Fire...
Brat
After there was fire, but before it went mainstream, there was a period of
product development that would foreshadow product development for all
products to come....
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"Hey, Og."
Og looked up from the antelope he'd been skinning. He had reached the tricky
part around the hind legs of the animal, and really didn't want to be
disturbed. His hands were covered in slippery fat; the chert knife slipped
in his grip and he nicked his arm. His own blood joined the antelope's on
the floor of his lean-to.
"Shit!"
"Hi, Og."
"Shit. Thud, I know what you want, so you can just get the hell out of my
tent and tell them to fuck off."
"Well, good morning to you, too."
Og spat on the floor, rubbed his bleeding arm, and returned to hacking away
at the antelope.
"The development committee wants to have a meeting about the new version of
Fire this afternoon. We think you should be there."
"That's nice."
"Not to put too fine a point on it, but we're wondering if, uh, if we could
make it less, less hot?"
Og stripped a sinew away from a length of bone and began tracing it down to
where it anchored. "You want fire. Less. Hot."
"That's right. Our market studies have shown us that people won't read the
directions, that they'll get burned and then we'll have to invent lawyers in
order to settle everything."
"That's the stupidest thing I ever heard."
"Without a cooler fire, we'll need to invent courts to handle the case load.
And probably laws, and politicians, and special interests and gerrymandering
just to make things fair."
"Look, it's a fucking exothermic chemical reaction. You can't make fire any
cooler. It wouldn't be bloody fire then." Og popped the sinew loose and put
it neatly next to a collection of other useful bits.
"Put that knife down a minute, Og, and we'll talk about this calmly."
"I am calm. You're the loony who wants cool fire, softer rocks, rain that's
less wet, and a cooling-off period before people can take posession of
spears."
"We just want fire that looks hot. We think that would satisfy most of our
target audience without compromising --"
"What about cooked food, Thud?"
"What about it? It's just a fad, we think that --"
Og braced himself and twisted. The antelope leg came out of its socket with
a wet POP. He wedged it between some branches in the ceiling. "See that hunk
of meat?" he said.
"Yeah, what about it?"
"I'm going to smoke it presently. It'll keep for months after that When was
the last time you were sick from bad meat, Thud? Smoke kills all the bad
stuff in there."
"That's another thing we wanted to talk about, the smoke --"
"Go ahead. Do what you want."
"Huh?"
"Do anything you like. I give it up, it's all yours. Cooler fire. Smokeless
fire. Designer fire, collectible Star Wars fire characters, fire dolls and
fire bubblegum, insert fucking rectal fire suppositories for all I care.
Have your fire talk radio, fire therapy, fire focus groups, fire
legislation, go walk on fire, eat the goddamned stuff for all I care. Burn
villages, ignite rivers, vaporize city centers, launch global thermonuclear
war, go right ahead. I've done my bit. I gave you fire. If you screw it up
now it's not my problem."
"We're afraid we don't know how."
Og smiled and applied his knife to the antelope again.
Tex
Otter
--
Otter
"Brat" <br...@portalofevil.com> wrote in message
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Krush
Krush
Brat <br...@portalofevil.com> wrote in message
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M
Brat wrote in message
>After there was fire...
>
>"I am calm. You're the loony who wants cool fire, softer rocks, rain that's
>less wet, and a cooling-off period before people can take posession of
>spears."
Ralph? Ralph Nadanertal?
Pasha
Kraits Seeker
Seeker (impressed)
"Brat" <br...@portalofevil.com> wrote in message
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Brat
"Kraits Seeker" <rexk...@get2net.dk> wrote in message
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Savge
Savge