You have probably seen my picture in the history cassettes. “Inventions of Late 20th century.” Ward, Dexter L. I am twenty bytes from Walt Whitman, two sectors from Eli Whitney, inventor of the cotton gin.
The picture of Ward, bright mustache, smiling face, piecing, is outdated now.Today, I have a white beard, long sandy hair, a worldly face. I am no genius. I have steadfastly denied this.
People have asked me what it is like to be wealthy.
I always mention the jammed elevator. I had every-thing, yet nothing. I had a leeroid jet, I had fame, I had women. But all this was negated – I did not have faith in myself. I grew afraid of my power, afraid that I might hurt others. Jammed. Neither up, nor down.
Everyone knows Automatic Words, the invention the invention that predated imagination machines. Automatic Words—the words you type on your keyboard, the words that create images in your brain.
I did not “ invent” the imagination machine. Nakajima, the great neurophysicis, once remarked that language is simply the brick staircase to infinity. Nakajima performed the final interface with a human nervous system. He taught us how to turn words into images, how to turn adjectives into moods, and verbs into pleasure or pain.
He taught us to train children to type “CAT”—a lion appears, a rainbow appears, a red canyon appears, a bobcat surrounded by tall Colorado Mountains. An entire generation nurtured and bathed in Subjective Time.
I was one of the pioneers. So what? In a world, in an era of Subjective Time, fame and wealth are irrelevant.
I was foolhardy, reckless at the age of 50.
I’ll never forget that paramed. Guys like me who give imagination a bad name.
I am sad, now. It is a shame that imagination machines cannot break down any more.
Or can they?
Fuses spark through my mind. My body. My body shakes, a slight jar to the parasympathetic system.
Time is four letter word.
Where is the repairman from Central?
Immortal Stories Electronic Magazine
© Immortal Publications Inc.
Immortal Stories Electronic Magazine