The Coming of the Quantum Cats

22 August 1983

4:20 A.M. Senator Dominic DeSota

The Cathouse personnel didn't seem to notice that it was the middle of the night. The prisoner had, though. He had been sound asleep. The sergeant phoned from the detention section to say that the prisoner begged permission to void his bladder and take a shower before he came up to be interviewed. "Why not?" I said, when Colonel Martineau asked me. "I don't mind being a little considerate. Especially to me."

He opened his lips and laughed silently. It was the kind of laugh you give an incongruity, not a joke. He gave the permission and ordered up coffee, as much for ourselves as for the prisoner, and then we sat looking at each other while we waited.

There didn't seem to be much to say.

We could have chatted about this person who seemed to be me, but both of us had formed the habit of not chatting about Cats. In fact, we never even used the term except in the confines of a classified meeting. As far as I knew, the term had never appeared in writing anywhere. It was the biggest secret in America's most secret defense research facility. It was such a big secret that I hadn't for one minute believed it was true.

Sandia wasn't all secret. There was the solar-power research facility, and that wasn't secret at all; it took up more than half the thousands of sprawling acres of the base. The nuclear-weapons section wasn't exactly a secret, either-only what was going on in it was secret. The world knew that there was a flow of smart bombs and self-piloting missiles coming out of that part.

After that no one knew. Or at least, no one was supposed to know, that there were parts of Sandia a lot weirder than any of that. There was one small section devoted to climate modification as a way of cutting off an enemy's agriculture, and another exploring the possibility of genetic warfare. Genetic. The goodies they were whipping up weren't viruses or chemicals to attack the present population of a foe state. They were DNA spoilers. They were meant to make the enemy's children grow up incompetent and defeatable.

I defend myself by saying that, although this seemed immoral to me, it also seemed as though it wouldn't ever work anyway.

Then there was Psi-War. Even more doubtful, even more peculiar. Inside the Psi-War building we kept a herd that averaged eighteen or twenty wackos and loopies—as young as eight years old, as old as eighty—all very odd indeed. Each one of them claimed some special ability. There were the guys with the "out-of-body" skills; they said they could leave their own bodies and enter another's, even another's thousands of miles away, and see with the other person's eyes and hear with the other person's ears. Wonderful! They could go to an enemy base and sniff out every secret there was! Some of them said they had actually done that, although we had yet to find a secret that could be made to work for us, or that any other evidence suggested was working for anyone else.

Of this whole shebang I was a big, big skeptic. Part of the reason was simple cynicism. The loopies were so loopy, and besides they had a nasty little habit of cheating on the tests. Once caught cheating they were on probation; twice caught, they were out. Sooner or later, they were all out. This didn't deter the people who ran Psi-War very much, though. As soon as they decided one weirdo was a fake and sent him on his way, the talent scouts turned up another in some tanktown in Idaho or Alabama and shot him over to us to be checked out . . . and so on, and on.

The other reason I was a skeptic was not cynical at all. On the contrary. It was the opposite of cynicism; my fellow committee members charged me with almost idealism when I hinted at it.

I didn't believe we really had any enemies.

Oh, the Japanese and the Germans, sure. They were really tough competitors and our business community hated them as much as old Cato had hated Carthage. They really lambasted us in international trade; but did we want to go to war with them? By "enemies" I mean irreconcilable blood foes, like Adolf Hitler or Josef Stalin had been a while back. They were long gone-in fact, there was a grandson of Stalin's in the Russian diplomatic corps that I played poker with when I got a chance. Nice guy. Such mortal, military enemies simply did not exist. That wasn't so much wisdom and tolerance on our part as it was luck, of course-if the Cold War had got a few degrees hotter some years back, it could have been pretty bad. But we were saved all of that when the Russians and the Chinese escalated their border arguments into a full-scale nuclear confrontation. They stopped after a few bombs, but neither of them was a really worrisome military enemy any more. Their big problem was trying to keep from falling apart entirely.

For all of those reasons, it might seem puzzling that our Joint Committee on Weapons Research Analysis had never tried to cut off funds for even Psi-War. There were reasons for that. The big reason was that these projects were so cheap they didn't matter. Given that it was U.S. national policy to maintain a strong defense-and with President Reagan in the White House there was no doubt about that policy—there had to be something like Sandia. If Psi-War and genetics and the Cathouse were all a total waste of money, as I rather thought they were, the amounts involved were so pitifully tiny that they simply weren't worth the trouble of defunding. Psi-War and the Cathouse together cost less per year than the upkeep on a single missile silo.

And if any of them should actually turn out to make a workable weapons system .

Well, the potential was simply enormous. Especially the Cathouse.

The Cathouse was named after something called Schroedinger's Cat. What was Schroedinger's cat? Well, said the physicist who was testifying before us the first time this came up, Schroedinger was a man who had discovered something called quantum mechanics. Ah, yes, and what was quantum mechanics? Well, said the physicist, basically it was a new way of looking at physics. When that explanation didn't seem quite to satisfy any of us hard-bitten politicos on the Joint Committee he tried again. Quantum mechanics, he said, got its name from Schroedinger's discovery that energy, for instance, didn't come in a sort of uniform endless flow, like water out of a tap (although, he corrected himself, even water out of a tap only looks uniform and endless, it being in fact made up of molecules and atoms and even smaller particles)—it didn't come in an endless flow, that was, but in unitary packets called quanta. The basic quantum of light was the photon. Well, we began to feel we might be getting to solid ground there, because even senators and congressmen had heard of photons. But then he dashed our hopes by getting back to the cat. What did the cat have to do with all this? Well, said the physicist, gamely hanging in there in the face of our expressions, that was a kind of mind experiment Schroedinger proposed. You see, there is this other thing called the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. And what was the Heisenberg uncertainty principle when it was home? Well, he said, shifting uncomfortably in the witness chair, that was a little hard to explain. .

He was wrong about that. It wasn't hard to explain at all. It was just hard to understand. According to Heisenberg, you could never know both the position and the movement of a particle. Either you could know where it was, or you could know where it was going. You couldn't know both.

Worse than that, there were some questions that you not only couldn't find an answer to, but there wasn't an answer, and that's when we got to the cat. Suppose you put a cat in a box, said Schroedinger. Suppose you put in with the cat a radioactive particle, which has exactly one chance in two of fissioning. Suppose in with the cat and the radionuclide, you put a can of poison gas with a switch that will be triggered if the particle fissions. Then you look at the outside of the box and ask yourself if the cat is alive or dead. If the particle has fissioned, it's dead. If the particle hasn't fissioned, the gas was not released and the cat is alive.

But from outside there is no knowing which is true. From outside, there is a five-tenths chance that the cat's alive.

But a cat can't be five-tenths alive.

So, said the physicist triumphantly, beaming around at us in pleasure at having made it so clear, the point is that both things are true. The cat's alive. The cat's dead. But each statement is true in a particular universe. At the point of decision the universes split—and now, forever after, there will be parallel universes. A cat-alive universe, and a cat-dead universe. A different universe every time a subnuclear reaction takes place that could go either way—for it goes both ways, and universes are multiplied endlessly.

Senator Kennedy cleared his throat at that point. "Ah, Dr. Fass," he said, "that is most interesting, as an exercise in speculation. But in the real universe we open the box and see if the cat's dead."

"No, no, Senator!" cried the physicist. "No, that's wholly wrong. They're all real."

We looked at each other. "In a mathematical sense, you mean?" Kennedy tried.

"In every sense," cried Fass, wagging his head violently. "Those parallel universes, created at the rate of millions every microsecond, are just as 'real' as the one I'm testifying before you in. Or, to put it in a different context, the universe we inhabit is exactly as 'imaginary' as any of them."

So we sat there like dummies, eighteen of us, congressmen and senators from all over the United States, wondering if this man was trying to put us on—wondering what it all meant if he wasn't. A congressman from New Jersey leaned over to whisper in my ear:

"Do you see any military application in this, Dom?"

"Ask him, Jim," I whispered back, and when the congressman did the physicist looked astonished.

"Oh, I do beg your pardon, gentlemen," he said. "And ladies, too, I mean," he added, nodding toward Senator Byrne. "I thought all that had been made clear. Well. Suppose you want to H-bomb a city, or a military installation,, or anything at all, anywhere in the world. You build your bomb. You take it into one of the parallel universes. You fly it to the latitude and longitude of Tokyo-I mean, of whatever the place is—and you push it back into our world and detonate it. Boom. Whatever it is, it's gone. If you have ten thousand targets—say, the entire missile capacity of another country—you just build ten thousand bombs and push them all through at once. It can't be defended against. The other people can't see it coming. Because, in their world, it isn't coming ... until it's there."

And sat back, looking pleased with himself.

And we all sat back too. We looked at each other. But I do not think any of us really were looking pleased.

Even that might not have sold the committee, except for the one big fact. I've mentioned it already: If this program didn't work, as all of us thought, and most of us hoped, it wouldn't, very little would be lost. For it, like Psi-War, was very, very cheap.

Well, they finally brought this guy in, and I have to say it was one of the most unpleasant experiences of my life. Not painful. Not intolerable. But nonpleasant, wholly without pleasure in any way.

Like most men, I really dislike shopping. Especially for clothes. And one of the principal reasons for that is that I detest those threeway mirrors they have in clothing stores. They are simply unfair. They catch you by surprise. You try on a suit; the salesperson tells you lyingly that it fits as though custom-tailored; he walks you down the store to where three mirrors are linked together, like a medieval triptych. You look into them all unaware, and the first thing you know you're staring at your own profile. I never voluntarily look at my profile. I consider the idea almost obscene. It is not the way God intended me to see myself, and the proof of that is that when I do see myself that way I look perfectly terrible. I don't even recognize that simpering fellow with the funny-shaped nose and the stick-out chin. How he got into the mirror that should have been reflecting me is always a great mystery ... and yet I am not wholly lost to reality. I know that person is really me. I just don't want to know it.

That's how it was in the Cathouse at Sandia.

When they brought this person in he didn't look at me. He didn't look at anybody. They'd let him splash water on his face, at least, but then they'd handcuffed his arms behind his back. Maybe one reason he kept his eyes on the ground was fear of falling. I don't think so. I think there was only one reason, and that was that he knew if he raised them the eyes he would be looking into would be his own. Or my own. Ours.

I hated it.

It was a thousand times worse than the three-way mirrors in the clothing stores. It was as bad as it could be.

This other I had my face, my hair color, even my little thinning patch on top. My everything. Almost everything, for there were small differences—he was maybe six or eight pounds lighter than I, and what he was wearing was no garment I had ever owned. It was a one-piece coverall made out of some shiny forest-green fabric, with pockets all over the chest, and where trouser pockets would have been if there had been separate trousers. There were even pockets on the sleeves and over the right thigh. Perhaps all those pockets once had held my other self's valued possessions. No more. They had been searched and rifled, no doubt by the colonel's troops.

I made myself say, "Dominic. Look at me."

Silence. The other Dominic didn't answer, didn't look up, didn't respond at all—though I could tell from the stubborn way he set his head that he had heard me clearly enough. No one else in the room spoke, either. The colonel watched closely but was silent; and while Colonel Martineau didn't speak none of his men were likely to.

I tried again. "Dominic! For God's sake tell me what's happening."

The other I kept his eyes on the floor for a while longer. Then he looked up, but not at me. He gazed over Martineau's head at the clock on the wall, making some sort of calculation. Then he turned to me and spoke. "Dominic," he said, "for God's sake, I can't."

It was not a satisfying answer. Colonel Martineau opened his mouth to say something, but I waved it shut again. "Please," I said.

That other me said regretfully, "Well, Dom, old buddy, as a matter of fact the reason I'm here is that I wanted to tell you something. By 'you,' " he explained, "I don't mean second-person-plural or even single-other-person-than-myself. I mean you-Dominic-DeSota, who is, as you know, also me."

The colonel was looking suddenly furious. It took me a different way. "Oh, Dom," I said sorrowfully to myself, "how many times I've wished to myself that I'd outgrow playing that sort of game. Spit out what you wanted to tell me, why don't you?"

"Because it's too late, Dom," he said. "Too late for goddam what?"

"The thing I was going to warn you about, you know?"

"I don't know!"

"But you will. It's happening. And the next time we meet"—he offered a grin, but it looked more as though he were crying—"it won't be me you are meeting." He stopped there, started to speak again, hesitated, glanced at the clock— And then he disappeared.

When I say he "disappeared" that is the exact right word, but it may give the wrong image. The other Dominic DeSota didn't "disappear" by ducking out of sight into a closet or something. Nor did he turn transparent like an actor in a TV sci-fi show. He just disappeared. At one instant he was there. At the next he was not.

And a pair of handcuffs, locked around no wrists at all, clattered to the floor where he had been.

Things like that simply do not happen in my life. I had no reactions preprogrammed for flagrant violations of natural law, and neither did Colonel Martineau. He looked at me. I looked at him.

Neither of us said a word about the disappearance, unless "Holy shit!" is a word. I think I heard that whisper from the colonel.

"Any idea what he was talking about, Colonel?" I asked—just to make sure. "No? I thought not. Well, what do we do now?"

"Beats the hell out of me, Senator," he said. But although a commanding officer of the Army is allowed to say that, he is not allowed to mean it. I-Ic called in a sergeant and issued orders for search parties to look for my missing other self; the sergeant looked bewildered and the colonel looked resigned, because we all knew how little use that was going to be. "Do it, Sergeant," he said, and watched the noncom start off. "Well," he said to me at last, "one good thing. He said whatever it was was happening already, so we're sure to find out before long what this is all about."

"I wish I were sure that was a good thing," I said. And, as a matter of fact, when it turned out to be true, ten minutes later, it also turned out not to be a good thing in any way at all. Out of the room we went and down the hall, the colonel's little detachment of troops following in hangdog route step, wondering where they'd screwed the bird. And coming toward us was another detachment of troops, a dozen of them or so. They were in route step, too, but not the least hangdog. They were wearing combat fatigues instead of dress sun-tans, and they carried funny-looking, short-barreled carbines slung over their shoulders. The carbines didn't stay slung. "Hup," said a noncom when they were half a dozen yards away. The detachment stopped. The troopers sank to their knees. The carbines revolved off their straps and were aimed right at us.

An officer stepped forward from the middle of the detachment. "Holy shit," said Colonel Martineau again, and I didn't have to ask why.

The officer was wearing the same combat gear as the troops, but you could tell he was an officer because he carried a pistol instead of a carbine. There was something else I could tell about him right away, and he confirmed it when he spoke. "I'm Major Dominic DeSota of the United States Army," he said, in a voice I knew very well, "and you are all my prisoners of war."

He said it clearly enough, but there was a strain in his voice. I knew why. The words were addressed to the colonel, but the man's eyes were stuck on me, and the expression on his face was one I knew well. It was the same expression I wore myself. I said, "Hello, me." The other guy's expression hardened. "I thought you'd disappeared," I went on. "Was that some kind of a joke?"

He jerked his head at a soldier, who stepped up behind me and grabbed my arms. Something cold and harsh bit into my wrists, behind my back, and I knew I'd been handcuffed. "I don't know what you mean about disappearing," the other me said, "but there's no joke. You're all in protective custody."

"For what?" demanded the colonel, accepting handcuffs of his own.

"Just while we straighten things out with your government," the "I" assured us. "We have to explain to them what they're going to do, and you're prisoners until they agree. That's your best option, see? If you don't like it, you do have one other choice. You can offer resistance. Then you won't be prisoners any more, just dead."