Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy Part 13

STOIC AND CHRISTIAN.

e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.nS.

If we compare Stoic with Christian e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns, we see much.

-WILLIAM JAMES, Varieties of Religious Varieties of Religious Experience

AD ASTRA.

The majority of Terrans were six-legged, but we are not concerned with them. We are concerned with a tiny minority of domesticated primates who built pyramids and wrote books and eventually achieved s.p.a.ce Migration and entered into the galactic drama.

They were very clever primates-excellent at mimicry and even capable of creative thinking at times.

They never would have escaped from their planet and the boom-and-bust cycles of all life-forms adapted to planetside living if it hadn't been for the H.E.A.D. Revolution.

HEAD means Hedonic Hedonic Engineering and Development. It consists of learning to use the primate brain for fun and profit. Engineering and Development. It consists of learning to use the primate brain for fun and profit.

At the time of our story the HEAD Revolution, after an underground existence of many centuries, included only about 2 percent of the domesticated primates on Terra. The rest of the domesticated primates were still using their brains for misery and failure.

They did not know they were misusing their brains. They thought there was something wrong with the universe.

They called it the Problem of Evil.

Experts on the Problem of Evil were known as theologians. These were very erudite primates, skilled in primate logic, who wrote long books trying to answer the question "Why did G.o.d create an imperfect universe?"

"G.o.d" was their name for the hypothetical biggest-alpha-male-of-all. Being primates, they could not comprehend how anything could run if there weren't an alpha male in charge of it.

They a.s.sumed the universe was imperfect because it was obviously not set up for the convenience of domesticated primates.

The universe was not even designed for the convenience and comfort of the six-legged majority on Terra. The convenience and comfort of planetside species has very little to do with the cosmic drama.

A few of the primates had realized this. They were known as cynics. cynics.

Cynics were primates who realized the monotonous life-death cycle of terrestrial life, but were not imaginative enough to conceive of future evolution after longevity and escape velocity had been attained.

Planetary life is cyclical because planets themselves follow cyclical orbits about their mother stars. (See Galactic Encyclopedia Galactic Encyclopedia, "Larvel Stages of Species Development.") The six-legged majority on Terra, for instance, followed a life script of four or more stages. In general, the pattern was: (1) the embryonic or egg form; (2) the larval period; (3) the pupal or chrysalis stage; (4) the adult insect. During each stage the biot biot or biological unit-the so-called individual-pa.s.sed through a metamorphosis during which it was totally or partially transformed. or biological unit-the so-called individual-pa.s.sed through a metamorphosis during which it was totally or partially transformed.

The same was true of the domesticated primates. Most of them pa.s.sed through, and kept neurological circuits characteristic of, the following four stages: (1) imprinting and using the self-nourishing networks of the primate brain-the neonate or infant stage (oral biosurvival consciousness); (2) imprinting and using the emotional-territorial networks of the primate brain-the "toddler" stage (a.n.a.l status consciousness); (3) imprinting and using the semantic circuits-the verbal or conceptual stage (symbolic rational consciousness); (4) imprinting and using the socio-s.e.xual circuits-the mating or parenting stage (tribal taboo consciousness).

It was all very mechanical-but that's the way planetside life is.

PRETTY LITTLE BIRDIES.

December 1, 1983: Benny "Eggs" Benedict, plump, smallish, and balding, a popular columnist for the New York* News-Times News-Times, sat down to compose his daily essay. According to his usual procedure, he breathed deeply, relaxed every muscle, and gradually forced all verbalization in his brain to stop. When he had reached the Void he waited to see what would float up to fill the vacuum. What surfaced was: Pretty little birdies Picking in the t.u.r.dies Benny felt a rush of nostalgia. The jingle had been popular in Brooklyn when he was a schoolboy in the antediluvian era of the 1930s. Back then, in the Dark Ages of Roosevelt II, many Brooklyn peddlers still had horse-drawn carts, and the horses, as is common with their species, left piles of horse s.h.i.t in the streets as they went about their itineraries. Sparrows would peck in these steaming piles of dung for undigested oats, and a Brooklyn child would exclaim, on seeing this: "Pretty little birdies Picking in the t.u.r.dies!"

To which another child would usually reply: "He's a poet Though his looks don't show it!"

Benny reflected that this little bit of kidlore had stuck in his memory for nearly half a century and that it must therefore contain some profound Meaning. He began pounding the Mac Plus, offering the birdie-t.u.r.die poemlet as a perfect example of an American haiku haiku-the juxtaposition of two images, without comment by the author, in a way that suggested far more than it actually said.

"Birds," Benny wrote, "are traditional symbols of beauty, from Bacon's nightingales to Keats's skylark, throughout our whole poetic tradition. Horse manure, on the other hand, is regarded with revulsion and loathing. Yet the sparrows, indifferent to human standards, blithely pick in the manure, seeking the food they know is there. The poem is telling us that human likes and dislikes are arbitrary, squinty-eyed, chauvinistic, and irrelevant to nature's own grand design strategy."

Benny went on to a.s.sert that he had only been able to see this profundity in the jingle now, after he had spent six months meditating at the Manhattan Zen Center. "This rhyme is the Essence of Zen," he concluded.

It was probably the least successful column Benny ever wrote. Virtually n.o.body understood it and everybody was bored by it. Some readers even wrote protesting letters complaining that the column had been in questionable taste.

Benny was depressed by this reaction. He felt it had been a stroke of genius on his part to rescue from oblivion a genuine American haiku; haiku; but even more than that, writing the column had triggered a vast stream of recollections about 1930s Brooklyn which gave him a renewed sense of Roots he had hoped to share. Why, how many still alive could remember the procedure when the meter man from Monopolated Edison appeared in a Brooklyn neighborhood in those days? The kids were dispatched as runners, racing from house to house, shouting "Mon Ed! Mon Ed!" Everybody would then remove the bags of salt which they kept over the electric meters to deflect the readings downward and thereby lower the electric bill. but even more than that, writing the column had triggered a vast stream of recollections about 1930s Brooklyn which gave him a renewed sense of Roots he had hoped to share. Why, how many still alive could remember the procedure when the meter man from Monopolated Edison appeared in a Brooklyn neighborhood in those days? The kids were dispatched as runners, racing from house to house, shouting "Mon Ed! Mon Ed!" Everybody would then remove the bags of salt which they kept over the electric meters to deflect the readings downward and thereby lower the electric bill.

It seemed like only yesterday that Benny himself had raced from house to house shouting, "Mon Ed! Mon Ed!" And people had rushed to move the bags of salt to closets where the meter man wouldn't see them. Benny hadn't thought of those days in more than four decades, yet they lived on in Memory Storage and could be activated again by something as simple as the jingle about the pretty little birdies. And Benny's whole att.i.tude toward Mon Edison had been shaped by those experiences; he still regarded the "public" utility with a mixture of fear and loathing.

As a student of Zen, Benny knew that such negative emotions were bad for the nervous system and he often tried to regard Mon Ed without bias. It was impossible. He had learned to forgive Hitler, Stalin, even Nixon, but Mon Edison was still so charged with emotion that he could not think of it without his blood pressure rising. Besides, they had just raised their rates again in October. At the memory of that, Benny's Zen crumbled entirely.

"Public utilities are a monopolist's heaven and a consumer's h.e.l.l," he growled, knowing he was not yet a Buddha.

But then he cheered up as another bit of 1930s kidlore came back to him. It was a silly ritual, really, but it used to keep them amused, even hilarious, back in sixth grade. It would begin with somebody asking, "Who s.h.i.t in the sink?"

"You s.h.i.t!" another would reply.

"Bulls.h.i.t," the first would riposte.

"Who s.h.i.t?" a third would then ask.

"Frank s.h.i.t," somebody would answer.

"Bulls.h.i.t," Frank would object.

"Who s.h.i.t?"

"Joe s.h.i.t," Frank would say, getting Joe into the game.

"Bulls.h.i.t," Joe would pay promptly.

And so it would go: "Who s.h.i.t?" "Pete s.h.i.t." "Bulls.h.i.t!" "Who s.h.i.t?" "Jerry s.h.i.t." "Bulls.h.i.t!" ... And on, and on, until everybody was bored-which among schoolboys might take quite a long time.

Benny was so overwhelmed with nostalgia that he decided to go visit his mother at the Brooklyn Senior Citizens' Home, even though the old lady had been a bit neurotic ever since she was knocked on her a.s.s by a purses.n.a.t.c.her three years ago on July 23, 1981.

*Terran Archives 2803: New York was a city-state or island in the midwestern part of the Unistat. It seems to have been a center of religious worship, and many came there to walk about, probably in deep meditation, within an enormous female statue, the G.o.ddess of these primitives. Various authorities identify this divinity as Columbia, Marilyn Monroe, Liberty, or Mother f.u.c.ker-all of these being names widely recorded in Unistat glyphs. Perhaps her true name will never be known. New York was a city-state or island in the midwestern part of the Unistat. It seems to have been a center of religious worship, and many came there to walk about, probably in deep meditation, within an enormous female statue, the G.o.ddess of these primitives. Various authorities identify this divinity as Columbia, Marilyn Monroe, Liberty, or Mother f.u.c.ker-all of these being names widely recorded in Unistat glyphs. Perhaps her true name will never be known.

AMERICAN HAIKU.

The only one in New York who really grokked Benny Benedict's column about the pretty little birdies was Justin Case, a mild, fortyish man who looked Gay but wasn't. Case wrote excruciatingly intelligent music criticism. Since he read about this example of American folk haiku haiku while very, very, while very, very, very very stoned on Columbian Gold, he immediately conceived that it would be even more stoned on Columbian Gold, he immediately conceived that it would be even more folkish folkish and beautiful if recited with an old, Dark Age Brooklyn accent, and beautiful if recited with an old, Dark Age Brooklyn accent, viz: viz: "Pretty little boidies Picking in the toidies!"

He was so enamored of this that he quoted it, whenever he was drunk or stoned, for several months. The whole winter-spring season of 1983-84, if you mingled with the intelligentsia in Manhattan, you were likely to hear Case declaiming, in a style based partly on Orson Welles and partly on Charles Laughton, "Pretty little boidies/Picking in the toidies!" This finally found its way into Case's NBI file-"Subject is inclined to quoting obscene poetry in mixed company"-and was even fed to the Beast.

The NBI had a file on Case because one of their informants had stated that he was a frequent a.s.sociate of Blake Williams. In fact, Case detested Williams and only was seen in his presence because it was impossible to go to the best parties on the Isle of Manhattan without encountering him. Oddly enough, the informant knew that quite well-but she also knew that her fees depended on the number of new suspects she reported each month.

Case's NBI dossier remained always small. As a Congressional Medal of Honor winner in Vietnam, he was not the sort of man the Bureau cared to spy on too closely, since it would be embarra.s.sing if they were caught. Besides, they couldn't make head or tails out of his phone conversations, which were all about such inscrutable matters as whether Beethoven's obsession with his nephew represented repressed paternal impulses, latent h.o.m.os.e.xuality, or the desire to be a mother, and whether all three elements were expressed in the tonic chord of the ba.s.soon under the dominant chord of the tutti tutti in the opening of the in the opening of the Ninth. Ninth.

Justin Case's G.o.d was a dead Irishman named James Augustine Aloysius Joyce, who had been the greatest tenor of the twentieth century. Case owned every record of every Joyce concert preserved on wax, and regarded the man as having the most subtle musical sensibility since the great Ludwig himself. If only he had been a composer instead of a singer, Case sometimes thought, with that ear ...

Actually, Joyce had considered the priesthood, writing, and even medicine before settling on a musical career. His voice thrilled audiences in Europe and America for nearly a decade before the famous Joyce Scandal, which destroyed him. Case always fumed with anger when he read of the great singer's last days-how concerts were disrupted and ruined by moralistic hecklers howling "Garters garters garters!" till the shamed man left the stage, humiliated. It was known that he died of drink, often comparing himself to Oscar Wilde and Charles Stewart Parnell, and cursing the Christian churches bitterly.

Case once had an affair with the anthropologist and s.e.xologist Marilyn Chambers, just because she shared his pa.s.sion for Joyce's music. Due to the receptivity of the postcoital male, he had even allowed her to explain the parallel universe theory to him once-something he always dismissed as rubbish when Blake Williams talked about it.

"You mean," he asked, "that in another universe Joyce's thing about girls' undergarments might never have been discovered and his career wouldn't have been ruined?"

"Even more," Dr. Chambers said. "If Wheeler's interpretation of the state vector is true, there must be such a universe. Also, a universe where Joyce did become a priest instead of a singer."

"Far f.u.c.king out," Case said. "I wonder what you'd you'd be in the universe next door ..." be in the universe next door ..."

NO WIFE, NO HORSE, NO MUSTACHE.

What is certain is that in countries like Bulgaria, where people live on polenta, yogurt, and other such foods, men live to a greater age than in our parts of the world.-FURBISH LOUSEWART V, Unsafe Wherever You Go Unsafe Wherever You Go Justin Case heard about the man with no wife, no horse, and no mustache at one of Mary Margaret Wildeblood's wild, wild parties. Joe Malik, the editor of Confrontation Confrontation, told the story. It was rather hard for Case to follow because the party was huge and noisy-a typical Wildeblood soiree. Everybody soiree. Everybody was there-Blake Williams, bearded, beamish, bland, the inventor of interstellar pharmaco-anthropology, Gestalt neurobiology, and a dozen other sciences that n.o.body understood; Juan Tootreego, the Olympic runner who had broken the three-and-a-half-minute mile; Carol Christmas, blond, bubbly, and possessed of the greatest bod in Manhattan; Natalie Drest, chairperson of the Index Expurgatorius in G.o.d's Lightning; Marvin Gardens, who had two best-selling novels and seemingly owned 90 percent of the cocaine in the Western world; Bertha Van Ation, the astronomer from Griffith Observatory who had discovered the two new planets beyond Pluto. Hordes of other Names-maxi-, midi-, and mini-celebrities-swarmed through Mary Margaret's posh Sutton Place pad as the evening wore on. There was a lot of booze, a lot of weed, and-due to Marvin Gardens-altogether too much c.o.ke. was there-Blake Williams, bearded, beamish, bland, the inventor of interstellar pharmaco-anthropology, Gestalt neurobiology, and a dozen other sciences that n.o.body understood; Juan Tootreego, the Olympic runner who had broken the three-and-a-half-minute mile; Carol Christmas, blond, bubbly, and possessed of the greatest bod in Manhattan; Natalie Drest, chairperson of the Index Expurgatorius in G.o.d's Lightning; Marvin Gardens, who had two best-selling novels and seemingly owned 90 percent of the cocaine in the Western world; Bertha Van Ation, the astronomer from Griffith Observatory who had discovered the two new planets beyond Pluto. Hordes of other Names-maxi-, midi-, and mini-celebrities-swarmed through Mary Margaret's posh Sutton Place pad as the evening wore on. There was a lot of booze, a lot of weed, and-due to Marvin Gardens-altogether too much c.o.ke.

Basically, Joe Malik said, his encounter with the man who had no wife, no horse, and no mustache had been part of an experiment in neurometaprogramming. Case had no idea what the holy waltzing f.u.c.k neurometaprogramming might be in English, and the story came through in a kind of polyphonic counterpoint with the other conversations swirling around them.

Joe Malik, known as the last of the Red Hot Liberals, was half Arab, of course, but-as he himself liked to point out-he had been raised Roman Catholic and became an atheist in engineering school (Brooklyn Polytechnic) and n.o.body could detect anything Islamic about him. Yet he did talk rather oddly at times-especially after his melodramatic adventures with the Discordian philosopher and millionaire Hagbard Celine.

"No wife, no horse, no mustache," Malik was saying.

"Oh, I think President Hubbard is doing a great job," Blake Williams was telling Carol Christmas. "The solar energy we're getting from the L5 s.p.a.ce cities is going to triple and quadruple the Gross National Product, and the way she abolished poverty was brilliant."

"But Hubbard is so d.a.m.n technological," Fred "Figs" Newton protested piously. "There's no spirit no sense of tragedy no gnosis anywhere in the administration...."

"I can't get used to Mary Margaret being a woman," an Unidentified Man said.

"No wife, no horse, no mustache," Malik repeated. "That's all it said."

"I beg your pardon?" Case asked, intrigued by something nonmusical for the first time in his life.

"I still say f.u.c.k em all," all," a drunken writer howled somewhere. "b.a.s.t.a.r.dly thieving ..." a drunken writer howled somewhere. "b.a.s.t.a.r.dly thieving ..."

"It was in the Readers Digest," Readers Digest," Malik explained, trying to clarify matters but not sure how much Case had already missed. Malik explained, trying to clarify matters but not sure how much Case had already missed.

"The Readers Digest?" Readers Digest?" Case prompted. Case prompted.

"That was the whole point," Malik went on earnestly. "I was stoned on Alamout Black hashish, the best in the world, and I sat down to read a whole issue of Readers Digest Readers Digest all the way through and all the way through and become one with it." become one with it."

"Become one with the Readers Digest?" Readers Digest?" Case was in beyond his depth and sinking fast in ontological quicksand. Case was in beyond his depth and sinking fast in ontological quicksand.

"... which makes the Van Allen Belt a gigantic placenta"-Captain Cosmic was still on his own trip-"and every organism a cell in the megafetus struggling up the slippery 4,000-mile walls of the gravity well ..."

"I wanted to experience a totally alien, science-fiction reality," Malik pursued his theme. "Reader's Digest "Reader's Digest comes from another universe, grok, from a world occupied by millions of Americans who are not New York intellectuals. These people sincerely believe that our government has never waged an unjust war, that the hair of a seventh son of a seventh son cures warts, that millionaires get rich through honesty and hard work, that a Jewish girl once got pregnant by a dove, and all sorts of things like that, which are regarded as medieval superst.i.tions in my normal environment. Entering comes from another universe, grok, from a world occupied by millions of Americans who are not New York intellectuals. These people sincerely believe that our government has never waged an unjust war, that the hair of a seventh son of a seventh son cures warts, that millionaires get rich through honesty and hard work, that a Jewish girl once got pregnant by a dove, and all sorts of things like that, which are regarded as medieval superst.i.tions in my normal environment. Entering Readers Digest Readers Digest through the empathy of hash is a quantum jump to another reality." through the empathy of hash is a quantum jump to another reality."

There was a momentary silence in which Case distinctly heard Juan Tootreego whispering, "... nose candy nose candy from Marvin ..." from Marvin ..."

"The trick," Malik went on, "is to concentrate on the reality projected through the printed page. the reality projected through the printed page. Every sentence is a signal from another world, a nervous system different from yours with which you can interface synergetically ..." Every sentence is a signal from another world, a nervous system different from yours with which you can interface synergetically ..."

"You mean," Carol Christmas breathed huskily, "you were deliberately brainwashing yourself to believe in this Readers Digest Readers Digest world?" world?"

"Of course," Malik said, with an isn't-it-obvious shrug. "A single ego is a very narrow view of the world."

"Escape velocity," Williams plunged onward to the stars, "that is, 18,000 em-pee-aitch, is the bursting of the waters, the endocrine message that the planetary birth process is beginning ..."

"Everybody," Mary Margaret Wildeblood announced, "this is Dr. Dashwood from San Francisco he studies o.r.g.a.s.ms."

Dashwood, a pipe-smoking ectomorph, fidgeted in their gaze.

"Yes, I know," know," came the paranoid pipe of Marvin Gardens, always sounding a little like Peter Lorre, "they all say I'm exaggerating, but I tell you it's came the paranoid pipe of Marvin Gardens, always sounding a little like Peter Lorre, "they all say I'm exaggerating, but I tell you it's real real they are extraterrestrials and they control they are extraterrestrials and they control TV TV and the and the newspapers newspapers and and all the media ..." all the media ..."

Case began to think he was in a play, with everybody reading from a different script.

JUAN TOOTREEGO: But why did you give the new planets such strange names?

BERTHA VAN ATION: Well, I'm old-fashioned enough to be patriotic. I mean, why should everything everything in the sky have a Greek or Roman name? in the sky have a Greek or Roman name?

BENNY BENEDICT: "Who s.h.i.t?" "You s.h.i.t!" "Bulls.h.i.t!"

JUAN TOOTREEGO: I see. Like Mr. Benet, you have fallen in love with American names.

BERTHA VAN ATION: Well, yes, but I didn't call either of them Wounded Knee....

DRUNKEN WRITER: Yeah, I remember that from when I was a kid in Kentucky. "Frank s.h.i.t!!" BULLs.h.i.t!!!!" "Who s.h.i.t ...?"

WILLIAMS: ... A Jam Sandwich using No Peanuts Mayonnaise or Glue.

NEWTON: My G.o.d, I just saw Bigfoot on the balcony.

WILDEBLOOD: Oh, that's Simon Moon. He's a mathematician and quite harmless, really.

MALIK: So in effect I became became Middle America. Bouncing off the printed page into my retina, grok, decoded by nervous system circulating through Memory Storage the words formed a Middle America. Bouncing off the printed page into my retina, grok, decoded by nervous system circulating through Memory Storage the words formed a micro-Reader's Digest micro-Reader's Digest in my neurons. I honestly began to worry about in my neurons. I honestly began to worry about the dangers of premarital s.e.x. the dangers of premarital s.e.x.

BENEDICT: Nothing to compare with the hazards of marital s.e.x. Do you have any idea how much alimony I'm paying every month?

At that point, unfortunately, Case dozed off in his chair (one joint of Colombian too many) and he never did find out about the man with no wife, no horse, and no mustache.