http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlkYe6i3Dns
“Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center. Big, undreamed-of things — the people on the edge see them first.” (Finnerty)
“After you’ve spent an adult lifetime at Miskatonic, you discover you’ve developed a rather different understanding from the herd’s of the distinction between the imaginary and the real.”
Wilmartha stood at the edge of the circle of onlookers. The entity was nonplussed, although it could not have expressed this as anything other than a keen curiosity arising from Interior, or the Brain, at the sight of the Onlookers, who seemed to have a fascination for standing to stare, despite an insistent, pattering rain. Staring at a human shouting to them from his perch atop a unicycle, essentially a giant wheel, with pedals, a meter and a half high, which the bewhiskered, bare-chested youth sat astride, maneuvering in a wobbling circle around which his audience crowded, smiling and laughing at his shouted song, “Bring my Pluto Back”…(above link)…
Faces around reflected what the entity recognized from studies in the Plutonian SuperbicAcademy as Emotion, that most curious of human characteristics, that cause for most of the follies of the human race, and also, responsible for the most surprising and spontaneous — insane — of actions. Which rendered humans an insufficient species, on a statistical basis, for rational, cognitive behavior. Wilmartha, the Plutonian entity, cocked head. Those humans in close proximity had no idea an Interplanetary creature stood in their midst, for now passively observing the scene. The young male human placed his hands on the seat of the unicycle and, with a swift roll of his torso, raised his entire body in a vertical column, balancing with his head resting on the seat, his legs still moving comically, miming the rolling motion, the rotating of mock pedals, while the real ones still turned below him, supposedly of their own volition. The unicycle continued turning effortlessly in a perfect lazy circle, pedals slowly in motion, and the legs of the upsidedown man moving in perfect unison with the pedals below, and the man continuing to shout out his song, “Bring my Pluto b a a a a c k….lewdly winking at the crowd.
Wilmartha, the Plutonian entity, blinked. Without hesitation, the man began to perform handwheels in complete circles from the seat, rising in strange, slowmotion arcs through the air, several feet above the rotating unicycle, and landing facing as he had, head down, hands to either side of the seat — and then BOUNCE, off he was into the air in yet another handflip: backwards, forwards, backwards, forwards. He no longer sang, however, and he no longer winked. Rather, if anyone had cared to comment, they would have said he was ashen-faced, with nothing less than terror shining from his eyes. The people watching at first clapped and screamed with laughter, but after 3 more handwheels while observing the youth’s frozen expression, the encircling group fell silent, and they began to look at one another in alarm and confusion. Wilmartha alone watched quietly, solemnly, laser eyes taking in all faces at once, all reactions, registering these carefully in the Brain.
Blink.
The man suddenly leaped from his perch, landing gracefully with knees and head bent, his arms extended to the crowd. The crowd burst into cheers and moved in to clap him on the back, bellowing with laughter and relief. The stuntman promptly collapsed in a faint at their feet.
Pushing through the human throng, Wilmartha picked up the unicycle, studying it. “A blithering stunt machine” - it said to no one. “Why?“
http://www.unicyclist.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=47729&d=1303592575
