Yesterday, I saw the Halo water wheel at Leipzig, and my first thought was, "God, I hope I'm around to see the first guy kills himself on that."

Today, I wandered back to the water wheel, well hoping that the stone's flawless marble underbelly would now be spattered with congealed brains, the trickling fountain turned ruddy with blood, the 360 booth babes pale and trembling.

But it was fine. There the waterwheel was, largely revolving as before. Pristine, mint. Curious, I sidled up to a nearby booth babe and put my arm around her.

"Hi there! So is this for Halo?"

The 360 girl had obviously no idea what I was talking about, but decided to humor me. "Ja!" she affirmed.

I got right to the point: "So. Jane. Has anyone killed themselves yet on this crazy thing?"

The 360 babe looked thoughtful, chewing her lower lip ponderously. I could tell she was going to be politic. "Well..." she eventually hazarded, "Of course this is always risk."

"Of course," I soothed. This seemed to make her more open.

"This one man, this very crazy man..." the 360 Babe googled her eyes when she said 'crazy', in order to facilitate universal translation. And then she proceeded to pantomime what must have involved a man splaying himself open like Da Vinci's Virtuvian Man to roll upside down in the Halo water wheel.

"Wow!" I said. The 360 Booth Babe agreed, and then proceeded to give me a demonstration of the many mechanical marvels of the wheel. She swore that the marble ring, which must way a ton, spinned only by the burbling of the underlying fountain. There was a brake to prevent it from going too fast.

But as she was showing me the wheel's workings, she mentioned that it was possible for someone to run inside the wheel too fast. When that happened, there was not enough water to keep the underside of the wheel lubricated.

"So what happens then? Does it grind to a halt and sunder in twain like the Ten Commandments, crushing any human guinea pig currently inside clean to death? Or does it merely go flying off the pedestal, to roll through the Leipzig Convention Center, gelatinating nerds and causing carnage?"

"Ja! JA!" she affirmed, then wandered away to help a little girl to climb onboard. To be fair, though, there may have been some translation issues afoot. Florian Eckhardt