Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxj!ihnp4!zehntel!hplabs!sri-unix!sharp%farmer.DEC@decwrl.ARPA From: sharp%farmer.DEC@decwrl.ARPA Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers Subject: Re: Do you recognize this story? Message-ID: <12533@sri-arpa.UUCP> Date: Mon, 1-Oct-84 13:43:25 EDT Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.12533 Posted: Mon Oct 1 13:43:25 1984 Date-Received: Fri, 5-Oct-84 05:36:39 EDT Lines: 28 From: sharp%farmer.DEC@decwrl.ARPA (Don Sharp, MKO1-1/B7 DTN 264-6068) From: Peter.Monta@cmu-cs-g.arpa >A young alien boy lives on Earth, and he is unaware of his origins. >Apparently he has a sense of ``winding number'', in that if he were >to walk around the block, he would feel a desire to turn once in the >opposite direction, to regain his equilibrium. Naturally, he >attempts to suppress this strange behavior, and as he gets older he >is able to tolerate larger winding numbers---at the end of the day >he stands on his bed turning and doing backflips. The purpose of >the sense is to orient him with respect to his home, which is a >distant star. I recognize this enough to supply some more detail, but I can't place it. The story's protagonist was not an alien, but a human with the distinction of being the first human born in freefall, in orbit. He might also have spent some pre-natal time in freefall. He grew up with this infallible inertial sense of direction, and nobody could figure out how come. Then later in his life he suddenly experienced a debilitating case of chronic vertigo. His directional sense suddenly deserted him. Since they didn't know where it came from in the first place doctors had no explanation where it went. But by diligent research he found his own answer: a radio signal from space had suddenly turned off. It was a galactic carrier signal, that our hero had sensed with some hitherto dormant organ, and the vertigo he experienced heralded a message from the Benevolent Space Brothers. -Don.