Eye-Ris

A short piece of cyberpunkish fiction

It started with a blink.

Not when I blinked my eyes. I don’t have that set for anything. I’ve heard that some people have blink bring up the time or some micro-battery meter or something like that, but do you know how many times you blink during a day? Seriously, you blink at the end of each sentence you read. You tried not to right there. Everyone does.

Anyway, I realized there was something wrong when the shutter blinked extra.

I paid top dollar for my InlineSmoothCarressCamera3. The company is up to the 6th iteration already, but for photogs (or wanna be photogs like myself) the 3 is the one that set the standard. I mean it fits right on top of the pupil with no problem, and the ISCC people have promised to continue to update the applications for the lifespan of this series of EYE-RIS. Given that these things have been lasting a decade each (as well they should with the cost of the damn things) this bad boy should have been golden for at least a few more years.

Then the blink.

It’s imperceptible. That’s why I don’t think anyone knows about it.

‘But if it’s imperceptible, how could you recognize it?’

Yeah, I know smartass, that’s kind of the point of my story.

I’m on my second EYE-RIS. Don’t laugh heartily as you go ‘Oh look at Mistah Moneybags being able to buy TWO top of the line eye-implant smart machines. It isn’t that simple.

Ok, so it started when I saved up for my first one. That was probably five or so years ago. The new model had just come out (the one with the little jingle ‘See all you never saw’ .. I was humming it around my apodment for a month while I watched my extra savings account get closer and closer.) So after I had made the scratch to get the attach, I did it. It hurts like hell. I mean, I know that there are a lot of articles about dealing with the pain management of having your optic nerve severed and replaced with a cybernetic implant, but the people that wrote those articles clearly haven’t had it done, because the first two days is screaming… ok, the times that you aren’t on morphee is screaming. The other times you are counting cashmere bunnies that are obviously kneading your genitals. Morphee rules.

After the week or two of getting used to it. Learning the eye flickers, the directional arrow, the behind eye field, and the hundreds upon hundreds of syncing and resyncing you have to do to make sure that both eyes are aligned. (I still do some of the exercises to this day, even though I’m well aware I’m at 98% sync)

My life got awesome. I mean, the eye didn’t win the lotto or anything for me, but damn is it a convenient piece of tech. Any word spoken that isn’t in the normal common vernacular appears on the left side of your vision. With a preset motion (for me, most of mine involve touching my tongue to my teeth. It was a long time to get the motions right, but it’s pretty sexy, and most people have no idea I’m accessing.) the word pops up and you now seem smarter. If someone mentions a song, you can bookmark it to listen to later. It gives you fun facts about movies you’re watching. And with one good squeeze you can turn it off and it is just a regular old eye. Well, it isn’t, but it acts like one.

When I outfitted my unit, I picked the ISCC3. It was the best one I could get for the amount of money I had, and I might have used a little extra on the camera and skinted on the audio. I’ve never been much of an audiophile, so I didn’t feel it was that big of a loss.

There are blogs and photostreams dedicated to the clarity of the ISCC3 over all over ocular cameras. Go look them up. The green/red contrast is better than the ISCC4. The clarity is crisper than the ISCC5. The contrast destroys their top competitors. Nobody knows what they did with the 3, but there has been none since that could beat it.

The coolest feature of the ISCC is the shutter animation. I know that sounds idiotic, but it is. You see a translucent grey slip of light over your eyes, like someone just waved a piece of sunglasses in front of your face, and you hear a little ‘woosh’ noise in your ear that sounds like one of those old digital cameras with the auto-zoom. Swoop. Woosh. Grey light. Cute sound. That’s it. Every time I double tap my back left molar twice I am taking a 3 photoburst that is immediately sent to my inbox.

Swoop Woosh was the last thing I heard before I lost that first EYE-RIS.

I got mugged.. but here’s the thing. They wanted my eye. There have been some gangs that are using them as their initiation ritual or some bullshit like that. They wanted my frigging eye. They couldn’t DO anything with it. Once disconnected it isn’t like the tech is even that great on the inside of the EYE part. All the tech is in all that gooey holey mess behind it. That’s where the screaming came from. From the fact that there were sound cuffs grafted to bones in my face so I could hear stupid little noises like ‘woosh’. There are wires digging into my nerve clusters near my jaw so I can tap on a damned bicuspid and see what’s on television later tonight.

Gangs don’t change though. At gunpoint, they reached in and ripped it out. They wouldn’t even let me eject it. They wanted to see me in pain and the wires and nerves on fire as biofeedback shot through my entire head. I swear, the scream that came out of me with my hands on my ears to try and block the high pitched squealing and the pain down through my mouth, made the one that came after the original installation sound like a babies whimper. There were people on the scene in seconds trying to comfort me, but I couldn’t hear them over my own screaming and the wooping rushing highpitched wail that was reverberating through my bone into my eardrum. (A flaw they apparently have fixed in more recent installations… thanks assholes.)

So that was my first year with the EYE-RIS. Learn it. Love it. Lose it.

I spent the next 3 months in intensive rehabilitation while trying to keep my job. I mean, they were really supportive, but I was getting hit with headaches and constant itches and phantom feelings in the hideous socket that remained. It came as a major surprise for me though when they ran the drive for me. That’s really where you are allowed to go ‘Oh poor him..’ because these dozens of people that I work with, and the community pod that I live in all kind of banded together and got enough for me to get a new eye — which was more expensive because first they had to gut everything that was broken, which was more or less everything. They were able to fix some bits here and there, but those monsters ripped the eye and then pulled at the core wire. The nerve bundle. They destroyed the side of my face and made me look like some old cybernetic monster from a science fiction movie.

Long story short, I got the new eye.

I was back to the road of recovery.

I went and got another ICSS3.

That’s when I noticed it.

The ‘Swoop Woosh’ was wrong.

It was no longer ‘Swoop’. It was ‘Swoooop’. You get it?

The data transfer to my inbox also took an extra second. I know because after noticing it more and more I installed a transfer widget in my peripheral and would keep an eye on it regularly after I took a photoburst. Is it a second more? Half a second? I don’t know, I never measured it with the first eye, but it definitely is a little longer and a little slower. I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled every piece of software in my entire face, but that ‘Swoooop’ is too long. The brief blink of sunglasses over my phototaking eye is too long. I know it is.

You are surely asking what I think this means, right? I’m pretty sure it means my photos are going somewhere else. Not sure whether it is all of them or just one of them. I’ve sat in front of my tablet and scanned and worked on where all my pictures are. I’ve tried giving them unique signatures in the file so I can go look for them on the net, but if they’re going to someone else’s private inbox and remaining there, they would never be found again unless someone puts one of them out there online.

That brings me to my last, and maybe only realistic piece of evidence. After those scumfucks ripped out my eye, I took a burst. It was the last burst, like I said.

When the police said they caught the guy who did it… they said they used my evidence.

What evidence, I asked.

The last picture I took.

Well how the hell would you have a copy of the last picture I took since I never gave it to you, Officer Krupkey? Who the hell gave you access to my private database? He had no answer. One of my doctors tried to tell me that I happily offered it up, but I don’t remember any of that. All I remember is that disgusting guy who dug his fingers into my eyesocket and ripped a piece of me away and now the only thing I ever really earned for myself in this world. This stupid vanity item that I wanted more than anything has been tainted and is sending off images to god knows fucking where.

I’m dictating this to my EYE-RIS. I hope you’re listening. I hope you realize that you won. You clearly wanted me to hate this thing and now I do. I can’t stand it. I can’t stand that it’s in my eye or that it is forever tainted with information that is someone else’s. It’s no longer mine. It’s yours. I can’t even get rid of it.. I was told the shock just might fucking kill me, or maybe just render me blind.

CAN YOU HEAR ME!

[End transmission]