Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy

A VISITOR FROM FAIRY LAND

"Participation" is the incontrovertible new concept given by quantum mechanics; it strikes down the term "observer" of classical theory, the man who stands safely behind a thick glass wall and watches what goes on without taking part. That can't be done, quantum mechanics says.

–wheeler, misner, amp; thorne, Gravitation

MAY 1, 1934:

"They call it liberalism and socialism, the bastards, but really it's their own brand of highway robbery. They been after me and Henry Ford and every independent in the country for a hell of a long time. You remember all this, son; you remember what your father told you. It's a big fortune the Crane holdings and they're going to be trying to take it away from you, just like they're trying to take it away from me. I earned every penny of it, when I invented ORGASMOR, and I don't aim to let them take it away from me or from you. You just remember why all the bankers are Rosenfelt liberals, son; you remember who your real enemies are and don't think it's those idiot socialists and other cranks like Townsend, with his thirty dollars every Thursday. It's those kike bankers who want the whole pie and are just using Rosenfelt as a pawn."

That was old Crane, Tom Crane, the man who invented ORGASMOR, talking to his son, Hugh, in Central Park, where sweet birds sang. Tom Crane was more dinosaur than primate: a tough, unsentimental reptile whose wealth was based on a swindle, pure and simple. He never explicitly claimed in any advertisement that ORGASMOR created more orgasms-just that it was "deliciously enticing" and "stimulating to all body cells and tissues" and the PDA never succeeded in proving that his agents had planted the popular mythology attributing lubricity to a product not very different in chemical content from Coca-Cola. A strict constructionist would certainly say that Crane's customers were being defrauded.

"It doesn't poison anybody," old Crane always answered such nitpickers.

In fact, Hugh Crane-who was only ten in 1934 and would reach twelve before he discovered that the actual pronunciation of the President's name was Roosevelt-was only partially listening to his father's rambling diatribe. He had heard all of it before, many times, and besides, the Mysterious Tramp was much more interesting.

The Mysterious Tramp, perhaps a visitor from fairy land, was stopping each person who passed and asking them something. They all shook their heads and walked by rapidly. This was puzzling to little Hugh: If the answer was negative, why did the Tramp keep asking the question? Didn't he believe the people who had already answered? Was he offering a chance to cross the boundary into magic space and were they all too timid to try?

"You see, son, Rosenfelt and the Rhodes scholars have it all sliced up and they have to get rid of people like me…" Tom Crane was still rambling along his own paranoid yellow-brick road when they finally came abreast of the Tramp. Hugh listened eagerly to catch the Mystery Question.

"Hey mister could you spare a dime I haven't eaten in three days mister hey listen mister…"

"Get a job," said old Crane, walking faster. "You see, son, that's the kind of good-for-nothing loafer who's destroying this country."

But the boy who was to become Cagliostro the Escape Artist looked back and saw the Mysterious Tramp falling to the ground very slowly like a tree he had seen fall slowly after being chopped by the caretaker at the Crane country home out on Long Island, and just like the tree, when he finally reached the sidewalk, the Tramp didn't move at all, not one bit, and even seemed to get stiff like the tree did, only faster.