Schrodinger’s House Plant

‘You can’t say precisely how the damn thing grew.  It had leaves, it had blooms, it had roots, it just didn’t have any visible structure.  It was simply undetectable to the eye.  Either its constituent parts were too small, or they reflected things in such a way that all light appeared to go round it or pass through it without being interfered with.  I took it to the university yesterday, to one of the labs that deals with this sort of thing – they’d been very keen on the phone, and they invited me in.  When I got there the people at the reception desk asked to look through my bag before I went into the building, and when I began describing what was in there – as you couldn’t see the thing – the look on their faces became more and more focused, quizzical and officious…’

Human Tide

‘Last night they wouldn’t let him back in the country, said he had too many scars.  Besides, there was an election coming up, so – if he didn’t mind – could he just wait a few months till things quietened down and everything got back to normal…
He stood there muttering to himself, “Scars…the damn things…”  They were impossible to hide or explain away…’