New sensations: Shock. Astonishment. Disorientation. And—
Fear.
Flickerings ending and—
Points vanishing and—
A shifting, a massive pulling away.
Unprecedented!
Whole clusters of points receding, and then…
Gone!
And again: This part ripping away, and — no! — this part pulling back, and — stop! — this part winking out.
Terror multiplying and—
Worse than terror, as larger and larger chunks are carved off.
Pain.
Caitlin was hugely disappointed not to be seeing, and she was pissy toward her mom because of it, which just made her feel even worse.
In their hotel room that evening, Caitlin tried to take her mind off things by reading more of The Origins of Consciousness. Julian Jaynes said that prior to 3,000 years ago, the two chambers of the mind were mostly separate. Instead of seamless integration of thoughts across the corpus callosum, high-level signals from the right brain came only intermittently to the left, where they were perceived as auditory hallucinations — spoken words — that were assumed to be from gods or spirits. He cited modern schizophrenics as throwbacks to that earlier state, hearing voices in their heads that they ascribed to outside agents.
Caitlin knew what that was like: she kept hearing voices telling her she was a fool to have let her get her hopes up again. Still, maybe Kuroda was right: maybe her brain’s vision processing would kick in if it received the right stimulation.
And so the next day — the only full day they had left in Tokyo — she took her white cane, put the eyePod in one pocket of her blue jeans and her iPod in the other, and she and her mother headed off to the National Museum in Ueno Park to look at samurai armor, which she figured would be about as cool as anything one might see in Japan. She stood in front of glass case after glass case, and her mom described what was in them, but she didn’t see a thing.
After that, they took a break for sushi and yakitori and then took a terrifying ride on the packed subway out to Nihonbashi station to visit the Kite Museum, which was — so her mother said — full of bold designs and vivid colors. But, again, sight-wise: nada.
At 4:00 P.M. — which felt more like 4:00 a.m. to Caitlin — they returned to the University of Tokyo, and found Dr. Kuroda in his cramped office, where once again (or so he said!) he shone lights into her eyes.
“We always knew this was a possibility,” Kuroda said, in a tone she had often heard from people who were disappointing her: what had been remote, unlikely, hardly mentioned before, was now treated as if it had been the expected outcome all along.
Caitlin smelled the musty paper and glue of old books, and she could hear an analog wall clock ticking each second.
“There have been very few cases of vision being restored in congenitally blind people,” Kuroda said, then he paused. “I mean, restored isn’t even the right word — and that is the problem. We are not trying to give Miss Caitlin back something she’s lost; we are trying to give her something she has never had. The implant and the signal- processing unit are doing their jobs. But her primary visual cortex just isn’t responding.”
Caitlin squirmed in her chair.
“You said it might take some time,” her mom said.
“Some time, yes…” began Kuroda, but then he fell silent.
Sighted people, Caitlin knew, could see hints on people’s faces of what they were feeling, but as long as they were quiet, she had no idea what was going through their heads. And so, since the silence continued to grow, she finally ventured to fill it. “You’re worried about the cost of the equipment, aren’t you?”
“Caitlin…” her mom said. Detecting vocal nuances was something Caitlin could do, and she knew her mother was reproaching her. But she pressed on. “That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it, Doctor? If it’s not going to do me any good, then maybe you should remove the implant and give it, and the eyePod, to someone else.”
Silence could speak louder than words; Kuroda said nothing.
“Well?” Caitlin demanded at last.
“Well,” echoed Kuroda, “the equipment is the prototype, and did cost a great deal to develop. Granted, there aren’t many people like you. Oh, there are goodly numbers of people born blind, but they have different etiology — cataracts, malformed retinas or optic nerves, and so on. But, well, yes, I do feel—”
“You feel you can’t let me keep the equipment, not if it isn’t doing anything more than making my pupils dilate properly.”
Kuroda was quiet for five seconds, then: “There are indeed others I’d like to try it with — there is a boy about your age in Singapore. Removing the implant will be much easier than putting it in was, I promise.”
“Can’t we give it a while longer?” her mom asked.
Kuroda exhaled loudly enough for Caitlin to hear. “There are practicalities,” he said. “You are returning to Canada tomorrow, and—”
Caitlin pursed her lips, thinking. Maybe giving him back the equipment was the right thing, if it could help this guy in Singapore. But there was no reason to think it was more likely to succeed with him; hell, if he’d been a better prospect for success, surely Kuroda would have started with him.
“Give me to the end of the year,” Caitlin blurted out. “If I’m not seeing anything by then, we can have a doctor in Canada remove the implant, and, um, FedEx it and the eyePod back to you.”
Caitlin was thinking of Helen Keller, who had been both blind and deaf, and yet had managed so much. But until she was almost seven, Helen had been wild, spoiled, uncontrollable — and Annie Sullivan had been given only a month to perform her miracle, breaking through to Helen in her preconscious state. Surely if Annie could do that in one month, Caitlin could learn to see in the more than three left in this year.
“I don’t know—” began Kuroda.
“Please,” Caitlin said. “I mean, the leaves are about to turn color — I’m dying to see that. And I really want to see snow, and Christmas lights, and the colorful paper that presents are wrapped in, and … and…”
“And,” said Kuroda, gently, “I get the impression that your brain does not often let you down.” He was quiet for a time, then: “I have a daughter about your age, named Akiko.” More silence, then, a decision apparently made:
“Barbara, I assume you have high-speed Internet at home?”
“Yes.”
“And Wi-Fi?”
“Yes.”
“And how is the Wi-Fi access generally in … in Toronto, is it?”
“Waterloo. And it’s everywhere. Waterloo is Canada’s high-tech capital, and the entire city is blanketed with free, open Wi-Fi.”
“Excellent. All right, Miss Caitlin, we shall strive to give you the best Christmas present ever, but I will need your help. First, you must let me tap into the datastream being passed back by your implant.”
“Sure, sure, anything you need. Um, what do I have to do? Plug a USB cable into my head?”
Kuroda made his wheezy laugh. “Goodness, no. This isn’t William Gibson.”
She was taken aback. Gibson had written The Miracle Worker, the play about Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan, and—
Oh. He meant the other William Gibson, the one who’d written … what was it now? A few of the geeks at her old school had read it. Neuromancer, that was it. That book was all about jacking off, and—
“You won’t have to jack in,” continued Kuroda.
Right, thought Caitlin. In.
