How Cool Is This?

All cool cats, eventually, should veer away from self-serving solipsism and ponder the "meaning of it all." It can't be all about bitchin' cars, "it" couples, clicks-and-likes, and liquidity, can it?

I was too late for my wake-up call. Being sized up for a cherry solid-wood coffin, I was cool with that. Besides, cherry—how cool is that!

The lid sealed and my box slid underground. As I lay there, the ghost of Schrödinger appeared to me.

"Dude."

I was pleased this specter called me Dude. How cool is that? Still, I knew I shouldn't have eaten that undigested bit of beef, blot of mustard, cheese crumb, and underdone potato.

"There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!”

"I am your probability vapor," it said in a tone that implied gravity.

"I'm in the presence of quantum determinism, then? Must be, 'cause I'm dead. Cool. Now what?"

"More like indeterminism," said the wraith with a wry grin. "Tonight you'll be visited by two spirits. The first will show you your afterlife."

"Cool. Can’t wait. And the second?"

"The second, my still, cold friend, will approach as a solemn phantom, draped and hooded, and will come like a mist along the ground, towards you: he be Oblivion."

"Not cool." I said. There’s gravity and then there’s gravity. This was very heavy, indeed.

"We're way past cool and uncool,” he thus spoke. “You thought you were alive. Were you really? When your final box opens, will you go on, or will you never have been."

I thought for a minute. As well as cold synapses could muster. Thinking was like trying to reconnect neurons when attempting to remember a dream.

"Will I care? I mean, if I go on—how cool is that! And if oblivion happens, I can't even care." Even dead, I was still the cool cat.

"Be ready," Schrödinger cautioned. And that's when the bell tolled once.

For whom?

Schrödinger withdrew and I closed my eyes to what I thought would begin my eternal rest. I looked for the remote in my potato existence on the existential sofa of the meaning of life...streaming—and without ads.

"Dude," a new spirit called. (How cool is that?) This dude was a little creepier. "Come with me,” it urged me. “Consider your cherry box."

"Sure." I recognized very well what my estate had shelled out eight grand for.

"Behold, it is opening."

"Whoa, wait! Waddaya mean it’s opening? Who's opening it? Why the hell is anyone opening my casket?"

"You're being exhumed."

"Why?"

"I don't know these things, and you should not concern yourself with such trivial distractions. But it's got to happen. It’s the way things happen. You must suffer the observer effect that collapses your probability cloud.” Then it asked, “How cool is that?" And I thought Schrödinger had cornered the market on wry grins.

"How cool, you ask? I say…not! Not cool at all. So, what happens now?"

"Now what happens…happens. Does your soul move on or are you lost to oblivion?"

"Are you asking me a question?” The Ghost of Christmas IS just stared. I stared back. Then I broke. “OK, I take it back. I do care. Really!"

Just as the seal between the lid and the box—all cherry, I might add—began to separate, the whole thing slammed shut and I was returned to my interment. I guess I had beaten the odds.

So, it seemed, I lay in superposition, where I had either decayed or hadn't. In my very cool casket made of cherrywood. It also seemed...this box was made for opening, whereupon the observer would then know which.

And further it seemed, the person who opens the box will make either of those potential consequences ensue, by just observing. Oh, what double slits we traverse!

"You lie in wait, traveler," said a second solemn phantom, draped and hooded, coming toward me like a mist along the ground. My ground. My six-feet-under'ground.

"My casket remains shut," I explained.

"There are many ways to open it," the ghoul spoke scratchily. "Many ways to finally—deterministically—be observed. Your measurement awaits, traveler."

"What if it's never opened? What if there's no observer? No observer effect? What if I remain in superimposition—between decay—and not?"

"Spe Salvi!" the spirit exclaimed angrily. "That option expired in 2007."

"Ah, 2007. That was one sweet Porshe!"

The spirit rolled his eyes, but being a spirit, the eye-roll continued until his sockets emptied. "Intermediate state of temporary custody," it finally said. Those eye sockets—spooky as hell!

"Did you say 'Hell,' traveler?"

"No! I didn't say that."

"You thought it!"

"Not with a capital 'H'!" I blurted. His eyes rolled back but, seeing them, I kinda wished the sockets had stayed empty.

"Time to observe, traveler," he announced.

The casket lid began to loosen, noisily, its creaking a bonus.

"Oh, my God, I'm heartily sorry for having offended Thee—" I began, panicking. The most urgent prayers are recited the fastest.

"Too late for apologies, heartily sorrowful or not!" the spirit cried. Hovering outside the casket, I saw myself. A reflection of all I was—all I'd been.

Suddenly, cool wasn't so valuable a currency.

I realized if I had lived a lie, I wouldn't recognize myself, meaning oblivion. But if I recognized myself, seeing something good in me, then that good existed in me in simultaneity with all the years that came before, in all its spooky-action-at-a-distance non-locality.

"I measure you in decay!" the ghoul shouted.

"I don't," I said, lifting up the lid at my wake, whereupon there exited a stampede of my friends and family. "Even cool cats get 9 lives," I announced to the stunned undertaker.

"How cool is that!" he said.

"How cool is that?" the next spirit asked.