Steve and I were going to a lecture on the fourth floor of a buiding. The corridors were around the exterior of the building, but there were no exterior walls or railings. The floors were very slippery, and sloped toward the outside. The elevator was also outside, and there was a gap between the elevator and the corridor floor, so we had to jump across that gap. We were both very cautious about that.
Steve got a new job at a startup company, and I didn’t see him very much for a while. As it happened, the next time I saw him we were both going back to the same building. I was still extremely cautious, but Steve was not, which surprised me.
Several other things happened that made it clear that Steve was no longer at all concerned with heights. I asked him why, and he said that he’d tell me as long as I didn’t tell anyone else. I agreed, and he explained that his employer had developed an antigravity device. One of the versions of the device was implantable in the human body, and he had one of those. He demonstrated that he could step off of the ledge, and just stand in mid-air.
Eventually he introduced me to some of his coworkers and the founder of the company. They showed me a model designed for passenger cars and small trucks, and let me fly it around a test area.
I wanted the implanted device, but they had stopped making them because their legal department had decided that they had too much potential legal liability. The device was under conscious control, but would also intervene to prevent accidents. For instance, if Steve had fallen off of the building without consciously controlling the device, he would have fallen, but at a reduced rate such that he was unlikely to be harmed. But the device couldn’t always prevent injury, and the lawyers were worried that people with the implant would think they were invulnerable, do stupid things, get injured or killed, and they or their heirs would sue the company.