The Eye of the Beholder - I
This is a fragment of a short story on which I'm working, suggested by a conversation I had at a dinner party about Augmented Reality (AR) and its possible implications for humankind. I'm still working on it. I'd love to hear your thoughts.
The Eye of the Beholder (Fragment)
Today I tried to remove one of my AR lenses with no luck.
As I have said before, looking at my own eyes in the mirror was no help at all. In the reflected image my eyes look as free of devices as I always thought they were. Probably the AR lenses erase themselves on the mirror image to perfect the illusion of their nonexistence the same way they modify everything at which I look.
If I touch my eye balls, though, I can clearly feel them. I can even feel them if I touch them with my eyelids closed, so they must have a substantial thickness. They are roughly shaped as a disc, more or less the diameter of my irises. I would assume that they are not flat discs, but sections of a sphere, so they can conform more easily to the shape of the eyeball. Nevertheless, they seem to be loose, slightly floating over the cornea like jellyfish on the sea.
Although mostly circular in shape, they seem to have a small smooth protuberance directed towards the inner corner of the eye. It is interesting that I can't feel any part of these devices just by blinking. Probably my eyelids are used to the presence of the lenses. Particularly if it is true, as I assume, that they are installed on the eyeballs right after birth.
I kept my left eye open securing my eyelids with my left hand and tried to grab the lens with the finger tips of my right hand, but it kept sliding. The lens seems to be made out of some kind of slippery substance, some sort silicon perhaps, and highly lubricated.
Failing to grab the lens directly, I tried a different approach. Using the fingernail of my thumb as a lever I tried to to separate the lens border from the eyeball. I could feel the lens edge, slightly bevelled. It took me a few seconds until I managed to tuck my fingernail under it. Delicately, I started pushing, but as soon as I separated the border of the lens from the surface of my eye, just but a fraction of a millimetre, I saw a sudden flash of light.
I am not sure if it was a flash of light or an the electrical discharge, because it was very intense. As it was rather painful, I immediately stopped what I was doing, closed my eye and instinctively covered it with my hand, putting pressure over my eyelid, probably reattaching the lens with this gesture. I was blind of my left eye for a few seconds, after which it started getting full of tears. The black subdued and the vision came back. The pain was gone and everything looked the same.
By touching the left eye, though, I could feel the lens was not as moveable as it was before. It seemed secured on its place. The inner protuberance seemed engorged and somehow more lubricated, as if the tears were not coming from my eye but from the lens itself.
I tried to find the edge of the lens again with my fingernail and I discovered that it was no longer bevelled, but saw-toothed. Moving my thumb up and down I could feel the tiny teeth rubbing against my fingernail. They were rather small so it was difficult to determine their geometry but, instead of radiating from the disc, they seemed to be bent 90 degrees towards the eye and even sunken on the cornea.
I felt something warm and thick had collected on the fingertip I was rubbing against the toothed border. I took it for blood, but after carefully inspecting it I noticed it was a clear fluid. It had a peculiar smell of iron and a slightly salty taste, but it had no colour whatsoever. Perhaps another trick of the lens.
Rubbing my eye had started to make it hurt again, so I stopped my experiments and went to bed.
Maybe there is not such a thing as AR lenses after all and I'm just damaging my own eyes with all these explorations. I should device a different method to prove or deny their existence – and with it my sanity. A less prosaic method. One that would play with the lenses' own rules.
(...)
The Eye of the Beholder (Fragment)
Today I tried to remove one of my AR lenses with no luck.
As I have said before, looking at my own eyes in the mirror was no help at all. In the reflected image my eyes look as free of devices as I always thought they were. Probably the AR lenses erase themselves on the mirror image to perfect the illusion of their nonexistence the same way they modify everything at which I look.
If I touch my eye balls, though, I can clearly feel them. I can even feel them if I touch them with my eyelids closed, so they must have a substantial thickness. They are roughly shaped as a disc, more or less the diameter of my irises. I would assume that they are not flat discs, but sections of a sphere, so they can conform more easily to the shape of the eyeball. Nevertheless, they seem to be loose, slightly floating over the cornea like jellyfish on the sea.
Anatomy of the Eye - The Household Cyclopedia
Although mostly circular in shape, they seem to have a small smooth protuberance directed towards the inner corner of the eye. It is interesting that I can't feel any part of these devices just by blinking. Probably my eyelids are used to the presence of the lenses. Particularly if it is true, as I assume, that they are installed on the eyeballs right after birth.
I kept my left eye open securing my eyelids with my left hand and tried to grab the lens with the finger tips of my right hand, but it kept sliding. The lens seems to be made out of some kind of slippery substance, some sort silicon perhaps, and highly lubricated.
Failing to grab the lens directly, I tried a different approach. Using the fingernail of my thumb as a lever I tried to to separate the lens border from the eyeball. I could feel the lens edge, slightly bevelled. It took me a few seconds until I managed to tuck my fingernail under it. Delicately, I started pushing, but as soon as I separated the border of the lens from the surface of my eye, just but a fraction of a millimetre, I saw a sudden flash of light.
I am not sure if it was a flash of light or an the electrical discharge, because it was very intense. As it was rather painful, I immediately stopped what I was doing, closed my eye and instinctively covered it with my hand, putting pressure over my eyelid, probably reattaching the lens with this gesture. I was blind of my left eye for a few seconds, after which it started getting full of tears. The black subdued and the vision came back. The pain was gone and everything looked the same.
By touching the left eye, though, I could feel the lens was not as moveable as it was before. It seemed secured on its place. The inner protuberance seemed engorged and somehow more lubricated, as if the tears were not coming from my eye but from the lens itself.
Anatomy of the Eye - The Household Cyclopedia
I tried to find the edge of the lens again with my fingernail and I discovered that it was no longer bevelled, but saw-toothed. Moving my thumb up and down I could feel the tiny teeth rubbing against my fingernail. They were rather small so it was difficult to determine their geometry but, instead of radiating from the disc, they seemed to be bent 90 degrees towards the eye and even sunken on the cornea.
I felt something warm and thick had collected on the fingertip I was rubbing against the toothed border. I took it for blood, but after carefully inspecting it I noticed it was a clear fluid. It had a peculiar smell of iron and a slightly salty taste, but it had no colour whatsoever. Perhaps another trick of the lens.
Rubbing my eye had started to make it hurt again, so I stopped my experiments and went to bed.
Maybe there is not such a thing as AR lenses after all and I'm just damaging my own eyes with all these explorations. I should device a different method to prove or deny their existence – and with it my sanity. A less prosaic method. One that would play with the lenses' own rules.
(...)
posted by wcloister at 6:41 PM
5 Comments:
Squeamish as I am, I plodded along till the end, with my eyes... almost closed. I like the veracity and descriptive nature of your tale. There's a is-it?-or-is-it-not-fiction? touch to it.
Many thanks.
Just like it happened to me last year when I read 'Tres Tristes Tigres', 'Rayuela' is turning out to be my favourite novel so far this year. I finished the first book, or the 'normal' book a Cortazar call sit, and I'm down now reading the 'prescindibles' chapters. :-) And having fun with it. In fact it inspired a post which will come out next week and which I finished writing last night.
Keep up the good work.
Greetings from London.
Thanks for reading, Londoner. The funny thing is that I'm squeamish myself. I would not watch a gory movie for all the money of the world. Never trust the midnight muses - or ravens, should I say.
Let's hope my future explorations on the AR lenses are more, errr, semantic.
Now you made me want to read Rayuela. OK, that is it, Cortazar jumps to the front of the "to read" line. Hesse, Dickens and Balzac eye him wearily: these Latins and their [lack of] manners...
"May I?" - says Lezama politely trying to follow Cortazar to the front of the line. "Don't you dare!" - says Mujica brandishing a copy of Bomarzo - "I can take you all right!"
Looking forward to read your next post.
Greetings from the (thawing) North Pole
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Sigo en mi descaro :)
Rayuela? mmm. También te lo recomiendo. hace muy buena polinización con este post su famoso cápitulo 73 y su tornillo...
Por cierto, esto me ha hecho pensar otra vez en otra de las "extensiones" de la realidad. (O debo decir implantes, a lo replicante): el concepto de la Prosthetic Memory.
Dice la que nombró la bestia: (Alison Landsberg), “By prosthetic memories I mean memories which do not come from a person’s lived experience in any strict sense.
When someone views, for example, a film or television program, they have a memory of the narrative events which transpired without actually having experienced those events in any manner. (...)
Everyone remembers the horrific events of September 11, 2001, but many of those who recall that day did not witness the event with their own eyes”
Este (¿posthumans?) es uno de mis temas preferidos. En un mundo ideal, preferiría hacer otro upgrade: tener una batería nuclear a lo terminator y no tener que trabajar para comer y calentarme.
Que distinto el paisaje del mundo que imagino sin tener que vivir en función de la molécula de ATP y los caprichos del tracto digestivo. Como aquello que decía Kerouac subido en un monte en las rocosas buscando la iluminación: no hay redención ni ataraxia para los que tienen que comer todos los días...
En fin, me ha gustado mucho este post.
Espero que empiecen a llegarnos los "doses", no sea que caigas en la trampa de solo tener "unos" :)
PS: Ah y no olvides "No hay banda!, is all illusion" (Mulholland Drive)
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