POV

As the hot chocolate heated up I made my sandwich, while vaguely paying attention to the headlines, and as I sliced the knife through the bread, I saw a headline that changed everything.

SARAH SIMONE, 22, MURDERED

I put the knife down, no longer trusting my shaking hands, and double-tapped the headline using the touch unit. It expanded until it filled my field of vision, and I stood there for a minute taking the information in.

Artist Sarah Simone (more), 22, New York (about NY), was found dead in her home earlier today. The NYPD suspect foul play. There were signs of a struggle in the artist’s home (GPS/Photos) and evidence that an intruder had broken in. Ms Simone lived alone (Single? Cheating? Women in your area are looking for you now). Police indicated that a violent struggle had taken place. Items from Ms Simone’s home were taken, and her eyes had been removed. Police have asked for information from anyone who is offered black market IDRoPS (IDRoPS – See the world with a new point of view) and anyone who was around Queens Block Seven (GPS/Map/Photos/News Headlines for Queens Block Seven) between eight and twelve last night.

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I switched off the display and took a deep breath. Sarah Simone had been my patient a week earlier. I put her through the IDRoPS procedure. And now she was dead.

Killed for her eyes.

Chapter Three (#ulink_fc72dc49-db3f-5518-98b6-56c096e66174)

IDRoPS – Internal Display Retina Operating Systems – are big business, and have been for the last four years. Take-up was slow at first, as people had been skeptical for two years before that, but as more celebrities began to extol the virtues of them, and the procedure became smoother and easier, more people began to get them.

Then, more and more media outlets started streaming to them. They were easy to adapt information for and that was before you got to all the other benefits.

I was one of the optometrists involved in creating the procedure and working out a way for it to be as safe and painless as possible. Before they got us involved, it was damn near butchery, and early converts were left with unsightly scar tissue across their eyes. While some of them wore the scars proudly, almost as a fashion accessory, others found them embarrassing and took to wearing dark glasses, which pretty much defeated half of the functions of them in the first place. While some worked fine in the dark, others needed light in order to function at the proper capacity.

Getting the procedure right was a big part of the rise in popularity. We had the number of problem installations down to almost zero percent, and the procedure was now six times faster than it had been when it started.

Originally, the liquid was used primarily for display purposes, and for data information transfer during the slow upgrade to visible light communication becoming a standard way of receiving streamed information.

The nanotech is filled with receiver units and translation units, which allow for a number of uses. One of them is to use your eyes as a display screen, featuring windows of information that display straight onto your retina, automatically adjusting so it is comfortable for your own vision. You can also programme it using the touch units on your watch, which are configured directly to your personal IDRoPS and allow you to navigate through any options.

The system used to be two-way, and could send information as well as receive, but this was deemed to be inordinately dangerous and we were obliged to fit certain breakpoints into the software in order to make them receive-only. We had to track down the earlier converts – this was not fun.

The most popular aspect of the technology, though, is real time information mapping and visual transformation. This is called Personal Reality and was the single biggest selling point that brought people on board.

The IDRoPS act as a filter, using object recognition technology to remap information. So, you can use your visual display to, say, change the colour of a car from blue to red in your own personal viewpoint. But it isn’t clumsy – it’s fine-tuned enough to recognise face and body features.

This means that you can look at somebody and change your perception of them so that they look different. The most popular use of this is actually personal. Most people change the way they look at themselves in any reflective surface or pictures and videos, allowing them to see themselves as thinner or better looking than they are. It remaps the information across the recognition points, allowing you to look in the mirror and lose that spare tyre around your waist, or that second chin, or give yourself more perfect breasts, or a different shade of skin colour, hair … you can be who you want to be.

According to research, thirty-seven per cent of people who use the technology in this way become more confident.

You can also map the software across people who you see regularly and recognise.

This means that you can make your partner more youthful, better looking, or even look like someone else entirely.

And you only have to be as open as you wish to be. They never have to know. You can screw a movie star every night if you wish and when you look into their eyes and see your reflection, you can look as handsome or as beautiful as you want to imagine that you can.

Of course it’s popular.

Rachel and I don’t often use that aspect of it. We discussed it, but we prefer remembering what each other actually looks like. We don’t want to get away from the reality of each other and replace it with an illusion of who we want. We’re comfortable with each other and we want to share ourselves as we actually are.

For us, we don’t want to turn into an idealised version of ourselves, otherwise we feel we’ll lose track of who we are. Keeping your feet on the ground is important.

I don’t think it’s particularly healthy to replace yourself in such a way that you start completely believing in this new version of you and forgetting the reality underneath. Partially, even if you’re unaware of it, and even if you don’t care, you can end up looking ridiculous to other people.

Think of the most ludicrous person you know. The most ridiculous looking, or the most contemptible, or the ugliest. Whatever. Now, take the element of them that thinks that they’re better than everyone else and you start filling their world with constant reinforcement of that ideal. You get people swanning around like they’re a movie star, when they’re more of a freak show.

And that’s fine if you’re in the middle of it. That’s fine if it’s you. It’s just that neither of us want to get carried away to the point where we start believing in it. That said, I do shave a few pounds off myself in my own point of view and make myself just that little bit more chiselled if we’re going out to a party or something. Everyone does.

The earlier version of the software, before we had to fit in the blockers that stopped it from being able to send information, would allow you to transmit information about what you looked like to other people. As long as both people were fitted with the software, you would have been able to make yourself look like anyone you wanted to – or even invisible. However, the criminal implications created by this were obvious and beyond control, so we effectively had to cut off that functionality. So unless a criminal was willing to slice into their eye and had the technological ability to reset those connections, the functionality was useless.

As it is, you can only control what you see, not what others see. Rachel and I have used the software on each other at times – of course we have. Every now and then during sex, we’ll agree to make each other into someone we want to have sex with, and it always gets that extra bit wild. A movie star, a celebrity, or (even more thrilling) a friend. It lets us experience our fantasies but still keep it with each other.

But again, we don’t want to forget what it’s actually like to love each other physically as well as emotionally. It’s always been better with Rachel than with anyone else. More intense, more relaxed and more trusting. But every now and then, it’s fun to spice things up and get the visual thrill of playing away without actually doing it.

We take each other on trust. She could, of course, be replacing me every time she looks at me. But I don’t with her and I don’t believe that she does with me. We trust each other and we love each other.

And I’ll always be grateful to her for the new turn my life has taken, because before then …

Before then, I would have swapped myself for anyone. I would have looked in the mirror and replaced myself with nothing if I could have done.

That was before the alcohol. Before the breakdown. Before the suicide attempts. Before the testing. Before I was tested.

Well, before we were tested.

Chapter Four (#ulink_fa71e71a-3d71-531c-b801-322086e64edc)

‘Mr. MacFarlane?’ The man at the door looked like he never smiled. He looked like he spent his entire time getting annoyed and angry at people. He wasn’t wearing a uniform, but he didn’t need to flash his badge for me to know that he was with the police.

‘Yes?’ I replied.

‘I’m Michael Byrne. I’m with the New York Police Department. May I come in and ask you some questions?’

I stood to the side to allow him access to the surgery room. ‘Come on in,’ I said to him.

He walked through the door. I followed him as he looked around the surgery, taking in as much as he could before he focused on the chair with the restraints on.

While it was white and medical, it suddenly felt to me like it had a medieval aspect to it. A cruel aspect to it. The kind of aspect where you could imagine Goneril commanding her husband to pluck out Gloucester’s eyes.

The line ‘Out, vile jelly’ crept unbidden into my consciousness. The image made me want to panic, so I went back to one of my old relaxation tricks that I learned during my time in therapy. Breathing in time to a tune in my head, and keeping it steady.