Special Smashwords Edition
Schrodinger’s Mouse
By
Niagara Books
Schrodinger’s Mouse
Special Smashwords Edition
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.
Copyright © 2011 Niagara Books All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical without the express written permission of the author. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
ePublished and distributed by Smashwords
http://www.smashwords.com
Schrodinger’s Mouse
Volume One, Issue One
Tim Rowe – Managing Editor
Ann Stolinsky – Editor
Teresa Tunaley – Contributing Artist
Niagara Books – Publisher
T. Rowe and Associates – Marketing and Advertising
T. Rowe and Associates – Web Design
Gemini Wordsmiths – Web Copy Editing
Amit Dey – Formatting Conversion
David Remington – Legal Counsel
Submissions to Schrodinger’s Mouse should be emailed to submissions@schrodingersmouse.com or mailed to 816 West Arlington Road, Erie, Pennsylvania 16509. Editors will only return mailings that are accompanied with a self-addressed-stamped envelope.
Subscriber Services - For subscriptions, gifts, or changes of address (print or eBook) please email customer service at service@schrodingersmouse.com.
Advertising – for information about advertising rates please email business@schrodingersmouse.com.
Permissions – email business@schrodingersmouse.com or write to 816 West Arlington Road, Erie, Pennsylvania 16509.
Visit our website at www.schrodingersmouse.com
Notice: the contents of Schrodinger’s Mouse are copyrighted. Please do not distribute the contents of this magazine without expressed written permission from Schrodinger’s Mouse.
Table of Content
Poetry
Almost Nighttime by Kristine Ong Muslim
Inner Circles by Pat Tompkins
Flash Fiction
Jane’s Head by Vincent Scarsella
In Service of a Greater Cause by Alex Shvartsman
Short Stories
SnapBack by John F.D. Taff
Poetry
Almost Nighttime
Kristine Ong Muslim
Kristine Ong Muslim has poetry and prose appearing in hundreds of publications. In addition, she has also authored the full-length poetry collection, A Roomful of Machines available from Searle Publishing. Her work has been nominated five times for the Pushcart Prize and four times for the Science Fiction Poetry Association's Rhysling Award.
Like the loneliest kettle in the world, it totters on creaky joints and pours oil on its rusty comrades. It will not last long. It has no way of repairing itself. The fallen ambles by its feet. Spent fuseboxes glitter amongst contraptions once intended to pet and feed robotic dogs. The grandmotherly faceplates of obsolete Babysitters™ lay crushed, mouths twisted. Pieces of metal refuse glow in the dark. The late-afternoon smog is dense enough to carry the ghosts of these machines long discarded, repurposed. The only sound is the screeching of the conveyor’s jaw as it crashes down. A juggernaut’s maw that will soon fail, its wail reduced into a thud, rhythmic and commonplace.
Inner Circles
Pat Tompkins
Pat Tompkins is an editor in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her poems have appeared recently in Flashquake, Strange Horizons, Astropoetica, and Mayfly.
a moon to planet
as Io to Jupiter
linked by gravity:
a king’s courtier valued
only for proximity
in the dark, looking
for clues from satellites
or constellations
weatherspies pronouncing
the possible as soothful
unmanned space probes search
for signs of water and air
that they do not need:
artificial canaries
wing toward our future or past
Flash Fiction
Jane’s Head
Vincent Scarsella
Vince has gained some modest success in publishing his work in print magazines such as The Leading Edge, Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature, and Fictitious Force, and various eZines. His short story, “The Cards of Unknown Players,” was nominated for the prestigious Pushcart Prize.
Before retiring in September 2010, Vince worked for over 26 years for the State of New York. After leaving state service, Vince continues to practice law. Vince lives in Lackawanna, New York with his wife Rosanne. They have three children, Derek, Vincent and Kristyn, and a grandson, Alexavier.
Dearest Jane,
I have your head.
It's frozen, of course, preserved the past three years in a stainless steel box filled with liquid nitrogen, 480 or something degrees below zero. Not a molecule of tissue has moved in your brain in all that time.
From time to time, I thought of joining you. I thought of killing myself by taking an overdose of pills or suffocating myself on car fumes in the garage. Those methods of suicide, as you know, will inflict the least amount of damage to human cells. But I simply haven't found the courage despite our solemn vow that if one of us died, the other would not be long in following so that we would awaken together in a future golden age.
I have kept the insurance policy in effect, covering the cost of preserving my head immediately upon my death. But I am worried about the rising cost of the process. Freezing your head cost only $40,000. But that was three years ago and the price has risen to $60k.
At a meeting of our cryogenics group (renamed, Everlife Inc., from Forever Always, Inc., after its corporate structure was reorganized or something), in New York City last month, we were told by Dr. Franz - you remember him, our dour group leader, a professor of literature at Columbia, who always wore those moldy tweeds - that the insurance premium would be going up at least twofold to cover these increases.
From the beginning, as you predicted, my mother bitterly opposed keeping your head. "You still have that head of hers? What if you find someone new? Fall in love again?" she constantly nagged during every long distance call from her condo in Venice, Florida. (She moved there six months or so after you died). "What will you do with that head?” Her scolding continued. "You're too young to give up the rest of your life.”
But how could I send your head to the Everlife storage facility in Phoenix, hundreds of miles away? After all, you died because of my unmitigated stupidity. I was driving the car. I fell asleep. (The police report included with this letter gives the horrific details. It’s a wonder that I survived!).
As you also predicted, my mother was horrified when I told her there wasn’t going to be a conventional funeral. After you died, she fully expected that I'd arrange a two-day wake with all the ghoulish trappings. That would have given her the chance to parade the ugly daughters of her busybody friends before me. She was aghast that I was going forward with our plan to freeze your head. Despite her nagging me to reconsider, I didn’t give in. You would have been proud how I stood up to her.
I arranged for a memorial service at our house in conjunction with the delivery of your head. Two solemn Everlife technicians looking like soldiers or something in blue jumpsuits with the Everlife insignia came in a rental car straight from the airport at Noon. The technicians solemnly carried the special, stainless steel box containing your head downstairs and carefully placed it on a special metal table I had to purchase from Everlife at considerable expense. After they hooked it up to a 220 line and attached a series of tubes from a water line, I let mother’s priest, Father Murphy, offer a prayer. Then we all headed upstairs to the living room where John Stark and his wife, Judy, and your sisters gave wonderful, tearful eulogies. Finally, it was my turn to add my two cents and address the mourners. And I think my speech would have made you smile. Everyone should keep their spirits up, I said. No one should cry or grieve. That you really did expect to live again in a future world where there would be no pain, no suffering, no injustice, no death.