The cat looked coldly at him for a moment, and began to wash its left shoulder with negligent energy. An almost religious expression had come into Rover's face. "It was meant," he said in a low, impressive tone. 'Yah. It was
Schro'dinger's CatA. 163
meant. It can't be a mere coincidence. It's too improbable. Me, with the box; you, with the cat; to meet -- here -- now." He looked up at me, his eyes shining with happy fervor. "Isn't it wonderful?" he said. "I'll get the box set up right away." And he started to tear open his huge knapsack.
While the cat washed its front paws, Rover unpacked. While the cat washed its tail and belly, regions hard to reach gracefully, Rover put together what he had unpacked, a complex task. When he and the cat finished their operations simultaneously and looked at me, I was impressed. They had come out even, to the very second. Indeed it seemed that something more than chance was involved. I hoped it was not myself.
"What's that?" I asked, pointing to a protuberance on the outside of the box. I did not ask what the box was as it was quite clearly a box.
"The gun," Rover said with excited pride.
"The gun?"
"To shoot the cat"
'To shoot the cat?"
"Or to not shoot the cat Depending on the photon."
"The photon?"
'Yah! It's Schro'dinger's great Gedankenexperiment You see, there's a little emitter here. At Zero Time, five seconds after the lid of the box is closed, it will emit one photon. The photon will strike a halfsilvered mirror. The quantum mechanical probability of the photon passing through the mirror is exactly one-half, isn't it? So! If the photon passes through, the trigger will be activated and the gun will fire. If the photon is deflected, the trigger will not be activated and the gun will not fire. Now, you put the cat in. The cat is in the box. You close the lid. You go away! You stay away! What happens?" Rover's eyes were bright
"The cat gets hungry?"
"The cat gets shot -- or not shot," he said, seizing my arm,
164 JT BUFFALO GALS Schr&dingefs
though not, fortunately, in his teeth. "But the gun is silent, perfectly silent The box is soundproof. There is no way to know whether or not the cat has been shot, until you lift the lid of the box. There is NO way! Do you see how central this is to the whole of quantum theory? Before Zero Time the whole system, on the quantum level or on our level, is nice and simple. But after Zero Time the whole system can be represented only by a linear combination of two waves. We cannot
predict the behavior of the photon, and thus, once it has behaved, we cannot predict the state of the system it has determined. We cannot predict it! God plays dice with the world! So it is beautifully demonstrated that if you desire certainty, any certainty, you must create it yourself!"
"How?"
"By lifting the lid of the box, of course," Rover said, looking at me with sudden disappointment, perhaps a touch of suspicion, like a Baptist who finds he has been talking church matters not to another Baptist as he thought, but a Methodist, or even, God forbid, an Episcopalian. "To find out whether the cat is dead or not"
"Do you mean," I said carefully, "that until you lift the lid of the box, the cat has neither been shot nor not been shot?"
'Yah!" Rover said, radiant with relief, welcoming me back to the fold. "Or maybe, you know, both."
"But why does opening the box and looking reduce the system back to one probability, either live cat or dead cat? Why don't we get included in the system when we lift the lid of the box?"
There was a pause. "How?" Rover barked, distrustfully.
"Well, we would involve ourselves in the system, you see, the superposition of two waves. There's no reason why ii should only exist inside an open box, is there? so when w< came to look, there we would be, you and I, both looking a live cat, and both looking at a dead cat You see?"
A dark cloud lowered on Rover's eyes and brow. He barked twice in a subdued, harsh voice, and walked away. With his back turned to me he said in a firm, sad tone, "You must not complicate the issue. It is complicated enough."
"Are you sure?"
He nodded. Turning he spoke pleadingly. "Listen. It's all we have -the box. Truly it is. The box. And the cat And they're here. The box, the cat, at last. Put the cat in the box. Will you? Will you let me put the cat in the box?"
"No," I said, shocked.
"Please. Please. Just for a minute. Just for half a minute! Please let me put the cat in the box!"
"Why?"
"I can't stand this terrible uncertainty," he said, and burst into tears.
I stood some while indecisive. Though I felt sorry for the poor son of a bitch, I was about to tell him, gently, No; when a curious thing happened. The cat walked over to the box, sniffed around it, lifted his
tail and sprayed a comer to mark his territory, and then lightly, with that marvelous fluid ease, leapt into it. His yellow tail just flicked the edge of the lid as he jumped, and it closed, falling into place with a soft, decisive click.
"The cat is in the box," I said.
"The cat is in the box," Rover repeated in a whisper, falling to his knees. "Oh, wow. Oh, wow. Oh, wow."
There was silence then: deep silence. We both gazed, I afoot Rover kneeling at the box No sound. Nothing happened. Nothing would happen. Nothing would ever happen, until we lifted the lid of the box.
"Like Pandora," I said in a weak whisper. I could not quite recall Pandora's legend. She had let all the plagues and evils out of the box, of course, but there had been something else, too. After all the devils were let loose,
166-ABUFFALO GALS
something quite different, quite unexpected, had been left. What had it been? Hope? A dead cat? I could not remember.
Impatience welled up in me. I turned on Rover, glaring. He returned the look with expressive brown eyes. You can't tell me dogs haven't got souls.
"Just exactly what are you trying to prove?" I demanded.
"That the cat will be dead, or not dead," he murmured submissively. "Certainty. All I want is certainty. To know for sure that God does play dice with the world!"
I looked at him for a while with fascinated incredulity. "Whether he does, or doesn't," I said, "do you think he's going to leave you a note about it in the box?" I went to the box, and with a rather dramatic gesture, flung the lid back. Rover staggered up from his knees, gasping, to look. The cat was, of course, not there.
Rover neither barked, nor fainted, nor cursed, nor wept. He really took it very well.
"Where is the cat?" he asked at last "Where is the box?"
"Here."
"Where's here?"
"Here is now."
"We used to think so," I said, "but really we could use larger boxes."
He gazed about him in mute bewilderment, and did not flinch even when the roof of the house was lifted off just like the lid of a box, letting in the unconscionable, inordinate light of the stars. He had just time to breathe, "Oh, wow!"
I have identified the note that keeps sounding. I checked it on the mandolin before the glue melted. It is the note A, the one that drove the composer Schumann mad. It is a beautiful, clear tone, much clearer now that the stars are visible. I shall miss the cat I wonder if he found what it was we lost
(1974)
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"The Author of the Acacia Seeds" and Other Extracts from the Journal of the Association of Therolinguistics MS. FOUND IN AN ANT-HILL