Mario's birth and body — "When required to stand upright and…"
When required to stand upright and still, like when videotaping an E.T.A.’s service motion or manning the light meters on the set of a high-contrast chiaroscuro art film, Mario in his forward list is supported by a NNYC-apartment-door-style police lock, a .7-meter steel pole that extends from a special Velcroed vest and angles about 40° down and out to a slotted piece of lead blocking (a bitch to carry, in that complicated pack) placed by someone understanding and prehensile on the ground before him.
Context
The police lock: Mario's standing apparatus, engineered from a burglary-proofing device, requiring "someone understanding and prehensile" as its second half — the accommodation is social as much as mechanical. Filed also because the term returns in the theme's blackest echo: Lucien Antitoi dies propped "at a police-lock’s canted angle" (097, p. 488, below).