Shrewdinger's Rat
The stage is dark.
We hear a scurrying sound, followed by a shrill shriek. Another scurry, followed by some low-level blasphemy and rummaging, then a thud.
The lights rise suddenly on a dingy living room, with a couch, a side table with a lamp. On the back of the couch is a tie. In front of the couch is a large cardboard box, open side downwards. Kneeling on the couch and pressing down on the box is a very agitated and unhappy looking open-shirted bed-headed Joe.
Marie, dressed up to go out, is standing in the door, by the light switch.
Marie What the hell is going on in here?
Joe A rat!
Marie A rat?
Joe Yes, a rat!
Marie A rat?
Joe I said -
Marie But we’re meant to be going out!
Joe Well that can wait until we have dealt with the rat.
Marie I mean, a rat in here? That's weird.
Joe It's not just weird, it's in this box.
Marie Seriously?
Joe No, Marie, I'm holding this box down for the hell of it.
Marie You don't have to be sarcastic. It's just really strange - we haven't had rats here before.
Joe Try telling this guy that.
Marie I mean, it’s a shitty overpriced apartment, but I didn’t think the place was that bad.
Joe Well, clearly it is.
Marie Do you think we should tell the landlord?
Joe I think we should deal with the rat first.
Marie What was it doing?
Joe Running across the floor. Like a rat.
Marie Freaky.
Joe I know. Will you hold this box down for me?
Marie You don't like rats, do you.
Joe What gives you that idea? The fact that I am holding down a box to stop it getting free?
Marie No, the fact that you screamed.
Joe I did not scream-
Marie Like a little girl, screaming in the dark. "Eeee! Eeee! It's a wat!"
Joe I did not - will you hold down this box?
Marie Did you even catch the rat?
Joe Of course I did. And I didn't scream.
Marie (Jumping on the couch) How do I know that it isn't running around somewhere?
Joe I told you I caught it in this box.
Marie Are you sure you did?
Joe Certain. Look.
Joe very slowly takes one of his hands off the box. He then lifts the other hand up a little, keeping contact with the box with less pressure. Nothing happens.
Marie Well?
Joe Wait.
Joe taps the box with his free hand. Suddenly, nothing at all happens.
Marie Yeah. A rat.
Joe (carefully returning full pressure to the box) I’m telling you, there is a rat in there.
Marie Well, it doesn't sound like it to me.
Joe Maybe it's playing possum?
Marie I thought you said it was a rat.
Joe I did say it was a rat, but it's PLAYING possum. Maybe it's gone to sleep.
Marie Maybe it doesn't exist.
Joe I came in here, I saw something too small to be a cat, with a long tail, sitting in the middle of the floor, so I calmly got this box and captured it.
Marie In the dark.
Joe What?
Marie In the dark. The lights were off.
Joe Of course the lights were off - you don't think it would be sitting out in the open if the lights were on, do you.
Marie I'm just saying that it was dark and you...
Joe I what?
Marie Maybe you just saw a shadow.
Joe Seriously? I saw a rat running along the floor and I caught it and you think it was a shadow?
Marie I thought it was sitting there.
Joe It was. And then it ran. It didn't stay sitting long when I came in.
Marie I'm sorry, it's just I don't know how there could be a rat in here.
Joe Neither do I.
Marie We’re paying a whole lot for this place – there cannot be a rat in here.
Joe I know.
Marie I just can’t see how there can be a rat here when the rent is that much.
Joe Well maybe we should ask him to pay a third?
Marie Funny. You're sure that there is a rat in there?
Joe Do you want to look?
Marie I...
Joe Do you?
Marie I think that would be a bad idea. If we lift the box to look, the rat – if there is one – will escape.
Joe I know.
Marie But it doesn't sound like there’s anything in there, does it?
Joe Well, no, you're right, it doesn’t.
Marie Stop!
Joe Stop what?
Marie I know what it is!
Joe We’ve been over this – it’s a rat.
Marie It’s… It’s on the tip of my tongue. It’s uncertainty!
Joe Seriously, I am certain.
Marie No, I mean the theory, the principle! Uncertainty – Heidelberg! We can’t know exactly if it is a rat, or if it’s in the box. I think.
Joe I don’t know what you’re saying but I promise you I saw it, and I caught it in the box.
Marie Just wait a minute! There may or may not be a rat in this room...
Joe There's a rat. And it's in this box.
Over the next speech, Joe relaxes his grip on the box and sits up more
Marie Hear me out first. Theoretically, there may or may not be a rat in this room, but we can’t exactly know or measure it. It’s all coming back to me at last! And if there is a rat in the room, it may or may not be in that box. And if it is in that box, it may or may not be dead.
Joe What?
Marie Or asleep. In fact, it may or may not be a rat, because we can’t measure it.
Marie continues to figure it out
Joe Are you trying to say it’s bigger, like a possum? Maybe… no, it can’t be.
Marie It can’t be what
Joe A possum. The box isn’t big enough for a possum.
Marie No, didn’t we just… I mean, that's not important. It's Shrewdinger's Cat.
Joe I said, it's a rat, not some kind of "shrewd" cat.
Marie No, the experiment - Shrewdinger's Cat. Remember when I did that Philosophy of Quantum Physics class?
Joe I remember you started one.
Marie I think that there was this thing where a scientist puts a cat in a box and it will die if you open the box, but it could be dead anyway -
Joe (Taking one hand off the box and shaking it at little) That's just cruel. Why wouldn't he give the cat a chance?
Marie It was an experiment. So the cat was in the box but because of how it worked, it was simultaneously dead and alive at the same time.
Joe Surely the cat was either dead or it wasn't.
Marie It was both. That's the point. Oh, and it was radiation poisoning that did it!
Joe So it WAS dead.
Marie Yes... No. It might be dead, or it might be alive.
Joe That weird Frankenstein stuff is beyond me - why would you want to make a mutant cat?
Marie It was to prove a point.
Joe Yeah, well, what about this rat?
Marie That's the thing. We don't know.
Joe What?
Marie It could be a rat or not. It could be in the box or not. It could be dead or not. It's all these things at the one time. This is Shrewdingers Rat!
Joe So, if it is Shrewdinger's Rat… shouldn’t that be it Schrödinger's Rat?
Marie No, I'm pretty certain it's Shrewdinger's Rat.
Joe You’re the expert. Anyway, you admit it is a rat?
Marie That's the point. There's no way of knowing if it is a rat or not.
Joe I can think of one.
Marie What?
Joe I could lift the box.
Marie You wouldn't let a rat free in the house?
Joe I could.
Marie You couldn't! You're frightened of them.
Joe Yes. Yes I am. So no, no I couldn't.
Marie Well, couldn’t we open the top of the box and look in?
Joe What? And let it jump at our faces? Didn't you read that Orson Welles book?
Marie Orson Welles?
Joe (Absently takes his other hand of the box to make his points) Yeah, it was called 1964 or something. It was about a guy in an office who has sex with some girl in a red dress and gets in trouble about it, and he gets killed by being eaten alive by rats. Boring book, but really scary ending. I’ll never forget it.
Marie Do you mean George Orwell and 1984?
Joe That makes sense - he made a film of it in 1984. I watched it for that course on great books.
Marie Must have been just before he died.
Joe No, it was when I was a freshman.
Marie I mean the film.
Joe Sure. Anyway, my point is, we’re not opening this box.
Marie So, what can we to do?
Joe Well, we can't open it.
Marie No. And we can't lift it.
Joe So what are we going to do.
Marie Isn’t this kind of the landlord’s problem?
Joe He isn’t going to come tonight. Or any time soon, is he?
Marie Unless there’s like an infestation of them.
Joe Don’t even joke about that.
Marie I wasn’t.
Joe So what do you think we can do?
Marie I have no idea.
They both look at the box. They look at each other. They both plunge down their hands to hold the unmoving box in place.
What time is it?
Joe I don't know.
Marie You're wearing a watch.
Joe The box!
Marie I've got it.
Joe Are you sure?
Marie I am right beside you, holding it down.
Joe Yeah. Sorry.
Marie It's OK. What time is it?
Joe straightens up. He looks at his watch and nods. He returns to holding down the box.
Marie What time is it?
Joe Sorry! (Joe once more straightens up to look at the watch) It's quarter of.
He bends back down to hold the box.
Marie We gotta go. We're due there in fifteen.
Joe Yeah, but we can be late – the rest of the gang is always like 30 minutes late.
Marie Yeah, so I told you the wrong time so we didn’t have to wait around for a half hour. What are we going to do?
Joe I don't know. I don't even know if it's in the box anymore.
Marie But it might be.
Joe But it might not.
Marie It might not be a rat.
Joe But it might be.
Did Shrewdinger… Are you sure it's not Schrodinger?
Marie Shrew. Dinger.
Joe OK, I don’t know why I…. Did Shrewdinger say anything about how he killed the rat.
Marie It was radiation poisoning.
Joe Damn!
Marie The thing with Shrewdinger is the rat is both alive and dead. It's there and not there. It (recalling from the dim recesses of the memory) exists in two states simultaneously. (Proudly) I remember that from my old textbooks.
Joe These textbooks won't help us any now. We need to get going, and there is a rat that may or may not be in this room – or even exist – in this box. Or not. And it probably wants to eat our faces off. And I didn’t even get to have sex with a woman in a red dress yet, like Orson Welles in that uni book.
Marie Wait a minute, wait a minute! Joe, you're a genius. The answer is in those textbooks. Go get my old physics textbooks and bring them here.
Joe But the box!
Marie I'll hold the box. Get those books!
He gingerly gets up and runs out.
(Shouting after him) And get all those old lit books of yours too!
Well, Mr. Rat! Mr. Orson Shrewdinger! I hope you are happy in there. We are going to use the power of physics and literature and all kinds of education to make sure you don't escape!
Where are you, Joe? The books are just in the kitchen. We need to get going!
Joe returns shortly. He is weighed down with six massive physics text books, and five or six books of literary criticism too, of varying sizes. He gets up onto the couch, still holding them all. He has a very sheepish look.
Joe Sorry, I got caught up looking at the lit books. That book I watched was called 1984. And you were right. It was George Orwell.
Marie I thought so: Orson Welles made the movie. Now give me the physics books.
Joe hands her one. During his speech she takes it with one hand, keeping her other hand on the box at all times. She very carefully puts it on the box in one corner. She then puts her hand out for another.
Joe This is the one with quantum physics. I didn't see anything about philosophy in any of them, but I brought them all just in case.
Marie It doesn't matter. Give them here.
He hands them to her one by one, naming them before he presents them, all the while she keeps one hand on the box. She carefully covers the box with layers of books until they run out of physics books.
Joe ‘Practical and Impractical: The Impossibility of an Antiquark and Other Tales’.
‘Calculus in Context’. Teachers Edition – nice!
‘A Mathematicians Introduction to the Theory of Relativity, 4th Edition’.
‘University Physics with Modern Physics’.
‘Intersection: The Case for the Integration of Physics, Metaphysics, and Existential Philosophy’.
Marie OK, now give me your lit books, biggest first.
Joe No problem, I get it. This is probably the most good I’ve got out of them since graduation.
Marie Same here.
She finishes covering the box and relaxes her remaining hand. They both are more at ease.
It should be safe now.
Joe Just the finishing touch.
Joe gets up and goes to the table. He gets the lamp, unplugs it and places it on top of the pile of books. He stands back, fairly pleased.
That should be safe now.
Marie Great. Let's get going.
They start to leave. Joe stops.
Joe My hair!
Marie Joe! You can do that in the car!
Joe Yeah, you're right.
He gets a comb and a bottle of hair product.
Marie OK, let’s go then.
They get to the door. Joe stops.
Joe Wait. What if... what if you are right and the rat is NOT in the box. What if it’s hiding in the room somewhere? What then?
Marie We could... close the door?
Joe We could close the door! Exactly!
Neither move
Marie And then what?
Joe What do you mean "And then what"?
Marie When we get back. There may or may not be in this room something that may or may not be a rat, which may or may not be in that box, dead or asleep or something else.
Joe Well... Maybe we should just get a cat?
Marie nods.
Call it Heidelberg?
They both nod, Marie switches off the light and they start to go out the door. As they depart.
Joe You know, cats are pretty useful creatures, when you think about it.
Marie Sounds like that Orson Welles character would have been better off having one in that book
Joe Yes. I really don't know what Shrewdinger was thinking, trying to-
The door is closed.
Author’s Biography
Martin French is an Irish born writer and theatre director. He has worked as a theatre professional for several years throughout the Louisville KY region, having previously worked in Dublin, London, and Finland. A number of his plays have been performed locally. Recently, he has published a number of science fiction stories on SciFiShorts and Medium.com, as well as his sci-fi horror, ‘Hunter And Prey’ in And The Dead Shall Rise Again. Martin lives in Southern Indiana with a wife, a child, and many cats.
