Martin Heavisides
Stories (8/0)
The Legend of the Gift Turned Loan
A man, Trent Cicino Florent, Down Stage Centre, ‘lights’ a cigar and begins puffing it. If the House’s imagination is in high gear, they’ll perfectly picture the bright orange glow at the tip as he inhales and shakes the unlit (if not nonexistent) match to put it out.
By Martin Heavisides3 years ago in Humans
Fog Lights
Generally fog would arise and dissipate as it usually does, but a few patches of it began settling in. This didn't always seem such a bad thing at first. Some of the buildings or partial streets it obscured were eyesores, and the fog that hid them picturesque. Certainly the coronas of light that crackled round the not-quite-definable edges of the fog, moving through all the colours of the rainbow and possibly beyond. (Yes, looking at it people would swear they could see colours outside the spectrum ordinarily visible to humans. Tests of this have so far proved anecdotally rich yet scientifically inconclusive.)
By Martin Heavisides3 years ago in Futurism
Burning Bright/Come Away, Human Child
(i) Burning Bright I dreamed about the tiger tonight--approach of handlers and veterinary physicians to the great cat into whom, across species, the invisible worldwide celebrity had perilously entered. Some of those managing the beast were young enough to have partied at close range on sun-spackled beaches with mammals, on the whole, more lethal than this cat they observed at a respectful distance, or tranquilized first before nearer approach. Some were old enough to fear far more the infinitesimal creature within, that may make it under sedation a greater threat than it would be awake, charging, thoroughly pissed as perhaps it has every right to be: you nearly eliminate my kind in their natural state but save specimens of us for show; granted, you care for us in these sheltered unnatural places until suddenly we come in contact with a danger unknown in the wild (where with all due modesty, we were for long ages the principal danger, a crown we’ve ceded a good few of your generations now); you lift us for our safety out of a habitat you’ve made inhospitable for us and our prey, and what happens? an invisible enemy, bred by the same genius that makes civilization, war, prisons, discotheques, casinos, air conditioning, jet exhaust, books and films and music and such, bunker style luxury condos and zoos, slips without being seen through these sheltering bars as easily as it leaps across borders from nation to nation, and lays me low. Your safety is another name for danger.
By Martin Heavisides3 years ago in Futurism
Blindsight
I wonder how many people with reflexive responses (whether of approval or disapproval) to Stanley Milgram’s famous experiment have read the book he generated from its results, Obedience to Authority. It’s a curious document. He vastly overimagines the degree to which authority and obedience are ingrained in human interactions. To demonstrate that people have provisional authority in some situations who don’t in normal circumstances, he points out that a shoe clerk can order you to stand in your sock feet, a barber to present your throat to his razor, a movie usher to take the seat she (usually) shows you with the flashlight she carries for guidance in the dark, and a bank teller to surrender your money. The last is the only one of these that bears any real colour of truth, and most of the means by which banks extract money from their ordinary customers are imposed by the invisible authority of custom, not that of tellers whom we’re likelier to regard as servants than masters (if we don’t regard them as equals momentarily attending to our needs).
By Martin Heavisides3 years ago in FYI
Fog Lights
Generally fog would arise and dissipate as it usually does, but a few patches of it began settling in. This didn't always seem such a bad thing at first. Some of the buildings or partial streets it obscured were eyesores, and the fog that hid them picturesque. Certainly the coronas of light that crackled round the not-quite-definable edges of the fog, moving through all the colours of the rainbow and possibly beyond. (Yes, looking at it people would swear they could see colours outside the spectrum ordinarily visible to humans. Tests of this have so far proved anecdotally rich yet scientifically inconclusive.)
By Martin Heavisides3 years ago in Futurism
Burning Bright/Come Away, Human Child
(i) Burning Bright I dreamed about the tiger tonight--approach of handlers and veterinary physicians to the great cat into whom, across species, the invisible worldwide celebrity had perilously entered. Some of those managing the beast were young enough to have partied at close range on sun-spackled beaches with mammals, on the whole, more lethal than this cat they observed at a respectful distance, or tranquilized first before nearer approach. Some were old enough to fear far more the infinitesimal creature within, that may make it under sedation a greater threat than it would be awake, charging, thoroughly pissed as perhaps it has every right to be: you nearly eliminate my kind in their natural state but save specimens of us for show; granted, you care for us in these sheltered unnatural places until suddenly we come in contact with a danger unknown in the wild (where with all due modesty, we were for long ages the principal danger, a crown we’ve ceded a good few of your generations now); you lift us for our safety out of a habitat you’ve made inhospitable for us and our prey, and what happens? an invisible enemy, bred by the same genius that makes civilization, war, prisons, discotheques, casinos, air conditioning, jet exhaust, books and films and music and such, bunker style luxury condos and zoos, slips without being seen through these sheltering bars as easily as it leaps across borders from nation to nation, and lays me low. Your safety is another name for danger.
By Martin Heavisides3 years ago in Futurism
Burning Bright/Come Away, Human Child
(i) Burning Bright I dreamed about the tiger tonight--approach of handlers and veterinary physicians to the great cat into whom, across species, the invisible worldwide celebrity had perilously entered. Some of those managing the beast were young enough to have partied at close range on sun-spackled beaches with mammals, on the whole, more lethal than this cat they observed at a respectful distance, or tranquilized first before nearer approach. Some were old enough to fear far more the infinitesimal creature within, that may make it under sedation a greater threat than it would be awake, charging, thoroughly pissed as perhaps it has every right to be: you nearly eliminate my kind in their natural state but save specimens of us for show; granted, you care for us in these sheltered unnatural places until suddenly we come in contact with a danger unknown in the wild (where with all due modesty, we were for long ages the principal danger, a crown we’ve ceded a good few of your generations now); you lift us for our safety out of a habitat you’ve made inhospitable for us and our prey, and what happens? an invisible enemy, bred by the same genius that makes civilization, war, prisons, discotheques, casinos, air conditioning, jet exhaust, books and films and music and such, bunker style luxury condos and zoos, slips without being seen through these sheltering bars as easily as it leaps across borders from nation to nation, and lays me low. Your safety is another name for danger.
By Martin Heavisides3 years ago in Futurism
Blindsight
I wonder how many people with reflexive responses (whether of approval or disapproval) to Stanley Milgram’s famous experiment have read the book he generated from its results, Obedience to Authority. It’s a curious document. He vastly overimagines the degree to which authority and obedience are ingrained in human interactions. To demonstrate that people have provisional authority in some situations who don’t in normal circumstances, he points out that a shoe clerk can order you to stand in your sock feet, a barber to present your throat to his razor, a movie usher to take the seat she (usually) shows you with the flashlight she carries for guidance in the dark, and a bank teller to surrender your money. The last is the only one of these that bears any real colour of truth, and most of the means by which banks extract money from their ordinary customers are imposed by the invisible authority of custom, not that of tellers whom we’re likelier to regard as servants than masters (if we don’t regard them as equals momentarily attending to our needs).
By Martin Heavisides3 years ago in FYI