And there are all the students sitting in the hall. Some look at me in horror, not believing that the mild Professor Schrödinger is actually going to perform the experiment he has proposed. Others, cat haters, give me that evil eye. They hope to see a dead cat at the end of the experiment. Perhaps some are gamblers, and fools too, betting on even odds.
Now the lecture begins. Into the box I go, with the rock, the vial and the counter. The box is closed and I know I have nearly an hour of isolation in this dark box. The students don't know that real uranium is far too active for this experiment. They don't know that the batteries in the geiger counter are long dead, and the professor probably doesn't know it either. Besides, it isn't turned on, and I know how to turn it off. The vial of cyanide? It's been empty for years.
The whole experiment is flawed anyway, and the students ought to be bright enough by now to know that. So what if the uranium decays and the geiger counter clicks? What mechanism is there for the vial to be broken when that happens? This is no ordinary cat here, why I probably know his lectures as well as he does. But why worry about that, I have an hour to nap.
Hey! Wait a minute! If I really am simultaneously dead and alive, if I really am in a parallel universe, I ought to be able to time travel. I should have thought of that years ago. What a great way to occupy my boring time in here with all this junk. This isn't just a box, it's a time machine. How do I do it? I guess I just close my eyes and meditate...
Wow, look at this. I'm in the woods. I'll climb up this tree to get a better view of where I am. Uh oh. There's a little girl over there. Oops! She sees me, here she comes. The least I can do is smile. She's talking to me now, she wants to know which way to go. That's easy, I'll just string her along and maybe she'll go away.
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to." Hey, this is cool. Not only can I time travel, she seems to understand me too. Oh no, another question. Now she wants to know who lives around here. How would I know? I'll have to make something up.
"In that direction lives a Hatter, and in that direction lives a March Hare." All this questioning is making me feel a bit lightheaded. I've told her now that we're all mad here, and now she is talking about the Queen's croquet game. That sounds like fun.
"You'll see me there," I tell her, and then it begins to grow dark. I must be travelling back to the box. Not yet, I'm not ready and my hour isn't up. I'll concentrate on getting back to the tree. Ah, here we are again.
This young girl looks like she should have a doll, but she has none. I'll have to ask her about that. "By the way, what became of the baby? I'd nearly forgotten to ask."
She replied with some sort of nonsense, and quizzing her about it didn't get me anywhere. Besides, she was complaining about my fading in and out making her giddy too. Oh no! The time has flown by, it's time to go back to the box.
I'm back in a nick of time. I can hear footsteps, the students coming over to look in the box for themselves. I smile at them and give them a plaintive, "Meow?"