After what seemed like an eternity, he opened his eyes, looked down, realized there was nothing under him but air, then managed to scramble, Wile E. Coyote style, from the brink of doom.
My relief at High Pockets’ escape from certain death was short-lived.
“Why is it so quiet?” I asked myself out loud.
Flash looked over his shoulder, grinned, then subjected me to his Porky Pig impression. The last thing I remember about the flight of the Looney Tune was the weird expression on High Pockets’ face and my own realization that it was so quiet because the engines had quit. I was then struck by flying debris and lost consciousness.
We weren’t over the commune, as it turned out. But we were out of gas and several government agencies had amassed all over the state, waiting for us.
Flash and I were taken into custody after gravity did its thing with respect to the Looney Tune.
Apparently we had been under intense scrutiny for quite a while. Some of the agencies (the Drug Enforcement Administration, for example) had no idea that other agencies (the CIA, for example) were also on our case, so things got very confused and twisted.
Meanwhile, José, Robert and Jim had heard us roar over the commune and had jumped into our Rider rental truck to find the new drop zone.
Evidently the movie had just started when Flash gave me the drop sign, causing our load to be strewn across a crowded drive-in theater. The audience was quite enthusiastic about this gift from above.
José copped a heavy Bandito Attitude when he saw the delighted moviegoers loading our bales into the trunks of their cars and roaring off. He jumped out of the truck, his Thompson machine gun blazing warning shots. The boys managed to salvage about half the load and escaped before the local authorities figured out what was going on.
Everybody was curious about Flash’s and my whereabouts, so they drove back to the commune and turned on the news. This was a common method we used to find out what happened when things didn’t go exactly as planned.
The boys got upset when the newscaster informed them that Flash, High Pockets, Aileron and I were in the clink.
You live in a deranged age, more deranged than usual, because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing.
—Walker Percy
9
Bandito Baseball
Our little shack in the jungle has turned into a veritable Temple of Cosmic Enlightenment. As my understanding of the wonderful machinations of this Universe of ours increases, so does my serenity. I am dragging High Pockets down the Path of Canine Quiescence with the Leash of Knowledge.
I would like to make this world a mellower, more peaceful place for all God’s children. Last week I decided to begin my Crusade for World Peace right here in my own little Corner of the Cosmos. José and his boys have started a feud with a gang of Rival Banditos from the other side of the mountain. Some sort of primitive territorial imperative is at the bottom of it, I suspect.
Anyway, I decided to begin my crusade by giving José and his gang some insight into the Underlying Nature of Reality, thereby putting the dispute in its proper perspective. I persuaded José to let High Pockets and me visit the village for a night of pool and mescal. I prepared a lecture, loaded my M-16 and rode down into town on Pepe’s cousin, a little burro named Raoul.
The town is more or less your typical Bandito Stronghold: a narrow, unpaved road with a few adobe houses and shops on either side, some corrals containing various forms of livestock (mostly pigs, goats and chickens), along with several mortar emplacements and a .30-caliber machine gun nest in the steeple of the town’s rarely visited church. The night I showed up, the town’s old diesel generator was on the blink, so the street was dimly lit by a few kerosene torches and a bonfire in front of Enrique’s Astoria del Waldorfo, the town’s Bandito Saloon. I dismounted Raoul and entered Enrique’s place, ready to get down to some serious Subatomic Business. Unfortunately, the evening didn’t go exactly as I had planned.
The saloon was well lit by flickering kerosene lamps and packed with Banditos, who were also well lit. I hadn’t seen most of the gang since their return from assaulting the University of Barranquilla Research Library, so High Pockets and I got a rousing Bandito Welcome—in other words, with guns blazing (through the roof).
I was forced to chug a pint of homemade mescal (a house rule) before I could order a drink from the bar.
A chaotic pool game was in progress. José was roaring drunk and brandishing a broken pool cue. He was chasing one of his men around the table, bellowing Bandito Threats while his drunken cohorts yelled encouragement and made bets. Rowdy Banditos make High Pockets nervous, so he slinked over to an unoccupied corner and lay down.
José flung what was left of the cue stick in the general direction of the bar, pulled his .45, shot a hole through the pool table, then, apparently having forgotten why he was pissed off at the other Bandito, embraced him, laughing hysterically.
They both toppled over onto a table, pissing off some Banditos who were playing dominoes. This resulted in a Bandito Chain Reaction that got everyone in the place pissed off. High Pockets and I saw it coming and bolted outside. A Bandito Brawl is an awesome sight if one isn’t used to random destruction.42
Anyway, as in all chain reactions, the Bandito Brawl wound down slowly. The crashing and grunting sounds from within the Astoria del Waldorfo abated as well as the frequency and velocity of Flying Banditos.
Eventually José emerged from inside. He stood on the stoop holding a liter of mescal in one hand and his tattered sombrero in the other. He looked about as drunk and disheveled as I’d ever seen him. He took a huge belt of mescal, tossed his damaged sombrero into the street, then yelled for High Pockets and me to come inside for a drink.
We zigzagged our way back to the saloon, trying to avoid stepping on unconscious and semiconscious Banditos, and entered. José followed us in, calling out for Enrique to come out from wherever he was hiding. He emerged cautiously from under the bar. Needless to say, his place was a shambles.
José offered me the only intact bar stool and ordered a round on the house for the two of us, plus a plate of rice, beans and salsa for High Pockets.
I then explained that I had some vital topics to discuss with him and his men.
He slugged down the remainder of his mescal and inquired as to what these topics might be.
When I replied that they involved the Underlying Nature of Reality and how it related to his gang’s feud with the Rival Full-Blown Bandito on the other side of the mountain, he said, “Ahh,” nodded sagely, then excused himself. He stumbled out onto the porch and discharged a round from his .45, meanwhile yelling at the top of his lungs for any Bandito within earshot to get his ass back into Enrique’s Astoria del Waldorfo.
In a few minutes the saloon was packed with woozy Banditos, some bleeding from cuts and contusions sustained during the brawl.
In order to make Quantum Theory comprehensible to a score or so of cranky Banditos, I knew I had to lay some groundwork.
I had José and his crew gather around the pool table.43 I then racked the balls and commenced my lecture on classical Newtonian physics. The old physics that had led scientists to the erroneous conclusion that the universe is a predictable and orderly place. I was, of course, going to use the pool table and its caroming balls as a metaphor for Newton’s cause-and-effect Worldview.
I explained that according to Newton all natural phenomena are innately predictable if we have enough information about mass, momentum, direction of movement, etc. To demonstrate, I set the cue ball in front of the rack and, before taking aim, explained about angles of incidence and reflection and how, according to the old physics, if we knew enough about my break shot, we could predict where each ball would end up when friction and air resistance caused it to stop.
My demonstration didn’t work out exactly as I had planned. I put a little too much English on my break shot, causing it
to fly off the pack and across the room.
The cue ball described a parabolic trajectory that was terminated by José’s forehead. Following the laws pertaining to momentum and reflection, the errant shot ricocheted off José’s head, then a wall, broke a bottle of mescal that a Bandito was raising to his lips, then shattered a kerosene lamp, causing a minor conflagration behind the bar.
High Pockets panicked and bolted outside.
Enrique panicked and threw a pot of black bean soup on the fire.
José’s gang erupted in uproarious laughter.
José himself toppled over backward onto the floor. He was out cold.
I was momentarily at a loss for words. I checked José. I had really rung his bell: A lump the size of a golf ball had already blossomed on his forehead and was obviously intent on further expansion.
I knew I had to act quickly to regain my credibility.
“You see!” I yelled over the laughter. “I was just getting to the point! Newton could never have predicted this! A random event!”44
I grabbed a grease pencil from my pocket and scrawled in huge letters on the wall: “RE.”
“RE! A random event!” I then wrote the equals sign (=). “Equals a UB, an Unconscious Bandito!” I underlined the equation. “RE = UB.”
I had a slug of mescal and rambled on. “This equation forms the very foundation of Quantum Theory!’”45 I headed for the door. “I will continue the lecture another time!” With that, I collected High Pockets and hauled ass back to the shack. I had no idea what kind of mood José would be in when he regained consciousness, and even less desire to find out.
On the way back, I decided to rethink my plan to stop further violence between José’s gang and their rivals on the other side of the mountain.
José showed up at the shack the next day. Sure enough, the lump on his forehead had moved on from golf to tennis.
Luckily for me, my errant break shot had resulted in José sustaining a mild concussion and a slight case of Bandito Amnesia. He recalled nothing of my aborted lecture on Newtonian physics or being knocked senseless by the flying cue ball. His crew, God bless them, had had enough compassion for me and regard for my friendship with José not to blow the whistle.
Anyway, during the night I had devised a plan to peacefully settle the Bandito Dispute.
After much haggling and negotiating, José and his Rival Full-Blown Bandito agreed to go along with my plan.
I proposed that the two gangs compete in a sporting event, the winners of which would be dubbed the Best Banditos. I picked baseball since it isn’t too heavy a contact sport and probably wouldn’t cause too many Bandito Temper Flare-Ups, which can be lethal. Unfortunately, the game didn’t go exactly as I had planned.
Miraculously, nobody was killed, but several Banditos from both teams were wounded and I suffered a mild concussion46 when, as umpire of the event, I made a bad call at the plate in the top of the first inning. I ejected the Bandito who hit me with the bat from the game, even though he was on José’s team.
The actual gun battle didn’t start until the bottom of the fifth. I called the game a tie (José’s team was 22 runs ahead) and beat a hasty retreat.
The real news, the big news, doesn’t have anything to do with Bandito Baseball, however. It happened yesterday and my heartbeat still has not returned to its normal rhythm.
Are you ready? All right. Here it is: I heard from Tina’s father.
I suggest the reader take a breather at this point in order to allow the implications of this to sink in.
It is now obvious to me, though I had suspected it all along, that my life is linked to Tina’s father’s in some weird Subatomic sort of way. But in my completely serene state of mind, I do not try to question. I make decisions in the mundane world of Bandito Baseball Games, but when it comes down to the Big Riddle, when the Cosmic Bandito slides into a close play at the Home Plate of Enlightenment, who am I to judge or analyze?
In my original note to Tina’s father I had instructed him to contact me as “Mr. Quark” in an International Trib ad, Quarks being the most elusive (illusory?) of Subatomic Particles. Subsequently, as you will recall, I had José’s Bandito Buddies mail cryptic messages to him (plus Tom, Gary and Tina) from various Bandito Strongholds in order to see if he would understand my reference to the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. Tina’s father’s response was more enlightened than I could ever have expected. This is what he said in the ad: “Mr. Quark: Please leave me and my family alone.”
Quarks are extraordinarily elusive particles (as many now known particles were in the past) with some strange characteristics.
—Gary Zukav
10
Every Silver lining Has A Cloud47
Various federal agencies squab-bled amongst themselves, each wanting to be the first to interrogate Flash and myself. High Pockets and Aileron were given a private cell. I assumed that a Canine Constable of some sort would eventually get around to them.
Flash was almost strangled with his own ponytail by a crazed Federal Aviation Administration official who had apparently been chasing him for years. Flash’s infamous B-29 was evidently a legend amongst air traffic controllers; it had caused several nervous breakdowns and was said to have been a bargaining point when they recently attempted to strike.
I myself had been in hot water with the Feds for some time, although it was news to me. Every agency I’d ever heard of (and some that I was unfamiliar with) had impressive files on Yours Truly. I was a severely misunderstood individual.
José, Robert and Jim showed up, impersonating reporters, but they were intensely inebriated and their act was not real convincing. Especially José’s. He spoke no English and was still wearing his Bandito Outfit, including sombrero and crisscrossed bandoliers. (At this time José was still technically a Full-Blown Dope Lord, but he always had the down-to-earth attitude of a Bandito.)
We were being held in a very small jail in a very small town. The details of our escape are unimportant. Suffice it to say that a mixture of tequila, hand grenades and Robert was involved.
We found Harry and the Lear waiting at a local airport, flattened the tires on the squadron of federal, state, local and military aircraft that had arrived after we were apprehended, then hightailed it to the Big Apple. Our rented truck had already left (we’d hired one of Flash’s buddies to drive it) and would meet us at our distributor’s warehouse in Brooklyn.
We found our boy at his usual blackjack table at an Upper East Side after-hours club at about 6 A.M. Captain C.O.D. is the second-most unbalanced of all my associates, but he doesn’t make me anywhere near as nervous as Flash does. For one thing the Captain never travels at high speeds in unsafe vehicles, unless you consider his mind an unsafe vehicle.
Captain C.O.D. is a good old boy from Georgia with a thick backwoods accent and a huge potbelly. His exploits in the marijuana trade are legendary, and he has what can only be described as stupendous connections. His associates run the gamut from Colombian Dope Lords to ex-CIA Cubans to current CIA big shots to down-and-out street hustlers and so on. Everybody likes the Captain.
At any rate, we hadn’t seen him in quite some time, so our reunion turned into one of his major productions.
The details of this production are unimportant but it suffices to say that they involved a truck full of marijuana, four limousines, two helicopters, one Learjet, three wholesale liquor outlets, suites at the Sherry Netherlands in New York City and the Queen Elizabeth in Montreal and a cornucopia of Bimbos, Sleazoids and Full-Blown Degenerates, not to mention Captain C.O.D., the Comedy Team from Hell, Flash, Aileron, High Pockets, José and Yours Truly.
The true story of quantum mechanics [is] a truth far stranger than any fiction.
—John Gribbin
11
Quantum Banditos
The theory of relativity is laugh-ably lightweight stuff compared to Quantum Mechanics and Subatomic Particle Theory in general. I mentioned this to Tina’s fa
ther in my last volley of Bandito-Mailed Notes, but he has been strangely reticent. I hope and pray that his silence is some sort of Zenlike comment on the Natural Order of Things. The only other explanation is that (as with Quarks) he has become skeptical about my actual existence as a bona fide aspect of reality.
I think it vital at this point to reveal that I believe in Quarks. For those few of you who haven’t already done some research on your own, I will give a quick layman’s definition of a Quark: A Quark is the most likely candidate at present for the Ultimate Building Block of the Universe.
No one has yet found a Quark, but many are looking. Those scientists who doubt the existence of Quarks are, in my opinion, extremely shortsighted. As proof of this, let us all participate in what Einstein calls a “thought experiment.” This is an experiment whose premises are scientifically and logically sound but, for technical reasons, cannot be carried out physically. (Einstein’s famous “elevator in vacuum” is a good example.) Since the following experiment is basically conceptual in nature, I will dub it “a metaphorical thought experiment.” (By the way, I have already tried this experiment with José, and the results were as I had predicted.) Here it is:
Tina’s father has never seen me. (I am a metaphorical Quark.) The only evidence he has to confirm my existence is, of course, the notes I wrote that were mailed by José and his scattered Bandito Allies. As I’ve already mentioned, Tina’s father, from his position as an observer, must assume that I am in many different Bandito Strongholds at the same time. That is one possibility. (Quarks also seem to have this property.) But this possibility might be unacceptable to Tina’s father because of his limited Worldview. The only other possibility is for him to deny my existence altogether (as he seems to have done with Quarks). If he chooses the latter of the two possibilities, then he will have to either ignore or find some other explanation for my notes.48
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