“Now we’ve told you a thousand times, we don’t want nothing to do with this stinking iGlass business,” the man told me. “It’s poison for my family, and I don’t want none of it.”
My name is Randal Dean, and this is my job. I work for iGlass, a product with over 99% market penetration across the world. A product whose clear benefits, low-price point, and intuitive user interface make it literally a no-brainer to use. And as my piss poor luck would have it, my job is to talk to those “no-brainers” who refuse to wear them.
With nothing more than a thought, I switched my active HUD – the heads-up-display on my iGlass – to look up his personal information. Although the information was obviously thin, I could still see his name, age, family information (two young daughters, supposedly in the house as well), occupation (unemployed, obviously), and his abandoned iGlass social media account, untouched for the last 5 years. On his nose, instead of the virtually-identifiable iGlass device that the rest of the world wore, this man had a beaten-up pair of thick spectacles. An antique, no doubt, as they were no longer made at all. For whatever reason, this basket-case was off the grid, and it was my unpleasant responsibility to try to get him back on. Or at least give it some kind of try.
“Look here, Mr. Fletcher, I can understand that you might have some personal reservations towards the iGlass. I even empathize with your concerns.” This was a lie – I don’t understand these kooks – but you’ve got to hold up appearance. “However, it’s simply necessary for your daughters’ education to be connected now that the oldest is going to school. How can she participate in the class if she can’t actually see it?”
“That’s where your wrong, sir. My daughters can see, and it’s exactly ‘cause they won’t be wearing any iGlasses. I’ll just be home schooling them if the school’s gonna force ‘em to wear those things,” he said with demented conviction. “You know, when I was a little boy I could see fine, and then I started going to school and they gave me them things and look at me now!” he exclaimed, pointing at the old-fashioned spectacles on his nose. “I’m blind as a bat. Those things took my healthy eyes and ruined ‘em! I won’t have it no more, and I won’t have it for my kids either.”
This was an original complaint, to say the least. Usually the crazies were more of the tin-foil hat variety, ranting about the government watching them while they take a shit or make love or something along those lines. I had never heard this particular type of crazy before, so I was a little taken off-guard and didn’t have a script ready. Nodding empathetically, I quickly browsed through the script options on my HUD but found nothing relevant, so I just winged it.
“Although I can empathize with your concerns, I believe you’ll find that you’ve misunderstood the purpose of the iGlass, sir. In addition to being a highly advanced communications device, computer, and all-around technical marvel, the iGlass merely passively detects and corrects its user’s visual problems, if any. So on the contrary, it improves your vision, and that’s just one of the many hassles in life that it eliminates.”
“I know what your stinkin’ company says about it,” the man replied, waving his hand dismissively. “All I know is that in the 20th century, less than 1 in 4 were nearsighted. Now? Pfft. Every man, woman, and child has a pair of strong lenses on their eyes. Just look at you, you’re worse off than me: you probably can’t even see your nose without those thick things. I won’t have that. Not for me, and certainly not for my family, no sir.”
Right around this point, I quickly checked his vitals on my HUD, which showed the clear biometric patterns of the true believer. This man was dead-set on his path. The odds of changing his mind were clearly below acceptable levels, and so I took my leave of him, but not before leaving him two complimentary pairs of children’s iGlass, as per protocol. As I got on the cab, his wife – who also wore a pair of antique spectacles with considerable edge thickness – threw the cases back out at me as I got on the cab, yelling some type of profanities that I tried my best to ignore. These people were really something else.
**
“So you’re telling me that he didn’t want to wear them because they make his vision… worse?”
“Yep, I told you, completely crazy,” I said to the holographic image of my supervisor, an attractive woman who wore a stylish, large-framed pair of dark red tortoiseshell iGlasses, the sides of her face minified and significantly pushed in by the effect of the lenses.
“Well, that’s special, isn’t it? I want you to put some research into this, see how many of these people there are, and what strategies we can use to convince them. I’m putting you in charge of this project, Randal, so let me know what resources you need.”
So that’s how my project started. I had to come up with a report and an action plan about this new “trend” of people rejecting iGlasses as harmful to their eyesight. Over the next few weeks, I found and interviewed around a dozen different consumers, each with different but strangely convergent stories about a belief that their eyesight would get worse if they wore the iGlasses. For instance, there was a woman, an ex-doctor, who insisted that as a medical expert, she knew that her nearsightedness would get to dangerous levels if she continued to wear the iGlasses, and so switched to spectacles that gave her significantly worse vision to try to control it. Try as I might, I couldn’t understand: how could deliberately seeing worse help her improve her eyesight? Another dissenter was this teenager whose parents insisted he not wear iGlasses, as his vision was perfect. In fact, I tested him briefly and he could actually see almost as well as I did without any aid, but what sort of useless talent was that? Without iGlasses, he was just a dumb kid hopelessly behind in school with nothing to read or watch, no way of contacting friends and family, and no possibility of even landing a job. Yet the parents still insisted on not giving him iGlasses to “preserve” his vision. If it were up to me, I’d have called child protection services.
I did interview one slightly more sensible man, though. He was very very old. In fact, according to his outdated record, he was almost 150, a good thirty years above life expectancy. In his house, he worked in a room with thousands upon thousands of books. Not e-books, but honest-to-goodness paper books, which he read with an old pair of spectacles that sat oddly on the tip of his nose. He seemed straight out of a period drama, that one, but he was quite lucid. I tried to ask him about why exactly he didn’t wear iGlasses, but he wouldn’t give me a straight answer. Instead, he got up, shuffled along the dusty shelves, and got out a dusty, faded academic journal. “Take this,” he said, “and you’ll find your answer.” Then, as if addressing someone who wasn’t there, he continued: “Noel, you son-of-a…”
I tried to ask more questions, like who was Noel? Did he mean Noel Keno, the legendary creator of the iGlasses? Could he have actually known him? But he wouldn’t reply. He told me to read what he had given me instead, and that I’d find my answers there. After a few more futile questions, I thanked him and left with the books. On my way out, he said, rather cryptically:
“Remember that behind every great fortune lies a great crime. And this crime... this crime is monumental.”
Puzzled, I made my way back to the office and started poring over the old tome. I had never truly read a paper book, much less a real copy of a scientific journal, and it was difficult navigating it without any search, indexing or synthesis functions. Eventually, I found an article entitled “The Effects of Automatic Prescription Adjustment on Myopia” from more than 100 years ago which described research into iGlasses technology’s effects on myopic progression. The study lasted 5 years and found that wearers, on average, saw their myopia progress 50% faster than those in the control group. These results were staggering: could it really be true that the simple fact of wearing these smart glasses could actually worsen your eyesight over time? Could these kooks actually be onto something? And what’s worse is that on the databanks that I could access with my iGlasses, the article wasn’t there. All the other articles from that publication were, but not that one. It began to seem like that old man might actually be aware of a phenomenon that no one else had considered.
I decided to call it a day and head back home. This time, instead of playing a game, browsing the web, or generally occupying myself with all the innumerable connectivity functions of the iGlass like I normally do on my commute, I looked at my fellow commuters. On the elevator, in the street, and as they got on their cabs, all of them were engrossed in their own hyper-connected world thanks to their iGlasses. All of them of course also showed various degrees of minification in their lenses, but this was simply a fact of life. As we had learned in school, throughout human history our eyes were never truly perfect, and to achieve normal vision at all ranges required correction that we now thankfully had readily available. I couldn’t spend more than a few minutes people-watching, though, because my self-driving cab arrived almost instantly, as usual, and descended into the vast underground tunnel network that spanned the whole city. It took me less than 10 minutes to get home – the ancient concept of “traffic” also belonged to the history books.
When I got home, I decided to take my iGlasses off for the first time in ages. I truly couldn’t remember the last time I had taken them off. This was because the advanced nanotechnology inside the device allowed it to be fully customizable in shape, appearance and even prescription, such that there was never any need to take the iGlasses off. There was even a shower mode and a sleep mode in which they would mould themselves seamlessly onto your face like goggles, so as to not bother you. And so when I took them off that evening, I found myself plunged into an absolute helpless blur. Not only could I not make out anything around me, but without the familiar HUD and countless functionalities of the iGlasses, I felt like I was missing a few limbs and several senses. Still, I fought the urge to put them back on instantly and examined them close to my eyes, where I could focus. The frame style I had currently chosen was semi-rimless, a fashionable choice recently for men. The lenses themselves were obviously very powerful and would create countless white rings of reflection on the sides if I tilted them one way or another. This was a normal phenomenon that pretty much everyone had on their own iGlasses. Even fashion models and actors were selected partly based on the amount of white rings around their glasses, as these had obvious aesthetic qualities. The amount of rings in my glasses was just about the ideal for men, a fact which definitely added to my attractiveness.
While I was doing this, my girlfriend walked in and was startled by my appearance without the iGlasses. She herself was wearing a lightly cat-eyed feminine frame in pink today, which I had always liked. The number of rings on her glasses was much higher than average, which had a strong minifying effect on her eyes and her face. While other men might be turned off from this obvious “flaw,” I found that it didn’t bother me so much. Once she got over the shock of seeing me without the iGlasses, I playfully asked her to take hers off too. And so we played with each other for a while completely blind. But for those purposes, reader, I’m sure you’ll understand it wasn’t much of a handicap.
“So what came over you?” she asked as she put her cat-eye frames back on after we got out of bed. “What’s with this sudden desire to take off your iGlasses?”
I hesitated about whether or not to tell her what I had found as I too put on my iGlasses. “Oh, nothing, darling. I was just playing around, that’s all.”
For some reason, I decided to wait before telling her what I found.
**
Over the next few weeks, I busied myself with gathering more proof to either prove or disprove this phenomenon, and so I read many old books on “ophthalmology,” the ancient science of visual correction – a solved problem, really, in our day and age. It seemed as though the only optical difference between “glasses” and “iGlasses” was that glasses wouldn’t adjust automatically – you had to go see a doctor to get new ones every year or so. The device they used for measuring this was called an “auto-refractor,” which was just a large, clunky, expensive machine that would find your prescription based on how your eye refracted light, the same principle used in modern iGlasses. Although much less conveniently implemented obviously. Still, why would having the process be automated rather than manual produce different results? In other words, why did iGlasses cause more myopia than antique spectacles, if the article was to be believed? It made no sense.
I was frustrated that I couldn’t reason my way out of this one. There was no proof either in the past or now that having an accurate correction increased the progression of myopia, and so reasonably the results should be the same. So I decided to start measuring my own correction.
In the past, they used the idea of “diopters” to represent different lens powers – that is, the inverse of the focal length of a lens in meters. I had no way of knowing the power of my own lenses, and so I built my own auto-refractor out of old schematics using my 3D printer. With the machine, I first measured my own refractive error: -5.50 diopters in both eyes. Then, I measured the power of my iGlasses, and to my surprise, I found a significantly higher prescription: around -6.50 diopters for both. Even accounting for the farther focal point in the glasses as opposed to directly on my eyeball, this was a disparity of around .50 diopters! Could it be that there was a mistake in the programming which systematically over-corrected the user’s myopia, thus potentially leading to faster and faster progression?
I used the auto-refractor to test my girlfriend’s eyes and glasses, as well as those of anyone who would allow me to, and I found the same results. So in the next few days, I started writing my report, quite excited about my results. This was a big discovery: a flaw in our system! I would definitely be getting a promotion for finding this out.
One day, while writing the report at work using the sophisticated brainwave-controlled text editor on my iGlass, I received a high-priority message from my boss.
“Someone high-up from the executive office wants to talk to you, Randal. You know what that means. Be there. Now.”
Executive? Me? I was startled, of course, but then again I told myself my report *was* actually extremely important and did deserve this kind of attention. They’d definitely be showering me with praise any minute now.
I quickly made my way to the designated office on the highest level of our building, and was met by an extremely attractive secretary who had significantly higher minification than most in her large, rectangular-shaped frames. This was especially rare women so attractive. Usually, girls like that would get refractive surgery to get within a more acceptable and flattering range.
“Mr. Dean? He’s expecting you. Go on in,” she said, with an incredible smile. She was just about the most gorgeous woman I had ever seen, let alone among secretaries!
Inside the palatial executive office proper sat an unexpectedly old man. He himself must also have been close to 150, but I couldn’t scan him. It wasn’t that he had no profile – of course he would, he was an executive for iGlass – but it was more likely that he had restricted access to scanning.
“Ahhhh, so you’re Randal. Please, sit down. Would you like a drink?” he said, with the slow patience that centenarians often had. I accepted graciously, of course. “What did you think of Sally?” he asked.
“Sally?” I replied nervously. A slight pause lingered before I connected the dots. “Oh, your secretary. Yes, she was quite professional,” I offered in as neutral a tone as I could muster.
“Stunning, really. A thing of pure, absolute beauty,” he said wistfully. “Do you know, young man, back in my day, a woman like that would never have been caught dead with any sort of corrective eyewear.”
“Is that so?” I offered meekly. Where was this rich old man going with this? I was definitely nervous now.
“Yes, yes,” he paused, seemingly staring off into the past as my palms gathered more and more moisture. “That all changed when I created the iGlass, you know? Within a couple of generations, corrective eyewear went from being stigmatized to being absolutely normalized, and we all can now live with this technological marvel in front of our eyes at all times, free of any stigma.”
With this, the realization grew on me that the man I was talking to was none other than the fabled Noel Keno, the extremely secretive multi-trillionaire developer of the iGlass. So secretive, in fact, that whether he was alive or dead was an open question for the public.
“Without my invention, who knows what would have happened to eyewear? And our little Sally would not have the precious, glimmering jewels she now wears 24/7. Isn’t it absolutely wonderful?”
“Y-yes,” I stammered. “It is an incredible product, Mr. Keno.”
An overly long pause occurred as the old man took a deliberate sip from his whiskey, which I tried to mimic awkwardly.
“I cannot lie, Randal. I do so very much enjoy to see the whole world’s population with moderate to high levels of myopic correction. I would even say it is my life’s greatest achievement, far more valuable to me than the vast wealth or humanitarian benefits,” his speaking pace accelerated now, and his voice intensified. “You see, even though I am the famed Noel Keno, I am fundamentally selfish, as you’ve recently stumbled upon. I am single-handedly responsible for the fact that you and everyone you know wear strong myopic correction from an extremely early age. And all it took was a few lines of code and some targeted ad campaigns.”
I didn’t even attempt to say anything during this next pause, dumbstruck as I was. I felt like the helpless hero in a cheesy action film, in the climax where the villain makes his “bad-guy speech.”
“And now, Randal, you’ve figured it out. Congratulations. You’re probably thinking you can go to the press with this information, cause a huge scandal, inform the public and so forth, yes?”
That was definitely what any rational person would be considering, of course, but obviously, with Noel Keno himself in front of me, I couldn’t say that. So I hurriedly said: “No, no, of course not, sir. I am loyal to the company above all else, sir.”
“Oh please, spare me. I wouldn’t hold it against you, it’s what any reasonable person would do with such information, is it not? You probably think I am going to stop you somehow, but I won’t. You can do whatever you want with this information, that’s entirely up to you.”
He had to be joking, there had to be a catch somewhere.
“Don’t tell me what you choose, yet, son,” he continued. “I will let you go now. I have but one last request: as you leave, please take one last long look at Sally, my secretary, and truly consider your options in their entirety. Now run along now, you’ve got work to do. Pleasure meeting you, Randal.”
My heart racing like a mag-lev train, I made my way out after returning the farewell. I was expecting a team of mechanized guards taking me into custody at any moment, but nothing happened. On the way out, I looked at the secretary, who smiled radiantly in my direction. I looked at her beautiful eyes, distorted and focused as they were behind her large, powerful eyewear. I almost boarded the elevator, but then I turned around abruptly and asked:
“Miss, I’m sorry if this is kind of a strange request, but could you please take off your iGlasses for a moment?”
**
I never saw or heard of Noel again. My half-written report still lies somewhere on my personal cloud drive, as do the strong iGlasses on my nose. That night, as I lay in bed with the woman that I loved, I thoroughly enjoyed the extra function that had been on them all along.
https://vision-and-spex.com/iglasses-a-sci-fi-short-t877.html