Blind Read online

  Contents

  Blind

  When Dr. Barnard finally reentered the room, in a panic, Edison bumped his elbow on the examination table. A sharp resonant ping of pain vibrated his arm where it connected. Mr. Jacobi, the boy’s equally impatient father, also jolted upright from the stark wall he’d braced himself against.

  “I found it.” The doctor handed a sheet of paper and a pen to Edison. “I’m sorry to frighten you like that, since it turned out to be such a simple matter. I only needed the nurse to replicate the original.”

  Mr. Jacobi’s large, squared shoulders relaxed. “This shouldn’t take long. Just tell him what you want.”

  What I want. Tell him what I want.

  Edison’s hands shook the paper. “I want new eyes.”

  Both the doctor and his father smiled, encouragingly.

  “Of course,” Dr. Barnard said. “And you’re entitled to them.”

  Mr. Jacobi, a tall lanky man, tapped the mechanical orbs jutting from the middle of his face, fixed objects which moved and clicked as his father’s focus shifted from one object to another, from the doctor, to the boy, to the application in his hand. Again. Tap. Tap. “These are certainly more sophisticated than what you have now.”

  Edison cheeks burned at being misunderstood.

  “No,” he said quietly, his face flooding with a fresh wave of heat. He breathed through the overwhelming pulse of the room, warping under the pressure of his impending confession—“I don’t want another pair of Mathematical eyes.”

  He forced himself to breath, and then turn toward Dr. Barnard for help. “I—I want something else.”

  Dr. Barnard spoke on behalf of the boy almost intuitively. “It is not uncommon for young adults approaching Settlement to desire change. If I remember correctly, Mr. Jacobi, both of your parents had Technical eyes, did they not? Therefore your choice for Mathematical eyes was a deviation as well.”

  But Jacobi’s shoulders were already hunching again, rising up toward his ears. And the place on the back of Edison’s neck where he was certain his father’s glare rested, burned.

  Dr. Barnard, with a wide, generous smile seemed ignorant of the tension thickening around him. “What kind of eyes are you interested in, Edison?”

  When the boy did not immediately answer the doctor removed one wrinkled hand from the pocket where it rested and pointed to an area on the application that trembled in the boy’s hands.

  “It’s all here,” the doctor continued. “You need only check one of the labeled boxes. Instructive, Technical, Systematic, Empathic, Topographic—you have excellent neurological scores. You even qualify for Architectural and—.”

  “Ar-ist,” Edison said. His voice cracked.

  “Arsonist?” Dr. Barnard laughed, a hearty chuckle. “Sorry but we don’t have—”

  “Artist.” Edison wet his lips and when he could bear it, he said it again, the way he’d practiced for the last two months. “I want Artist eyes.”

  The spinning room stopped. Neither his father nor Dr. Barnard moved. Edison knew from the stimuli interpreted by his own Mathematical eyes that only seconds had passed. His Mathematical eyes also informed his brain that his father, Mr. Jacobi, was very, very upset. The darkening shade of his cheeks meant his blood vessels were dilating. The increased perspiration forming at his temples, and Edison suspected, his palms—the awkward shift in his weight and the rapid click of his metallic eyes as he looked Edison up and down, as if unable to process him.

  “Artist?” Dr. Barnard asked, softly. “Are you sure?”

  Only then did the rest of his rehearsed speech, his practiced argument come back to the boy. “I want to see color. To dream. And I want to experience imagination like—”

  “No,” Mr. Jacobi said. He trembled. “No.”

  Dr. Barnard intercepted Mr. Jacobi’s escalating anger with a raised hand. “Mr. Jacobi, please. If you’ll run the calculations, sir, you’ll see that your anger is misplaced.”

  His father turned away from them both. It struck him—his father’s back, taut, and shoulders tight. Dr. Barnard stood between them blocking Edison’s view.

  “Edison,” the doctor said. The voice was guarded now. The lighthearted humor and kind encouragement were both gone. “Can you give us a moment? There should be at least one empty chair outside for you to occupy.”

  With his hand on the examination room door, Edison turned back to face Dr. Barnard. No point in backing down now.

  He spoke to his father’s back, to the large hands on his hips. “I am certain I want Artist eyes, Dr. Barnard. That’s what I’ll put on my application.”

  The doctor didn’t smile. “I understand. Now, if you please.”

  His father’s head was down, perhaps calculating, in a repetitive and therefore reassuring fashion, the number of flecks in the floor’s tile. Edison himself had done this very same task to alleviate the fear associated with shots and unpleasant examinations. Or maybe he thought of something else—of her.

  Even once the door was shut between them, he could hear the doctor and his father exchange assessments.

  “You must understand my concern,” Mr. Jacobi began. “His mother—his mother—”

  “I understand and acknowledge your experience,” the doctor replied diplomatically, the automatic response expected when conversing with someone of a different eye. “But I must also offer my analysis.” After a pause in which Edison heard nothing, the doctor continued. “Since your son has Mathematical eyes like your own, he would have calculated the potential danger himself. Furthermore, he has supplied no evidence to suggest that he means himself harm. It is obvious that his decision is based upon other factors. Perhaps it is the educational and travel opportunities associated in training the Artist eye. With his temperament, perhaps he romanticizes all that he will see and experience. You must recognize that it is an interesting life. If not always practical, it has opportunity.”

  “His assessment is faulty,” Mr. Jacobi replied. “Initial sets last ten years. His eyes are nine years old. His assessments are flawed.

  “It is possible, but unlikely,” the doctor agreed. “Regardless, his choice is protected.”

  Edison curled deeper into the chair beside the door and cradled his knees against his chest. How had he expected this to go? Of course, this would end badly. How could it not?

  As he adjusted himself for comfort, his father said something he couldn’t hear through the rustling of his own clothes. Though he strained, he couldn’t hear what they now whispered. If the first part of the conversation was indirectly meant for him, then what were they discussing now? No logical inference from his environment suggested so, but Edison knew they spoke about his mother. Probably of what she did with her own eyes—

  His mother.

  The hushed whispers stopped and the door swung open.

  His father started down the wide, long hall without him.

  “Here you go,” Dr. Barnard said and handed Edison a stapled booklet attached to his Settlement application just as the boy unfolded himself from the chair. “It explains the features, complications, and expectations associated with each pair of eyes. I’ve earmarked the Artist section for you. Be sure to read it carefully. You must submit your completed application the morning of your surgery.”

  “Yes, sir,” Edison replied and accepted the glossy booklet before running after his father.

  He caught his him at the edge of the hallway before it forked left and right.

  “I want to see her. Before we go,” he said. “Please.”

  Without waiting for an answer, Edison took the right fork, past the nursery where the newborns were housed. He peeked in at them, always marveling at their smooth unblemished faces, the way the skin connected from forehead to jaw without a single interruption.
r />   After pushing through a pair of heavy doors marked AUTHORIZED VISITORS ONLY, only a desk stood between Edison and his destination. A nurse manning the station scratched the edge of her metallic eyes, the delicate area where the skin met the metal was red and puffy.

  “Does it hurt?” he asked her as he signed the sheet on the desk that would allow him to see his mother.

  “It’s only an allergy,” she said, her voice upbeat and almost musical. “They think it might be the nickel in the outer casing. They are doing a major recall on some of the models. Have you seen the 6.7s? My God, they’re beautiful.”

  He didn’t do a good job of hiding his concern. Yet most medical professionals, apart from surgeons and a few other specializations, were equipped with Empathic eyes. Hiding one’s emotions from an empath was nearly impossible.

  “Don’t worry!” the nurse said, initialing beside Edison’s own sloppy scrawl. “It is easy to fix. Dr. Barnard will take a look at the end of my shift. Really I should have let him do the upgrade to begin with. He really is the best. He makes the most beautiful eyelids. My friend Jane’s eyes look like open sores in comparison. Just look at yours. He gave you those adorable little lifts in the corners.”

  “Thanks,” Edison said and had a brief but vivid vision of Dr. Barnard scooping his eyes out of his own wet, red and empty sockets, before carving and constructing those adorable lifts out of his remaining skin.

  The gravity seemed to increase as he approached his mother’s room and became the worst at the threshold itself. He entered the dark room, one quiet step after another, in case she slept. It was hard to tell at first glance, so he spent a moment calculating her breathing pattern and muscle activity to determine that she was awake.

  “Mom,” he said. Her skin was warm under his light touch, probably from the heat generated by the layers of bedding. “Hi, Mom. It’s me. Edison.”

  She couldn’t do more than turn her wrists in the restraints, but she opened her palm in invitation. Edison curled his fingers into hers. He wanted her to say something, anything. His best memories involved her stories, detailed and impossible to him. But now he couldn’t even recall the sound of her voice.

  She was still quite young, her face mostly smooth until his gaze reached the small indentions beneath her brow. The face mask hid the hollowed black holes where her eyes had once been. He knew the skin surrounding each socket was shrived into a pucker as if they still grasped for the missing Artist eyes they once held. He knew because many a time—though not this time—he’d lifted the silk cloth in order to see into the darkness for himself.

  “Hold still,” she whispered. Her dark hair had fallen into her face and a few strands were caught on the grooves of her protruding eyes. “I’m not talented enough to work with moving targets.”

  But it was hard for Edison to do what his mother asked. He couldn’t have been more than five years old as they crouched in the middle of the floor. He incorrectly believed he was sitting as still as possible on a plush cushion that his mother had dragged into her work studio from the living room couch. This was before Curie was born. Before his mother’s sacred work space was converted into a nursery and she’d given up painting, drawing, and telling stories.

  Before she tore out her own eyes.

  “I had the most wonderful dream last night,” this mother whispered, or at least she seemed too. Her voice rarely rose above the lowest of decibels.

  “What’s a dream?” without an artist chip, Edison couldn’t dream himself. But he didn’t really care about dreams. He only asked so she would speak to him. So she would sit close, smelling like soap and looking at him carefully, as if to memorize every detail. This intense attention made Edison’s limbs go weak in a pleasant, heavy way.

  “You were there,” she said, adding one line, then two to the drawing spread on the floor in front of her. “We were in a field with trees and sunlight and gorgeous blue jays. It was a place called Eden, where everything was just as it was meant to be. Natural. Can you imagine it, baby?”

  His chip allowed him to intake data, to process possibilities and draw conclusions based on empirical data. But processing was the cold cousin of imagination. The two had yet to learn how to keep company with the other. His eye itched and without thought he reached his hand up to rub it. But the fiber optic lashes protecting the eye shocked his hand.

  “What’s a blue jay?” he asked. His rubbing his hands together to chase away the last bits of the charge.

  “Do you remember what I told you about the sky?” she said.

  “It is blue,” he said. And in hopes of making her happy, “like a blue jay.”

  She did smile. “Close enough.”

  And that smile was radiant for Edison, even if in reality the sky was nothing more than a gray blur overhead.

  “Be still,” she sang again. “And I didn’t see you in the dream exactly. I just knew you were there, hiding in the trees. Like a little fox, playing hide and seek with me.”

  She lifted the drawing up, flipping it toward him so he could see. “What do you think?”

  Edison reached toward the picture. “I have ears and a tail. Like a puppy!”

  “A fox,” his mother corrected. “I’m going to make you a fox-boy and write about you in my next story. Would you like that?”

  “Yes,” he said, tapping his heels against the wood floor in delight.

  She took the drawing from him them and spread it flat on the floor before pulling him into her arms.

  She kissed the top of his head. For long while she just held him, saying nothing. And Edison was perfectly content with that.

  “What’s a life without dreams?” she said at last, her voice faraway now.

  Edison pretended not to hear the sadness.

  When Edison woke it was still dark. Something had jarred him from heavy slumber and had left his heart rapt and thrashing. His bedroom held the predawn close, the fuzzy outline of his desk and corner against the wall were soft around the edges as they bled into the shadows. The rapid click of his eyes darting around the room, annoyed him, increasing his agitation.

  Then he heard the voices.

  He pushed his school books off of him and slipped from bed. He found a T-shirt on his floor to cover his cool skin. The smell of roasting meat and sweet bread filled the house. He braced one hand on the frame before he dared to peek out.

  “You can’t do that,” Nana said. She was nearly foot shorter than her son, but she was unafraid to look up into his wild face. Her hair was out of place and she still wore the long robe that she favored in the off hours of the day. She’d turned away from the stove where dinner was cooking to scold him.

  “It will buy time,” his father replied.

  “Sure, an appeal will delay the operation, but—”

  “That’s all I need. More time. There’s only very small window for such a request. If I can simply drag it out for a year, maybe two, then he’ll no longer be eligible.”

  “No,” his Nana said firmly. “He’ll pursue it regardless because he’s as stubborn as you are. He’ll get the ocular implantations, no matter his age. And you’ll simply put his life in danger.”

  “His life is in danger if I do nothing.”

  “The integration of such a chip is highly complicated,” she said. “There are so many things that go wrong. These chips have more side effects than any other. The morosity and impulsive behaviors that your wife had are the least of it. It is best if you nurture him now. Help him stabilize rather than fight him! Your resistance endangers him more than the chip itself! And it was the same with Vivienne!”

  Nana looked at Edison then, past his father directly into his own eyes. Edison slipped back into his bedroom. For countless moments he waited to hear them come down the hall into his bedroom. He waited to be yanked forcibly not only into the hallway, but into the argument.

  Instead, the house grew quiet, even over the sound of pots clanking at the stove and his own thunderous heart.

  When the
door was finally opened from the outside, it was only the small, frail woman.

  “Come on out. Dinner’s ready,” she said, her robe hanging open on either side of her. Her long thick brain hung over her shoulder, well-past her sagging chest. “And don’t worry. Your father won’t be joining us.”

  “What’s wrong with you?” Locke asked the next day. She laid her bike down in the grass near Edison’s front porch and sank onto the step beside him. “You haven’t heard anything I’ve said, have you?”

  “Sorry,” he mumbled and leaned his back into the cool stone. “I know you hate it when people don’t listen to you.”

  She ruffled his hair, as she’d done more and more frequently lately. And as was the latest custom, a strange feeling rolled through him, a flutter somewhere between his heart and stomach.

  He knocked her hand away. “I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

  She cradled her wrist as if he’d broken it. He opened his mouth to apologize again but couldn’t think of what he was apologizing for. That things were different? He wasn’t sure how to articulate that anyway. Because he wasn’t sure how they were different, especially since so many things were still the same. She was only a few months older than him, still his best friend, still living just two doors down. But she’d already undergone Settlement and so they no longer had classes together. Once she chose Instructional eyes, her education had been adjusted, as was the case. In fact, Edison was only one of six students still left in his class. And if his father did appeal, then what? Would he be tutored individually? Like an idiot?

  But it wasn’t that she’d changed classes.

  She lowered her wrist and straightened her back.

  “I said I know what you should say to your dad,” she said. “I know how you can explain your side to him.”

  “Just because you are good at telling people what to do, doesn’t mean you should,” Edison replied. His eyes were fixed on the backpack between his feet as he ran a minor calculation of the zipped teeth.