You get to stand, sit and lay down as normal. Any movement from the one place to another, even a few feet, requires elevation.
Good question. I grant you the power to carry any person you could carry on the ground. It takes exactly the same amount to move person X from one spot to another as it did before.
No, it’s no more effort to fly at 1000 feet than at 5.
Swimming is still in. And your legs work for everything except walking and running.
The energy expended is aerobic. Don’t ask how this works: I dunno.
Everyone in this thread. Limited time offer, some restrictions may apply. So you probably won’t be the lone freak, but you’ll still be damned odd. Which might work out for you if you hate your job. There has to be some money in being one of the few dozen flying people in the world.
Oh, and no wings. You look normal when you aren’t moving.
I have extremely vivid dreams about this every week or so and I think I know what it would feel like based on that. I call them hovering dreams and I stay mostly a foot or two off of the ground gliding down hills and such. I love it and always wake up disappointed that I can’t do it in real life but giving up walking makes it a close call.
Heck yes. Where’s the downside? You might lose a few moments hovering up briefly to turn on the telly or go for a piss, but I imagine you’d save a load more time hovering over obstacles as opposed to walking around it.
What happens if you become exhausted flying? Just drop to the earth? Can you still cycle? The process isn’t too different from running, so if you miss terra firma you can always nip on the bike.
Also; is it just vertical hovering or can you fly (at running pace) with you body horizontal too? Reason for asking: Rule of Cool.
If it’s the same exertion as walking, then falling shouldn’t be a danger. I can’t remember ever being so tired I literally couldn’t take another step. Fainting might get you hurt though.
What happens when I inevitably forget about my new talent and absentmindedly try to get up and walk? Do I default to hovering, or do I fall flat on my face?
Even if it’s the latter, it would be amazingly cool to be a person whose feet don’t quite touch the ground. (I’m sure I’d learn to quit walking after a while.) For regular walking, I’d just tuck up my feet and glide at standing-person level.
I’d learn to mime walking (like the old invisible box routine) rather than just bobbing around, and I’d frolic around on telephone wires and thin, precarious tree branches in public.
I’m not sure I’d come out as a flying person until the rest of the people in this thread had revealed themselves and exhausted the novelty of the whole thing.
Then I’ll become a flying photographer and cinematographer.
Well, sure. I’d probably start publicly walking on water just for the hell of it, too, and then I’d have to embark on a successful career as a stage magician just so I don’t blow my cover. I think I could live with that, though. The Amazing Telperion. Broken glass? Not a problem. Glowing coals? Likewise. Landmines? No worries. Rabid animals? Won’t harm me unless they grow wings.
Very yes. I’d never have to worry about stepping in dog doo ever again. If were running late and the sidewalks were crowded, I could rise above all the obstacles and zip along at sprint-speed without crashing into anything.
Would hovering in place take effort? If not, could I sleep while hovering? Because that would be great for the back.
I’m coming at this from a different place than most. For the last seven years I’ve had varying degrees of arthritis of the knees.
When my legs first got “bad” – before I really knew how bad “bad” could get * – my old fantasy from childhood began to emerge strongly and frequently again. If only I could levitate, I would think, it wouldn’t matter that my legs were suddenly continuously stiff and bothersome.
No one has ever made their way into a superhero group with the sole ability of excellent walking, BTW.
And it’s hard to imagine Standards Lad or Examiner Lass saying, “Heck, we can’t let anyone in to the Fiftieth Century Super-Club who can’t even walk like everyone else.”
Bird strikes.
Also, you can mime walking, but your minimum height above ground is a foot, so you probably aren’t going to fool anyone. You can hover reclining. You can ride a bike. Hovering in place takes as much effort as standing, so you couldn’t really do it in your sleep.
I personally think I’d take it, as long as my husband could, too. It would suck to have to hover everywhere all by myself, and he’d be jealous. I’d prefer that my dogs stay earthbound, though.
Absolutely. I could even wear a parachute just in case. The chute could have an altimeter/sensor that auto-deploys the chute when I loose X altitude in X time. That takes care of any (very unlikely) fainting spell, stroke, or epileptic fit – if i have sufficient altitude of course.
I would also wear a leather bomber helmet and goggles. It’d be sharp as hell and functional - keeping bird shit, bugs, and precipitation out of my eyes.
Even the thousand foot ceiling is no big deal - especially if that thousand feet is relative to the ground I take off from (mountain tops).