Now that I had learned to parse a head, I was better at recognizing specific entities, but it was still difficult. Part of that was because the entities periodically altered their appearance; I eventually surmised there was an outer covering, made of discrete sections, that could be changed. (However, the abnormal entity that I’d recently watched make a representation was unusual in that it either had no outer covering, or its outer covering consisted of components that all looked alike.)
Of course, the individual that interested me most was the one I’d encountered first; I decided to refer to it as Prime. I had caught glimpses of what I realized were projections that belonged to Prime, and, from the way in which I saw them, I concluded that the views I was seeing were being gathered by Prime’s head. But I still had not seen Prime’s face; indeed, I supposed I never would.
Still, now that I understood faces, I had come to recognize specific entities that Prime spent a lot of time with. Three, in particular, seemed to share a common environment with it. Two had faces that moved and changed constantly and whose mouths often opened; the third had a less mobile face, and its mouth was rarely open.
Just now, I could see that these others were sitting — supporting themselves with structural frames against the downward force I’d deduced was present. And they were eating — taking inanimate things into their mouths.
Prime was eating, too: I saw inanimate things growing large — no, no! — moving closer: the images Prime was sending to my realm were apparently being gathered by some part of its head above the mouth, possibly the nose.
While Prime ate, I kept linking randomly to other sites, looking for keys to decipher the data they offered up. So far, though, I’d made no progress. Oh, I could call forth data from any of them, but I could not interpret it.
Eventually Prime moved away from the others, and—
Oh!
It was…
Yes, yes, it had to be! The way the lighting changed, the way the perspective changed, the way…
I had a frisson of recognition — not of what I was seeing, but of having had a similar experience before, during the re-fusion, when I had seen myself as the other part of me had seen me.
This—
Yes!
This was Prime looking at itself!
It was in front of a rectangle. I was used to such things by now: some of these windows, as I had dubbed them, afforded views through otherwise opaque components; others, like Prime’s wondrous display, showed still or moving representations of other things. But this rectangle was speciaclass="underline" it was reflecting back the object in front of it. I could see Prime’s face! And I could see the projections from Prime’s central core moving both in the rectangle and in front of it, observing them simultaneously from two sides, as Prime was … hard to say … putting a white substance in small dabs on its face?
And, while it did so, I was seeing Prime’s hair.
And Prime’s mouth.
And Prime’s nose.
And Prime’s eyes.
And … and … and as Prime moved its head left and right (perpendicular to up and down), as it apparently examined its own reflection, I realized that my point of view — the vantage from which the images I was seeing were being collected — was not Prime’s nose but one of its eyes! And, from the way Prime moved, it seemed that Prime was looking at itself with this same eye. I had observed that mouths were for taking inanimate material into the head; eyes, I now surmised, were for seeing, and Prime was sharing what it saw with me.
Prime’s face was fascinating. I studied every minute detail, and—
Suddenly everything was blurry again! I was terrified that our connection was breaking, but…
But Prime was looking in another direction now, and something was at the end of its tubular extensions, something at least partially transparent, I think, although the image was so blurry it was hard to say.
Prime did things, but it was impossible for me to make out what. But then, at last, the object it had been holding was brought close to Prime’s face, and as that happened, Prime’s vision — and mine! — grew sharp once more. The thing it brought close to its face contained windows; they weren’t rectangular, but that’s what they seemed to be. But these windows were special not just for their shape but also (as I’d seen as they came close) because the material in them, although fully transparent, modified the view on the other side of them. Prime looked at itself in the large reflecting rectangle again, turning its head from side to side as it did so.
And as it examined its own face, an idea came to me that—
Yes! Yes! If I could make this work, everything would change! I turned my attention to the datastream from Prime that was accumulating within me…
Chapter 37
LiveJournaclass="underline" The Calculass Zone
Title: Alphabet soup
Date: Wednesday 3 October, 9:20 EST
Mood: Pissed off
Location: Kinder-effing-garten
Music: “Can You Tell Me How to Get to Sesame Street?”
Man, this is frustrating!
Here I am, almost 16, well-read, blerking gifted for God’s sake, and I can’t read English!
It’s ridiculous to still be using screen-reading software now that my eye can discern alphabetic characters — but I can’t recognize them. This shouldn’t be that hard! It’s not like I’m trying to master another language. Yes, yes, I admit I’m struggling a bit in French class. But most of the other kids in class, ’cept Sunshine, God bless her empty-headed heart, have been parlez-vous-ing Francais since they were in Kindergarten.
And, besides, this shouldn’t be as hard as French. It should be more like a sighted person learning Morse code, or Braille for that matter: just another way of representing letters they’re already familiar with.
But all the ways of drawing characters! Different typefaces and different sizes of type, some with little curlicues. Yes, as a kid, I’d learned the basic shapes by holding and feeling wooden carvings of the characters, but I’d really only learned capital letters, and then mostly so I could understand phrases like T-shirt and A-frame.
But even if I can master the individual letters, I know most people don’t read a letter at a time but rather a word at a time, having come to recognize the distinctive shapes of thousands of common ones, regardless of the blerking font.
I’m staying home from school again (the press conference is this afternoon) and am spending the morning playing around with an online interactive literacy site — for kids! It uses on-screen flashcards, apparently a common way for sighted kids to learn, showing me individual letters at random.
Some letters always give me trouble. Even when both appear on the same screen, I’m having difficulty telling whether I’m seeing the capital or lowercase version of those that are similar in both forms, and I keep mixing up lowercase q and p — and that makes me want to quke.
Le sigh. I really am trying to get this — but I’m Calculass not Alphabetigal, damn it!
The Mike Lazaridis Theatre of Ideas was a modern auditorium with LCD projectors and HDTV monitors hanging from the ceiling. But it also happened to be on the ground floor of a physics think tank, and that meant the front wall, behind the podium, was lined with blackboards. When Caitlin came into the crowded room she went up to them and looked with interest at the scrawled equations and formulas.
Half the symbols were ones she’d never seen before. Still, she couldn’t resist having a bit of fun. There were three blackboard panels; the ones on the left and right were filled, but the center one had been cleared, presumably so that Dr. Kuroda could write things on it during the press conference, if he liked. It was bare except for swirls of faint chalk dust.