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"The world is really so surreal these days that it's necessary for us to blunt it somehow in order to stay sane. The artist functions to short-circuit the buffering mechanism, so that people can occasionally perceive the weirdness of things as they are."
- William Gibson
 |
| Electric Brain Stimulator | ||
| A device that coordinated the waves of the brain with an external device to improve performance. |
Once the King of Speed himself, Ben Gleed has been fired for pushing people too far. Now, Ben is just employee SX333; he's determined to prove himself.
| Lunch hour and midday check-up.
"SX333, come into the wave room,"
said a supervisor. "You need more
stimulant than coffee." In the designated room an absent-minded laboratory official made a test of Ben's brain
waves under concentration, explaining,
"This is one of the Speed King's Efficio
devices for converting electrical energy
into brain power."
He fitted an instrument over SX333's head. "Plug it in and work the rheostat to suit yourself. The electrical waves will synchronize with your own brain waves and reinforce them." The King of Speed clamped the electric stimulator over his head, turned the rheostat on full, and poured forth words and sweat. He choked down black coffee, did not stop for lunch, tried not to hear the whisper of "Faster! Faster!" But late in the afternoon when the speed-up whisper bore down and one of the women workers screamed out, "For God's sakes, turn that thing off!" and then slumped over her desk in tears, he wasted five good minutes getting his mind back on his work. "Damn weaklings," he muttered to himself. "They can't take the pace! I'll show them." |
| Technovelgy from Ben Gleed, King of Speed,
by Don Wilcox. Published by Amazing Stories in 1939 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the control helmet from Easy Money (1938) by Edmond Hamilton and the cogitator from The Consolidator (1705) by Daniel Defoe.
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'The crawling... object was V-Stephen's surgeon-hand...'
'Joe got out the gravity-simulator harnesses...'
'You couldn't have the capstone without the pyramid to hold it up.'
'the unobtrusive inspections with tiny remote-cast snoopers...'
I'm hoping that this procedure becomes a normal part of medical practice!
'... nothing was perfected until M. Pantalon announced the completion of his automatic valet.'
'...its streets were of remarkable width, with few or no buildings so high as mosques, churches, State-offices, or palaces in Tellurian cities.'
