My most recent offering, after I felt like it had been too long since I'd actually finished anything. Perhaps it quotes a bit too much from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, but I think it turned out OK. Hope you like it.

Cat and Mouse

      It was midnight in the bus station as Carl opened the doors. He already had his ticket, so there was no need to wake the cashier. This station had the same look as every other bus station he'd been in: old wood, old paint, old newspapers hiding anywhere they weren't likely to be stepped on.
     There was only one other person in the entire station: a short, dark-haired man with thick glasses, wearing a very weathered trenchcoat, sitting beside a very odd-looking metal box. Since there was nothing else to do, Carl decided to go over and talk to him.
     He almost changed his mind as he neared the bench. This man was very pale, nervous, and obviously hadn't been sleeping well. He decided to sit there anyway: after all, maybe he could help this guy. Sometimes, people like this just needed to tell their stories, have someone listen. That was certainly something he could do. It was his job.
     The man completely ignored his approach, perhaps flinching slightly when Carl sat down.
     "Hi." It sounded awkward, but he had to start somehow. This wasn't it.
     "I'm Carl."
     The other an gave a high-pitched, nasal whine.
     "So, what's in the box?"
     The other man almost exploded.
     "Damn you! Damn you all! I go to the most crowded stations, trying to blend into the scenery, and I'm surrounded by people whining 'What's in the box? What's in the box?' I go to deserted stations and still people approach. When I look like I want to be alone, people come by with pity in their eyes. When neutral, I'm always the target of idle chatter. Why couldn't I get this much attention when I wanted it? And the box. Always the Box. Everyone wants to touch it, to be near it, to know what's in it. No matter how much I tell them that they don't want to know, they insist that yes, they do want to know! I suppose that if I implore you that you really do not want to know what's inside, that you'd insist that no, you do want to know? Well?"
     "Um... I am curious." This was becoming a lot more complicated than he had expected.
     "Curious! Curious! This man is curious! You know what they say, 'Curiosity killed the cat.' Mrrmf! I hate it when stupid little inane sayings end up being so close to the mark. Only it's curiosity about a cat killing everyone. Well, your curiosity has just caught up with you, Carl cat. Because you know what? I'll tell you. I'll tell you just what you don't want to know, because you asked for it. And you'll hate me -- but hate yourself more because you couldn't mind your own business. I'll start telling you... but first I have to find out where to begin. What's your job?"
     Carl almost jumped at the sudden silence. These ramblings certainly weren't something he could deal with. Still, he didn't want to upset this guy any more than he already was. Just be truthful, and see where it carries you.
     "I'm a reporter. Local paper."
     "Oh, great. How absolutely wonderful. How mind bogglingly scrumptuous. I don't suppose you've had any education beyond the Neanderthal level?"
     "Well, as a matter of fact, I did go to college."
     "Simply attended or did you actually manage to get a degree?"
     "I got a degree. In communications."
     "Well, so far you've been communicating decently. Not that I'd expect anyone to need a degree for such a level, but I'll let that pass. So, what did you learn in the way of science, or did you think you were above such things?"
     "No, as a matter of fact I did take an Astronomy..."
     "Astronomy! Well, was it one of those, 'Ooh, look up in the sky and see the pretty stars and look at the pretty pictures, and oh, I understand, science is so hard', kind of courses, or did you actually learn something?"
     Carl shook his head slowly. He wasn't used to being interrogated, much less by a bum with a strange box in a bus station at midnight. Still, he had to answer just to be polite. And, damn it, he was still curious.
     "I learned plenty. I know that the course itself was pretty easy, but I've always been a little interested in the sutff, so I've kept up with that sort of thing, and I've read some things on my own."
     "Well, then. Here's a little test. What do you think the name 'Shoemaker' would mean to a modern astronomer?"
     "Hmm. Wait, I read about that. Had something to do with Jupiter, or the end of the world..."
     "Well I won't waste time while you fish through that mess in your mind. It actually had to do with both. Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashed into Jupiter in '95. Sparked a lot of sensationalism in the press about a comet hitting Earth, wiping us out, all that sort of thing. Pretty overblown, but at least people had a chance to hear about such an important event.
     "O.K., next question. Another person for you. How about Tycho?"
     Despite himself, Carl was starting to have fun with this. "Funny you should pick him. I remember reading a story in the Times that just stuck in my mind. The guy who figured out that the planets went around the Sun -- Kepler, was it? Anyway, he used to work for this Tycho guy, who spent all his life measuring stuff in the sky. Obsessed over being perfect. Well, Kepler, he took all of this information, and figured out that the planets went around the Sun with orbits that were a certain shape. Everybody went around saying how great Kepler was, because his model fit Tycho's measurements better than any other model. But later on, people started finding out that Kepler was a little bit off -- his general types of shapes were right, but some were in the wrong places. So everyone assumed that it must have been Tycho's fault, being a little bit off with the measurements. Then, about ten years or so ago, people checked it out in detail. It turns out that Tycho was right, but Kepler fudged the information a little to make his theory look better. Only he didn't really need to, if he'd done some calculations better. So now there's this dilemma: who was the better scientist, Tycho or Kepler? Tycho was honest and precise, but didn't add anything really new to human knowledge. But Kepler came up with these great theories that helped explain everything -- but he was a little dishonest to try to make his answers look too good. So that's it."
     The man in the trenchcoat smiled and started to applaud. "A +. There's hope for you yet. I'm an astrophysicist, and even though I know many people with a scientific background, few know that story so well. So you cover the astronomy part pretty well. How about physics?"
     "What do you mean?"
     "O.K., how much do you know about the most important practical theory of this century, quantum mechanics?"
     "Only that even Einstein hated the theory, and that some famous guy said that no one understands it."
     "Good enough. Ever hear of Schroediner's cat?"
     "No. Wait. Wasn't that some weird idea -- some experiment that no one would do because it doesn't make sense?"
     "Getting there. Hold on a second." He reached into a coat pocket and removed a very tattered and stained paperback novel. "I never thought I'd ever actually enjoy looking at this again. It started it all. I guess it's the teacher in me coming through. Surprisingly enough, I think this book presents one of the best discussions of that particular experiment that I've ever read. Go ahead and read the highlighted portions. It starts on page 115."
     Carl turned the book over, and was startled to discover that he was holding "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency," by Douglas Adams. He remembered the author because a friend in college -- who called himself Zaphod and mixed an obnoxious drink which he called the "gargle blaster" -- had managed to convince him to read "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." For some reason, he never really enjoyed the British humor as much as everyone else seemed to.
     He read.

     * * * * * * * * *

     With a sigh Dirk flipped up the lid of the pizza with a single flick of practiced fingers. He surveyed the cold round thing with a kind of sadness and then tore off a hunk of it. Pieces of pepperoni and anchovy scattered over his desk.
     "I am sure, Richard," he said, "that you are familiar with the notion of Schrodinger's Cat," and he stuffed the larger part of the hunk into his mouth.
     "Of course," said Richard. "Well, reasonably familiar."
     "What is it?" said Dirk through a mouthful.
     Richard shifted irritably in his seat. "It's an illustration," he said, "of the principle that at a quantum level all events are governed by probabilities --"
     "At a quantum level, and therefore at all levels," interrupted Dirk. "Though at any level higher than the subatomic the cumulative effect of those probabilities is, in the normal course of events, indistinguishable from the effect of hard-and-fast physical laws. Continue."
     He put some more cold pizza into his face.
     Richard reflected that Dirk's was a face into which too much had already been put. What with that and the amount he talked, the traffic through is mouth was almost incessant. His ears, on the other hand, remained almost totally unused in normal conversation.
     It occurred to Richard that if Lamarck had been right and you were to take a line through this behavior for several generations, the chances were that some radical replumbing of the interior of the skull would eventually take place.
     Richard continued, "Not only are quantum level events governed by probabilities, but those probabilities aren't even resolved into actual events until they are measured. Or, to use a phrase that I just heard you use in a rather bizarre context, the act of measurement collapses the probability waveform. Up until that point all the possible courses of action open to, say, an electron, coexist as probability waveforms. Nothing is decided. Until it's measured."
     Dirk nodded. "More or less," he said, taking another mouthful. "But what of the cat?"
     Richard decided that there was only one way to avoid having to watch Dirk eat his way through all the rest of the pizza, and that was to eat the rest himself. He rolled it up and took a token nibble off the end. It was rather good. He took another bite.
     Dirk watched this with startled dismay.
     "So," said Richard, "the idea behind Schrodinger's Cat was to try and imagine a way in which the effects of probabilistic behavior at a quantum level could be considered at a macroscopic level. Or let's say an everyday level."
     "Yes, let's," said Dirk, regarding the rest of the pizza with a stricken look. Richard took another bite and continued cheerfully.
     "So you imagine that you take a cat and put it in a box that you can seal completely. Also in the box you put a small lump of radioactive material, and a vial of poison gas. You arrange it so that within a given period of time there is an exactly fifty-fifty chance that an atom in the radioactive lump will decay and emit an electron. If it does decay, then it triggers the release of the gas and kills the cat. if it doesn't, the cat lives. Fifty-fifty. Depending on the fifty-fifty chance that a single atom does or does not decay.
     "The point as I understand it is this: Since the decay of a single atom is a quantum level event that wouldn't be resolved either way until it was observed, and since you don't make the observation until you open the box and see whether the cat is alive or dead, then there's a rather extraordinary consequence.
     "Until you do open the box the cat itself exists in an indeterminate state. The possibility that it is alive, and the possibility that it is dead, are two different waveforms superimposed on each other inside the box. Schrodinger put forward this idea to illustrate what he thought was absurd about quantum theory."
     ... (there were some sections left un-highlighted)
     "All right. You said that some people were performing the experiment. That's nonsense. Schrodinger's Cat isn't a real experiment. It's just an illustration for arguing about the idea. It's not something you'd actually do."
     Dirk was watching him with odd attention.
     "Oh, really?" he said at last. "And why not?"
     "Well, there's nothing you can test. The whole point of the idea is to think about what happens before you make your observation. You can't know what's going on inside the box without looking, and the very instant you look the wave packet collapses and the probabilities resolve. It's self-defeating. It's completely purposeless."

     * * * * * * * * * * *

     "Finished?"
     "Yes, but I don't..."
     The strange man snatched the book from Carl's hands and it immediately found its way to a hidden pocket in the trenchcoat. "Of course you don't. Allow me to explain. You see, things which are obviously 'impossible'-- those things which, while allowed by the fundamental laws of physics but can't ordinarily happen -- can indeed happen if a system is not 'observed' -- or interfered with in such a way as to collapse its wavefunction. So we (my collaborators and I, from many different scientific fields), we designed a system which could, for a long but uncertain amount of time, be isolated completely. We used such things as: a vacuum thinner than anywhere except parts of intergalactic space, electromagnetic fields stronger than anywhere but the surfaces of some dying stars, et cetera. The hope was that we could create a pocket of our universe which not only allowed the stranger aspects of our presently known physical laws to become obvious, but also to let us observe something completely new.
     "We spent years developing the hardware to make this possible, and many more years hard-wiring a system which could keep it all under control. All of this was amazingly difficult because our idea was so far ahead of anything done in respectable, directly funded research, so each of us managed to appropriate some parts from our own laboratories in our own diverse fields. Finally, we were able to build a small container which could do it all. But we had to put some mass in this small box (it really could have been anything), and one of us had the crazy idea to actually perform the Schroedinger's cat experiment. But a cat was too big, it couldn't really live very long -- so as a compromise we took our biologist's suggestion and chose a small laboratory mouse. We built the box, put the mouse in, sealed it, then spent the next few days isolating the system from the rest of our universe."
     "But why? This sounds crazy!"
     "It was crazy, but not for the reasons you're thinking. As I said, obviously impossible things can happen in there. Here are just a few of the more easily publicized things which we might have been able to do. The laws of physics are the same everywhere -- that's what every scientist believes, because it's what's always been observed to be true -- but there's no fundamental reason for that yet known. So suppose we could build a small, controlled region where, say, the laws of physics were such that fusion were much easier. The world's energy problems could be solved in an instant! Or suppose we could build a space where time flowed at a different rate -- we could preserve things for eternity, or observe in wonderful detail particles which usually decay far too fast for us to really understand them, learn more about the fundamental building blocks of matter in a few weeks than has been discovered through all of human history! The possibilities are endless!"
     This was going too far. Carl was rapidly coming to the conclusion that this man was beyond help. "So what's the problem? You said 'could have...'"
     "Don't inturrupt me! I was just about to get to that. Too late, I recalled another impossible thing. You see, many theories suggest that there may be a type of particle which, under normal conditions, would decay almost instantly. But if enough of them were created near enough to each other, then the collection would be amazingly stable. But more than that -- it would be even more stable than ordinary matter. As a result, anything nearby would be converted into this stuff, giving off huge amounts of energy in the process. And it just wouldn't stop, not until destroying a planet, a solar system, or maybe even more, depending on the theory. Imagine an entire star system exploding! Of course, that part of the theories was laughed at back then -- if it were true, that catastrophe should already have happed in many places, probably even here, according to the original theory. So clearly, we should have seen it by now -- absolutely huge amounts of energy pouring out in an instant."
     Carl fished in his jacket for a cigarette to calm his nerves. Surely this was pure madness! But it seemed to be starting to take root in his mind. After all, it was nearly 1 A.M.
     "Well. As I was saying, in the days before our box ws complete, I became more and more agitated. So this idea became my focus, throwing all that energy into the calculations. Of course, I had to make some assumptions, so I looked at a worst case scenario. Suppose the theory is correct, or at least that something equally bad is true. My own feeling is that this is about fifty-fifty. Then suppose that our experiment actually does what it's designed to do -- here, I'd guess about one in a million -- but as I said, suppose it does work, worst case scenario. So supposing those are true, I estimated that there would be about a one in a thousand chance of these particles forming in sufficient quantities to be catastrophic. That's it. Worst case, I calculated about a one in a thousand chance that when we open the box, everything we know will be destroyed. Of course, if you choose to factor in the chance of the Box working, you're at a more comfortable one in a billion."
     Things were starting to take shape. Carl did some calculations of his own: a man, working with a small team in an underground project which he believes is of earth shattering importance, feels the pressures building. The work must continue; but, right or wrong, if word of his involvement got out, he'd be scarred for life as a scientist. The scientific community didn't have the most forgiving reputation.
     As Carl thought, the lecture continued. "But I couldn't accept even that small a chance -- it had to be smaller. Something must have been wrong in my calculations, or more likely, something was fundamentally wrong with the entire concept of our machine -- it just couldn't be that way, yet it was!"
     At last, Carl found the inconsistancy he'd been looking for; the detail so easily overlooked by one who is looking for any reason to ruin his life for the sake of preserving his reputation. "But you said that, if the theory were correct, it should have been observed already. We haven't seen it, so the theory must be wrong."
     "But we have seen it," the scientist exploded, the force of his words carrying him to his feet. "Gamma ray bursters! I should have seen it from the beginning. Ever since we've put up the right kind of satellites, we've been seeing these bursts of energy, brighter than anything else in the universe for an almost unmeasurably short amount of time, coming from seemingly random places throughout the universe, never twice in the same place. It's been a mystery for years, but it has a signiature which fits my theory beautifully. But it hasn't happened naturally to our solar system or anything nearby -- and that's consistant with many theories. In fact, it seems most likely that only a few events per decade should happen in the entire observable universe!"
     "But how many really are seen?" There had to be a hole somewhere.
     "Oh, hundreds by now, but..."
     "Aha!"
     The cashier stirred in his sleep. "Aha, nothing! You see, this also answers another long-standing mystery: where's all the intelligent life? While our planet is certainly special, it is also certainly not unique, and most studies suggest that life is almost inevitable on an Earth-like planet. Now intelligent life is a trickier issue, but, well, if other civilizations had the technology to talk to us, we should have heared them by now. But any civilization with the technology to talk to us (and we're just barely getting to that point ourselves) would surely have tried this very experiment we tried. And if they do..."
     "So you actually think that these hundreds of bursts out there are a bunch of aliens..."
     "Blowing themselves up, yes. I came to that conclusion the night before we were scheduled to open the Box," the ragged character plainly stated as he returned to his seat on the bench.
     "The night before... but... When was that?"
     "About a month ago."
     "A month!" It was Carl's turn to let his words carry him to his feet, and his cigarette to the floor. "Then, again, you're just plain wrong!"
     "No." The haggard astrophysicist's entire demeanor was now strangely calm. He actually managed a slight smile. "You see, when I felt the ring of truth to this idea, I just couldn't let the experiment continue. So I simply went into our lab in the wee hours of the morning and stole the Box. This was a completely underground project, you recall, so there's no way my collaborators could have officially reported it missing or gone looking for me themselves. Given what little trouble I've had, I suspect there haven't even been any unofficial searches. Perhaps they realized why I did what I did. Perhaps not. Anyway, at least I was able to give the world a temporary reprieve."
     Carl slumped back down onto the bench. "Temporary? But if you have the box, why couldn't you..."
     "Destroy it? Think about it. We have a piece of space, cut off from the rest of the universe. Smashing the Box would obviously bring that piece into immediate contact with the rest. Burning it, same result. Nothing will bring it safely back."
     "So what about..."
     "Keeping it forever separate? I've thought about that, too. It doesn't work. The vaccuum, the fields built up in there are gradually decaying. If they live up to their minimum design requirements, I'd expect the isolation will last about another month. I'd be surprised if it lasted more than a year.
     "As far as trying to get a 'recharge' is concerned, the only facilities where that is possible is the lab where it was built. But that's only if it hasn't been disassembled by now, the 'appropriated' pieces returned to their intended experiments. Besides, I fully expecet that if I were to return, asking for help, my former collaborators would demand that I open the Box immediately. So there is nothing to do but wait. If you're optimistic, in about a year you'll have about a one in a billion chance of being instantly vaporized, becoming a statistic in an interesting puzzle for the next civilization on the road toward destrucion."
     Carl was now resigned to having at least a part of him believe this idea, probably just for the next couple of hours, until he could sit and think, far away from this madman who spoke of the End. "So that's why you've let your life fall to this, becoming little more than a bum in a bus station at midnight. Aware of your own mortality, feeling the weight of responsiblity for the death of humanity."
     "No!" An edge of anger returned to this harbinger's voice. "If that were all, the box would have been opened long ago. Perhaps only one day late. For years now, I've been half expecting a nuclear armageddon. (Well, not really expecting, but preparing myself emotionally should it ever actually come.) But you see, despite everything I've come to accept, there's still one thing that I just cannot face.
     "For all my life, I've seen Mankind as an explorer. I've believed that studying nature, learning the truth about the intimate details of the world around us, is perhaps the most noble, maybe even holy, human endeavour. Now that seems to be utterly wrong. God, or nature, or chance, or whatever, has put us in a perverse universe where our thirst for knowledge, just when it is about to pay off in the greatest ways imaginable, destroys us. But not just us -- any curious life. So you see? If I'm right, and I hope to whatever God there may be that I'm not, then it's curiosity itself which ultimaltely kills all hope. And that I cannot face."
     An uneasy silence fell between the two men. It was as if three boxes sat there on the bench: the mad scientist, overwhelmed by the horror he was determined to believe lied in his own creation. Carl, isolated in a way he had never known, knowing something which, despite his profession, he could never tell anyone else. And of course, the mouse.
     He turned to look at the large metal container resting between himself and the madman, and wondered. How had the mouse spent its own last days in the Box?