Robert Wilson - SCHRODINGER'S CAT TRILOGY

It was thorough, painstaking work, and since the Mad Fishmonger and his, or her, associates accomplished it all at noon on a busy day 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 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 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 shellfish falling from the sky; 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 Damned Things that fell out of the sky, such as iron balls with inscriptions on them or chunks of ice as big as elephants. There were also Damned 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-space 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 nobody 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.

The spirit of decision consists simply in not hesitating when an inner voice commands you to act.

–furbish lousewart V, Unsafe Wherever "four Go

Just before coming to Wildeblood's party, Blake Williams wrote one of the most heretical passages in his jealously guarded Secret Diaries. He wrote:

I am an anthropologist, 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.

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 massive 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, 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.*

*Galactic Archives: Rent was a form of tribute paid by non-"owning" users of land to nonusing "owners." The "owners," known as lords-of-the-land, or 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."

In May the missing gold from Fort Knox was found buried at San Clemente. Nixon still denied everything.

The new World Almanac 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.

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

Benny "Eggs" Benedict never got home from Epicene Wildeblood's party that night. On the corner of Lexington and Twenty-third, Benny was hit 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 sadistically. 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.

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-rehearsed 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.