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eBook Category: Science Fiction
eBook Description: We see motion pictures because of "persistence of vision"--a feature of our perception, known since ancient times, that makes a series of still pictures seem as if they are in motion. George Seeley, a famous film critic, seems to lack this capacity...

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: Microcosms, ed. Gregory Benford, 2004
Fictionwise Release Date: March 2004

29 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [80 KB], eReader (PDB) [33 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [19 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [18 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [52 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [90 KB], hiebook (KML) [74 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [49 KB], iSilo (PDB) [16 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [20 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [48 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [30 KB]
Words: 5870
Reading time: 16-23 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

He worked quickly--his eyes teared from the smoke, his throat was dry from the uneven heat--but he worked fast, anyway. He had no choice. Soon the days would shrink and their icy cold would wrap around him, and he would have to leave this place. So he worked quickly on the sides of this cave--quickly in the on-again/off-again light of the fire, because he wanted to leave something behind.

He loved his children. He knew so much--he was not modest--and he wanted to leave some of his knowledge to guide them. He was old now, weak, and would not be around here or anywhere in this world much longer. Truth is, he was never very strong even in his prime. He was a listener, a thinker, and he derived his knowledge of the hunt from others. This is what he wanted to leave for his children.

He worked quickly on the wall. It was a communal wall, and many others had left their knowledge here. But he had something new to add, something he knew was very new. He was adding motion. To the static symbols of hunter and hunted, the knowledge of image and proportion swollen in time, he was adding connection--relationship, story. For his figures moved on the cave wall. In the flicker of the firelight, they joined in his vision, and came to life. His wall was more than a group of pictures--it was a wall of life, a motion picture.

He worked quickly on the wall of the cave near a place that would someday be called Lascaux. And his tears flowed, not only from the smoke, but because he knew he was capturing the essence of being and becoming on this wall.

Or at least he thought so. For who really knew what was real in its own sense, independent of us, and what only seemed to be real to us because our vision, our imagination, saw it somewhere, and then projected it on the world? Maybe motion itself was in the eye of the beholder.

He knew that those who understood this would have an advantage over those who did not.

But so few did.