Rescue (an Ell Donsaii story #11)

by Laurence Dahners

  Soon Ryan and Mrs. Simsworth were eagerly pointing out various objects in the room, telling her what they were and what color they were as she excitedly asked for more and more. “Oh!” Stell said, turning her head toward the door, “Are you Dr. Willoughby?”

  Ryan and Stell’s mother turned to see the ophthalmologist standing in the door of the exam room, staring at the little girl in astonishment. Then he laughed, “My first reaction was to wonder how she was seeing when she still had the bandage over her eye.”

  After Dr. Willoughby had finished removing the bandage and examining Stell’s eye, he seemed to be as excited as they were to have participated in giving the little girl her sight back. “We should wait a few months before doing the other eye so we can be sure nothing goes wrong with this one.”

  The others agreed, though it frustrated Stell who wanted to go ahead with the second surgery immediately.

  Willoughby tilted his head as he watched Stell using her new sight.

  “It’d be nice if somehow the cameras on her headband could be made to point the same direction her eyes are pointing. Then she wouldn’t have to turn her head toward everything she wants to look at.”

  Ryan reached into a case he’d been carrying, “Well, I think we have a solution for that too.” He pulled out a headband with many more cameras on the front of it than the standard. “This headset has two tiny cameras that track the direction Stell points her eyes. It also has enough cameras pointing outward from the headband that its high end AI can feed her retina pictures from whichever direction her eyes are pointing.”

  “Oh!” Mrs. Simsworth exclaimed, “That AI and headband combo sounds very expensive. Even though Stell’s making some money from her singing, we still wouldn’t be able to afford what you’re talking about.”

  Ryan touched her arm, “Don’t worry Mrs. Simsworth. Ell Donsaii funds Quantum Biomed well enough so that we’re able to do these kinds of things for free.”

  Stell, over looking at herself in the mirror, turned and said, “Is President Stockton ever going to stop picking on Ms. Donsaii so she can come back from wherever she’s gone to and start helping people again?”

  Ryan shrugged, then realizing that Stell might not know what a shrug was, and really wasn’t looking his way anyway, said, “I don’t know, but I sure hope so. Ell’s… really very sweet and kind.”

  “I think so too,” Stell said, then turned from the mirror and came over to peer at everyone else’s eyes. She frowned, “My eyes are different from yours. Yours are… black in the middle with colors around it and mine are… not black.”

  “Yes, Stell,” Dr. Willoughby said, “there is a clear part in the middle of the eye called the cornea. It’s over the iris which is the colored ring. The black area in the center of the iris is called the pupil. But, remember your cornea has something wrong with it so that it’s white instead of clear.”

  Stell turned to look up at her mother. Quietly and sadly, she said “Are other kids still going to make fun of me because my eyes look different even though I can see now?”

  No one knew what to say. Stell’s mother swallowed and almost whispered, “They might. Kids can be very cruel.”

  Dr. Willoughby said, “We have contacts that you could try. They have a colored iris built into them for people who want to have eyes that are a different color. Do you want me to fit you with some?”

  Stell nodded solemnly.

  A short while later Stell had been fitted with a pair of light blue colored contacts to match her mother’s irises and to go with her platinum hair. She looked back and forth at her face in the mirror, then at her mother. “They still look wrong, ‘cause they’re white in the center instead of black.”

  Her mother nodded and swallowed, then tried to make the best of it, “But they look better than all white.”

  Ryan said, “I’ll bet I can get the contact company to make you some colored contacts that are black in the center.”

  Stell clasped her hands together and quietly whispered, “That would be nice, thank you.”

  ***

  Viveka’s mother called at 9:30 PM. It was early morning back home in India and her mother had only been awake for a short while. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine Mama. Have they finished repairing your roof?”

  “Yes, yes,” her mother said impatiently, “they finished it days ago. Have you decided when you will be able to come home yet?”

  “No Mama, when I come home I want it to be for several weeks to make it worthwhile. I don’t think I should leave my job for weeks at a time when I’ve only been working here for such a short while.”

  On the video her mother frowned at her, “I thought your boss liked you?”

  “You’re the one who says he only wants me for sex!”

  Her mother waved down away with a dismissing motion, “Yes, yes, probably that’s all he cares about, like most men. All the more reason why he won’t complain if you need a vacation.”

  “But the other people I work with, it isn’t fair to them if I leave for a long time.”

  “Hah, they’ll get by fine without you for a few weeks.”

  Viveka I wondered uneasily if this could be true. Her coworkers and even Dr. Pace were always telling her how brilliant she was, and how important her insights were. They acted like she was indispensable, but perhaps that’s just the way people talked here in America? Or maybe they did think she was indispensable, but would quickly find out she wasn’t if she were gone long and they got by fine without her. “Uh…” Viveka said, uncertainly.

  Her mother narrowed her eyes, “Has Dr. Pace asked you out to dinner again?”

  “No Mama,” her voice almost breaking, “not since…”

  “Not since what?” her mother said suspiciously.

  “That first time, I think he wanted to…”

  “What? Have sex?”

  “No! No. He just wanted, I think, to kiss me. I pulled away, and I think it hurt his feelings.”

  “Yes, yes, first a kiss, then more and more…”

  Even though she’d been worried about the same thing, Viveka didn’t want to admit it to her mother. “I don’t think he’s that way,” she said, “I…”

  Her mother waved dismissively, “Of course you don’t think he’s ‘that way.’ You’re young and naïve. You think love is all important.”

  “You and Poppa loved each other!”

  “Yes, but we were very lucky. Most people don’t have that. Maybe you’ll be lucky too, but don’t count on it…”

  After her mother hung up, Viveka went to bed, her emotions in turmoil. She felt a tremendous attraction for Dr. Pace, and sometimes could convince herself that he felt the same way about her. Especially right after he had complimented her, which had been pretty common. But, then her mother’s cynical words would come back to her, raising doubt after doubt. Her mother had told her many times about how men used flattery to seduce, though Viveka’s impression had been that such praise typically revolved around a girl’s appearance, not her intelligence. She thought she could love Dr. Pace, if she didn’t already, but she would be heartbroken if it turned out that her mother was right. She didn’t want to be just another conquest like she’d heard had happened to others.

  Chapter Four

  Ell studied the ophthalmic contact as it sat on one of the prosthetic eyes she’d bought for her project. She squirted a little more solution on it to keep it moist. The contact had been cast out of one of the standard hydrogels that ophthalmic contacts were normally made out of. Near the periphery of the front layer of the lens lay a conducting ring with quantum entangled buckyballs on it. This ring formed a port with a curve that kept it right on the surface of the lens. The port passed light that normally would have entered the eye and instead sent it to an optical processing device akin to the one Ryan had provided for Stell. Light amplification, UV or infrared detection all occurred there. In addition, any needed heads up display information got added to the light path. Then, closer t
o the back surface of the lens, another ring of buckyballs formed a second smaller curved port. This port sent light from the processor on into the eye and through the lens to be picked up by the retina.

  Ell had been practicing wearing cosmetic contacts just to get used to them. She’d had these “active contacts,” as she thought of them, mounted on the prosthetic eyes for weeks now in an attempt to be sure that they weren’t somehow going to fail catastrophically and damage the eyes they rested on. Any time the port opened or closed it could cut any material of the hydrogel protruding through the surface of the port so she had worked hard to place the port exactly on the surface of the curve of the lens. Additionally, she had made the electronics for the port very robust to prevent accidental shutdown. Even if it did shut down, as long as the curvature was correct when it did, it wouldn’t cut anything.

  Deciding that she’d have to try them sometime, she sighed and reached out to pluck the contact off the prosthetic eye. It felt different than the contacts she’d been wearing for practice because the central portion where the ports were mounted was a little thicker and stiffer. Carrying it to a mirror she put it in her eye. She blinked a few times, getting used to its increased thickness and then started putting it through its paces.

  A few hours later Ell still felt pretty comfortable with the contacts in place. She’d put lenses in both eyes and worn them steadily. She’d worked with Allan on how to place the HUD information in her field of view. In the past she’d been able to look up at her HUD, finding certain information, like the time, in customarily specified locations on the display up beneath her eyebrows. Now, since the display floated on the front of her eyes, if she looked up, the display also moved up.

  So she couldn’t point her eye at the time anymore.

  However, she found that Allan, analyzing the image sent by the contact, could easily recognize the typical movement she’d always made to look up and to the right at the time where it was displayed on her HUD. When she looked up like she would have to check the time Allan simply displayed a clock image for her momentarily. Even better, she had been able to teach him to recognize when she was straining to see something. When he detected straining, he then auto adjusted the brightness and contrast to sharpen the image for her. She could even ask him to zoom in the image somewhat. It wasn’t like a digital zoom that made an image larger but really didn’t have any more information. Because the contact was gathering light from the entire area of her cornea rather than the smaller area that the pupil normally let light in through, the quality of the image was excellent until it had been zoomed quite a ways.

  With a little work she and Allan had been able to set it up so that, like a regular HUD, she could look around a document or picture Allan projected for her. He would initially put it up so that the document was centered in her field of view. Then, when she looked up to the upper left corner, for instance, and began reading the document, he shifted the document appropriately in her field of view. Therefore instead of the document staying centered in her field of view even though she’d moved her eye, he projected the document as if it had moved down and to the right. This actually wasn’t difficult when she was sitting still. Allan could simply project the document in the same location over her surroundings despite the fact her eyes had moved to point somewhere else. In fact, he could do this so well that it felt to her like the image stayed perfectly still in her field of view while her eyes moved around to examine or read different parts of it. After Allan had had some practice doing this, he was even able to project it correctly when she was walking around and the background was moving, though you wouldn’t normally project an opaque HUD image into the middle of your visual field while you were moving around.

  Ell headed upstairs where she found Amy in the play room they’d set up for Zage. “Hey Amelia, has the Z-man been giving you a lot of trouble this afternoon?” she asked smilingly, hoping that Amy would tell her that Zage had done something besides sit and watch nature shows today. Sure enough Zage sat, his attention fixed on a biology show. He rarely cried except to signal the need for a diaper change, a desire for food, or to let them know that one program had finished and he wanted another. He also cried if they tried to show him a repeat of a previous show. He could crawl, but rarely did. He never made any attempt to walk. If you held him up, instead of trying to stand on his feet, he just pulled them up in the air. He didn’t want to watch children’s shows which seemed mature, but he never even tried to speak any words which he should be doing by now. Ell fretted constantly about it.

  Amy shook her head, “No problems out of Zage today,” she said affectionately, “not that there ever are.” She stood and started getting her things. “He’s going to be a year old pretty soon. He’ll be starting the ‘Mother’s Morning Out’ program and spending more time around other kids. Maybe they’ll teach him to cause more trouble.”

  Ell picked Zage up, telling the show to pause. Zage also cried if he was taken away from his show when it had been left to run so that he couldn’t come back to it at the same place. “Did he play much with Billy at their play date today?”

  Amy shook her head, “He pretty much sat there watching Billy like he watches his shows. Billy crawled over and started hitting him with a little Tonka truck. Zage just pulled the truck out of Billy’s hand and held it out of his reach. It was kind of cute but didn’t really amount to ‘playing.’”

  Ell shook her head, “It’s pretty sad that I’m worried he doesn’t cause more trouble isn’t it? I’d rather be worried because he hit or bit Billy over the truck incident. Better that, than worrying because he doesn’t really play at all.”

  Amy shrugged, “Yeah. It’s hard to know what to make of his development.”

  “See you tomorrow,” Ell said as she put Zage on her hip and headed for Shan’s study.

  They found Shan sitting in front of his big wall screen, staring at a plethora of symbols and rubbing his temples in frustration. “Hey Hubby, what’s got you down?”

  “Arghh! Just not making any progress. It turns out that getting my PhD didn’t make me any smarter than I used to be.” He muttered, “Still dumb as a post in fact.”

  Ell sat Zane down on the couch and snuggled up next to Shan, throwing her arms around him, “Well I think you’re plenty smart. You want me to look at what you’re doing? See if I have any ideas?”

  “No!” He waved his hands in mock terror, “I want to figure this one out myself so I don’t feel like everything I’ve ever accomplished needed you to make it work.”

  Ell laughed, “Finding the changes at large distances and graphing the allotropes were all you, both of them!” She smiled at him wistfully, “I think we make a good team.” She stood back up, “But right now, it’s quittin’ time. Amelia’s put Zage back in our charge. How about you watch him while I cook us some dinner?”

  Shan looked at her curiously, “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather I cooked dinner and you watched Zage?”

  Ell frowned at him, “Are you casting aspersions on my cooking?”

  Shan put his hands up in mock surrender, “No! No, I’ll try to eat whatever you make, really I will!”

  “You’d better, man o’ mine!” Ell said, poking him with a finger, then grinning, “but actually you’ve seen through my underhanded ploy to try to get you to cook dinner while I play with the Z-man.”

  Getting up he said, “It’s a deal, if you guys will come talk to me in the kitchen while I’m slaving away.” He lifted his chin at her curiously, “Why aren’t you wearing your headset?”

  As they walked into the large farm style kitchen Ell grinned back over her shoulder at Shan, “I am wearing my headset.”

  Shan blinked, “What do you mean?”

  She pointed at her eyes, “Contacts with ports in them. They send incoming light to a processor that enhances it, adds my heads up display and then ports it on back to my retinas.”

  Shan’s eyes widened as he took in her meaning, “No shit?” he whispered.


  Ell nodded and he threw his arms around her and Zage, dancing them up and down and around in a little jig. Looking down at his son, he said “Your momma’s really smart, you know that?”

  Ell sat Zage on the middle of the kitchen table while Shan busied himself making fish tacos and asking about the contacts. She tried playing peek-a-boo, but as usual Zage seemed uninterested. Tickling his feet brought a grin to his face and when she impulsively picked him up and hugged him, he hugged her back, snuggling his head to hers.

  Ell wiggled a finger around in front of him. He tracked it with his eyes. She zoomed it in to tickle him which got a smile from Zage. From what she’d read he didn’t seem autistic… but he didn’t seem normal either. She put Zage on the floor, “I’m running to the bathroom so I’ve parked your son on the floor here, don’t step on him.”

  Shan grunted affirmatively.

  As Ell started across the room she noticed that the baby safety gate at the top of the stairs to the basement hadn’t fully latched. For a moment she considered leaving it open, Zage never went anywhere after all. Then she shook her head, a good mother would latch it, just in case. She walked over, latched it and went on across the room to the bathroom.

  Returning from the bathroom to the kitchen Ell looked around, then said, “What did you do with Zage?” Hiding Zage is just the kind of trick Shan would think was funny, she thought.

  Shan, stirring salsa, said, “I didn’t do anything with him.” He snorted, “Where did you last set him? That’s where you’ll find him.”

  Ell looked around the kitchen again, then stepped out into the family room, Where could he be?

  No Zage in the family room. Ell leaned down to look under the low end tables, “Shan? This isn’t funny!”

  Shan walked out into the family room, salsa bowl still in his hands, “Really? You don’t know where he is? Where did you put him?”

  “On the floor in the kitchen, behind the table, just like I told you!” Ell said, feeling a little panicked. Could someone have snuck into the house and kidnapped Zage without us seeing them? She looked in the bathroom she’d just come out of. No Zage!