R.J.G.

Got my implants the other day. Couldn’t fucking believe it when the day finally arrived. I could barely sleep the night before. Felt like Christmas.

What model? Fitz Oh-Twos. What else? I saved all year for them. Besides, you’ve seen the ads. It’s true. Show me a pair of RH Blacks that’ll do glare reduction like Fitzes can. They shit all over even the top shelf Vederes. Fitzes have better multitasking, sharper image quality, colour bloom. And besides, no one else does the real time facial overlays like them. Not even close.

Yeah, no shit that’s why I got em. Why else?

Nah. Jesus, man you’re not that harsh on the eyes.

Val? Are you kidding? She’s, I mean, she would… Look man. You shouldn’t say shit like that. Learned that the hard way. I…

Look, I think that was my last one, reckon I could bum a…

Cheers.

Yeah, cheers.

…

Nah didn’t hurt. Painless. I was shit-scared though, I’ll be honest. Shit-scared. They put you in the chair and—well, it’s just like everyone else says. It was fine. You pick the spot for the input and then they put you under. You blink and it’s over, right? Except it’s not even a blink. You close your eyes and then you’re out. Then you’re awake and you open your eyes, but you don’t see. Can’t. It’s strange, right? Waking up without sight. It was being able to hear all of a sudden, feeling the touch of one of the technicians just on my wrist. Real gentle. They’re trained in how to do it; I think a lot of people freak. Like, really freak. I dunno.

They must sedate you—I don’t know how I didn’t freak myself. I mean, waking up blind like that the first thought is going to be that they’ve botched it—that I was blind for life. Only reason I didn’t freak is because the first thing I heard, right as I was regaining consciousness, was that the implant was a success. Everything went perfectly, there were no hiccoughs, yada, yada, yada. It was okay that I couldn’t see anything—that’s what she said. You’re not supposed to be seeing anything yet. Let me know if you can see.

And then the calibration—I mean, you know how it is right? You’ve got that one in your gut, you’ve heard Joanie bitch about her Aurals and how that went.

Some colours, some flashes of white. And then, the technician, she says, she’s gonna switch them on properly and that I’ll be able to see.

Is it different? My god. Is it different? It’s insanity is what it is. You never really think about it, but your eyes are nowhere near as high-def as you might think they are. Even the shittiest, cheapest displays you can get have a resolution that’s two thousand times that of what the base-model fluid and flesh human eye can see. I could see the pores on the technician at the back of the fucking room. The end of the hallway, which was like from here to that fucking streetlamp, was as crisp as anything and I could see a greasy fingerprint stuck to the plaster. It was a genuine overload.

And then she turned it down, like way down. Like way down. Told me that this was what my eyes were like before and that I should keep it like that for the rest of the day and slowly work my way up if I so desired.

Nah, actually. It just so happens that I don’t so desire. I’ve gone up a bit since then. Like that sign over there? Can you read it? Yeah, didn’t think so. Says ‘Permit application for sublease.’ Want the permit application number? Can read that too. But I won’t go any further than this. Things look better when you can’t see them properly. People especially. The human body tries to keep secrets and it should stay that way. I’m not a voyeur. Things shouldn’t be perfect, and they certainly aren’t when it’s so easy to see all the imperfections.

Oh, yeah, look. Val, I mean…

Well, I mean, she knew I was getting them, right? She walked me out of the clinic.

I mean, what the fuck did she expect, right? She knew I was getting the Fitzes for fuck’s sake. She knew why. She should’ve.

…

So, I get home. I was blinking the whole walk. Looking at my reflection and the horizon, staring into the sun to test the glare reduction like an idiot.

After that, it was pretty much all reading. They give you a manual for them—took like ten minutes to download the thing it was so fucking big. It’s got everything man, and I mean it. It’s like they’re tryna cover their asses or something. All this bullshit.

But, the first section I go to? Real-time overlays. What’s the corny brand name they have for it? Masqing™? Is that it? After a bit, I’m thinking I’ve got a hang of it and I’m thinking that I might as well try it out because there’s one part of the manual that I’ve deliberated over and memorised and, honestly, fucking drooled over.

The imported facemaps. Of course it is! Ha ha! You know exactly what I’m thinking about! Of course! What else? What other fucking reason did I shell out all this cash for, huh? So go ahead then. Guess the first face I downloaded.

…

Yeah, you got it. That’s the one. Ha! So, with knowing well enough how to get to the dodgier places, I find some bootleg site that has her and half a million other, ahem, actresses on it and I snatch hers. Completely free, very likely unofficial.

Put it on a SOM chip and just like that, right into the input. Took me till way late into the night but I finally get it working, working like a fucking dream.

And then Val walks in to check on me. Except, it’s not Val I’m looking at. It’s Sonara Dusk. Sonara Dusk in the flesh here before me. They call it a facial overlay, right? That’s the technical term. I guess it just got grandfathered in from when all they could do was the face. Even Masq™ seems like it’s selling itself short. This thing is full body.

You know Val. She’s slim, she’s tall. But she’s kinda sickly looking sometimes and by God she doesn’t have what Sonara Dusk has. But all of a sudden, she did. The waist on Val, man. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

Val asks me how I’m going—and I realised that I need to save up for a pair of Aurals like Joanie did, because it was almost ruined, yanno? Val didn’t sound at all like she looked—like she was putting on a fucking voice.

But I was quick. I was like a man possessed. I jumped up and I grabbed Val and I pulled her close, squeezing her ass, seeing it spill over between my fingers. And I was all over her instantly. Dark lips on mine, right from the get-go.

And I guess I hadn’t been that passionate in a while, right? It’s hard to keep going like that after however many years. It’s not that you get sick of her, it’s just that it becomes ordinary. But it was pretty out of the fucking ordinary to fuck Sonara Dusk. And I guess it took Val by surprise and she liked it. She liked the passion, you know. Maybe she thought it had gone. Maybe she thought this was a one off and that if she didn’t respond properly, she’d miss it. It was like she’d glimpsed the winning lottery numbers in a dream and then woken up, had to frantically find a pen to scribble it down before it left her for good.

And because Sonara Dusk is kissing me back, because Sonara Dusk is lifting up her thigh for me to hold and motioning me towards the bed, because Sonara Dusk is taking off her top and beneath it she looks just like she always does, I’m freaking too. We’re feeding off each other like that. Our hearts are in a race to see which can beat faster.

She’s wondering where this came from. Wondering who this guy is, right? Who can fuck like that out of nowhere? And anytime Val goes to speak, I’m quicker. I’m anticipating exactly what she wants so that she doesn’t have to say it, kissing her before she can get a word in, making her yelp mid-sentence, pushing her face into the pillow, into my neck.

It’s the best sex of my life. When it’s over and we roll off each other, I don’t turn it off. Sonara’s still next to me. And it’s Sonara that I hold all through the night and fall asleep with and when I wake up, the Oh-Two’s don’t skip a fucking beat. There’s not a second that it’s Val. Not one.

…

Yeah. Yeah, no she did.

…

Don’t know, actually. They do have a tell built in. For legal reasons, I guess. The pupils contract quite a bit. Apparently, the irises go a shade lighter, but I can’t tell—there’s nothing in the documentation about it, not that I found anyway. Maybe she saw what I had been downloading a couple hours before. Couldn’t have been the SOM chip—I’d kept it in all that time. Maybe I’d called her Sonara like an idiot. God, that’d be a fucking stupid way for it to happen. Like a sitcom. Like it was scripted and fake.

Yeah, she was pissed, man. Pissed isn’t the word, really. Kicked me out of the apartment, screaming. I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. Don’t know if it would have helped. Might have made it worse. Screaming man, like full on fucking screaming her lungs out.

Ah, man. Jesus. Everything dropped out of me.

Felt like I had cheated on her. Worse than that. Like I’d… I mean, not like raped, but… and not just her… yanno, Sonara Dusk too was what she said. Big words being thrown around, I…

I mean, her eyes were puffy, swollen and she was choking on her sobs. Tears down her face. The Masqing™ can cope with tears, yanno. What could I fucking do, man?

I didn’t push her to let me back in. If she needed space… well, I needed to get drunk. It wasn’t till I got to the bar and Sonara was there serving me in this strange masculine voice that I spat the chip out. Jesus that was a shock. Came back later that night and she was fucking gone. Outta sight. Won’t answer her phone, try to call her at work and get disconnected. All her shit’s still at mine. Ours. Maybe she’ll be cleaning it out while I’m here. Maybe she’ll be back home tonight and we’ll talk it out. I dunno.

I hope.

…

Yeah, man.

…

Yeah, shit. You’re right. Better get back. Jesus. You really think so?

---

R.J.G. is an unpublished writer living in Victoria.

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