MIND HOW YOU GO

 


Ildmar Flimp had a secret, which no one knew but himself and his pet iguana. His pet iguana's name was Haberdash. He had a blue streak along the upper section of his tail. Ildmar and Haberdash lived together in an attic apartment in the old part of the city, near a floating storage centre for displaced persons. These people didn't really belong in the city, so the owners of the city decided to put them in the water where they wouldn't occupy any space belonging to people already living in the city. The displaced persons were happy to have somewhere to live at first, because where they really belonged had been turned upside down by soldiers with machines made of tough metals extracted from a mountain in a different country. Because the mountains had run out of metal in their own country, the soldiers were told to find new mountains, so they could have more tough machines.

The problem with this plan was a small one, and it was this - the people who lived in the neighbouring lands needed the mountains to put their animals on, and they needed the metals inside to make spoons, watches, bicycles and impressionistic sculptures. The solution, however, presented itself easily - because their neighbours had no tough machines designed to explode and crush people and their houses, it would be easy for the soldiers to explode and crush them. Which they did.

Unfortunately, this was only the beginning of the displaced persons' problems. When the country on the other side of the mountains heard that the soldiers were taking over the mountains so that they could make more tough machines, they became very indignant. They said it was wrong for the soldiers to do such a thing. They said that the people who lived there were innocent and defenceless, and therefore it was their moral obligation to defend the country on their behalf. In fact, they were worried that the soldiers would have too much metal. They sent an army across the mountain to confront the soldiers, and the army had tough machines too.

Despite the sounds of explosions all around, some people continued to make spoons and watches, determined to stay until the bitter end. They liked their mountain. Then one day, the army arrived to defend them. The army accidentally crushed their houses and moved within firing range of the soldiers. They launched bundles of chemicals towards the soldiers in their tough machines. The soldiers saw the army, and launched bundles of chemicals in reply. Soon there were no spoons, and no watches. There was only a lot of noise, and smoke, and smells of burning protein. It was at this point that those lucky enough to still be alive realised that they had to find somewhere else to go, and so they left. They had no money, no clothes, no possessions of any value. They ended up living on the water, near Ildmar and his iguana.

Ildmar could see the displaced persons' house from his window. His own house was on the land. It was built from the ground up. It was made of brick, cement and wood. Actually, it was not his house - he only owned the uppermost part, which was right under the roof. His ceiling was V-shaped. The walls started from the floor in a reasonably vertical manner, but at a point level with Ildmar's shoulders the walls became the roof, and began to creep upwards and inwards until they met in the middle, which was the very highest part of the building, apart from the chimneys. Most of Ildmar's apartment was made of wood. It suited his moods, generally speaking. When he was tense, he felt that the wood was tense too. When he was sad, he saw that the wood was sad, and when he was happy then the wood was happy. It was an appropriate place to live. He could open the windows, which were wooden, and go outside onto a small balcony. Haberdash liked to lie there, in the sun. Ildmar didn't mind. He liked it too. Sometimes they would lie together in the sun, enjoying the warmth. Ildmar had some of his best ideas on that balcony, just lying in the sun.

Haberdash was just lying in the sun.

Ildmar could see the islands from his balcony. He knew that they were populated with a fabulous wealth of beautiful coloured birds and animals. There were no houses of cement or brick on the islands, because the ground was not stable enough. When they tried to put a house there, it sank before it was built. No one could live in it. So there were only small huts, and very few people wanted to live in small huts, even in Paradise.

This pleased the island. It liked itself just the way it was.

Ildmar liked the islands too. He sometimes worried that people would discover a way of making the ground hard enough to put tall buildings on it. Ildmar was an inventor. He invented things in his head, and sometimes he tried to build them. Every now and then he would divert himself with the notion of creating a hardproof protection for the islands, but without much success. Most of his ideas and inventions didn't have much success. He invented a bicycle with foldable pedals, so that people walking in the city with their bikes wouldn't bang their shins. This was his most famous invention, and he gets a cheque every month from a firm in another country who manufacture his folding pedals. He also invented a walker robot, which is for people who don't want to bother looking after a real dog but who still like the idea of taking something for a walk every day. His walker robot is small and oblong, with furry antennae. If its owner forgets to bring it for a walk, it starts whining and moping. But it doesn't mess the pavement, and it only needs to be fed once a year. It eats Lithium-Ion batteries, which is a very nutritious meal for a small robot.

Ildmar's newest invention, the one which was still a secret, was by far the most remarkable he had ever created. It was what might be called revolutionary. This means that it does something no one had believed possible before, and which could change the very fabric of society. So what was this fabulous invention? Simple - it was a mind reader. Unlike most of Ildmar's inventions, he created this one by accident. He was actually trying to devise a method of projecting images directly from the brain onto a screen, as a means of artistic expression. He sometimes painted pictures with paint and canvas, but because these materials were expensive and messy, he thought it would be a good idea to dispense with all the intermediary clutter and go straight from his imagination to the image. So he turned to science, which he believed to be a good friend of art, even if they did sometimes argue. He also thought it might be useful to devise a machine which actually improved a person's creative abilities, so that even people who didn't think they could be artistic would enjoy his new instant painting device.

Although this was clearly a good idea, Ildmar found that it was not so easy to make it work. After many weeks of soldering, testing, scheming and cleaning, all his machine managed to produce were a series of coloured bubbles which bore no relation to what he happened to be thinking at the time. No matter how closely he monitored his brain patterns, no matter how sensitive he made his patented electrospongepads, no matter what clever numbers he fed into the processors, he still failed to make it respond to his creative vision.

Then one afternoon, when the sun was particularly strong in the sky, he decided to take a break. He went out onto the balcony and saw Haberdash lying there, warm and content.
"Hello, Haberdash," he said.
Haberdash turned his head, but said nothing in reply.
"I'm having some problems with this new invention," said Ildmar. "I don't understand. It really should be responding, but it doesn't. Nothing I think makes the slightest difference to it."
Haberdash, in a similar manner, failed to respond. Then, after a few seconds, he stuck his tongue out and snatched a passing insect. He was perfectly happy on the balcony. He digested his meal with satisfaction, and rolled his eyes. Ildmar decided that perhaps he should have lunch too. He went inside and found some Brie.
When he returned to the balcony, he found that Haberdash had gone inside. Munching his cheese, Ildmar went to find him. He eventually spotted a tail with a blue streak, sticking out from under his workbench. It was at precisely this moment that inspiration struck.

"Hello, Haberdash. Come here for a minute. I need your help," he said, picking him up with one hand and placing him on the test cushion. "Don't worry, this won't hurt a bit. It's only science," he explained, winking. Haberdash rolled his eyes again. He was a very relaxed iguana.

Ildmar turned on his machine, then applied two electrospongepads to Haberdash's head, and one to his back. "How do you feel now?" he asked. Haberdash didn't reply, but made no effort to move. Ildmar then adjusted the screen so that they could both see it, and began to tune his machine to Haberdash's brainwaves. A series of blue and green bubbles appeared on the screen, much the same as before. After scanning through the entire spectrum of thought projections, Ildmar failed to locate anything which seemed to mimic Haberdash's brain in even the slightest particular. The bubbles would occasionally change in tone and size, but the overall effect remained constant - nothing. It was at this point that Ildmar had the most remarkable idea of giving some Brie to Haberdash, just to see if his eating something might register on the machine.

"Here, try this. It's tasty and sticky, just for you," he said, offering the cheese with a supportive smile. Haberdash observed the cheese, and seemed unexcited by it. However, after rolling his eyes once or twice, he decided to eat it anyway, and promptly gulped it down. It was difficult to tell if he liked it or not, as he displayed no reaction whatsoever. "There, it's not so bad, is it?" said Ildmar, popping the rest of the cheese into his own mouth and washing it down with a glass of rosato. When he turned towards the screen, however, he saw something which almost made him choke with surprise - for there, upon the space previously occupied by bubbles, was forming an image of a quite clearly different nature, a fuzzy, indistinct image, but certainly a new image, and it appeared to be a gathering of trees. Ildmar quickly moved towards his calibration centre and began to tune in: however, when he increased the frequency response, the image began to distort even further, and fade away, so he began to adjust the controls in the opposite direction, and the forest then returned, coming clearer than ever and suddenly it appeared in perfect focus, full colour and clearly formed, what was certainly an image of a forest, but unlike any forest that Ildmar had ever seen before.

First of all, the trees were impossibly tall, and seemed bent like bananas towards the sky, which was a pale ochre. The tree trunks were slashed with streaks of blue, yellow, red and green, and the vegetation below seemed to be formed from vast swathes of olive-brown vapour. Vines and creepers hung from the trees, and huge leaves protruded at random from amongst them, shiny and colourful, and covered with a myriad of delectable insects. However, Ildmar was in for another surprise. Just as he had noted all these details, the image began to move, like a movie camera, first in one direction and then the next, but always upwards through the trees, until, after a few moments of ascent, the balconies came into view. These were made mostly from wood, but there were glass windows behind, which seemed to lead into darkened rooms. Almost every tree had its own balcony, and it took a few seconds for Ildmar to realise that these balconies were actually Haberdash's vision of his own house. They were perched incongruously by, on or through the trees, held up as if by magic, and as the image moved towards the nearest balcony it began to rotate and Ildmar could make out the sea in the distance, with the trees suddenly lowering in front of him and turning a shade of furry grey. Every now and then a fat moth would pass over the buildings and trees, and celery shapes began to cascade from the clouds. Ildmar watched all this in fascination, barely able to contain his excitement, but after a few more moments the image began to fade and dissipate, slowly regaining the form of shapeless bubbles swirling lazily across the screen.

So that was how Ildmar Flimp managed to get his machine to work - by feeding the test subject soft cheese. However, there were some more problems. Whenever Ildmar tried to create an image on the screen, it became indecipherably distorted. It only worked when he thought about other things. So he thought about things, and images from his brain appeared upon the screen. Although this was entirely interesting, he found the images rather difficult to interpret, and so he devised a useful plug-in for his machine. This device interpreted the image, and inserted thoughts on the screen as sub-titles. Hence was the Flimp Mind Reader born.

There was, however, another problem with Ildmar's machine, a far more serious problem that Ildmar himself was not yet aware of. We will come to that in due course. In the meantime, Ildmar worked hard on his reader, and managed to compress it into a small portable box, with a built in screen. He tried it on himself, but what he really wanted to do was experiment with other people, to see what he could learn about the MIND. So he decided, one sunny day, to take his device for a walk.

He went downstairs, wearing a white hat. He left the building and headed east, towards the sea. Because it was morning, he was hungry and so he went into a baker's shop, the same shop he usually buys his bread from. A little bell rang as he pushed open the door. Inside there was a counter, and behind a glass panel there lay all kinds of bread, pastries and puffy sweets. A round man with black hair slicked thinly across his skull stood there with a brown bag in his hand.

"Morning, Mr. Flimp," said Fred the Baker.
"Good Morning to you," replied Ildmar.
"The usual, then?" asked Fred.
"No, not now. I'm just looking for some breakfast," said Ildmar, eyeing the cakes. "What's got lots of energy?"
"Well, I'm not sure about how much energy's in these things, but in that lot there you've got a pound and a half of sugar each. I reckon that's probably enough energy to get you by 'till lunch."
Ildmar looked at the tempting buns, and decided to try a few.
"OK, then, give me three of those, and one of those," he said, with digits.
"Right you are then."

While Fred the Baker was putting the buns in the bag, Ildmar quietly turned on his machine and casually began to observe the screen. Visions of bubbles slid across it. Before getting any reading from a person's brain, he first had to get the subject to eat some Brie, which is not as easy as it sounds. He decided to try an opening gambit.

"By the way," he began, "would you like to try some of my cheese?"
Fred the Baker looked up in surprise.
"Y'wot?" he exclaimed.
"Cheese. It's very good," explained Ildmar. "It's soft and fresh."
"Well, maybe just a taste. Did you make it yourself?"
"No, but I know someone who did. Here you go."

Fred tried the cheese, and proclaimed it to be good. Ildmar was concentrating on the screen, as an image was beginning to form there. He attempted to engage Fred in conversation for the duration of the cheeseffect, while monitoring his thoughts simultaneously. The first image to appear was of a disembodied head which appeared to be composed of numbers written in planets upon which grey patches of profound gradually emerged and receded, all the while rotating about a large degree of yeast which served itself upon a clay base throughout each vertex of the cluster.

"Nice day, isn't it?" said Ildmar, to see what would develop.
"Ah, yes, it is. Bit warm, but mustn't grumble," replied Fred.

Ildmar realised that the floating head had become a cloud of naked women, and the features of the face were his own. A series of flowers slid down a carpet of bushy wipers into a lake of mildred foam, and a gyrating pyramid of slightly grated cow resin began to ascend into the tyre tracks upon the forehead of another pulsating face, that of Emerald Hearse, the singing anthropod, who lurked with finger sprinkles upon the nerves of several functions below. The subtitles to accompany this scenario read as follows:

Gee, there's nothing like a 5mm for getting things done. Even if the other one moves there, then it can bend around and catch the slip from behind. Then the rain, and the coating can wear off, so a good box with rubber seals, but mostly invulnerable. And tomorrow I have to reset the counter on the car. What can I do with a fiver? Lunch is going to be hot, maybe curry. Something with chutney. Then Sally'll come home with my new trousers, have to watch the match. I hate that pillow.

" Are you going on holidays this year?" asked Ildmar.
"Ah, I think we're going down south for a couple of weeks. Caravan, bikes. Looking forward to it now."

On the screen a purple spacecraft emerged from behind a rapid edge, clothing vast swathes of wet stones with a semblance of Lenin, swerving into a bulging body of personal servants with turbans and trumpets aligned slightly askew from a bending stream of alphabet credence which surrounded the massed hordes of worshippers unduly serviced by titanic yoghurt muffles. On the horizon, a line of cows began to wind its way down through the hills, eating blue birds.

The subtitles read as follows:

Where are those keys? It's nearly time for lunch. Must check paper. I feel like chicken tonight. I wish I was a rich man, deedle deedle di de di. Blue is my favourite colour.

Ildmar decided that it was time to eat his breakfast, so he took his leave and left. Outside on the street he observed a man crossing the road, a postman with a bag, a woman with a large hat. It was becoming ever warmer, so he made his way towards the park. When he got there, he settled himself beneath a tree and began to eat.