.

He called together a small group of people who also owned identified El Mirs and begged them not to believe that they had been deceived.

"A signature," he told them earnestly, "is not an economic Good economic Good in itself, like gold or land or factories. It is only a in itself, like gold or land or factories. It is only a squiggle squiggle given contextual meaning by social convention." given contextual meaning by social convention."

He went on like that for nearly an hour. He spoke of the differences between the map and the territory; between the spoken word ("a sonic wave in the atmosphere") and the nonverbal thing nonverbal thing or or event event which the word merely designates; between the menu and the meal. He quoted Hume, Einstein, Korzybski, and Pope Stephen. He dragged in the latest theories in perception psychology, Ethnomethodology, and McLuhan's version of media-message a.n.a.lysis. which the word merely designates; between the menu and the meal. He quoted Hume, Einstein, Korzybski, and Pope Stephen. He dragged in the latest theories in perception psychology, Ethnomethodology, and McLuhan's version of media-message a.n.a.lysis.

He reminded them that Carlos Castaneda had studied Ethnomethodology with Garfinkle before studying shamanism with Don Juan Matus, and he a.s.sured them, as a professional anthropologist, that anyone who has the power to define reality for you has become a sorcerer, if you don't catch the b.a.s.t.a.r.d real quick.

By this time a lot of his audience was irritated and a little frightened-mutters of "He's just a d.a.m.ned crank" were heard from some corners of the room-but others were listening, enthralled.

Williams resorted to psycho-drama and Role Playing to get his point across. He said that he would pretend to be an extraterrestrial-"I wonder if it's just just pretending," said an awed voice from the group who had followed this lecture with a sense of Illumination. Play-acting the extraterrestrial, Williams defied them to explain several things to him, rationally and logically, without a.s.suming he had "intuitive" or pretending," said an awed voice from the group who had followed this lecture with a sense of Illumination. Play-acting the extraterrestrial, Williams defied them to explain several things to him, rationally and logically, without a.s.suming he had "intuitive" or a priori a priori knowledge about what they took for granted. knowledge about what they took for granted.

He wanted to know, first, the difference between a dollar bill printed by the Unistat Treasury and a dollar bill printed by a gang of counterfeiters.

Everybody got excited, and most of them got angry, in the course of trying to make this distinction clear to the extraterrestrial, who was very literal and logical, and did not understand anything they took for granted until it was explained literally and logically.

By the time the extraterrestrial was willing to grant that there was an agreed-upon agreed-upon difference between the two bills difference between the two bills created by created by social consensus, a few people had left, saying, "It's just an elaborate put-on." social consensus, a few people had left, saying, "It's just an elaborate put-on."

But the others, who stuck it out, were next confronted with a dollar bill hung in a museum as "found" art. Williams, the extraterrestrial, wanted to know whether its value was the same as, greater than, or less than it had been before being hung in the museum.

More people lost their tempers in the course of his discussion.

But Williams persisted. Still playing extraterrestrial, he wanted to know if it made any difference if the dollar hung in the museum as "found" art had been printed by the Treasury or by the criminal gang.

After a few minutes of this topic most of the people in the room were jumping up and down like the Amba.s.sador who found the Rehnquist on the stairs.

Williams had no mercy. He next wanted them to explain the difference between any or all of the above and an exact duplicate exact duplicate of any or all of them painted by Roy Lichtenstein and exhibited as Pop Art. of any or all of them painted by Roy Lichtenstein and exhibited as Pop Art.

After a half hour more he pointed out that they were arguing among themselves even more than they were attempting to explain these mysteries to him. He also mentioned, not too cruelly, that many of them had arrived at the state where they seemed to believe their definitions would become more convincing if they just repeated them at a louder decibel level.

Williams then gave up the extraterrestrial game and tried to restore order. He became droll and told them the old story of how Pica.s.so, asked to identify the real Pica.s.sos in a group of possible fakes, had put one of his own canvases among the fraudulent group. "But," an art dealer among those present protested, "I saw you paint that one myself, Pablo."

"No matter," said the Great Man imperturbably, "I can fake a Pica.s.so as well as anybody."

He reminded them that Andy Warhol kept a closet full of Campbell's soup cans, and gave autographed cans to people he liked so they could own "a genuine Warhol." He pointed out, after the laugh subsided, that neither extraterrestrials nor terrestrials could agree on the difference in value between a Treasury dollar signed by Warhol and thereby becoming "a genuine Warhol," a counterfeit dollar signed by Warhol for the purpose-giving "a genuine Warhol" to a friend, a Treasury dollar with Warhol's signature forged by El Mir, a Treasury dollar with Warhol's signature forged by an unknown criminal, and a counterfeit dollar with Warhol's signature forged by William S. Burroughs, the founder of Neo-Cubist painting.

He said that Ethnomethodologists knew that the border between the Real and the Unreal was not fixed, but just marked the last place where rival gangs of shamans had fought each other to a stalemate. He said the border had s.h.i.+fted after each major conceptual struggle, as national borders s.h.i.+ft after military struggles. He defined everybody who attempted to define Reality, including himself, as a conscious or unconscious co-conspirator with some gang of shamans who are trying to impose their game on the rest of us.

He said that both the economics of art and the art of economics were determined by shamans, whether they knew themselves as shamans or not.

"Crazy as a as a bedbug," bedbug," said the last man to quit the room. said the last man to quit the room.

The remainder were staring at Williams with devout awe. They felt that he had removed great murky shadows from their minds and brought them forward into the light.

Williams had made some Converts.

He settled back in an easy chair-he had been standing in his Full Professor lecture-room style through most of this-and got chatty and informal. He told them the little-known story of Pope Stephen's parable to the Spanish Cardinal who had told him that "seeking for the Real" was pointless since the Real is palpably right in front of our noses.

"Everybody knows," Pope Stephen had said, "that I studied singing and medicine before I decided to make the priesthood my life's work. What few know is that I also considered becoming a novelist. I often wonder, myself, if I ever abandoned that last ambition. Sometimes I feel like a novelist pretending to be a Pope, to see what it's like. And sometimes I even think the whole Church is a very old novel which I've revised and modernized. And, my reverend brother in Christ, sometimes I even think that I'm not alone in this novel-writing business; I think that every man, woman, and child on this planet is writing a novel inside their heads, all day long, every day-editing, rewriting, touching things up, improving a page here and throwing a page out somewhere else. The only difference is that when I write a novel, it becomes an Encyclical, and is therefore Reality for millions of believers."

Williams now had five True Believers out of the thirty persons he had called together. The five, together with Williams, founded the W. F. Bach Society that night, and set out to impose their definition of Art on the rest of the world.

They began by finding and financing Orson Welles, an obese genius who might have been the world's greatest film director if he had only been allowed to direct films.

Welles was not allowed to direct films because he had made the mistake, his first time out, of making a movie about Charles Foster Hearst, the richest and most powerful of the Communist clique who ruled Unistat. Welles changed the name, of course, and called his movie character William Randolph Kane, but few were deceived by this, and Hearst certainly wasn't.

The movie had a scene, at the beginning, in which a conservative banker said bluntly that "Kane" (Hearst) was a Communist. It went on to make a big mystery about the word "Rosebud," which referred to General Crowley's system of "Rosy Cross" Cabalistic magick which the Communists were using to make money out of nothing. It exposed, almost blatantly, how Unistat was actually governed.

Welles was blacklisted, and spent the rest of his life wandering around the world playing bit parts in films by other directors.

The W. F. Bach Society financed Welles in the making of his second film, Art Is What You Can Get Away With Art Is What You Can Get Away With, which was a bold glorification of El Mir.

Next, the W. F. Bach cabal financed a new literary journal, Pa.s.saic Review Pa.s.saic Review, which they advertised so widely that everybody with any pretense to being an intellectual had to read it.

The Pa.s.saic Review Pa.s.saic Review heaped scorn and invective on the established literary idols of the time-Simon Moon, the neo-surrealist novelist; Gerald Ford, the "country-and-western" poet; Norman Mailer; Robert Heinlein; Tim Hildebrand; and so on. They also denounced all the alleged "greats" of the first part of the century, like H. P. Lovecraft, Henry James, T. S. Eliot, and Robert Putney Drake. heaped scorn and invective on the established literary idols of the time-Simon Moon, the neo-surrealist novelist; Gerald Ford, the "country-and-western" poet; Norman Mailer; Robert Heinlein; Tim Hildebrand; and so on. They also denounced all the alleged "greats" of the first part of the century, like H. P. Lovecraft, Henry James, T. S. Eliot, and Robert Putney Drake.

They established their own pantheon of "great" writers, which included William Butler Yeats (an obscure Irish schoolteacher n.o.body had ever heard of), Olaf Stapledon, Arthur Flegenheimer, and Jonathan Latimer.

After only two years of bombardment by the erudite and authoritative-sounding articles in Pa.s.saic Review Pa.s.saic Review, most self-declared intellectuals were seriously comparing Yeats with Eliot and granting that some of Stapledon's novels were as good as anything by James or Drake.