The story starts like this… 

"Norman was a perfectly safe, perfectly sane man. 

He lived with his wife and his son, who were both perfectly safe, perfectly sane, in a world that was perfectly safe and perfectly sane. 

So when he woke up that morning, he felt as perfect as always. He had no inkling at all of the things that had already started to happen to him." 

It's the story of a guy called Norman, who lives in a regulated society. He lives in a house which is identical to every other house and drives the same car as everyone else to work every day. Like everyone else in his world, he was fitted with a bio-transmitter that regulates his life, telling him when to get up and do things. 

Then something unusual happens to Norman. 

One morning, he notices a bump on his forehead. He checks his watch biomitter and it says in reassuring green YOU ARE OK. Through the story the bump gets larger and he starts to feel strange – doesn't want to go to work, feels the urge to wander outside, and defy the norm. He continues to check his biomitter and it continues to say YOU ARE OK, though, but Norman was becoming pretty worried. Because he clearly wasn't OK – although in another sense he'd never felt better in his life.  

"He understood that he was in danger. He was in danger from his biomitter. It was a hazard to him. It was only a small thing, a meta-sensor that monitored his body for signs of illness; but it was linked to the huge computers of the General Hospital,and when his metabolism passed beyond the parameters of safety, sanity, his biomitter would summon the men in white coats…" 

Stephen R. Donaldson's short story "Mythological Beast" was first published in January 1979. It is part of a collection in Daughter of Regals and Other Tales, published in 1984.

For those of you who would like to read it, it has a happy ending, aka "Man Rebels Against Conformist Society, Turns Into Unicorn, Meets Likeminded Community".

The moral of the story, don't conform, don't comply! And, what came first? Sci-fi writers or Evil Dystopian Society plotters? 

We are living in a Brave New Magical World, and there is only ONE THING that the World Government witches and warlords are really afraid of… (Besides Lucy 'Honey Badger' Berwick that is).