Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy

THE DREADED NEUROLOGICAL ARMY

Being keys themselves, their keylessness does not matter.

–richard ellman, Ulysses on the Liffey

On March 2, 1984, Simon Moon found a peculiarity while scanning the Beast's memory banks for the Chicago police.

There seemed to be two possible totals for the number of police officers in Chicago.

Simon was intrigued. He began searching all the Chicago police records. What he found was so interesting that he mentioned it to Clem Cotex, whom he happened to be meeting for lunch that day.

Cotex was not concerned with things as mundane as police records, so it took a while before he heard what Simon was saying.

"Hold it," Clem said when it finally registered. "Did you say 198?"

"Yes, exactly," Simon said. "There are pay vouchers for 198 officers less than there are uniforms for. In other words, there are 198 cops in Chicago who aren't being paid. Weird, huh?"

"One hundred ninety-eight," Cotex repeated, eyes wide. "The exact number… Were they all over the department, these extras, or were they clustered?"

"That's even stranger," Simon said. "They're all in the Red Squad…"

That same day Markoff Chaney was hiding in a coffee urn at Orgasm Research, hatching further mischief.

The clock struck midnight; the cleaning women left; and out crept Chaney with an evil grin.

Alas, he was not the only intruder that night, for as he padded lightly down the hall he suddenly heard a hoarse voice in one of the laboratories.

"Better than human, are you, you @*)@' amp;0ing #$% amp;'#er? Better than human, my %$# amp;! Take this, you $%#)*$#-eating #$%%$*er!"

The voice was near inarticulate with rage, but it was clearly that of a jealous male, as any ethologist would easily recognize. Markoff slowly opened the door and peeked around the corner.

There in the dim light, fully dressed and in his wrong mind, stood the idol of millions, the world's leading rock guitarist, Knorton ("Grassy") Knoll, feverishly working with a monkey wrench upon an object the likes of which Markoff Chaney had never seen-a Giacometti robot with a gigantic human phallus.

"I'll take you apart, you $%$#," the demented rock musician was muttering. "I'll tear your $%$@0 out by its roots, I will." And he continued his assault, gargling and panting like one obsessed-which he was. "Man against machine," he gasped. "First they out-think us, now they out-fuck us. It's time for all-out war, by $%*@$…"

Markoff watched, silent as a cat, until the hebephrenic cuckold was finished with his foul work, and the machine stood, a heap of scrap metal, with the phallus removed. Then, after the musician slouched off into the night, the midget crept into the room and carefully wrote on the wall in stark purple crayon: