by Tom Hourie
Chasing Schrödinger’s Cat
By Tom Hourie
Iron Ring Communications Ltd.
431 Brookmill Road, Unit 1
Oakville, ON
Canada L6J 5K6
Published by Iron Ring Communications Ltd. 2011
ISBN 978-0-9812376-2-6
Copyright © Tom Hourie 2010
“If a man could pass thro’ Paradise in a Dream, & have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his Soul had really been there, & found that flower in his hand when he awoke - Aye? and what then?”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Chapter I:
Unicorns, Moles, Weasels and Sloths
I have had more than my share of leisure moments while soldiering in the trenches of academia. I often use such intermissions to ponder life’s great questions: Are time and space an illusion? Do we all share the same essence? Can you really make a bomb from non-dairy creamer and if so why do they serve it on airplanes?
It was during one such interlude that I came up with The Zoological Academic Classification System (ZACS) which divides post-graduates and professors into four animal species.
The first group I call the Unicorns. They have inquiring minds and a genuine thirst for knowledge. They discover cures for cancer and new uses for soybeans. I call them Unicorns, because I have never seen one.
Second are the mole people. Mostly male, they spent high school getting wedgies and pink bellies. For them, higher education is a way of distancing themselves from their former tormentors. They wear glasses and could make an experiment out of a shoelace and a ball of tofu.
Third are the Weasels. By far the most numerous, they spend their days jockeying for position in the University Caucus Race. It is these people Kissinger was talking about when he said “academic politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.”
And lastly, there are the Sloths, of whom I am one. We Sloths suffer from LPD or Lazy Personality Disorder. For us, university life is a kind of Big Rock Candy Mountain.
Where research grants grow on trees
And tenure comes
Just for showing up
And you do just as you please
We sloths believe that if a job is worth doing, it is worth doing later.
Which is how I came to be settling into a contour-adjustable bed at the University of Southern Washington Sleep Center while a technician named George attached electrodes to my head, a procedure that would leave me looking like Pinhead from the Hellraiser movies. I had always been proud of getting the Regent’s Advisory committee to let me do my thesis on The Ontological Aspects of Lucid Dreaming. I even got some grant money, not a lot, but some. Imagine getting paid to sleep.
“Think you’ll get liftoff tonight?” George asked when he was finished.
“Hope so,” I said. “Insomnia is a poor qualification for a sleep researcher.”
“Guilty conscience?”
“Lack of guts more like,” I said. “You wouldn’t believe some of the weird stuff my subconscious has been kicking out lately.”
Chapter II:
The Blind guy from Star Trek – Mind games
I fired up my Lucidream Goggles as soon as George had finished doing his stuff. The goggles are my own design and look like the ones the blind guy wears in Star Trek. They appear impressive but their functions are pretty simple. First of all they act as a head-mounted display and show me the output of my computer. Nothing special there. You can buy the same thing at Wal Mart. But they also have a biofeedback circuit that lets me control my circadian rhythms. And as a final touch they send out a series of faint light pulses once I’m in REM sleep. The idea is that the lights will cue me to the fact that I’m dreaming so that I can take control of the dream. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
I have a standard routine I go through at the sleep center. I start by playing a few games of Tetris. Except I don’t use a mouse to control the falling blocks, I use George’s electrodes to transmit my brain impulses to the computer. I am getting better although my reaction times still need work.
Then I work through a series of relaxation exercises and finish off with a kind of mantra. I touch the goggles and repeat the following words five times: “When I sense the flashing lights, I will know I am dreaming and I will control my dream.”
And then I wait.
Chapter III:
Women’s’ Suffrage – A Calico Cat
The dream was familiar. I was walking slowly down a distorted version of a rundown Edwardian street somewhere in East End London. It was almost evening and the gas lights had just sputtered into life, illuminating a painted streetwalker leading a nervous customer by the hand, two drunks arguing noisily on the steps of a gin palace and a blue-helmeted policeman selecting a free apple from a barrow, despite its proprietor’s resentful scowl.
The policeman had just lifted the fruit to his mouth when a strident female cry added itself to the hubbub.
“Get The Englishwoman’s Review. Support the cause of women’s suffrage. Votes for women!!” The speaker was a stylish young female in a linen duster who looked commandingly out at the world from beneath a broad-brimmed, veiled hat. Her face was too long to be described as beautiful but the combination of her raven hair, lively hazel eyes and full mouth made up for the deficiency. She was standing precariously on a small folding stool while waving a pamphlet with her left hand.
The policemen ponderously approached the woman and addressed her in a patient baritone. “Now then miss,” he said. “Move along. You’re upsetting the neighborhood.”
“Do you think you alone are entitled to the vote, just because you’re a man?” she said. “Votes for women!”
“Please move along, there’s a nice young miss. Don’t cause a disturbance.”
“I am entitled to sell my wares on this street, just like the vendor from whom you stole that apple. And I am not ‘miss.’ I am ‘my lady.”
“That’s as may be,” the policeman said coloring at the word ‘stole.’ “You may be entitled to sell your newspaper, but you are not entitled to cause a public disturbance, which is what you are doing.”
“Another example of official persecution. I am breaking no law!”
“You are creating a disturbance. Now move along or else.”
“Or else what?” she said holding out her hands. “Go ahead, handcuff me.”
“Sarah,” said a different voice. “This may not be the appropriate time.” An older woman in a gray frock coat had appeared from the crowd of onlookers. She gathered up the young woman’s newspapers and vanished into the crowd.
Deprived of her raison d'être, the young suffragette seemed to reconsider her pursuit of martyrdom. She quickly folded her stool and stormed off.
With her departure, the crowded street became insubstantial and I was alone, except for a man with brilliantined hair and a pencil-thin moustache standing in front of a shop whose gilt-lettered sign proclaimed it to be Schrödinger’s Esoterica.
“A very handsome young woman, our suffragette,” the man said, reaching up to stroke a calico cat sitting on his shoulders. “Why don’t you come in?” he asked, gesturing toward his shop’s open door. “You will catch your death of cold out here.”
I looked down and saw that I was naked. I was not embarrassed, but I did feel the need for clothing. I became aware of a pulsing light shining from behind the shop’s grimy, mullioned windows. “I am dreaming,” I said. “I am in control. I will go to the man with the cat.” I felt a glow of inner satisfaction as I began walking toward Schrödinger’s Esoterica. Maybe my research wasn’t such a crock after all.
The shopkeeper’s cat remained hunched on his owner’s shoulder as I approached. The animal peered suspiciously at me from bright yellow eyes set into a scarred face that was an odd mixture of white and orange tabby.
“I have been looking forward to your reappearance,” the man said in a low-pitched, raspy voice.
“I like your cat,” I said. “Can I hold her?”
“Why do you think my cat is female?” the man asked as he passed the cat over to me.
“Genetics. She’s calico and calico cats are always female. Males only have one X chromosome.”
“Max and his many lady friends can assure you he is entirely male,” the man said. “What is a chromosome?”
I scratched the cat’s tattered ears and attempted to examine his genitals while holding his collar, a rainbow-striped thing that looked like a computer ribbon cable with a small glass ornament attached. The cat was unimpressed and bit my right hand.
I would have liked to continue my conversation with the shopkeeper but my Lucidream goggles had other ideas and began sending me a series of light pulses accompanied by a high pitched humming sound. I woke to find myself alone in the darkened sleep center with nothing to show for my dream except the glass ornament from the cat’s collar and a stream of blood dripping from two deep puncture marks on my right hand.
Chapter IV:
My Thesis Obstructor – The New Chancellor – An Ominous Letter
You remember what I said about University Weasels? My thesis advisor Dr. Ross Percival is a perfect example of the genus. No I take it back. There is a big difference between Ross Percival and a weasel. One is a sneaky predator that smells worse than a skunk and feeds on lesser creatures; the other is a small northern mammal.
The USW post graduate students’ handbook says an advisor’s role is ‘to advance the student’s development through interpersonal engagement that facilitates guidance, experience and expertise.’ What it forgets to mention is that the role of the student is similar to that of an indentured servant.
“Bob, do you think you could just glance through my article on The Relationship Between Allergic Rhinitis and Sleep Apnea?” Translation: Spend your weekend correcting the proofs of my article.
“Could you save me a trip to the library and check out any material you can find on upper airway resistance and menopausal status?” Translation: Act as my unpaid and uncredited research assistant.
I had no choice but to go along. He had me by the cojones until my thesis had been accepted.
It was a Thursday, the day after my encounter with the calico cat. I was sitting in the hall outside Ross Percival’s office, waiting for Mary Lou Bernstein to finish giving him a blow job. She does that regularly, hoping it will fast track her though graduate school. I have news for her. Percival’s the kind of guy who will have her rewriting her thesis forever, just so that he can keep enjoying her services.
You might be wondering how I know about Mary Lou and Percival, like have I been spying on them or something. The truth is everybody knows about them. As with any small closed society, it’s hard to keep secrets in a university.
Sure enough, Percival’s door opened after I had been waiting about ten minutes and Mary Lou Bernstein came out. She was a good-looking woman in a zaftig, Queen Latifah kind of way. I had once considered asking her out but had discarded the idea, telling myself it was because I didn't need any more problems with Percival. Right now she was wiping tears away with the heels of her hands. No way she wanted to get spots on her silk Hermes scarf, a red-white-and blue creation displaying the French motto Liberté, égalité, fraternité. Yup, I thought, he’s asked for another rewrite. I waited a few more minutes to give Percival time to compose himself and then I knocked on his door.
A quarter of an hour later I had finished telling my advisor about my recent sleep session and was waiting for the putdowns that were sure to follow. I didn’t have long to wait.
“Bob, let me see if I understand you correctly,” Percival said, steepling his fingers. “You feel you are now in a position to present your thesis because you have physical proof of a link between the dream state and the waking world.”
“As real as these wounds on my hand,” I said, waving my injured member.
“My dear Mister Liddel,” Percival said, waving his hand dismissively. “I scarcely think the dissertation committee is likely to accept your word as to the source of a few minor injuries which they might suspect were self-induced.” He stopped to wait for my denial but I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. “I must confess I have never been comfortable with your topic of research,” he continued finally. “Had it not already been approved by my predecessor, I doubt I would have accepted it.”
“I believe in it,” I said.
“But it is rather a grab bag, isn’t it?” Percival said, peering malevolently at me through rimless glasses. “Post Hypnotic suggestion, new age spectacles, alternate dimensions. It’s all rather nineteen seventies, if you don’t mind my saying.”
“It’s taken up three years of my life,” I said. I could feel a knot of apprehension growing in my stomach.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t pull the plug on you, but others may.”
“What others?”
“As you are aware, our university has a new chancellor, Conrad Lord.”
“Of course I am. Isn’t there some kind of welcoming reception tomorrow night?”
“Indeed there is,” he said. “It will be my chance to find out if rumors are correct.”
“What rumors?”
“Early reports indicate Chancellor Lord is intent on making our University more relevant. He has little patience for what he calls academic woolgathering.”
“Meaning me?”
“Let’s just say that you would do well to complete your research and defend your thesis sooner rather than later.”
“What do I need to wrap it up?”
“You mentioned a male calico cat,” Percival said, with ill-concealed malice. “Perhaps if you could produce such a genetic curiosity, the committee might be more impressed. Oh, and one other thing. The next time you are in the library do you think you could…?”
I had an ulterior motive for wanting to present my thesis. There had been a letter waiting for me earlier that day at Mrs. Gridestone’s. Mrs. G had been holding on to it for me so that she could take the opportunity to remind me my rent was due.
“Not to worry,” I told her. “I’m expecting a bequest from my Aunt Edna any day now.”
“Is she unwell?”
“She is in constant pain.” I didn’t mention that Aunt Edna was only three years older than me and the pain in question was muscle soreness left over from running the Boston Marathon.
The letter was from the medical director at the Duke University Neurodiagnostic Laboratory who had made me a conditional offer of a research fellowship three months earlier. It was straight and to the point. “We expect you to be in a position to accept our offer within eight weeks or it will be revoked,” it said.
In other words, ‘get off your ass and finish your PhD or go fly a kite.’
Chapter V:
A Seduction – My Too Perfect Sons
I was sitting on a couch in the basement lounge of the graduate students’ residence later that evening making half-hearted attempts to undo Hope Buchan’s blouse. We had the place to ourselves because the television was stuck on the multicultural channel and was now showing a subtitled Korean drama called ‘My Too Perfect Sons’ about a mother’s attempts to find a wife for her son who cannot forget his first love.
To be quite honest, I had little expectation I would be successful in exposing Hope’s angular torso but it seemed only gentlemanly to try. I had just finished telling her about my dream and was half listening to her analysis while watching the TV out of the corner of my eye.
“The prostitutes and the suffragette obviously represent your ambivalent feelings toward women,” she said, slapping my hand away from her breast
s. “You should listen to the suffragette. Women were not put on this earth to serve as men’s playthings.”
“What was that?” I said, bringing my attention back from a scene where pharmacy owner Jin-pung imagines stealing his first love Kim Hye-rim from her husband Brutus by carrying her away on a motorcycle to find a “paradise of our own.” The Jin-pung character reminded me a lot of Moe Szyslak on the Simpsons. “Oh playthings,” I said. “No. Right. We wouldn’t want that.”
You might be wondering how I came to be involved with a humorless termagant like Hope Buchan. Me too. Like most other things in my life, it was something I had drifted into. We had coffee a couple of times and the next thing you know, I became the guy she was ‘going around with.’
It wasn’t that I didn’t like her. I enjoyed her company in small doses but I was uncomfortably aware that she felt we were becoming ‘serious.’ I had thought of breaking it off more than once but let’s face it, women weren’t exactly knocking down my door.
My worry was I might end up sleep walking my way into marrying her. I knew I should be looking for someone ‘more compatible’ but where was I likely find anyone with standards so undemanding they could put up with the likes of me?
I was busy trying to think up ways to escape when the lounge door opened and a girl named Amy Kim came in.