Not Alone

by Frederic Martin

“So you’re saying that we can only hear really low vox tones through this, but it can still capture the infrared light?”

  “I know it seems complicated, but basically, yes that is correct. Our eyes glow, but they change brightness like your vocal cords change sound pressure to make sound. That’s what our eyes can detect—the very subtle high-frequency changes in light. That is what was lost in almost everyone else around us—the ability to detect and process those subtle changes.”

  “But why would people keep the ability to chiss but not hear it?” asked Will.

  “That’s a very good question, and I don’t know the answer, just like I don’t know the answer to a lot of things. But I do know this: it is very easy to make sounds, however, hearing is a much more difficult proposition. Vocal cords are very simple organs, but ears are enormously more complex and delicate. I think the same goes for vox. It is easy to create light—just like a firefly or deep-sea fishes, but detecting light and processing it into images or sound is a very complex process. Your eyes are probably the most amazing part of your body, in terms of advanced sensing biotechnology. If you did not use your eyes, then your body would probably put its energy into better things rather than maintain a complex organ that is useless, just as deep-sea fishes still have eyes, but have lost the ability to see. They don’t need their eyes in the pitch blackness of the ocean floor.”

  “So you are saying that people still need their eyes for vision, but they don’t need them for vox anymore, so their eyes have evolved to be just vision, and the vox part has just atrophied into glowing, but not listening? Sort of like an appendix?” asked Will.

  His dad just stared at him. “Wow, son, that was amazing. You hit the nail on the head. I couldn’t have put it better myself.”

  Will felt himself blush. The technology was starting to make sense to him now, though. “Dad, can non-vox discover us with this camera? Don’t they use night vision cameras for surveillance?”

  “I thought about that. I imagine they could, but I think they would mistake it for something else. You know what ‘red-eye’ is in photography, right? It’s when the camera’s flash illuminates your retina because of its close proximity to the camera lens.”

  “Sure, but red-eye happens to everyone, not just us, right?”

  “True. The flash illuminates the retina of the eye, and the eye is focused on the camera, so the camera receives a magnified image of the retina of your eye. I think if anyone does see us in a surveillance camera, they would just assume it was some sort of red-eye effect. Fortunately, there is no camera that I know of that is designed to pick up modulated infrared light and amplify it into sound. Just like this camera, there wouldn’t be enough information there for them to decode it into anything.”

  His dad went into deep thought again, which was fine with Will. He was starting to find it hard to follow what his dad was saying. But he was starting to go into deep thought, too, and he had an idea.

  “Dad, can I borrow this camera sometime, just to see what it can do? It would be cool to just see what infrared light there is around us.” Will wasn’t very hopeful. The camera looked expensive, and his dad had just gotten it and was probably anxious to start experimenting with it himself. So he was surprised when his dad was actually agreeable.

  “Why not? Sharing a discovery is part of the fun. But take pictures of interesting things you see with it. That is part of research, collecting interesting things you might want to study later. Remember, we are still looking for sources of infrared light. And I don’t have to tell you to take good care of it. Just make sure it comes back to the lab in the morning in good condition.” “Use, don’t abuse the privilege!”

  Platitudes, platitudes. That was a Latin word Will was overly familiar with, but he was ecstatic about being able to borrow the night vision camera. And he was even more excited to see what Blue’s reaction would be.

  17

  Field Discoveries

  As soon as he and his dad got back from work, Will slipped down the block and put up his signal. He and Blue had worked out a system so they didn’t have to pass notes or call and risk giving away their secret meetings. Will would jam an old plastic Smurf doll in the crotch of a tree across the street from the O’Days where it couldn’t be seen from the street but could be seen from Blue’s window. Blue would pick it up and bring it back to him at their rendezvous. Blue’s signal was a little plaster garden gnome in the yard. She would turn it so it was facing sideways when viewed from the sidewalk whenever she wanted to meet. She would turn it back after their rendezvous.

  He reached their rendezvous tree a little early and hoped she showed up, given the short notice. They didn’t usually do back-to-back nights but tired as he was, he was amped up about the IR camera and figured she would get amped up about it, too. He didn’t have to wait for more than a minute before a Smurf flew out of the dark and plopped on the ground at his feet. Blue materialized out of the dark like she usually did but there was something wrong about it. She didn’t glide in and vox “Hey” like she usually did. Instead, she crept up to him slowly, staring at him warily, and then sat down a good two arm lengths away. She didn’t say or vox a single thing. It was exactly as if she were approaching a wild animal she wasn’t sure would bite or not. Will wasn’t quite sure what to say, so he just said what he usually said.

  “Hey.”

  She didn’t reply. She just kept staring at him. He felt off balance. Then he remembered why they were here. “Uh . . . Hey,” he began again. “Uh, I wasn’t sure you would get the Smurf.” He paused to see her reaction. It was kind of a joke between them and she would usually reply with a sardonic grin and, “ba-dum-dum-dah,” but tonight her face remained motionless in stony silence. There wasn’t much else he could do except keep going. “I know it’s risky to meet again so soon, but my dad got this infrared camera for his lab. I really thought you’d like to check it out. You won’t believe what you can see with this thing.” He held up the camera for her to see. He felt like he was coaxing a stray dog to befriend him by holding out a treat. She cautiously scooted close enough so she could take it from him, but then she scooted right back.

  “The controls are on the side.” He stepped over to her and reached out to the camera. “I’ll turn it on and then you can look through the eyepiece. The focus is right here.” She stiffened as he reached out, but she let him work the switch on the side of the camera. Her movements, her attitude, everything was screaming that something had happened and he had no clue to what it was. Was it him? Was it that tension from last night?

  Blue examined the camera. She was still dead quiet, but appeared to relax as she turned the camera all around, studying its features with interest. She put the camera up to her face and started looking around her. Then she turned it towards Will’s face. She started fiddling with the focus and leaned forward and back. He felt like he was on an examining table. Then she spoke for the first time that night. Her voice was flat and expressionless, but edged with a tinge of curiosity.

  “Have you actually looked at vox eyes with this?” Blue asked out loud. With the camera held up to her face, she looked like a cyborg.

  “Yeah, I looked at my dad’s eyes while he voxed,” replied Will. “Are you ready? I’ll vox something . . .”

  “No, wait! That’s not what I meant. I meant your iris. Just keep looking at me with your eyes as wide as you can.” There was a little excitement of discovery in her voice.

  “What is it you see?” asked Will.

  Blue didn’t answer right away. She was concentrating on something. Finally, she voxed, “Here, see for yourself,” and she handed him the camera. “Only don’t touch the controls and stay about as far away as we are now. I have it zoomed in and focused as close as it will go.” Blue opened her eyes wide and looked at Will as he put the camera up to his eye.

  For a second he fiddled with getting her eyes in view. Then he took a good look. What he saw caused him to take in a sharp breath. Her iris was highlighted by a very
thin ring that surrounded it with a very faint luminescence. The iris itself had a deep, fibrous texture to it, and the luminous ring provided just enough illumination to give it a startling three-dimensional look.

  “Whoa.” That was all his brain came up with. Whoa. He lowered the camera. “Do you think everyone’s eyes look like that or just ours?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never used a camera like this before.” She looked thoughtful for a moment. “Let me see your eyes when you vox.”

  Will handed the camera back. She took it and held it up to her eye and Will looked straight at the lens and voxed low and slow, “Tempus fugit.” She gasped. Will laughed.

  “Again!” she said emphatically.

  “Carpe diem! Waste not a moment! Use don’t abuse! When the going gets weird, the weird get going!” Will stopped and said, “Should I go on?”

  Blue lowered the camera, her mouth open in amazement. “I can’t believe it . . .” She sat there in silence looking not at him, but at something far far away.

  Will broke the silence, “It’s amazing, isn’t it? I mean you can see it—what our eyes are doing.”

  “It’s real,” voxed Blue. “I mean it’s not magic or telepathy or mental illness. It’s a real thing, just like having blue eyes instead of brown eyes, or dark hair instead of blonde.”

  “Or having a tail or wings or gills. You just can’t see it,” voxed Will. “At least not without this camera. There might be animals that can, though. My dad said there are lots of different eyes, like a fly’s eyes or a bird’s eyes or fox eyes. They all have different types of rods and cones and tapetum.”

  “What’s tapetum?” asked Blue.

  “It’s, like, a special lining in the eye. That’s what we’re studying now in Dad’s lab. He thinks we have a tapetum that lets us vox. That’s what you see . . . our tapetum glowing. He calls it lucet a retina which means ‘light from the retina.’” replied Will.

  “But normal people chiss, so they must have this . . . tapetum . . . or whatever . . . like ours. So why can’t they hear vox?”

  “That’s the rods and cones. The rods and cones are cells in your retina that can detect color and light. He’s pretty sure that we have different cones that lets us detect the glowing of our tapetum.”

  Blue had moved closer to Will, his wild animal aura apparently wearing off. She was acting more like she had the past few weeks, as if the weird start to the evening had never happened.

  “What about when we’re not looking right at each other?” voxed Blue.

  “You mean can the camera see us at an angle?”

  She nodded, then stood up and pointed the camera at him. “Stand up and turn around slowly while you’re voxing.”

  They discovered that they didn’t have to be looking directly at the camera in order for it to detect the glow of their eyes. They could still see it even when they looked to either side of the camera, though it was fainter.

  “So that must be why we don’t have to be looking right at each other in order to pick up vox. It’s like our whole retina is glowing,” voxed Will

  “Yeah, but what about when we’re not looking at each other at all?” voxed Blue.

  “You mean reflections?”

  “Yeah. If we can hear reflected vox, this camera should be able to see it.” Blue looked around searching for something and then said, “There.” She pointed to a park trash can about ten feet away.

  Will looked where she was pointing and then heard, “Can you hear me?”

  He voxed back, looking at the trash can, “Yeah. Can you hear me?”

  She didn’t answer. She just held the night vision camera up to her face and said, “Okay, now do it again.”

  He did his signature “click, click, click.”

  “I could see that!” she said, without lowering the camera. “Do it again but say something different.”

  Will recited, “On the shores of Gitche Gumee, Of the shining Big-Sea-Water . . .”

  Blue lowered the camera and looked at Will. “So why is it garbled? It sounds like you are underwater.”

  “My dad says it’s the camera – it chops vox all up” He held out his hand for the camera. She gave it to him and he pointed it at the trash can. “My turn.”

  He looked through the camera and then heard the strangest thing in his head. It was like folk music coming from a bad radio connection, like some sort of static-y techno-pop. “What the . . . are you singing?” He lowered the camera and stared at her. The static caused by the camera was gone, and what played in his head was clear and amazing, “. . . So, we'll go no more a roving, so late into the night . . .” It was an almost perfect imitation of a famous old folk singer. Of all the things that had happened over the last 24 hours, this had to be about the most astonishing.

  “Don’t tell me you’ve never done that,” she voxed. “Sing, that is.”

  “Well yeah, but not like that! Where’d you learn to do that?” He immediately regretted it as soon as he said it. Her face went dead. Dammit, Woods, why do you keep doing that, he thought. He was waiting for her to stand up and stalk away again like she did last night.

  She didn’t. She had heard him, he could tell. But then she seemed to shake it off.

  “We ought to be able to see chiss with this.” She nodded toward the camera.

  Will raised an eyebrow. “There’s probably some couples down in the park on a night like tonight,” he replied. As Will watched for her response, a buzz of excitement crept up his spine because her face had taken on that same look that first tickled the latent adventure gene inside him. It was her dark hair hanging loosely about her clean features, her mouth tweaked up into that slight half-grin with just a hint of a dimple, and her eyes peering up from under a brow that was pinched down in a devilish way that signaled that something interesting was about to happen.

  Without another word, they slid off silently in tandem down to the park. They went to the spot where they knew couples liked to hang out at this time of night. The first couple they spotted turned out to be a waste of time. Their eyes were closed and their faces were suction-cupped together and it looked like it would be a while before they would be unstuck. Will and Blue moved on to another favored spot and discovered a couple that was just sitting and talking quietly.

  They found a good spot behind a bush and peered at the couple. Will had a good view of the girl’s eyes and he picked up some whispers of chiss. What he heard instantly turned his ears blazing. He heard a little gasp and looked over at Blue who had clapped her hand over her mouth. She clearly picked it up, too. They looked at each other uneasily.

  “Well, she sure is a leaker,” Will voxed.

  Blue looked like she was going to choke. “Stop it! I’m going to lose it if you say anything more! Use the camera!”

  He put the camera up to his eye. He could see the girl’s eyes glow ever so slightly, but couldn’t make out the chiss through the camera. What came through was just too weak and chopped up.

  “I saw the girls eyes. They had a faint glow, but nothing like us. Take a look.”

  Blue shook her head.

  “Don’t worry, I couldn’t make out her chiss, the camera chops it up too much.”

  Blue took the camera and pointed it at the couple, but just as she did, their mouths docked and their eyes disappeared.

  “Damn I just saw them for a second. I saw a little glow but didn’t make out anything.” voxed Blue. “How can we hear anything at all from them? I could barely make out any glow.”

  “My dad said that eyes can see a single photon—the smallest amount of light possible.”

  “A single photon? But how bright is a single photon?”

  “Umm, I’m not actually sure. Not very, though. Probably like the faintest star you can see.”

  They both sat thoughtfully for a while. The fatigue from the previous late night seemed to have melted away. Will didn’t feel like going back just yet. He wondered what else they could try with the camera.

/>   “I wonder if this can see security cameras,” voxed Will.

  “Security cameras give off infrared light?” she asked.

  “Not exactly. Most security cameras use an IR illuminator.”

  “IR illuminator?”

  “Yeah. It’s like an infrared flashlight. This camera has one, too.”

  He flicked the switch for the illuminator but had to double check because it wasn’t obvious by just looking at it that the illuminator was actually on. He handed the camera to Blue.

  Blue put the camera up to her eye and after a moment whispered, “Wow, the illuminator really lights things up.” She lowered the camera again. “No one would notice our eyes or reflections with this thing on, it’s too bright.”

  Will tried out the camera with the illuminator on. “Yeah, this is pretty amazing. Might make stalking a lot easier, except you can only see a narrow spot.”

  “But you can take pictures and videos with this thing, right?” voxed Blue. Her voice had a sudden intensity to it.

  “Yeah . . . and?” voxed Will.

  “That seems pretty useful, that’s all,” she replied.

  “Useful for what?” asked Will.

  Blue hesitated, and then said, “Nothing.” She moved away from him and that weird vibe from the beginning of the evening came back. Will had a sense that she was retreating back into that tight, impenetrable private world of hers. She was silent for a long time. When she finally replied, it was with a flat, business-like tone.

  “I need to borrow the camera,” she voxed.

  Will was floored. “Blue, this isn’t something you can just borrow. I was lucky my dad even let me bring it home for one night!”

  “I need to borrow it,” she said again.

  “What for?”

  She didn’t answer, she just gave him that wary stare.

  “That’s a pretty big favor to ask,” he voxed.

  Blue just kept looking at him.

  Will shook his head, partly in frustration and partly in admiration of how single-minded she became when she lapsed into one of these moods. “Alright, I will ask my dad if you can borrow it sometime, but I don’t expect he’ll say yes.”