DECEMBER 24, 1983:
"So that the brick never moves, logically," Williams says.
"Yeah I had that in a class at the New School, 'Paradox and Personality,' it's based on you know Relativistic Ego Therapy, we're all Empedoclean concepts in social topology. " Natalie actually had received an A for the course.
"In territorial topology my dear I um invented Relativistic Ego Therapy," Williams says, meaning: I created the course.
"You're that Professor Williams my God you're famous at the new School." Natalie was impressed.
"And at Esalen um yes my dear but to the world at large-" Williams demurs.
"Thank God I'm an atheist," Joe Malik said fervently. "If I considered for even a moment for even a microsecond that the pretense of a demon might be functionally equivalent to the presence of a demon… Just change the t to an s…"
But Marvin abandons the Britannica (never find what you really want in there) and undressing for bed fumbles at the radio for something bearable, only to hear
I'm in love with Vlad the Impaler
With Hitler and Nixon and Ahab the Whaler
He quickly turns the dial (after a moment of pride at new-won fame and wincing at the cacophony of The Civic Monster), finding a classical station the end of the Ninth all those heavenly choirs singringinging at the Omega Point over a century before science discovered it (always read Nietzsche and listen to Ludwig, was one of his adages, for the long-range evolutionary perspective), pops a downer to take the edge off the coke jitters before they come, and slips under the covers remembering Linda's mouth two inches four inches six inches nine goddamned inches gorgeous splat splat splat always splitting but always one, is it really? as Ludwig answers yes I will yes
I never died said he
"But the crowning insult to our simple-minded realism comes, of course, from our friends the physicists," Williams explains. "If Krazy is Schrodinger's Cat in the famous demonstration then my dear then we are really up the ontological creek without a paddle because when the brick is hurled she may be in any of several etgenstates, several mathematical probability matrices, in some of which the brick will certainly hit her and in some of which it will not."
"Oh, wow."
"Wow, indeed. To paraphrase Descartes: T think; therefore, I am confused.' "
ESCAPISM
The first fame of Cagliostro began while he was touring with the U.S.O. during the war. He had entirely abandoned mentalism by then and his act depended entirely on escaping from everything the M.P.'s could devise to restrain him.
Variety called him "the new Houdini" in 1945, just a few months before Hiroshima.
His first arrest occurred in the fall of that year, possession of marijuana, the charges dismissed without a trial. (His agent's connections, the Crane family lawyer, the fact that the Crane fortune had not been wiped out entirely when ORGASMOR dropped to the bottom of the Big Board, and judicious oiling of what Show Biz and underworld people call "tin mittens"-officials on the take- contributed to this happy consummation.) He was one of the first guests on The Ed Sullivan Show, but was never asked to return due to a 1948 "morals" arrest: the girl was quite young and an "act against nature" was alleged. Once again, money changed hands and there was no trial.
His career was mostly "in the clubs" after that; Hollywood and TV were both in one of their chronic contractions of cowardice at the end of the decade.
A second morals arrest, followed rapidly by a second pot bust, made him a little too hot for most club owners. Still-the crowds turned out wherever he appeared. The mob decided to set immediate money against caution, and he was allowed to go on working. Until his disastrous appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1950.
"You're not a Communist, you hardly know any Communists, you could have sung like a bird without hurting yourself," his agent said afterward. "Why did you have to do it, baby?"
"Listen," Crane said angrily. "Do you think I can get out of a rucking set of Junior G-Man handcuffs if I let one single jot of fear get into my head? You don't understand. I can't let anything scare me-especially not shit-heads like them."
"It's your own funeral," the agent replied glumly. "I'll tell you the plain and varnished facts. You're gonna end up like Chaplin. Two sex scandals, two drug scandals, and now this. You're gonna end up worse than Chaplin. You're box-office poison, baby. From this day forward."
THE HEAD REVOLUTION
GALACTIC ARCHIVES:
Although the HEAD Revolution transformed the Terran primates at the time of this ancient Romance, nobody knows when it actually began. Some trace it to certain Alchemical cults of the early Dark Ages; some say it did not properly start as an organized movement until neuro-pharmacology began to replace old-fashioned "psychology" in the late Dark Ages (i.e., just before the time of this epic novel); some try to find its origins in primitive shamanism and yoga.
What is clear is that some primates on Terra began to transcend genetic four-circuit limitations many centuries, or even millennia, before true neuroscience appeared among them. Whether this was due to mutation, empirical hit-or-miss experimentation with alkaloid herbs, or other factors is unknown. In Egypt and China and other places, a few primates reported fifth-circuit raptures-the dawning of neurosomatic consciousness-two thousand or even three thousand years before the Space Age began.
The picture is the same on all planets. A few biots suddenly rise above the eat-it-or-flee-it imprints of the amphibian biosurvival circuit, above the dominate-or-submit imprints of the mammalian territorial-emotional circuit, above the either/or logic of the hominid semantic circuit, above the "good" and "bad" values of the tribal sociosexual circuit. They have transcended infantile feeding programs, childish emotional programs, adolescent philosophizing, and adult "responsibility" (pack role) all at once.
What has happened, of course, is that these biots have formed a fifth circuit in their brains. This is called the neurosomatic circuit because it allows conscious feedback between the nervous system ("mind," in prescientific primate language) and the soma ("body"). In the larval stages of this Hedonic Revolution, every planet exhibits the same monotonous pattern:
Mysticism and monomania appear. Many of the mutated biots become convinced that they control everything (the "I-am-God" syndrome), not realizing that they merely control their own perceptual field.
"Miracle healings" are reported. The neurosomatic ("mind body") feedback loop allows the mutant biots to become healthier, younger-looking, and sleeker ("handsomer") than average. They soon believe, and are encouraged by their admirers to never doubt, that they can "cure" anything.
Neurosomatic intolerance appears. The mutated biots grow annoyed, and become extremely critical about, the robot mechanisms of first-circuit approach-avoidance, second-circuit domination-submission, third-circuit either or-logic, and static fourth-circuit sex roles. They call on everybody to float free like themselves, or like the wind.
The other biots usually declare these five-circuit mutants to be divine, or else they kill them. Sometimes they do both.
The condition was just becoming understood on Terra at the time of this Quantum Comedy, as neuropharmacol-ogists slowly traced the links between neurochemistry and the creation of perceived reality-tunnels.