Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy Part 4

"I say you two," Epicene Wildeblood drawled, "did either of you see Cagliostro?"

"The magician?" Jo asked.

"Well," Wildeblood asked with infinite patience, "is there another Cagliostro?"

Marvin and Jo exchanged equally puzzled glances.

"I guess he hasn't arrived yet," Jo offered finally.

"What?" Wildeblood frowned. "Why, he's been here all night."

Marvin and Jo exchanged glances again.

"I guess we missed him," Marvin said gently, with the ghastly smile of one who humors a deranged mind.

Wildeblood glared at him and stalked off.

That was really heavy hash, Jo decided. Wildeblood had been hallucinating a guest who wasn't even there.

DEMATERIALIZING GORILLAS.

Knee-jerk liberals and all the certified saints of sanctified humanism are quick to condemn this great and much-maligned Transylvanian statesman.-WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR., The Wit and Wisdom of Vlad the Impaler The Warren Belch Society held its annual meeting on January 2, 1984, while POE was busy mining downtown Was.h.i.+ngton with homemade atom bombs. The Society knew nothing of this and was more concerned with disappearing gorillas in Chicago.

Their tiny office was dominated by a huge oil painting of Schrodinger's Cat, executed in weird orgone-blue hues by their founder and presiding officer, the eccentric millionaire, W. Clement Cotex. All active members of the Society-eight of them, to be exact-were present.

The Warren Belch Society had been founded after Cotex had been kicked out of the Fortean Society for having bizarre notions. The purpose of "the Belchers" (as Cotex jovially called them) was to investigate those aspects of scientific theory and those alleged occult events which were regarded as "too far out" by the unimaginative Forteans, who are willing to investigate UFOs, rains of crabs and fish, girls who might have turned into swans, and similar matters, but, like their founder, the late Charles Fort, drew the line at the dogs that said "Good morning" and then vanished in a puff of green smoke.

Cotex, admittedly, was an intellectual surrealist. The name of the Society, for instance, was deliberately taken from the most obscure of all the lawmen of the Old West, Marshall Warren Belch of Dodge City, who had unfortunately been shot to death when his pistol jammed during his very first gunfight. It was Clem Cotex's claim that the Everett-Wheeler-Graham-DeWitt interpretation of the Schrodinger's Cat paradox was literally true. Everything that could happen did happen Everything that could happen did happen. There were infinitely many universes, each one the result of a collapse of the state vector in a possible way. Thus, somewhere in supers.p.a.ce, there must be a universe in which Marshall Belch's pistol didn't jam and he lived on to become famous. There were probably TV shows and movies about him by now, over there in that universe. Or so Cotex argued.

In general, as good empiricists, the Belch Society was more interested in odd facts than in odd theories. A UFO Contactee who could jam zippers by looking at them. A man found dead in St. Louis with his throat torn as though by the fangs of an enormous beast, with no animal missing from the local zoos (the famous Stimson Case of 1968). Doc.u.mented instances of a fat bearded man with jolly eyes seen near chimneys on Christmas Eve, with a bag of toys over his shoulder. Bleeding Catholic statues. Flying Hindus. Dematerializing Buddhists. Kahuna fire-walkers. Why the signs always say WALK when the streetlight is on red and DON'T WALK when it is on green. Books in which the permutations of the phrase "heaven and h.e.l.l" appeared at random intervals, forming a Markoff Chain.

"Take anybody in the world-anybody in this novel," Cotex once explained his theory to a group of skeptical fellow characters. "Like you, Dr. Williams," he added, picking out the most erudite and wiggy in the crowd, Blake Williams. "In one of the parallel universes, you're probably not an anthropologist, but maybe a chemist or something. In another universe, you might even be a female musician instead of a male scientist. And so on. In another universe," Cotex concluded, "J might be a small businessman from Little Rock who believes the universe is five-cornered."

The disappearing gorillas, they were all convinced, were: (a) a major breakthrough to another universe; (b) not yet known to those stuffy old Forteans; and (c) really hot stuff.

"If gorillas can teleport," Professor Fred "Fidgets" Digits was saying, "that may be the whole key to the Mad Fishmonger."

"We needn't a.s.sume that the gorillas actually teleport," Dr. Horace Naismith objected. "It may be that there is a Schwartzchild Radius in Lincoln Park Zoo and they sort of fall into it and pa.s.s the Event Horizon."

This led to some lively debate on whether teleportation was or was not more likely than a Black Hole in the Lincoln Park Zoo, but Blake Williams suddenly derailed the conversation with a thoughtful and uncompleted "I wonder if this goes all the way back to the Democratic Convention of 1968...."

"Say," Cortex cried, eyes wide. "What was all that fighting and fussing about, anyway? The way I remember it, the radicals wanted to sleep in the park and the police beat the s.h.i.+t out of them and chased them out of the park. That seems an awfully silly issue to lead to a whole week of rioting and tear-ga.s.sing. And why were so many journalists-and especially cameramen-attacked by the cops ...?"

"You think maybe the city authorities knew about it, even back then ...?" Naismith asked eagerly.

"People may resist new ideas, as we all know to our sorrow," Williams said, "but a fact this size-over two hundred gorillas purchased by the zoo over a ten-year period and gorillas purchased by the zoo over a ten-year period and only two only two accounted for-must have been noticed by somebody on the finance committee at least. You can bet your sweet a.s.s the city authorities know about it. And, of course, they're imposing a cover-up, just like the air force with the UFOs. The same old government reflex. Pavlov's Dog meets Schrodinger's Cat again." accounted for-must have been noticed by somebody on the finance committee at least. You can bet your sweet a.s.s the city authorities know about it. And, of course, they're imposing a cover-up, just like the air force with the UFOs. The same old government reflex. Pavlov's Dog meets Schrodinger's Cat again."

"This is a time for action, not theory," said Cotex. "Gentlemen, I am flying to Chicago tonight to begin a personal investigation. A case like this is a surrealist's heaven and a logician's h.e.l.l," he added with a chuckle. He was totally nonlinear.

THE MAD FISHMONGER.

There is no such thing as water. It is merely melted ice.-FURBISH LOUSEWART V, Unsafe Wherever You Go Unsafe Wherever You Go The Mad Fishmonger was the patron saint of the Warren Belch Society. He, or she, had originally appeared, or had been alleged to have appeared, in Cromer Gardens, Worcester, England, on May 28, 1881. He, or she, along with perhaps a dozen a.s.sistants, had rushed through Cromer Gardens at high noon, throwing crabs and periwinkles all over the streets. They also threw crabs and periwinkles into the fields beside the road. They climbed high walls to dump some of the fish into gardens and onto the roofs of houses.

It was thorough, painstaking work, and since the Mad Fishmonger and his, or her, a.s.sociates accomplished it all at noon on a busy day without being seen without being seen, the citizens of Cromer Gardens claimed that the crabs and periwinkles had fallen out of the sky.

This notion was not acceptable to the scientists of the day, who held it as axiomatic that crabs and periwinkles do not fall out of the sky. A scientist from Nature Nature magazine therefore offered the Mad Fishmonger an explanation, although he failed to explain how the Fishmonger and his co-conspirators had accomplished their feat without being noticed by any of the citizenry. magazine therefore offered the Mad Fishmonger an explanation, although he failed to explain how the Fishmonger and his co-conspirators had accomplished their feat without being noticed by any of the citizenry.

Charles Fort, founder of the Fortean Society, rejected the Mad Fishmonger indignantly and claimed that crabs and periwinkles did did fall from the sky. After Clem Cotex was thrown out of the Fortean Society for his heresies, he reconsidered the whole puzzling case of the mysterious event in Cromer Gardens on May 28, 1881. Cotex decided to believe in the Mad Fishmonger. It was the fundamental hypothesis of his system of philosophy, and the guiding light of the Warren Belch Society, that the craziest-sounding theory is the most likely one. All things considered, the motives and methodology of the Mad Fishmonger were much more mysterious than sh.e.l.lfish falling from the sky; fall from the sky. After Clem Cotex was thrown out of the Fortean Society for his heresies, he reconsidered the whole puzzling case of the mysterious event in Cromer Gardens on May 28, 1881. Cotex decided to believe in the Mad Fishmonger. It was the fundamental hypothesis of his system of philosophy, and the guiding light of the Warren Belch Society, that the craziest-sounding theory is the most likely one. All things considered, the motives and methodology of the Mad Fishmonger were much more mysterious than sh.e.l.lfish falling from the sky; ergo ergo, the Mad Fishmonger probably did exist.

Among the things the science of that time could not explain, which Clem Cotex attributed to the Mad Fishmonger, were other d.a.m.ned Things that fell out of the sky, such as iron b.a.l.l.s with inscriptions on them or chunks of ice as big as elephants. There were also d.a.m.ned Things on the ground, including jumping furniture, "haunts," and the Gentry. There were animals that shouldn't be and animals that couldn't be and trans-time and trans-s.p.a.ce perceptions and religious "miracles."

The first clue to correct understanding of these things came when quantum causality was finally formulated correctly in Gilhooley's Demonstration of 1994, and n.o.body understood Gilhooley.

At the time of our story everybody was as confused as Clem Cotex. Most of them just expressed their confusion, or rather concealed it, in more conservative ways.

ANOTHER CIA PLOT.

The spirit of decision consists simply in not hesitating when an inner voice commands you to act.-FURBISH LOUSEWART V, Unsafe Wherever Your Go Unsafe Wherever Your Go Just before coming to Wildeblood's party, Blake Williams wrote one of the most heretical pa.s.sages in his jealously guarded Secret Diaries. Secret Diaries. He wrote: He wrote: I am an anthropologist, ergo ergo a professional liar. An anthropologist is a scientist trained to observe that every society is a little bit mad, including his own. He holds his job by never mentioning this fact explicitly. a professional liar. An anthropologist is a scientist trained to observe that every society is a little bit mad, including his own. He holds his job by never mentioning this fact explicitly.Perhaps 1983 as a whole had been too much for him. In January one of the biggest breakthroughs had occurred at Project Pan, and Williams and Dashwood had to reach new heights of eloquence to persuade the other scientists involved that any premature disclosure could be lethal. At that very time, they pointed out, the John Birch Society was staging ma.s.sive sit-ins and protests against the introduction of anthropology texts to high schools in Orange County.In February the Government Accounting Office announced that all the gold in Fort Knox had disappeared sometime in the past decade.In March three new life-extension pills were placed on the market during the controversy over FOREVER, the first life-extension pill, which was widely suspected of creating disastrous side effects. All the data on FOREVER thus far had shown one consistency: scientists not employed by Blue Sky Inc., the manufacturer of FOREVER, continually found evidence of these tragic side effects, and all scientists employed by Blue Sky continually found no evidence of such problems. (That month Blake Williams wrote in his Diaries Diaries, quoting Lord Macaulay, "The law of gravity would be thrown into dispute were there a commercial interest involved.")In April average rent for a one-room apartment reached $1,500 per month and many families were renting broom closets at $600 to $700 per month or just sleeping in parks. Landlords were hanged in Berkeley, California, and Carbondale, Michigan.*In May the missing gold from Fort Knox was found buried at San Clemente. Nixon still denied everything. everything.The new World Almanac World Almanac listed the first UFO cult to reach 20,000,000 members among the major world religions. listed the first UFO cult to reach 20,000,000 members among the major world religions.In June the first human embryo transplant was accomplished and the U.S. troops in Tierra del Fuego mutinied.In July FEMFREE, a drug which allegedly removed mothering impulses, was banned by the FDA, and UFO cultists and Christians clashed in Belfast.In August astronomer Bertha Van Ation discovered two new planets in the solar system, and bootleg FEMFREE at ten times the free market price began to circulate through Women's Lib groups coast to coast.In September UFO cultists and Moslems clashed in Cairo.In October landlords were lynched in three more American cities, the first human brain transplant was accomplished, and UFO cultists clashed with Maoists in Peking.In November, Mae Brussell on KPFA-Berkeley charged that Jesus had been killed by a CIA plot.*Galactic Archives: Rent was a form of tribute paid by non-"owning" users of land to nonusing "owners." The "owners," known as Rent was a form of tribute paid by non-"owning" users of land to nonusing "owners." The "owners," known as lords-of-the-land lords-of-the-land, or landlords landlords for short, were originally relatives of the alpha male or king (see Nomis of Noom, "From the Baboon Food-Gathering Band to Consciousness"), but among the higher barbarians, such as in Unistat at the time of this epic, anyone with enough "money" could buy land and become a "landlord." for short, were originally relatives of the alpha male or king (see Nomis of Noom, "From the Baboon Food-Gathering Band to Consciousness"), but among the higher barbarians, such as in Unistat at the time of this epic, anyone with enough "money" could buy land and become a "landlord."

A HIT ON THE HEAD.

Every society encourages some behaviors and punitively forbids others. Thus, although cultures were not scientifically designed, they act much like computers programmed for specific results. One can look at their cultural structure and predict: this one will have a high murder rate, this one will have many schizophrenics, this one will remain Stone Age unless interfered with, this one is going to the stars.-MARILYN CHAMBERS, Neuro-Anthropology Neuro-Anthropology Benny "Eggs" Benedict never got home from Epicene Wildeblood's party that night. On the corner of Lexington and Twenty-third, Benny was. .h.i.t by a heavy lead pipe, which smashed his skull and killed him. The pipe did not fall by accident; it was wielded deliberately by a man named Francesco "Pablo" Gomez. Pablo did not hate Benny or have any personal feelings toward him at all and he did not grin s.a.d.i.s.tically. Pablo hit Benny with the pipe because Benny was well dressed and probably had money in his pockets. When Benny was comatose but not yet dead, Pablo dragged him into an alley and went through his pockets, finding to his delight that his surmise had been correct and Benny was actually carrying more than $50; he had $52, to be exact. Benny died while Pablo was rifling the wallet.

To Pablo, $52 was a lot of money. He went home humming happily.

That's the way things were in Unistat at the height of the Revolution of Lowered Expectations.

CLUES.

Every string which has one end also has another end.-FINAGLE'S FIRST FUNDAMENTAL FINDING Clem Cotex had been nosing about the Lincoln Park Zoo for several days and was more puzzled than ever. The facts were undeniable: The zoo had, indeed, purchased over 200 gorillas in the past decade and only two of them were on exhibit; 198 were missing. Any sort of casual questioning of the primate house attendants brought instantly vague answers in a well-rehea.r.s.ed manner. They were all in on the cover-up. The public was being protected against all knowledge of the inexplicable, the weird, the surrealistic. All part of the usual governmental pretense that human affairs were rationally administered by experts who knew what was really going on. They feared that if people ever discovered that those in power were as confused by this inexplicable universe as those out of power, then the whole charade might collapse.

There was no Black Hole in the zoo; Cotex was sure of that. All gravity conditions were normal. The gorillas were not falling through a Schwartzchild radius into the universe next door or anything really spooky like that. They were simply teleporting somewhere ... maybe back to their homelands in Africa. Although, considering the unpredictability of teleportive currents as doc.u.mented by Charles Fort-who had recorded cases of snakes landing in Memphis, Tennessee, and coconuts being deposited in Worcester, England-the gorillas might actually be reappearing anywhere. anywhere.

Since anything might be a clue in such occult enigmas, Clem had carefully copied all the graffiti in the men's room at the primate house. It was the usual jumble of disparate and ambiguous signals: "Black P. Stone Run It," "For a good b.l.o.w. .j.o.b call 555-1717 and ask for Father James Flanagan," "Help Prevent Von Neumann's Catastrophe!," "Arm the Unemployed," "Free our four-legged brothers and sisters. A zoo is a child's heaven and an animal's h.e.l.l," "Save the Whales-Harpoon a Honda," "Off the Landlords," "Stamp Out Sizeism."

Probably, Cotex thought morosely, there is an important signal in there and I'm just not imaginative enough to see it.

THE ALTRUIST.

G.o.d bless America.-LAST WORDS OF G. I. GURDJIEFF Everybody who had been at Wildeblood's party felt compelled to attend Benedict's funeral, even though none of them enjoyed it. Benny had been one of the funniest writers of his time, at least in the daily press, and it would have been appropriate to send him off with a showing of old Laurel and Hardy films or something equally in his own metier. Primate decorum forbade this. They packed him in with a dull and depressing "religious" ceremony.

"I am the Resurrection and the Life," intoned a primate with his collar on backward. n.o.body knew what the h.e.l.l that meant, if anything, but they tried to feel better when they heard it.

At the time Benny was buried a window washer was at work on the seventeenth floor of the Morgan Guaranty Trust at 23 Wall Street. He was an expert lip-reader and knew more of the secrets of Wall Street than anybody outside the Illuminati. In fact, the second reason he had become a window washer was to get work in the Wall Street district and pick up useful information.

The main reason he had taken the job would have been even more unnerving to Morgan Guaranty had they known about it. The window washer was a member of Purity of Essence and had already managed to place 333 homemade nuclear weapons on ledges so high n.o.body but a pigeon was ever likely to see them.

All of the weapons were set to go off at a signal from the POE computer-another homemade contraption but awesomely efficient. POE was full of science grads who had dropped out of the career game in horror and revulsion at the uses to which science was being put in their universe.

At this point POE had twenty-eight American cities mined. The window washer hoped that, when push came to shove, POE wouldn't have to detonate more than one of those cities. He was an altruist, like everybody else in Purity of Essence.

TAKE WHAT THOU HAST.

Take what thou hast and give it to the poor.-ATTRIBUTED TO SOME LONGHAIR COMMIE FREAK The letter was sent out May 1, 1984, to the New York Times-News-Post Times-News-Post, the Chicago Sun Sun, the Los Angeles Times-Free Press Times-Free Press, NBC News, CBS News, the White House, Mae Brussel, the Berkeley Barb Barb, KPFA, ABC News, the London Times Times, Zodiac News Service, The Christian Science Monitor The Christian Science Monitor, the Archdioceses of New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and St. Louis, the Church of Scientology, Mark Lane, Paul Kra.s.sner, d.i.c.k Gregory, Chase Manhattan Bank, the Bad a.s.s Bugle Bugle, the Nihilist Anarchist Horde, Norman Mailer, and 237 miscellaneous other inst.i.tutions and celebrities. POE wanted to be sure that their message would get out to the general public with the minimum of distortion by the Establishment.

The letter said: May G.o.d forgive us. May history judge as charitably.We have placed tactical nuclear bombs in over 1,700 locations throughout the United States. The targets are all enemies of the people: large banks, multinational corporations, government facilities. We will trigger one of these bombs at noon tomorrow, somewhere in the eastern United States, to demonstrate that we are not bluffing.All of the other nuclear bombs will be triggered in succession until our demands are met. If any attempt is made to apprehend and arrest us-any attempt at all-all the remaining bombs will be detonated at once.We demand:That President Furbish Lousewart immediately confiscate all fortunes above one million dollars;That this money, which we calculate makes a sum of approximately three trillion dollars, be distributed at once to the forty million families, who are, according to the government's own standards, living below the poverty line, so that each poor family receives $75,000;That all government money presently invested in weapons of war and preparations for war be immediately redirected to improving schools, homes, and hospitals in poor neighborhoods, so as to make them fit for human beings;That George Was.h.i.+ngton be removed from the dollar bill and replaced by Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse to remind people forever of the idiocy of wors.h.i.+ping money.A final word of warning: We have been working on this project for sixteen years and have the full capacity to do all that we say. The Revolution of Lowered Expectations has been a monopolist's heaven and a poor people's h.e.l.l. We intend to change that.POE

COLLAPSE OF THE STATE VECTOR.

Records can be destroyed if they do not suit the prejudices of ruling cliques, lost if they become incomprehensible, distorted if a copyist wishes to impose a new meaning upon them, misunderstood if we lack the information to interpret them. The past is like a huge library, mostly fiction.-HENRY FORD, Neuro-History Neuro-History The doorbell rang.

Josephine Malik said "s.h.i.+t" quietly but fervently. She was correcting the galleys of the second printing of her c.l.i.toral Politics c.l.i.toral Politics and interruptions were not welcome. and interruptions were not welcome.

Jo approached the door warily. The regular lock, the bolt lock, and the police lock were all in place; the intruder would need an ax to get in if he were one of the 2,000,000 violent criminals among the 20,000,000 citizens of New York in 1984.

"Who is it?" she shouted through the door.

"Ukraine."

"Who???" she screamed.

"Hugh Crane," came the voice, louder. "We met at a Wildeblood party last December...."

"Go away. I don't know you and I'm busy."

"This is important. The novel we're in is coming to a horrible conclusion...."

"You're nuts. Go away." Jo turned away from the door and went to the closet for her Sat.u.r.day Night Special, in case this maniac did have an ax.

"Listen to me, please, we've only got a few minutes," the voice shouted through the door. "Maybe you can almost remember the name Hagbard Celine. That's the name I had in the last quantum eigen eigenstate, the last novel, when we worked together...."

Jo went to the phone. "Give me the police!" she shouted, forgetting that she wasn't yelling through a door anymore.

It was the last sentence she ever spoke.

At that moment Manhattan Island became a nuclear furnace.

President Lousewart, guided by Intelligence Agencies that had collectively listened to enough "private" conversations to be stone-paranoid, had acted within minutes after the POE letter arrived in the White House. The Unistat government would not be blackmailed. Even before TV could broadcast the story of the threat, over 10,000,000 "radicals" and possible "radicals" had been placed under arrest coast to coast. One of them, more or less accidentally, had been Sylvia Goldfarb of POE.

All 1,700 POE bombs detonated at once. Unistat as an ent.i.ty ceased to exist. Nihilist Anarchist Hordes roamed what was left of the landscape.

Twenty-three hundred nuclear missiles, computer-guided to fire if Unistat were nuked, took off at the first blast and decimated Russia. The Beast had been programmed by Intelligence Agencies who were all convinced that any nuclear attack would come from there.

Twenty-three hundred Russian missiles took off the moment the first Unistat missile entered Russian airs.p.a.ce. They all went to China. The Russian computer had also been programmed by very dogmatic, very inflexible primates; it "knew" that any nuclear attack would come from China.

Starhawk was coming out of a bar on Geary when Frisco went. He was incinerated before his brain could register that anything was happening.

Lionel Eacher, long since returned to Contract Law, outlived the blast. He had been on vacation in Upper Michigan and was well armed, since he had been hunting. He survived by hunting and eating other mammals, including formerly domesticated primates, for nearly twenty years.

Then another formerly domesticated primate, even quicker and slicker, hunted and ate Lionel.

Markoff Chaney also survived. He was on a Greyhound in Florida, between Miami and Hollywood, when the bombs went off. He took to the Everglades and eventually even found a mate-a Seminole woman who didn't think he was absurd at all.

Their tribe increased.

The tribal stage endured 100,000 years, as it had before.

Then, suddenly, when environmental conditions were right, genetic programs rea.s.serted themselves. The hive instinct reappeared in the primates. Cities appeared, sin and guilt were reinvented, technology advanced.

Nuclear energy was rediscovered, and misused again.

The tribal age endured 12,000,000 years the next time.

Then, suddenly, when environmental conditions were right, genetic programs rea.s.serted themselves. The hive instinct reappeared in the primates. Cities appeared, sin and guilt were reinvented, technology advanced....

The six-legged majority knew little and cared less about all this primate activity. They had solved all their social problems three billion years earlier, and saw no need to change. They followed their own DNA cycles, just as monotonously as the primates followed primate cycles.

PART ONE.

THE UNIVERSE NEXT DOOR.

We doctors know a hopeless case when-listen; there's a h.e.l.l of a good universe next door; let's go-E. E. c.u.mMINGS, "pity this busy monster, manunkind"