“Look at the light.”
“Look to the right.”
“Look to the left.”
“Look to the ceiling.”
“Look at the floor.”
“Now look straight ahead and read the letters until you can’t see them.”
I squinted.
“Q….P…R….C…G….F….T….M…S….Z….”
I squinted harder. Oh, there it was.
“Splon.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Splon. The last letter on the chart is splon. I almost couldn’t see it.”
“There’s no splon there.”
“Yes there is. It just took me a moment. I didn’t expect it.”
“There’s no such thing as splon.”
“Look at the chart.”
“I can’t see a splon.”
“Well, then talk to the manufacturer. Because there it is. Fairly clear, too, now that I know it’s there. Splon.”
“Wait here.”
I waited here. Some time and more here later, along came the optometrist again, this time with a relaxed woman in a suit.
“Hey,” said the woman. She was so relaxed her eyelids were barely open. “Do me a favour. Open your mouth and say om.”
“Ah?”
“No. Om.”
“Ommm.”
“Hah! Thought so. He’s got third eye. See? Right in the middle of his forehead.”
The optometrist squinted. “I don’t see it.”
“Exactly. Right, come into the room next door. We’re going to run a few more tests. It’s not a common condition.”
“Breathe in, breathe out, visualize yourself, yadda yadda. Okay, you meditating?”
“I guess.”
“Good. Now meditate at the light.”
“Okay.”
“Shh! Meditate to the right. Now the left. Meditate waaay up high at the ceiling. Now meditate at the floor – down, down, a little more – there! Now meditate and look at what I’m holding in my hand.”
“It’s hard and black and cold and stained with the guilt of failing to clean the coffeepot before you left home this morning.”
“What?”
“It’s the fifth time you’ve done that this month. You’re sorry but you don’t know how to make it better. It’s all your fault. You’re the worst.”
“Weird. That’s not normal third-eye behaviour. I figured you were going to see this die in my hand and tell me what number it came up from. Wait here a second.”
I waited a second. When the woman in the suit came back, it was with a man in a bathrobe.
“Huh,” he grunted. “Bend over.”
I bent over.
“What do you see?”
“A wasted life. A hollow existence. A failed marriage. Three resentful children that will not come to your funeral.”
“Yep. Sounds about right. Classic fourth eye. It’s lodged up your backside, and you’re seeing the backside of all humans with it. Ah well, whatcha gonna do.”
“Is there a cure?”
“Hell no. Why would there be? We’ve all got something like it, yours is just abnormally acute. Now, bend over and look at this picture.”
“Hollow longing for immortality, a desperate anxiety to make a mark.”
“You betcha. Now look ahead. Now look left. Right. Up. Down. Ahead. Now, concentrate as hard as you can on what’s in my pocket.”
“It’s fuzzy. And impossible to get ahold of.”
“You kidding? It’s my alimony cheque. They stick like glue.”
“It’s a cheque? I can’t see a cheque. Just an uncertain mass of…stuff.”
“Huh. Hold on a tick.”
The man in the bathrobe left. When he came back, it was in the company of a woman in a coat and a full-sized scanning electron microscope.
“Hello,” said the woman in the coat. “Do me a favour and tell me what this machine is looking at, without checking the display.”
I had to squint pretty hard. “I can’t tell, sorry. All I can see are stringy bits.”
“Well shit,” she said. “Looks like you’re sub-sub-sub-atomic. Or something. Hell if I can tell. Any alternate universes down there?”
“Let me look.”
I looked.
I looked REAL hard.
And when I was done looking, I looked around some more and found I was all alone in the room and they’d tied me down pretty good.
There’s an argument outside the door. Pretty energetic. Not sure what’s going to happen when it’s over. There’s ethical quandaries, and political ponderings, and some sort of abstract angles.
If I’d looked ahead a little bit harder, I bet could’ve seen this coming.
Oh well. My hindsight’s always been 20/20.