March of Microanalysis Day 9
Microfiction Entry Day 9:
Repentant, he turned the key of his own cell.
Adjectives can work for you, or against you. Repentant is a weasel word here. He’s repentant, sure, but does that mean he’s entering the cell or leaving it? The “turning” of the key doesn’t really give any clue. Nor is it meant to. This would be the bit where I the Author am being non-obvious, and trusting you the Reader to get a little Schrodingery (well, Schrodinger’s Cattery), and hover in a state of who-knows-what-is-really-going-on?
Maybe the prisoner is willingly entering confinement because he acknowledges that he did something wrong. Maybe he’s leaving because he finally accepted his culpability, and was freed. Maybe he railed for years against his imprisonment, but now has achieved peace within himself. Or maybe, in a future dystopia, penitentiaries are no longer places where that ideal of repentance is just a state to be hoped for, but a brain state that the courts can induce via chemical manipulation. God, that would suck. Imagine being wrongly convicted, and then forced to repent––not pay for, not be punished for, but repent ––for the crime you never committed, simply because it makes society run more smoothly. There wouldn’t even be an appellate division. Anyway, my point is that this story is deliberately ambiguous. I’d love it if this made you consider several storylines, all equally plausible.
Speaking of deliberately ambiguous, I have a question. In the Schrodinger’s cat experiment, does the cat know? Doesn’t that mess up the whole Schrodinger scenario? Does the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle* get all up in Schrodinger’s grill about the cat’s awareness, which would then alter the very experiment that it was part of? Or does the cat not count because it isn’t human? Isn’t that speciesist? I mean, yes, I get that according to Schrodinger, the cat is both alive and dead at the same time, with its little feline waveforms existing simultaneously until the observer opens the box and collapses the waveforms into one possible future (present?) or the other. I also get that Schrodinger’s Cat is just a thought experiment, and is less about about the cat than about how physicists handle unknowns. But still. The cat itself must have an effect. Would a depressed cat be more likely to collapse onto its “dead” future? Should we find cats with demonstrable psychological issues to test, or subject some normal cats to a looped Morrissey album for 24 hours prior to the experiment? Will the ASPCA flag this post because they think I’m talking about actual cats? I would never, guys. Kitties are the best. So sweet, like my Sammy Cat, who is both alive and sleeping right now. I don’t even have to open the box to know that.
*No! It wouldn’t. This isn’t about the cat’s freaking velocity and location. I mean, maybe it is metaphysically, but Heisenburg wasn’t referring to that. Or do we all need to listen to Stairway to Heaven again in that light? Or Highway to Hell? You’re still reading this? Why? I’m insane. Stop reading the internet and talk to a loved one. Seriously.
Through March, I'm posting a breakdown/analysis of the microfiction I posted on the corresponding day in February. This is probably only interesting to you if you care about the mechanics of writing, or if you know me personally.