Somewhere, there is a cat in a box
with a radioactive substance
rigged
to a vial of hydrocyanic acid.
Perhaps the substance has decayed
and the cat has died as a result.
Or perhaps not.
If the substance has decayed
and the hydrocyanic acid has been released,
then the cat is dead.
But there is no knowing whether or not that is the case.
As long as we do not know
how rapidly the substance has decayed,
as long as we don’t know
whether the acid has been released,
as long as we don’t know
whether or not the cat is dead,
the cat is both dead and alive.
So somewhere,
in some subset of possibility…
We don’t know what happens.
That’s what it amounts to.
That’s what it comes down to,
we don’t know what radioactive substances
might lie beyond the grave.
We’re the ones in the box, after all.
How can we,
the cat,
know that the rest of the world is still turning?
How do we know they’re not all dead?
How do we know what the hell is going on?
There are so many possibilities.
So many variations on this theme.
But as long as we’re still in the box,
as long as we still don’t know…
Somewhere,
there is a cat in a box
who is about to die.
It does not know what will happen
afterwards.
There are so many possibilities.
It could go to the cold place,
the place that might or might not
be a code for oblivion.
It could go to a place of reward
or of punishment—it’s impossible
to know which,
what arbitrary criteria would apply.
It could come back,
either as a cat again,
or as a human,
or an insect,
or a whale,
or a tree,
or a rock,
or a song,
or a feeling of desperate uncertainty in the face of profound loss.
Or something else could happen to it entirely.
Until the moment has arrived,
there is no way of knowing
what AfterLife will bring.
But standing at the threshold,
every conceivable possibility,
every possible outcome,
every final destination,
exists all at once.
As he hovers on the brink of death,
spinning at the precipice,
everything that could ever happen to him
is happening, all at once.
He is infinite.
Polypsyches 
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