Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy

THE DISPOSSESSED

Mounty Babbit never did learn to live with Fed Xing. In fact, he eventually had a full-scale psychotic breakdown. Of course, because of his wealth, the doctors always referred to it as a catathymic crisis.

The breakdown occurred at a dinner party, worse luck.

The Moons were guests again, and this time they had their nephew, Simon-a bearded young mathematician whose father had been the black sheep of the Moon family, a Wobbly agitator. Simon himself had been arrested during the Democratic Convention riots the previous year but got off on probation.

Everything went pleasantly enough until Molly Moon got on her obsession about Oriental Masters invading Western bodies to pass on their transcendental mysticism.

Joe Moon must have noticed the look on Mounty's face because he said, "Molly, remember our host is a scientist."

"And a Taurus," Molly said quickly. "I know how hard it is for him to accept spiritual truths."

"He doesn't bore you with the latest chemical shop-talk," Joe said gently. "I'm sure you don't have to bore him with all this astrology or whatever it is."

"It's not astrology. It's astral projection."

"It sounds half-astral to me," Joe said, laughing as loud as he could, trying to get them all laughing and turn the topic into a joke.

Young Simon, however, had ideas of his own. "Aunt Molly might be right," he said thoughtfully. "The Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky paradox does lead to some freaky possibilities. But why assume only the high adepts are coming? Every primitive group in the world has some kind of magical tradition. And they've tried everything else to get out from under white domination."

"Now don't start with your radicalism…" Joe warned.

"I'm not talking politics," Simon said innocently. "Everywhere in the world there are people who'd like to change places with us. Live in our rich homes. Eat our extravagant diet. Drive our cars. We know a lot about the space-time-matter continuum, but we're more ignorant than Asia or Africa about space-time-mind continuum. How about the Native Americans, for that matter? Wouldn't their magicians love to take over some white bodies for a while? Is that why so many young people are wearing Indian headbands, taking Indian drugs like peyote, moving out of the cities into the woods…? Ever have your car stolen by a black kid from Chicago's ghetto? Wouldn't they like to steal your body too?"

"That's nonsense," Molly Moon said angrily. "All those backward people you're talking about couldn't learn the higher spiritual arts…"

"Mounty, you're a scientist," Joe Moon said imploringly. "Tell Simon what's wrong with his theory."

"Anybody can spin theories," Babbit said carefully. "Science is a matter of proof. You can make up a million and one theories, Simon, but if you go to work for a corporation you'll have to produce theories that engineers can use. The one theory' out of a million that can be proven. Everything else is just idle speculation."

"Exactly." Joe Moon beamed, delighted. "Let the coons earn the right to live in Evanston, I say."

"Well, this theory could be checked out," Simon went on guilelessly; but Babbit knew he was baiting everybody. "If such an uh invasion were occurring, it would be aimed at people with important positions. Business executives. Government officials. The people who control the media. Check them out and see if they're all growing a little bit weird lately…"

The helicopter descended and the earth turned to flame. My daughter ran toward me, burning, screaming. Why was it an American flag on the helicopter instead of a swastika? Was it Galley or Eichmann who was looking at me with imploring eyes begging my understanding and forgiveness?

Day after day the napalm fell from the skies. Day after day children died screaming at 1,000° Centigrade. Month after month, year after year, the fire continued to consume the world, Fed King's world. He sat in the lotus, his shakti mounted on his penis, their eyes locked, until the neurological synergy occurred: They were One. And then the Others were there, too, all the minds of space-time who turned on the neuroatomic circuit, the beetle intellects of Betelgeuse, Nicholas and Perenella Flamel, Bruno and Elizabeth, Cagliostro, and, as the time warp opened, galaxy after galaxy joined in, the Starmaker appeared dimly, and the first jump was possible.

He was a flower on a rose bush in England and a poet was staring at him as he stared back at the poet: "The roses have the look of flowers that are looked at" emerged from that moment.

SHe was a microbe flailing tentatively in a soupy ocean.

He was a Terran archivist looking back at the decline and fall of the American Empire.

SHe was Mountbatten Babbit in Evanston, Illinois-a good one, grab quick, this was one of the murderers, hold on-

Mountbatten Babbit, Ph.D., became aware that everybody at the table was staring at him. Then he realized that he was sobbing. "Oh, God," he said, a mind at the end of its tether. "Oh, God, God, God…"

It was explained as a breakdown due to overwork. There was no psychiatrist; ambition forbade the risk, so a clinical psychologist of Behaviorist orientation was found, on the faculty of Northwestern University, and the visits were listed as consultation in social psychology for business management.

Mounty and the psychologist defined Fed Xing as a hallucination caused by the negative conditioning of the pacifist pickets surrounding Weishaupt Chemicals. A method of deconditioning was worked out, using hypnosis and aversion therapy against all manifestations of the Fed Xing persona. The aversive stimulus was apomorphine, a non-addicting morphine derivative that provokes vomiting and sensations of death. At first Fed Xing would speak directly at these moments, begging and pleading, "Don't send me back to the flames…" Later he became defiant. "We'll be back, millions of us, from all over the Third World. Living in your fat white bodies. Running your corporations and bureaucracies. All through the seventies and eighties. We'll be back." As the theory of aversion therapy predicts, Fed Xing was finally extinguished.

Safely established beyond freedom and dignity, Mounty Babbit became the ideal conditioned subject. In 1982 he resigned his position as President of Weishaupt Chemicals to become Special Scientific Advisor to the White House.