Catherine A. Callaghan is a writer who lives in Columbus, OH. Pudding House Publications has recently published Other Worlds, a book of Escher prints with her response poems. Her work has also appeared in Millennium Science Fiction and Fantasy and will soon appear in Dreams of Decadence. Dark Planet is designed and edited by Lucy A. Snyder. If you spot any errors, or if you have any comments, please contact her at lusnyde@cyberus.ca. All materials copyright 1996-2000 by their respective creators. No stories, articles, poems or images from this webzine may be posted or published without the written consent of their creator(s).

Schroedinger's Cat (as told to Catherine A. Callaghan) I'd perished scores of times in physics lectures because of that aelurophobic cuss, Erwin Schroedinger. I heard him jeer at Bohr for claiming a radioactive atom is neither decayed nor undecayed before observation. Why didn't Schroedinger choose a rat to kill and kill again while testing the paradox of Bohr's fur-ball claim? As I lay in my box, convulsing from poison gas triggered by that decay, I sensed no indeterminacy in my condition. After my last demise, the improbable occurred -- all my particles reverted to their former state, and I rose up when Schroedinger raised the lid. I sprang out, releasing a final whiff of cyanide. There was a fifty-fifty chance he would expire-- I won.