Robert Wilson - SCHRODINGER'S CAT TRILOGY

Even earlier a metaprogramming-circuit Greek primate, Aristotle, had observed that it would be possible to abolish slavery "when the loom and other machines become self-managing."

Terran primates had continued slavery over the generations, despite the increasing distress this caused their hominid third and fourth (semantic and moral) circuits, simply because machines could not yet manage themselves. As many a primate Utopian had rediscovered in chagrin, under primitive planetary conditions, "somebody has to do the shit-work." The most appealing solution to electing that somebody was to invade a weaker neighboring tribe and bring back a group of biots who could be domesticated.

This had been done so often that there was no hominid pack on Terra that did not show the effects of domestication and slave mentality, a fact first noted by a dour German primate named Nietzsche.

In Unistat, due to the strong encouragement of individualistic third- and fourth-circuit (semantic-moral) functions, slavery had grown so repugnant that it was formally "abolished" within a century after the formation of the pack constitution; it lingered on through inertia in the form of "wage slavery," which required that all primates not born into the sixty families that "owned" almost everything would have to "work" for those families or their corporations in order to get the tickets (called "money") which were necessary for survival.

This slave mentality was so entrenched in the domesticated primates that cybernation advanced very slowly in the first thirty years after Weiner discovered it would be possible to abolish primate toil. All the important primate bands-the alpha male corporations, the primate trade unions, the primate council or "government," the primate totem cults or "churches"-believed that the traditional domesticated caste system was the only possible system under which primates could live. Even the Red primates shared this delusion, differing only in their ideas about distribution of resources.

President Hubbard boldly challenged this domesticated primate thought-form by announcing that everybody who could be replaced by a machine would be replaced by a machine.

It seemed like the end of the world to the primates, at first.

It turned out to be only the end of poverty.

"Any false or partially false premise extended with accurate logic will generate an approximate simulation of insanity." Crossing Broadway at Seventy-second Street, still lecturing, it was Blake Williams.

"Yes, yes, of course, Professor, but if you'll listen a moment to what I'm trying to say," Natalie Drest protested.

"But you see, young lady, most of the premises of our current religious, scientific, and philosophical thinking must be false, or partially false, as judged by a more advanced civilization. What would a Higher Intelligence make of our doctrines of transubstantiation or charmed quarks or the categorical imperative?"

"Well, yeah, but, professor…"

"Then, dammit, will you listen? Most of our beliefs and behavior will appear clinically insane to a Higher Intelligence viewing this planet."

"Sure, it's all relative, I know that, but, Professor…"

"Look," Dr. Williams said with crushing finality, "do you want to fuck, or don't you?"

Her answer was drowned out by a siren racing up Riverside Drive.

"What?"

"I said, I been tryna tell you for ten blocks, Professor, I'm still getting over a case of the clap…"

"That's quite all right, my dear," Blake Williams pronounced suavely. "I'm a broad-minded man. I understand the exuberance of youth, the powerful hormones coursing through your vibrant young bloodstream, the noble refusal of your generation to regard the taboos of old as binding upon the free spirits of the 1980s, and besides, I've reached the age at which I'm not horny every night of the year. You are still invited to come along to my humble digs and listen to my old Joan Baez records."

"Gee, Professor, you know what you are? You're cool. You're not sexist at all."

"Urn, yes, thank you, my dear. I'm just getting old, actually. Now, about the Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky gedan-kenexperiment …"

The intellectual love of things consists in understanding their perfections.

–spinoza

Linda Lovelace, a projection of light traveling 186,000 miles per second through film of events that actually transpired in Miami years before, is taking first one inch of Harry Reems's penis, then two, three, five, the whole incredible nine inches, and paranoid little Marvin Gardens, hunched in his seat, overcoat in lap, snorts the last of his coke.

It was the forty-fourth time Marvin had seen Deep Throat and the twenty-third time on coke, and under the overcoat his hand was magically transforming into Linda's mouth again, that separate reality where the dancing photons on the screen and the synergizing synapses in his brain joined to produce more than 3-D better than Technicolor realer than real God yes higher than a kite oh Lord.

Marvin was having a rare happy moment in which the extraterrestrial invasion wasn't worrying him.

He, Harry Reems, is about to come, and Marvin Gardens, too, wondering in one corner of his mind about the eternity of protoplasm, because when he conies she'll take it out of her mouth and- splat!- he'll shoot all over her face. Marvin is waiting, but take an amoeba now does it die when it splits? Are there two new amoebas or is it two selves where there was one self before? God, she's got all of it now, faster, call them Krazy and Ignatz say, now is Krazy the first amoeba and Ignatz a twin or are both of them still Krazy, two Krazies instead of one? Jeez, right I down her throat now, and when they split again we have four, she's licking the head now ah that's good and about to swallow it all again, call them say Groucho Chico Harpo and Zeppo, which is the original amoeba or are they all, are amoebas really immortal then? Now now here it comes now one amoeba dividing forever now going on and on for all eternity now a single explosion of DNA seed now now ah Christ Christ yes now now now yes Eternal God oh good.

"Blake Williams had a mnemonic for my discovery," Bertha Van Ation was excitedly telling Juan Tootreego as they passed the DEEP THROAT marquee. "Mother Very Easily Made a Jam Sandwich Using No Peanuts, Mayonnaise, or Glue. See? Mercury Venus Earth…"

But about those amoebas: Marvin Gardens, more relaxed now, is buttoning his coat and heading for the exit. Linda Lovelace continues to schlurp and suck on the screen behind him, but he is deciding that after the first split there are two amoebas, of course, but should you call them children of the first amoeba- him or her or it? And after the second split there are four. After the third split, eight. Nowhere does the phase change denoted by the symbol "death" appear to have occurred. Is one of the eight third-generation amoebas the original amoeba (him or her or it), or are all of them the original? And how does 8 = 4 = 2 = 1, anyhow?

Markoff Chaney was about to have a dream come true. He was renting his old room at the YMCA on Chicago Avenue again, using it as a base for further anti-Dashwood activities. He had gone for a walk, and as he approached the intersection of Michigan and Lake Shore Drive, he was thinking about a new letterhead that would say FRATERNAL ORDER OF HATE GROUPS and have Robert Welch, Abby Hoffman, Anita Bryant, and George Wallace listed as officers. Perhaps he might add Natalie Drest and make her "Chairperson of the Board."

"Hsst!" a voice said. "You-yeah, you, shorty." The midget stiffened and whirled around. "Hssst!" he said, "You-yeah, you, asshole."