Through a Glass, Darkly

In the future, we are all Steve Mann.

An infant child is fitted at birth with two electronically-controlled lenses which, harnessing energy from the heat of her body, focus and augment her vision. The focusing is simply the refraction of light in a clear but optically dense polymer. The augmentation is performed by nanocircuitry controlling a delicate network of fibre optics which overlay the chaotic overload of visual information in a post-post-industrial world with a field of symbols comprehensible to a primate's brain.

The nanocircuitry learns these symbols by abstracting them from repeated elements in the environment, just as the infant learns to understand the world around her in the same way. It is never the infant's intention to have her perceptions thus augmented, but having been born, some well-intentioned and lens-fitted soul—in this case, her mother—notices her deficiency, and cures her of it.

We all must grow up.

The infant does not remain an infant for long. She enters school at a brick-faced symbol of primary education, graduates from university with a degree in symbol manipulation, and falls deeply in love with a symbol of an investment banker which bears a striking resemblance to the symbol of her father. They live in a symbol of suburban affluence for sixteen years, and then she leaves without a word. She adopts a Saint Bernard, a symbol of faithfulness.

It is an accident that one day the Saint Bernard bears all his weight against her body, and she falls sprawling to the floor, striking her head against the wood and dislodging both of her lenses. She is blinded at first, but once her pupils constrict to block so much light from striking her retina, she sees more clearly than she ever has before. With the overlay of symbols gone, only vivid images remain.

Now both of her hands seem new to her, and she discovers to her surprise that she can make the fingers move with her own will. The Saint Bernard's face is new to her, and in his dark lips and matted fur she sees the most intense beauty. Even the stained oak grains in the floor are new and and beautiful to her.

Like a newborn, she perceives no separation between herself and the world around her; she has lost a symbol even for herself. She spends five hours staring at the patterns in her ceiling, which are beautiful, and another three hours breathing in synchronization with the sleeping Saint Bernard.

She realizes she has two options. She could refit the lenses, and the world would be familiar once again—grey and detached, although she would be happy enough working and going to movies and paying the rent. How would others symbolize her stories about her experience, her suggestion that they should knock their heads against hardwood floors?

Her other option is to remain in this child-like bliss, intimate with the world around her, and this is what she chooses. But before long, she starts to imagine symbols of her own: This is a coffee mug, for serving coffee or orange juice or water. This is a wine glass, for wine and never for milk. This is a quarter, it is different from a nickel. This is my hand. This is his hand, it is calloused, but it does not hurt; it feels good. This is a cat, this is a catacomb, this is a catastrophe. This is Jack, he is a son of a bitch. I must get back my clothing, at the very least, but I would never visit his rotten face.

The world darkens as the light of her awakening fades, but at times she wonders, is this all there is?