Robert Wilson - SCHRODINGER'S CAT TRILOGY

"Um perhaps we have carried the metaphor till it staggers…"

"It sounds like Mozart's music," Natalie said, seeing the window again. "All as mechanical as a clockwork and yet as free as a dream…"

GALACTIC ARCHIVES:

President Hubbard had largely abolished crime by abolishing prisons.

This was one of her most astonishing achievements, since most primates thought prisons were preventatives, not causes, of crime.

Eve Hubbard, needless to say, had always been a unique Terran, which was why she was the first Black President of Unistat. Although she was, like most brilliant people, extremely good-looking-the genetic link between health, hedonism, cleverness, and good looks (the "bright-eyes-and-bushy-tails" gestalt) is true in all species on all known planets-Eve had dropped out of films after a smash success as the supersexed ebony android in Gentlemen Prefer Clones. She had gone on to major in philosophy at UCLA, and was almost denied her Ph.D. because her thesis was a thorough rejection of all philosophies hitherto invented by Terran primates. She went on to become one of the first neurogeneticists. In fact, it was due to certain discoveries in primate genetics that she had decided to go into politics next.

The Code Hubbard, the most important revision of primate jurisprudence since the Code Napoleon, divided all crimes into three classes.

Crimes against convention- so-called victimless crimes- were not penalized at all. A citizen could be interrogated about each behavior only after complaints by a minimum of one hundred neighbors. The interrogators, a group of trained neurogeneticists, would then publish a report, either mildly recommending relocation of the heretic, or, much more commonly, strongly advising the neighbors to mind their own business.

Many libertarians objected to this, since they wanted victimless crimes abolished utterly. Hubbard had pragmatically realized that such libertarian penology was impractical until the primates totally outgrew the morality delusion.

Those who chose relocation were assigned by the Beast to an environment where their heresy was "normal." Most of them found that the Beast recommended an L5 space-city, and most of them liked it when they got there. They had futique genes.

Many of the heretics, of course, chose to stay where they were and go on annoying the bejesus out of their neighbors. This is the typical recalcitrant streak found in certain domesticated primates on all planets.

Crimes against property were regarded as improper economics requiring adjustment. The felon was compelled to pay in full the value of that which had been appropriated or destroyed. If unable to pay, the felon then had a literal "debt to society." The government paid the victim, and the felon repaid the government by working at half wages on some socially useful project, such as longevity research, space research, or just as a forest ranger in the growing number of national parks that were appearing since Industry was moved off the planet into Free Space.

Crimes of violence were defined as the natural, inevitable, tragic, but intolerable resultant of some combination of genes, imprints, and conditioning. The biots who committed such acts were sent, without condemnation but irrevocably, to Hell.

Hell had previously been the state of Mississippi. After the aborigines were resettled in an environment suitable for two-circuit (prehominid) primates, Mississippi became Hell by simply surrounding it with a laser shield that made escape impossible. Everything within the shield was intact. The violent biots were free to do what they wanted, and they soon had several forms of feudalism, war, piracy, commerce, slavery, and other early primate institutions functioning in a manner that seemed normal to them.

Many violent biots and gene pools moved to Hell voluntarily, since it was the only remaining part of the world that fit their notions of proper primate society. Among those who migrated en masse and established sizable governments or robber bands in Hell were the Ku Klux Klan, the Black Panthers, the American Nazi Party, Hell's Angels, and most of the People's Ecology Party.

John Wayne, nearly one hundred years old, but looking and feeling around thirty due to FOREVER, and totally cured of all cancers by the Org pills, also went to Hell. He was rumored to be one of the richest slave traders and War Chiefs in the Western sector.

"HELL IS HEAVEN" was the proud slogan of the region.

Hugh Crane celebrated his fourteenth birthday in 1938 by climbing into the bed of the family's black maid, Sophie Hage. She had observed his precocity and wasn't surprised at the timing; and the deed itself, she had learned, was par for the sons and the female servants of the best families on Park Avenue. What was not normal was the passion that endured over several months, and the extent to which she herself was picked up and carried by it. Soon they were sharing secrets, just as if they were true lovers and equals, not master and servant.

"Nails and glass in your shoes?" she asked him on the day that Nazi tanks crossed the border into Czechoslovakia.

"I read about it in a book about saints that I got from the library on Forty-second Street," he said.

"But that's crazy, mon." She was from Haiti.

"But it worked," he said. "I saw Jesus."

"You saw Jesus?"

"Well," he said bashfully. "That wasn't just from the nails in my shoes. It was after I whipped my back with wet rope for six hours."

Sophie gazed at him thoughtfully for a long time. "What you trying to do, boy?"

"I'm learning how to live without fear," he said simply. "You know my dad. He's afraid of everything and everybody. Jews, Catholics, bad omens, the government, a broken mirror… you know. I just don't want to live my life that way."

Sophie thought about it for three days. Then she told him there was a man he ought to meet.

"What sort of man?" he asked.

"A high priest of Voudon."

Mister, what does it mean when a man crashes out?

–ida lupino in High Sierra, script by john huston

DECEMBER 24, 1983:

The Eye, diamond-bright and glowing with a red inflammation, floated in the air at the head of the couch as Joe Malik returned to the Euclidean flatland at the bottom of the gravity well. Bloodshot eyes I've got to be haunted by, he thought bitterly, still dealing with the dimensions of the triangle. 3 X 3 x 3. No doubt about it. 333. The number of the Mighty Devil Choronzon, who had afflicted Dr. Dee and Sir Edward Kelley in the seventeenth century and raised hell for Aleister Crowley earlier in this century. Choronzon, the Lurker at the Threshold, who drove back any occultist who tried to push open the final door, cross the boundary of the unmarked state. Choronzon, avatar of the Great Lie, spirit of Constriction, protector of the Illuminati.

Choronzon with a hangover, to judge by the redness of the eye.

"Jeez that was great oh honey ah you doll you lovely Arab sheikh you," Carol was bubbling happily.

But Blake Williams plows on:

"The Freudian, of course, sees much more in Krazy's love for Ignatz. Sadomasochism, in fact. 'Li'1 dollink, always fetful,' Krazy mutters contentedly as each brick bounces off her head. And worse: Krazy is female only in some sequences. In others this remarkable feline is indisputably male. Herriman, the psychoanalyst would suggest, had some AC-DC hang-ups when he conceived this fantasy.

"Sometimes, Professor, you remind me of Burroughs," Natalie said.

"Well, I do admire much of his work, especially The Job …" Williams was pleased by the comparison.