Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy

TOKE WITHOUT HASTE

The letter was sent out May 1, 1984, to the White House and all the major media. It said:

May God forgive us. May history judge us charitably.

We have placed tactical nuclear bombs in over 500 locations throughout Unistat. The targets are all enemies of the people: large banks, multinational corporations, government tax offices. We will trigger one of these bombs at noon tomorrow, somewhere in western Unistat, to demonstrate that we are not bluffing.

All the other nuclear bombs will be triggered in succession until our demands are met. If any attempt is made to apprehend and arrest us-any attempt at all- all the remaining bombs will be detonated at once.

We demand:

That President Lousewart immediately confiscate all fortunes above one million dollars…

And so on. POE had come into materialization again- caused by the same historical and neurogenetic forces.

"I think it's a hoax," said President Lousewart, who was really, of course, Franklin Delano Roosevelt Stuart, a.k.a. Hassan i Sabbah X.

"Can we be sure?" asked Mounty Babbit, who was now naught else but a walking automaton, controlled by the quantum information system that had been a Vietnamese Buddhist.

"We can never be sure," said Vice President Squeeze, who used to be Robert Pearson. "This is an absolute piss cutter."

There was a depressed silence.

"How did our karma ever land us here?" asked Hassan i Sabbah X.

Even Fed Xing wasn't sure of the answer to that.

"Well," Hassan said. "Let's distribute the fucking money. This just accelerates what we had in mind all along…"

"We can't do it," Pearson said. "You'd be assassinated before the day is over."

Hassan contemplated.

"We can fucking try," he said.

"There are many mind-states and universes," Ped Xing added serenely. "If we don't succeed here, we will continue elsewhere."