Status: This is the strangest story you will ever have the pleasure of reading.
The Entanglement of Cat and Rin Schrodinger
Ch. 2
Chapter two
Cat
It’s summer right now, and New York never quite gets over the hot summer day even at night. I doubt my mom even knows where I am, although she could guess. Battery Park is my refuge when I need a little nostalgia shot. When life gets too stifling, or confusing ,to think. Places like this that have a lot of history for you help. Except this time, my thoughts won’t leave me alone. It’s replaying the events of today over and over how they could’ve gone differently, well, at least maybe in a different world.
Of course there’s a part of me that screaming, you little brat. If this is the worst thing that’s happened to you recently, you should be about the happiest person on earth. People are dying out there in this world. It’s much easier to hate yourself than others, I’ve noticed. But it’s all I’ve ever known… I thought half defending myself from…myself.
Battery Park is one of Peter’s favorite places too, but I don’t think I’ll run into him here. It’s the park on the tip of Manhattan overlooking Liberty and Ellis Island. There’s a waterfront walkway, a lot of green lawns and modern art sculptures. In the evening it gets really pretty, if you ignore the tourists who swarm about. I dodge a pack of Russians pointing at the Statue of Liberty like it’s the messiah and head back toward the general vicinity of the bus stop. I take what I think is a short cut through the 9/11 memorial and around the group of cafés and restaurants. I watch the people eating at outside tables, feeling blissfully disconnected from them. The fountain I pause to look at my refection in gets my clothes a little wet. I guess I’m not quite ready to get back to life yet.
I wander back to the concrete path. I round a corner of a building and find—a grassy hill. Like, in the middle of a cement side walk. What? I walk around the end of the “hill” which at the back is tiered concrete, holding it up. From the front, you can’t see this, so it looks like a random hill with a stone wall at the top. All around the sides are quotes lit from behind in stripes. I find a plaque on the wall that explains this is a memorial to the Irish potato famine from 1845 to 1852. Ah, okay, I get it now. An Irish looking hill in the middle of New York City is a memorial to something that happened 150 years ago in Europe. Makes total sense.
I walk around to the front again and feel the grasses at the base. They’re real. Actually, if the plaque was right, they were actually imported from Ireland itself. I’m really surprised I haven’t found this before.
Curious, I step onto the path leading to the top. The breeze stirs my hair again. I reach the top where there’s this really cool stone wall and ruin of a stone house whose stones which, thanks to the plaque I know, were imported from Ireland from a real ruin like this. It feels ridiculous being up here, but also kind of fun. I walk around admiring the work and am about to go back—the bus back to my apartment will be coming soon—when an odd light catches my eye. It’s the weirdest thing, coming from behind the stone house. I come off the path to get a better look, the high grasses grabbing at my socks, pulling me back. I find the source of the light; it’s coming from behind a loosed rock on the ground. Maybe some visitor had dropped their flashlight. Only the light doesn’t look electric, actually, more like the quality of sunlight.
I crouch down and touch the rock, picking it up as the voice I heard this morning pushes another word into my head—rift. The light that was under the rock blinds me momentarily and sets my world askew.
...And the atoms decays, the Geiger counter registers the results and the Cat—
The Cat disappears.
Cat
It’s summer right now, and New York never quite gets over the hot summer day even at night. I doubt my mom even knows where I am, although she could guess. Battery Park is my refuge when I need a little nostalgia shot. When life gets too stifling, or confusing ,to think. Places like this that have a lot of history for you help. Except this time, my thoughts won’t leave me alone. It’s replaying the events of today over and over how they could’ve gone differently, well, at least maybe in a different world.
Of course there’s a part of me that screaming, you little brat. If this is the worst thing that’s happened to you recently, you should be about the happiest person on earth. People are dying out there in this world. It’s much easier to hate yourself than others, I’ve noticed. But it’s all I’ve ever known… I thought half defending myself from…myself.
Battery Park is one of Peter’s favorite places too, but I don’t think I’ll run into him here. It’s the park on the tip of Manhattan overlooking Liberty and Ellis Island. There’s a waterfront walkway, a lot of green lawns and modern art sculptures. In the evening it gets really pretty, if you ignore the tourists who swarm about. I dodge a pack of Russians pointing at the Statue of Liberty like it’s the messiah and head back toward the general vicinity of the bus stop. I take what I think is a short cut through the 9/11 memorial and around the group of cafés and restaurants. I watch the people eating at outside tables, feeling blissfully disconnected from them. The fountain I pause to look at my refection in gets my clothes a little wet. I guess I’m not quite ready to get back to life yet.
I wander back to the concrete path. I round a corner of a building and find—a grassy hill. Like, in the middle of a cement side walk. What? I walk around the end of the “hill” which at the back is tiered concrete, holding it up. From the front, you can’t see this, so it looks like a random hill with a stone wall at the top. All around the sides are quotes lit from behind in stripes. I find a plaque on the wall that explains this is a memorial to the Irish potato famine from 1845 to 1852. Ah, okay, I get it now. An Irish looking hill in the middle of New York City is a memorial to something that happened 150 years ago in Europe. Makes total sense.
I walk around to the front again and feel the grasses at the base. They’re real. Actually, if the plaque was right, they were actually imported from Ireland itself. I’m really surprised I haven’t found this before.
Curious, I step onto the path leading to the top. The breeze stirs my hair again. I reach the top where there’s this really cool stone wall and ruin of a stone house whose stones which, thanks to the plaque I know, were imported from Ireland from a real ruin like this. It feels ridiculous being up here, but also kind of fun. I walk around admiring the work and am about to go back—the bus back to my apartment will be coming soon—when an odd light catches my eye. It’s the weirdest thing, coming from behind the stone house. I come off the path to get a better look, the high grasses grabbing at my socks, pulling me back. I find the source of the light; it’s coming from behind a loosed rock on the ground. Maybe some visitor had dropped their flashlight. Only the light doesn’t look electric, actually, more like the quality of sunlight.
I crouch down and touch the rock, picking it up as the voice I heard this morning pushes another word into my head—rift. The light that was under the rock blinds me momentarily and sets my world askew.
...And the atoms decays, the Geiger counter registers the results and the Cat—
The Cat disappears.