Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy

FRANCIS DASHWOOD, M.D.
PRESIDENT

There was nothing urgent on the memo pad, so Dashwood began opening the incoming mail leisurely.

Dear Dr. Dashwood,

I am writing to you as a Sex Expert because I don't know where else to turn. I already wrote to Ann Lan-ders, but she just told me to take cold showers. My problem is that I am madly, hopelessly, passionately in love with Linda Lovelace. I've actually seen Deep Throat ninety-three times now and nothing can get her out of my mind. Other women leave me cold; I only want Linda, Linda, Linda. She has so much beauty and charm and sweetness and, my God, can she eat Rehnquist! I know this is hopeless because even though I've written a novel about Vlad the Impaler and made lots of money, I'm still very shy with women. (Some of them are extraterrestrials, I have discovered.) Why did God make such an unjust universe? Can you help me?

Dr. Dashwood frowned thoughtfully, then scrawled, 'Send this nut the see-a-psychiatrist letter." Dum de dum de dum de. Next!

Dr. Orgasm R. Institute

Frank Dashwood 666 Malaclypse San Francisco, Calif.

Dear Dr. Institute:

We are sending you this personalized letter because we know that a man like you, Dr. Institute, cares about his investments and wants to know the facts about Inflation.

Next! (And remember: look up that Zelenka.)

Dear Dr Dashwood,

I am a paraplegic and therefore I am incapable of normal coitus. My sweetheart and I, fortunately, have found that oral sex satisfies us fully-I Marshall her Frankel and then she gives me a Steinem Job. But this creates a terrible legal conundrum, since she lives across the Mississippi River in Iowa and I am a citizen of Illinois. Iowa has a very strict law against oral sex, which they classify as sodomy (due to a mistranslation of the Old Testament, I believe). Thus, we can't have sex in Iowa. Now, Illinois has had no anti-sodomy statutes since the 1960s, so you might think our problem can be solved by having sex in Illinois. Unfortunately, she can't afford to quit her job in Iowa, and thus every time she travels across the river to have sex with me, she is crossing a state line, which makes me vulnerable under the Mann Act. Is there any possible solution to this legal double-bind?

Dr. Dashwood was intrigued. He began thinking of topological transformations, non-Euclidean geometries, Wheeler's wormholes in superspace… But then he realized he was Romanticizing, just because the puzzle had sparked his imagination. In ordinary four-dimensional Heisenberg space-time, there was no way out of the paradox: If the writer crossed the river, he and his lady were committing sodomy in Iowa, and if the lady crossed the river, they were violating the Mann Act in Illinois.

Logicians dream up such Strange Loops, Dashwood reflected, just to make games for other logicians; but lawyers create them to make more jobs for lawyers.

Dashwood scrawled, "Tell him his lady better damned well find a job in Illinois."

Next.

Dear Dr. Dashwood,

Once there was a man who was condemned to live on the moon. He knew the punishment was just, because he hated his father and such a sin deserves an extreme penalty. Nonetheless, his isolation was terrible and there were times when he thought his heart would break, just because he could never hear a human voice again.

Well, he made the best of his cruel situation. He began sending messages from the moon, telling everything he knew about life on earth-all the joys and agonies and struggles, "the horror and the boredom and the glory" of the long climb upward from the slime to higher and higher consciousness. The people back on earth loved these signals, which contained so much of life's drama, and they praised him extravagantly, and that gave him some comfort through the long years of his exile.

Once, however, he sat down and made a message about his own loneliness, telling how it feels to be separated from humanity by 250,000 miles of Dead Silence.

He called it the Hammerklavier Sonata.

Try to plot that on one of your graphs, you sizeist son-of-a-bitch.

Ezra Pound

Fair Play for Fernando Poo

Committee

The intercom buzzed.

"A man is here from the FBI," Miss Karrig said nervously.

Dr. Dashwood began doing pranayama immediately. "Send… him… in… right… away…"he said between deep breaths.

The agent, whose name was Tobias Knight, had a walrus mustache and a cheery eye; nobody ever looked less threatening. Dr. Dashwood still regarded him with a wary respect, as a large and dangerous mammal. This was the normal attitude since the 1983 Anti-Crime, Anti-Subversion Omnibus bill had entitled the Bureau to conduct random wiretapping on all citizens rather than just on known criminals and known subversives. ("If we only watch the already recognized enemies of society," the author of this bill-Senator Uriah Snoop-had argued, "who knows what hidden monkey business might be festering in dark places to rise up and stab us in the back like a snake in the grass?")

Knight was brisk and (seemingly) honest. A prominent scientist-Dr. G. W. C. Bridge-had disappeared and, since no kidnappers had demanded ransom and no evidence indicated that he had defected to Russia or China, the Bureau was investigating even the most tenuous leads. "Since you attended Miskatonic University in Massachusetts at the same time as Dr. Bridge, we're curious about anything even that far back which might shed light on why he'd want to vanish… if he did vanish voluntarily…"

Dr. Dashwood created an expression of puzzlement. "I hardly knew George," he said slowly. "He was just about the only Black student at Miskatonic, of course, and that made him um highly visible, but we never became friends…"

They beat around the bush for about ten minutes; then Dashwood shot abruptly from the hip. "I know who really was close to Washy," he said, looking inspired! "Pete Simon, the geologist. Why don't you get in touch with him? I think the last I heard he was with the government…"

Knight looked perfectly innocent. "Peter Simon," he said slowly, making a note. "Geologist."

But Dashwood knew: the agent was a shade too bland, too innocent. The Bureau was aware that Dr. Simon had vanished also. Maybe they were on the track of the whole Miskatonic Group.

Dr. Dashwood experienced a thrill of pure adrenaline. Ever since he had started Project Pan he had known this moment would come, and now that it was here he was handling himself impeccably.

Dum de dum de dum de dum dum.

Who's Zelenka?