Author's Note:

This story takes place after my first two COTS stories, Evolution and Furlough. It does refer to events in those stories, but it is not necessary to have read them to understand this one.

Schrodinger's Cat

A Crest of the Stars story

Senator Helbert stepped out of the elevator and walked briskly down the corridor, past the large round crest of the Hania Star Fleet on the wall. He nodded a silent greeting to the armed guard as he stepped up to the security checkpoint and without needing to be asked placed his hand on the familiar plate, to scan both his hand and the wristband. The retinal scanner also flashed, and the algorithms all consented to slide open the glass door and admit him to the inner sanctum. His dress shoes hitting the shiny floor sent a quick staccato echoing down the deserted sub-basement corridor beyond. He had wanted to be here earlier, but being available for impromptu pressing of flesh was one price that had to be payed for accomplishing what he wanted to do… or more correctly, what he wanted to prevent.

He palmed the door open and strode into the small meeting room. "Sorry I'm late," he said curtly, noting the two people already seated at the table. One was Captain Brenslaw in his Star Fleet uniform. The other was a slim, attractive young looking woman in a dark blue business suit and black hair in neat pageboy style. He knew her, but she was not the second person he had been expecting to be here. "Hello Elenir, good to see you."

"Good morning Senator," she said, uncrossing her bare legs and swiveling her chair towards him.

"Is everything okay?" He had known the deputy defense minister's chief aide long enough for them both to understand the implied question: Where the hell is the deputy minister?

"Yes," she said. "Deputy Minister Tessler should be here shortly."

Helbert sighed. "Dammit, the meeting is in an hour. They're going to be making the decision today! Nobody else would deal, we need Tessler's vote!"

"He got a call from one of his apprentices and sent me ahead." The long-suffering look on her face confirmed the meaning of the codeword: one of his sugar babies. He had several, his proclivity was an open secret. Helbert pretty much surmised that Elenir had to fend off advances herself. She really got stuck with the wrong boss, but I'm glad she's the one running his office. Way too good for him, but we need her.

"Senator, we're down to the wire here," Brenslaw said gravely. "I know he opposes the project for the wrong reasons, but he's all we've got. This will be a sealed-room meeting, if he's even a minute late they'll close the door and proceed without him. The veep will use any excuse."

"I'm sure he will," Helbert said bitterly. This damned fool thing was the Vice President's pet project, he would do anything to push it through. He thought silently for just a few seconds then shook his head. "Elenir, we need to call him."

"If he's still on his call, I won't be able to get through."

"Please try."

She nodded, tapped her wristband and sat listening from her ear-bud. After a second her eyebrow came up in surprise and she nodded. Thank God, she got through. Helbert listened anxiously to this half of the call. "Good morning Minister," she said pleasantly. "I'm sorry to disturb you…. Oh, I see. Yes, I've arrived and we're waiting for you…. What's that?… Oh, I understand." She met Helbert's eyes and made a motion of tipping a glass to her lips.

Helbert's face fell. Shit, we don't need this.

A moment later Elenir tapped her wristband to end the call. "He'll get dressed and come straight over."

"I'm tempted to have you go back and make sure about that, but it's past that time," Helbert said. "Dammit."

"Senator, I really wish we could have got somebody else on board," Brenslaw said. "If he's in a state where he can't even-"

"Okay, he's a stupid fat fuck!" Helbert said more testily than he had intended. "But for now he's our stupid fat fuck. He's old wealth and a legacy graduate, that's what got us in the door. And at least he understands what a boondoggle this whole thing is going to be. It won't just take money from his friends' pockets, it will suck up funds for what we really want. The Star Force needs reforms, it doesn't need… this." He paced with his hands on his hips, "I mean, Mimics for God's sake..." he spat. "They must know it will be a failure, this is pure empire building."

"I'm actually more afraid of it succeeding." Captain Brenslaw could see his tone had really got their attention. He hesitated before continuing. "Have you ever seen one?"

"Just the declassified videos," Helbert answered.

"I've talked with a couple of them, just short interviews. What they say is true, once you start talking with one it doesn't take long before you've convinced yourself that there is a real person in front of you. But that's not the half of it. The detectives who crack the underground Mimic upload markets have stories you wouldn't believe. These things can be driven insane if they're mistreated, and a lot of them really have been. But even the ones who don't have good reason… you can just tell, they hate us for having created them. Having them pilot our warships is like handing the keys over to the enemy."

Senator Helbert regarded him silently for a moment. He had heard the Captain voice his concerns over the safety of this project before, but never in such stark terms. "Captain, if this doesn't go our way then we really need to make sure you become part of the team."

"One man can't sabotage this beast."

"Not sabotage, we at least need an adult in the room. If this does go forward, our best hope is that it goes just far enough along for everyone else to realize that this is a really, really bad idea." What he would really like is for Brenslaw to be in the meeting, telling them just how crazy this idea was. But it had been hard enough getting the one seat at the table.

Brenslaw shook his head. "If the Abh or the Triple Alliance ever suspected we were doing something like this, we would have worse things to worry about than sex dolls operating Star Fleet ships." He fidgeted a bit, no doubt wondering if he had stepped out of line, considering present company.

Elenir smiled. "I hadn't bothered to mentioned before but Tessler asked me to pass on a question. He was wondering if he could have a private meeting with 'one of those girls' as he calls them."

Helbert snorted. "Hell, after five minutes in the same room I want to kill him. I can just see him showing up and making that a condition for voting our way."

"I don't think you need to worry," Elenir said. "He's dead set against the project for his own economic reasons." She smiled. "And, I told him the story of how one mimic castrated her tormenter. I wonder if that one is true."

"It is," Brenslaw said. "Plenty of worse stuff, too. There's a reason possession of the uploads will get you a life sentence."

Helbert got tired of pacing and sat down. He turned to Brenslaw and addressed him in a less formal tone. "Meck, did you ever talk with anyone who had dealt with both a Mimic and the person they were downloaded from? I mean, one of the people on Cetia who were euthanized."

"No, I only read second-hand reports from the classified documents," Captain Brenslaw replied. "A few people had an opportunity to do that. Universally, they said there was really no distinction between the original and the Mimic." His face darkened. "The other thing they always said, it was like talking to the same person after they had gone through something unimaginable. Some dealt with it better than others, but they were all damaged, traumatized. Something dark, something that couldn't be fixed."

The silence that followed was not awkward, it was more like a mutual acknowledgment of the sense of dread which had settled over the room. Helbert could see reflected in their faces the feeling that if they took any missteps here it could mean the end of everything they knew.

Half an hour later, Senator Helbert just couldn't take it any more and asked Elenir to call again. She did, and after a moment she frowned. She looked at the Senator and in a quick, soft voice said "I've been transferred to his wife's-" Her expression and voice suddenly became pleasant as if to a film director's call to action. "Mrs Tessler, good morning. I'm sorry to disturb you, I was trying to reach your husband… What?… Can you tell me what's happened?" As she listened to what was coming across her ear-bud., her expression slowly transformed into one of horror, shock and bewilderment. Nevertheless, her voice remained unbelievably and admirably calm. "I am so sorry to hear that. I'm sure he'll be fine. I won't keep you any longer, but I'll be there as soon as I can." She touched her wristband to end the call. Now her voice gave in fully to the shock shown on her face. "The deputy minister is in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. He is unconscious, possibly in a coma."

"What the hell happened?" Helbert asked helplessly.

She hesitated just a moment before answering. "He was drunk and in a hurry, he… she said that he tripped over their cat. He hit his head on the end-table. There was blood, she called for medics… the ambulance left just now."

Helbert's mind shut down, overwhelmed by this phantasmagorical moment of savage absurdity. He just half registered Brenslaw's next words. "I fucking hate cats."

YEARS LATER

Lafiel really began to feel the burn in her muscles as she neared the lake-shore, visible in brief glimpses above the frothing water and between her arms rhythmically knifing into the water, left, right, left, right. She came to a halt and her bubble of frantic motion dissolved, giving way to the peace of the manicured landscape surrounding the lake. She let her feet sink to the sandy lake-bed and brought her upper body up out of the water, still breathing hard and deep. Hearing the splashing of her swimming companion, she turned to see Jinto coming up behind her to complete his own transit of the lake. Not as far behind as I had thought. I'm getting better but it's still hard to beat him.

Jinto came up beside her and stood, breathing just as heavily as her. He smiled and nodded, silently acknowledging her victory. She pointed to their beach blanket and he nodded agreement. They walked up onto the beach, picked up their towels and dried themselves off. Lafiel peeled off her swimming cap, pulled out the hairpin and let her long, blue hair drape down her back. She sat down on the blanket and Jinto sat down beside her. He poured out two glasses from the thermos and handed her one.

"Thanks." She drank down half of the passion-fruit juice and set the wide, heavy-bottomed glass down on the blanket beside her. They sat in comfortable silence while their racing bodies cooled down, just gazing out across the lake. This deck of the recreation ship was reserved for officers right now, so the grounds around the little artificial lake were only dotted with a few small groups of people. Most were in their uniforms, either strolling together or at tables with their drinks or snacks. The ceiling was currently simulating a cloudless blue sky.

"It looks like you will be winning the bet," Jinto said. "No sign of the admiral."

"It was an easy win. Admiral Spoor has no use for natural environments. If she is here at all it would almost certainly be at the billiards tables."

"I thought she could smell out an opportunity to tease you for your unbecoming attire."

"We are in regulation swimsuits. There is nothing unbecoming at all, though I would have to concede that we do stand out."

They were in fact both in modest black swimming outfits, even Jinto's suit covered his torso. Recreational swimming was virtually unheard of among space-borne Abh, the lake on this deck generally acted as just a scenic backdrop until it was opened to the lander-majority crew.

Jinto smiled at her. "Thankfully we're not getting any strange looks."

"Only out of politeness, I'm sure."

"You would be getting more looks if you wore one of the swimsuits you picked up at Moruweka."

She smiled. "Those are strictly for when we can get our feet dirty." That was slang for spending time on the surface of a planet.

"We are not likely to get that opportunity any time soon."

"Regretfully." Spoor's fleet was currently withdrawn from active participation in the counteroffensive that the Abh Empire had launched from Hania Federation space. But there was still plenty of work to manage the repairs, refit and resupply. This would of necessity be a short break, certainly leaving no time for planet-side excursions. Lafiel's crew in particular had little grounds for complaints, they had just come off a long furlough cut short by only a couple of days due to the surprise offensive launched by the Triple Alliance.

Lafiel had been debating whether to broach this next subject here or in a more formal setting. She decided on here, reflecting that she had made up her to bend the rules beyond strict interpretation. "Jinto, at my last meeting with the squadron ship commanders we agreed upon our final report to send to fleet command regarding our sortie at the Marlowe system. We concluded that the delay in sortie by my command ship led to the damage inflicted on the two battle-cruisers."

Jinto looked crestfallen. They both knew it was his fault their ship had been delayed. "I have no excuse, Commander," he said gravely.

"I decided not to include a reprimand, and the ship captains all agreed."

Rather than looking relieved, Jinto looked concerned. Lafiel well understood the reason, he was afraid that she were playing favorites. "Instead, I have reported what I think has been a flaw in my own approach to commanding the squadron. The captains of the battle-cruisers attached to our squadron have long expressed an opinion that their ships should take a more forward position when faced with enemy cruisers. In this case, that happened more or less by accident. It is true that they took damage. But the consensus was that if my command ship had been in its more typical position it almost certainly would have been the focus of the enemy fire mission."

"You think they identified the command ship?" Jinto asked.

"I think that I have been making it too easy for them to do so. Had they succeeded in focusing their firepower exclusively on our more vulnerable ship, it is quite likely it would have been destroyed."

Jinto took a moment to let that revelation sink in. "I confess to having mixed feelings about having accidentally saved us."

"I believe that mine has been the greater mistake. Thankfully, this time we lived to learn from our mistakes."

"The squadrons of mixed ship types is a work in progress," Jinto correctly pointed out.

"I still support the idea," Lafiel said firmly. "The Admiral has put a great deal of thought into the reorganization. She is always very thorough. But she can be, how is it you said?"

"Crazy like a fox."

She sighed. "Yes." They sat in silence again for a little while. "It was the first time you have ever been late getting to the bridge since my first command on the Basroil."

Jinto's smile was sheepish. "I still vividly remember the reprimand you gave me back then."

"And you have been almost obsessively punctual since then, to the point where I have been taking it for granted. If you are late doing anything, you always give me a valid reason."

Jinto's expression showed he understood, she was not demanding a reason but was offering him the opportunity to give one. "It is so embarrassing that I have been putting off this conversation."

"Do you not want to talk about it?"

"Do you promise not to laugh?"

Lafiel raised an eyebrow. "Laugh? If there was some unexpected problem then I certainly will not hold it against you."

"Milo chose that day to bolt out the door as I was leaving our quarters."

Milo was not their cat, exactly. In the mad scramble to muster their crew from their various and sundry furlough locations, various crew members had shown up with nothing but what they were wearing, carrying or could grab in the minutes available to catch their respective emergency shuttle rides. One junior vanguard flier had shown up with her cat in its travel case. Pets on Space Force ships were frowned upon at most times, but certainly were not allowed for enlisted crew in shared quarters. In deference to the unavoidable circumstance, Jinto had suggested the cat be kept in their quarters and Lafiel had not objected.

Considering that she and Jinto had shown up on the Frikov in nothing but their wet bathing suits smelling of seawater, she was hardly in a position to voice complaint.

"I agree that having a cat loose on the ship during a combat alert is not ideal, but it seems preferable to my wondering where my chief of staff had gone to."

"I was so certain that I could get him back to our room quickly, so I went after him. For whatever reason he simply did not want me picking him up. He just kept bolting at the last minute. Before I knew it I was all the way to the other side of the ship. I was going to leave him, but suddenly he decided he'd had enough running and I had to decide between taking him back to our quarters or taking him to the bridge."

Lafiel sighed. "You clearly succumbed to the sunk cost fallacy. I can see why you were reluctant to say anything, the absurdity is breathtaking. It seems we have Milo to thank for accidentally saving our lives. Irrespective of that, you will need to do a better job of keeping him."

"I did what I should have done from the start, he has a locator collar now." Jinto tapped at his wristband and examined the result. "It's working fine."

Lafiel frowned. "Jinto… Milo is in our quarters, is he not?"

"I brought him to the recreation ship. Before I met up with you he went off exploring on his own, so I just let him go." He pointed off to their left. "Looks like he's in those bushes right now."

"Is that… allowed?"

"I consulted with the recreation ship operations officer, he says it's fine as long as they have a locator. They even have an animal retrieval procedure and storage facilities."

Lafiel could not help but feel uneasy over this development. "Well… what if somebody else brings their cat and they don't get along?"

"Worse comes to worst, one of them runs away from the other. Or, Milo gets her pregnant and we fight over the pick of the litter."

"Knowing our luck he would impregnate the Admiral's cat." Lafiel considered what she had said. "Jinto, do you know if the Admiral has-"

"She doesn't, not a live one anyway."

"That's not funny. I've seen her collection of exotic pelts, none of them looks remotely like a cat."

"I couldn't vouch for what might be in her private collection."

"The Abh have strict customs on the disposal of cats at the end of their lives. Admiral Spoor might be eccentric, but in the ways that matter she behaves like proper Abh nobility."

Jinto cocked his head. "Then why do you still look nervous?"

"Having a cat loose in the wrong place has already had what is likely a profound impact on our fates. Now that I know Milo is loose on these grounds they suddenly seem..."

"Pregnant with new possibilities?"

"I would prefer to say less predictable."

"I'm sorry if my decision has cut into your enjoyment of our break." It sounded like he meant it. "I should have talked with you first."

Lafiel shook her head. "No, after what you have told me I'm sure that in my mind I am ascribing to Milo a level of agency that is unwarranted. Pay it no mind."

Jinto looked thoughtful. "Have you ever heard of Schrodinger's Cat?"

"No, who is Schrodinger?"

"Kufadis told me. Schrodinger was a physicist on Old Earth."

Admiral Spoor's Chief of Staff was an obsessive history buff, a veritable treasure trove of obscure stories from the ancient past. "Was there something special about his cat?"

"Not his cat per se. This was back before they even had a quantum theory of gravity so they had some rather odd views on the nature of reality. Schrodinger came up with a thought experiment to illustrate the collapse of a quantum field. You put a cat in a closed box with a radioactive isotope and a Geiger counter that has a fifty percent chance of registering radioactive decay before you open the box. If it fires, it breaks a vial of poison, killing the cat."

"Did this Schrodinger not like cats?"

"History does not record him actually doing the experiment. Anyway, his interpretation of the quantum field was that it did not collapse until somebody observed it collapse. So until the box was opened, the cat would be in a state where it was both alive and dead at the same time."

"That sounds silly. The cat would observe whether the vial broke, obviously. Was he suggesting there is some fundamental difference between how physics works for cats and people?"

"Probably not. He was unclear what to conclude from this thought experiment, it might have just been a reductio ad absurdum. But a lot of records from that era have been lost, what if he did know something about the special nature of cats that we don't? Maybe he was suggesting that the cat could control whether the unstable isotope decays."

"Well, I know of one cat who can control the behavior of my most intimate partner in ways I find incomprehensible. Are you suggesting that was not an accident?"

Jinto shrugged. "Who says that our welfare is their true agenda?"

Lafiel smiled. "I think I have seen that film."

"No, I think you are getting that confused with one of Camin's tall tales."

They shared a smile, which was all the thanks Lafiel needed to give to Jinto for having artfully deflected her baseless anxiety. "Accidentally or not, I wonder how often the trivial actions of a tiny companion has pushed us down an unexpected path?"

"If so, I have every reason to thank them," Jinto said fondly.

Lafiel nodded in agreement. She discreetly placed her hand over his and they sat in silence for a while. Whoever has conspired to bring us here, if you can hear me, thank you.

Still, she could not help but glance occasionally to the woods on her left. A small group of officers about halfway between her and the little grove caught her eye. They were looking down at the ground and laughing at something they saw there. Whatever it was, they soon lost interest and moved on.

A couple of minutes later, she had an idea what they had been looking at. Oh no. "Jinto." She pointed. "I see Milo coming."

"Where? Oh, I see. What has he got there?"

She looked at him."I think it's a bird of paradise."

Jinto's face slowly fell in a way that made her want to say you are looking like I am feeling. "You mean, the ones that Admiral Spoor was bragging about?"

"Yes."

The bird held in Milo's mouth looked impressively large. But as he approached it became apparent that was something of an illusion. It was not a small bird to be sure, but most of its apparent size was attributable to its impressive plumage. Without hesitation, Milo marched up to Jinto, dropped the bird in front of him and looked up at his face expectantly.

"I don't believe this," Lafiel lamented. "You are not even its real owner and it is bringing you a present?"

"It's actually a nice gesture," Jinto offered. "He must have a feeling that he owes us, so this is like offering tribute. It speaks to his character."

Lafiel sighed. "We are responsible for his actions. At the very least this is a property crime, I will have to report it."

"The bird is in remarkably good condition," Jinto said, delicately picking it up.

"Jinto, it's dead."

"I mean there's no visible damage."

"How does that help?"

"It might smooth things over if we had it stuffed and mounted and presented it to the Admiral as a token of apology. Considering her penchant for animal remains I would not put it past her to have a taxidermist on staff."

Lafiel glared at him. "That might inspire her to suggest that we have the culprit stuffed and mounted next to its victim."

Jinto smiled awkwardly. "You're right, I can see how that might backfire."

Lafiel reached over and picked up Milo under his front legs, dangling him in front of her. She glared into his annoyingly innocent looking eyes and addressed him sternly. "And you had best believe I would be sorely tempted to accede to having you added to her collection. I expect the only thing saving you would be her reluctance to indirectly punish a poor pilot whose only mistake was entrusting her cat to superior officers who proved incapable of keeping him out of trouble."

"One bird of paradise must be little more than a rounding error in her private donations to the fleet's recreational facilities."

"I wouldn't be so sure." Lafiel put the cat down. "You heard her. 'The standard fauna on the recreation decks is so dreary. I wanted to spice things up so I greased some palms among our new Hania allies and they delivered some perfectly marvelous examples of their avian breeding.' She was so proud of herself."

"Your Spoor impersonations are improving, it's quite uncanny."

Lafiel crossed her arms over her raised knees and bowed her head down on them. "I am never going to hear the end of this."

Jinto placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. "We'll think of something. We have our own contacts in Hania, I'll bet we could have something shipped out here that would really delight the Admiral."

"She would probably insist on something ridiculously large."

"That gives me an idea. Maybe we can interest her in horseback riding."

That took a while to explain. Lafiel had an idea what a horse looked like, but it took some effort to wrap her head around the idea of using one as a recreational vehicle. Just the knowable expenses and risks sounded daunting, but she felt certain this was something that could blow up in her face in ways she could never guess.

Jinto took her hand and softly spoke her name in a way that told her she was about to get some more bad news. "What is it, Jinto?" she said, resigning herself.

"It looks like I'm going to win that bet."

She did not even bother looking up or asking if the Admiral was approaching, of course she was. "I presume she is with the officers who witnessed the crime?"

"Yes, I think so."

She still did not bother looking up. "How does she look?"

"Simply delighted at having sniffed out an opportunity to tease her favorite Abriel," he replied sympathetically.

Lafiel looked longingly up into the fake sky. Jinto had once told her that in a moment of despair he had found comfort in composing bad poetry. "Oh good ship Frikov… would that I were now upon your bridge… with naught to worry me save an implacable enemy… fully intending to strip my atoms… of their electrons."

"That was pretty good. Do you feel better?"

Lafiel sighed. "No." She gazed at Milo. "I just don't understand. Why is it that we still love cats?"

The End

Author's Postscript

After I wrote my first two COTS stories, further novels in the series were released and it became apparent that events in my stories diverged significantly from the canon. In the latest volumes of the novels, the Hania Federation joins the Triple Alliance, whereas in my stories it allies with the Abh Empire. The Mimic rebellion in my first story threatened both Hania and the Abh, which brought them into closer cooperation, making their eventual alliance more plausible. It seemed to me that the real point of divergence was the existence of the secret project at the Vensath system, if that project had never been undertaken that might have made it more likely that Hania would go over to the Triple Alliance. So what tipped the scales? You guessed right, it was the cats maintaining the balance of the multiverse. That's my story, and I'm stuck with it. In my defense, a character in my first COTS story hinted that he had guessed some small part of the truth, I will leave finding that as an exercise for the reader.