More than six hundred years ago, the King of France stopped letting anyone touch him. Charles VI had iron rods sewn into his clothing and moved through his palace with the stiff care of a man carrying something breakable, because he believed he was carrying something breakable. He believed it was himself. The chronicles of his reign record that the king became convinced his body had turned to glass, and that a careless embrace or an ordinary stumble would shatter him to pieces on the stone floor.

Continue reading → The Glass People: The Materials of Madness, from the Glass King to the Simulation