SCHRODINGER'S CAT TRILOGY

THE GOATS MARCH

Now we've got them just where they want us!

–admiral james tiberius kirk

While Captain Ahab was trying to Illuminate Dr. Dashwood at noon in San Francisco, and Justin Case was dialing the Saudi Arabian consulate at 3 P.M. in New York, a man named Francois Loup-Garou was finding a Rehnquist in his Lobster Newburg in Paris, where it was already late evening.

Naturally, he was a bit startled.

M. Loup-Garou was, like all French intellectuals, a rationalist-virtually a Cartesian. Of course, as the founder of the Neo-Surrealist movement in art, he was officially an irrationalist; but, like all Gallic irrationalists, especially the Existentialists, he was exquisitely rational about his irrationality. He knew there was some explanation of how the Rehnquist had gotten into the Lobster Newburg, but for once in his life he preferred being an irrational rationalist rather than an irrational rationalist. He just did not care to think about the explanation of how a Rehnquist gets into a Lobster Newburg. Who, after all, wants to contemplate such ideas as maddened chefs having at each other with meat cleavers, or more exotic hypotheses, such anthropophagy or voodoo rituals in the kitchen?

The distasteful incident occurred at a di

As the guests settled themselves at the table, one of the English neurologists, Dr. Axon-a jovial, red-cheeked man who probably hunted as a hobby-asked Dr. Carter, "Does your theory actually propose that there are real tangible universes on all sides of us in hyperspace?"

"In superspace," Carter corrected genially. "Yay-us," he added blandly. "There are millions of such universes. Or to be more precise, there are about 10100 of them. Ah only refer to possible universes," he explained quickly, lest anybody think his theory was extravagant.

"Some more wine heah," Carter's brother said loudly. "Ah think you've had enough, Bill-uh," Carter muttered in an undertone.

"Do you think President Ke

"Ah don't understand politics," James Earl Carter said. "Ahm a scientist."

"Some MORE WINE heah," Carter's brother repeated. "Then there are universes in which I was never born." Dr. Axon pursued his own line of thought.

"There are universes in which John Baez became a general instead of a folk singer," Carter said easily. "Ah suppose he would be equally vehement about nuking people as he now is about not nuking them. If it's a possible universe, it exists. The equations say so. All ah've done, really, is to show that any other interpretation of the equations is contradictory."

"Somebody ought to psychoanalyze the physicists," the Austrian psychiatrist muttered to the Swedish film director.

"It's like the Buddhist concept of karma," the Swedish film director said. "We all get to play every role, somewhere in hyperspace."

"Superspace," Carter corrected again.

"Then there's a universe where Ke

"Well, Carter said with his genial smile, "ah hope ah could get along with the people who run the country. What do they call themselves-the Triangular Co

"I don't care whether this theory is true or not," the German novelist pronounced. "As a metaphor, it is perfect. We all live in parallel universes. I am Faust in my universe, and the rest of you are all extras or walk-ons. But each of you is Faust in his universe, and I am an extra-maybe just a spear carrier."

But by this time the wineglasses had been refilled several times and everybody was getting more relaxed, especially the physicist's brother, Billy, who was heard reciting to Ms. Gebloomenkraft, "Who Burgered? Tom Burgered! Bullburger! Who Burgered?"

"… the Second Oswald… in Hong Kong…" somebody was muttering at the other end of the table.

"In some universe maybe Schiller didn't write Faust at all…"

"I wonder," Dendrite said, "if there's a universe where Pope Stephen became a singer instead of a priest."

"Everyboduh knew that 'Who Burgered?' routine when we were growing up in Georgia," Billy was saying.

"Verdammte publishers," the German novelist was telling the Swiss theologian. "They're all thieves."

"Did somebody mention Pope Stephen?" the theologian asked.

"Strumpfbander, Strumpfbander, Strumpfbander," the psychiatrist chortled.

"They stay up nights thinking of new ways to cheat their writers," the novelist rambled on, now evidently addressing his wineglass, since nobody else was listening to him.

"I'd like to know who started all those rumors about Pope Stephen," the theologian fumed.

"I have written a poem commemorating your great discovery," Francois Loup-Garou told Dr. Carter, hacking his way into a pause in the conversation.

"A poem about me? In French?" Carter was enthused. "Ah love French poetry, especially RAM-BOW."

"No," Loup-Garou said, "in your honor, I have written it in English." Actually, he had written it in English to get even with T. S. Eliot, who had written a few rondels in French.

"Ah wonder if you could recite it," Carter prompted.

"Certainly," said Loup-Garou. And he began to declaim:

Schrodinger's cat and Wigner's friend

Cause us problems without end

The cat is both alive and dead

In the math that's in our head

And the regression of Von Neuma

Never ceases to a

The uncertainty just has no end

Until Wigner goes to tell his friend

For, until the friend receives the news

That the cat still purrs and mews

The cat remains (suspended Fate!)

In some formal Eigenstate

"Some MORE WINE heah!" Carter's brother bellowed at the butler.

Loup-Garou frowned and went on:

But if Wigner makes a beeline

To report the now-dead feline

All the friend can really know

Is just one branch of time's swift flow

For in Carter's multispace

Every time-branch has its place

So the cat remains alive

In the half cases (That's.5)

Lead us not to Copenhagen,

Nor to Shylock, nor to Fagin:

"The result's not parsimonious!"

Yet I find it quite harmonious

Nobody understood this except Dr. Carter himself, but he was so moved that his eyes watered a bit. "Ahm honored," he kept saying, shaking his head. "To have a poem written about me by a French artist in English. …"