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"...the space defense initiative drove the USSR bankrupt, and it originated at my house in Tarzana."
- Larry Niven
 |
| Pulse-Timer | ||
| A watch that uses your visual cortex for a read-out device. |
You can't always get to your watch when you want to know the time, particularly when you are bound hand and foot, like Teg the Mentat Bashar in this scene:
| Teg smiled amiably. "No one on this ship would survive." He clenched his jaw to key the nerve signal and activate the tiny pulse-timer in his skull. It played its graphic signals against his visual centers. "And you don't have much time in which to make a decision." |
| From Heretics of Dune,
by Frank Herbert. Published by Putnam in 1984 Additional resources -
|
Larry Niven has remarked that human beings will continue to seek solutions to particular problems, and that is one way to "predict the future" - so to speak. If this is true, then "What time is it?" is one of the most pressing issues facing humans.
I seem to remember that Molly, the razorgirl from William Gibson's Neuromancer, had some sort of modification to her optic nerve that put a timestamp on her visual field.
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