by NANCY GONGLIKWANYEOHEEEEEEEH, Alternate Reality News Service Technology Writer
When we were children, we used to play with the Visible Man, a doll with translucent skin that allowed us to see its internal organs. We wondered if the Visible Man and the Visible Woman would have visible babies (unfortunately, their reproductive organs were not included, so our childish curiosity was not satisfied, because heaven forbid our parents would actually give us a straight answer!). We wondered if the Visible Man's poop smelled when it was making its way through his intestines. All in all, it was a wonder full time.
Today, children wear their insides on their outsides. Often to gross effect.
Researchers at the Messachusetts Institute of Technology ("We're not afraid of getting our hands dirty!") have developed a sticker that, when applied to parts of the human body, can produce ultrasound images of a person's heart, lungs, and other internal organs. Children love to collect stickers (as any parent who has had to scrape them off the walls of their child's bedroom can attest), so, after hospitals, they became the biggest target market for the technology.
Ordinarily (as if there's anything ordinary about projecting the flow of blood in your spleen in real time), the images produced by the Kinder Blutmaschine would be projected onto a screen. However, a North Korean hacker who goes by the name XL25387;;gobble (they're the poets of the technological age, hackers are) developed a programme that would allow users to project KB images onto smart clothing (clothing interwoven with nanobots that allow it to display a variety of images); it is now widely available at Amuson and many other purveyors of fine hackware on the Deep Dark Web.
Depending upon your point of view, mirth or mayhem did ensue.
For example, seven year-old Endomitrium Grublarch regularly uses the technology to project an image of his stomach and intestines. While he is having dinner with his family. "The trick is to let people eat half of their meal before turning the image on," Grublarch enthused. "The first time I did it, it made my mother hurl!"
As in, throw plates and cutlery at him?
"As in throw up her di -"
Got it, thanks.
Thirteen year-old Schlomo Schwettstein had been given a smart tallit for his birthday; his father thought it would be a good idea to project torah portions against a backdrop of images of settler encampments in the holy land (Florida) during his bar mitzvah. The Schwettsteins were infamous throughout the diaspora for their "good" ideas.
Schlomo used his Kinder Blutmaschine to project the ultrasound image of his brain onto his prayer shawl. There went his college fund!
"I feel for the kid. Really, I do," said Esther Cartwrong, one of the MIT researchers who developed the Kinder Blutmaschin. "But MIT and its corporate partners cannot be held responsible for any unauthorized use of our patented technologies. This is very clearly stated in paragraph 237 of the End User Licence Agreement."
Besides, Cartwrong added, even at MIT they had heard about the Schwettsteins' "good ideas." "Schlomo wouldn't have lasted five minutes at any respectable college," she sniffed.
Not all young people use their Kinder Blutmaschine to upset adults; for many teenagers, it is an exciting new addition to mating rituals. When a girl sees a boy she is infatuated with, for instance, she can project the image of a beating heart onto her chest. Boys will also project images of their beating hearts on their clothes to indicate romantic interest; however, because they are generally not as emotionally demonstrative as girls, they often only project a smaller image on their arms or shoulders.
It gives the phrase "wearing your heart on your sleeve" a whole new meaning!
Conversely, when they are not interested in a boy who is interested in them, teenage girls have used the technology to express their disdain for his attention. Some project their jugular veins on their shirts (to indicate that they would rather slit their own throats than go out with the boy); others project the inner workings of their middle fingers (if you are not familiar with this gesture, you must lead a very sheltered life, indeed, although the ability to see one's blood run through the digit adds a new element of dimension to the scorn).
"I wouldn't worry too much about it," counselled Alternate Reality News Service advice columnist Amritsar Al-Falloudjianapour. "The children will soon grow out of using this new technology to gross out their parents. As parents themselves, they will switch to using it to gross out their children. That's the cycle of technology!"