Bionic Lenses

How blind can the sighted be in pursuit of their desires? And how blind can one become who sees again?

Patrick Porter had always been a man of precision. With his blue eyes trained on the minute details of microchips, he was the kind of engineer who could lose himself in the tiny world of transistors and circuits. After graduating with distinction from one of America’s top tech universities, he returned to England. An American tech company, desperate to keep their rising star, offered him a role in their London subsidiary. Patrick accepted and threw himself into developing the next generation of microchips.

Day after day, he hunched over his workstation, staring through a large magnifying lens, hands steady as he placed the delicate transistors in place. Success seemed inevitable, each chip outperforming the last. That was until the day he miscalculated—a tiny error in voltage, but enough to send the chip shattering into a thousand shards. The lab erupted in chaos, glass and silicon raining down. Some were lucky. Patrick wasn’t.

When he awoke, his world had gone dark. His eyes were wrapped in layers of bandages. Doctors muttered about the damage—tiny slivers of silicon and glass embedded in his corneas. There was nothing they could do. When the bandages finally came off, the truth hit him like a punch to the gut. He would never see again.

The days that followed were a blur. Darkness and depression became his constant companions. The streets of London became his battleground, each step a struggle as he fumbled through his new world of shadows. One evening, on his way to another pub to drown his sorrow, he bumped into someone. A girl, her voice soft, full of surprise and concern.

“Let me help you,” she said, guiding him to a seat inside.

Over the dim hum of the pub, Patrick shared his story with her, his words slurred with defeat. The girl introduced herself as Ember, a photographer who had dedicated her life to capturing natural beauty. She listened with an intensity that unnerved him, her presence comforting and yet strange.

“Let me take a picture of your eyes,” Ember asked, her voice hesitant but curious.

Patrick hesitated. “Why?”

“There’s something… beautiful about the way they look,” she explained, gently removing his glasses. The flash from her camera lit up his face, and though he couldn’t see it, he felt the weight of her gaze, studying him.

“You’ve got eyes like the ocean,” she murmured softly. “Endless… like you could drown in them.”

The color of those two bottomless eyeballs made an unforgettable impression on Ember. The irises, from the periphery to the center of the eye, were reminiscent of the Mariana Trench—deep, unknowable, filled with shades of blue. Through those depths, Ember saw not just his grief, but the spirit of a man who had once dreamed of greatness.

Patrick couldn’t see her, but in that moment, he felt something shift. Love wasn’t about sight; it was about connection.

Years passed, and Ember became his anchor. She refused to let him wallow in despair. She introduced him to Braille, recounting the story of Louis Braille, a man who had also lost his sight young but went on to create a system that revolutionized the world for the blind. Slowly, Patrick found his footing again, his fingers dancing across the raised dots of the Braille alphabet. He read. He learned. He rebuilt.

One day, Ember mentioned an old classmate of hers—Roy Benson. “He’s looking for engineers,” she said, her voice carrying the weight of something unsaid.

“An engineer who’s blind?” Patrick scoffed, but Ember’s persistence won him over.

Roy, with his ordinary brown eyes and entrepreneurial spirit, welcomed Patrick to his company, Bionic FutVision Corp. The company was on the cutting edge, developing smart glasses that could improve vision, assist in navigation, and even project a virtual assistant. But Roy had bigger dreams: bionic lenses. And Patrick, despite his blindness, had the vision to make those dreams a reality.

The work was slow, meticulous. Day by day, Patrick’s hands moved with a precision he thought he had lost. The first prototype of the bionic lenses was created, and Patrick volunteered to be the first test subject.

The operation was brief, a syringe injecting folded lenses into his eyes. When Patrick awoke, the world had returned to him, clearer than ever. His new vision was perfect—better than perfect. He could see details that no ordinary eye could—fingerprints, tiny textures in fabrics, the subtle shift of light across a surface.

But nothing compared to seeing Ember for the first time.

He stood in the living room, blinking against the flood of color and light. She approached him slowly, unsure of how he would react. Their eyes met, and for the first time, Patrick saw the woman he had come to love.

She was looking into his new eyes, which had turned from a blue, oceanic color to a dark blue with tiny dots reminiscent of space filled with stars. Patrick’s unique vision allowed him to look deep into his beloved’s eyes, in which he saw more gradients than he could have imagined. The juiciest, most beautiful, and warmest colors and shades merged in her gentle gaze. Most of the iris was ash-green. Nearer to the center, it became amber, and near the eyeballs, it was the color of ochre.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, his voice shaking.

They kissed, the world falling away around them.

But the perfection didn’t last. Patrick couldn’t ignore the way Roy’s eyes lingered on Ember whenever she visited. At first, it was subtle—just a fleeting glance, a touch too long. But soon it became more. Roy’s laughter, his compliments, his smiles—all directed at Ember. It was as if Patrick’s new sight had revealed something deeper, something darker. The doubts crept in, insidious, gnawing at him.

He would catch Roy watching them, his gaze flickering over to Ember as if she were something he desired. And slowly, Patrick’s insecurities began to surface. What if Roy wanted more than just a business partnership? What if Ember wasn’t as innocent as she seemed?

One evening, Patrick sat in the dim light of their apartment, watching Ember as she moved about the room. His mind buzzed with the possibilities. Could he trust her? His hands fidgeted, his jaw tight. The quiet was suffocating, thick with tension.

“I noticed the way you were looking at him,” Patrick muttered, his voice low but sharp, cutting through the stillness.

Ember stopped, her brow furrowing. “What are you talking about?”

“You and Roy,” Patrick continued, the words tasting bitter in his mouth. “I see the way he looks at you. You think I’m blind, but I’m not anymore. I see everything.”

Ember blinked, her confusion deepening. “Patrick, there’s nothing between us. Roy’s just—”

“Just what? Charming? Successful? Rich?” Patrick’s voice rose, fueled by the paranoia that had taken root inside him. Every glance, every touch—real or imagined—felt like proof of her betrayal.

Ember’s eyes searched his, her voice soft but steady. “Patrick, I love you. There’s nothing going on with Roy.”

But Patrick’s mind was spinning, twisting her words. He wanted to believe her. But every time he looked at her, all he saw was Roy’s lingering gaze. It was too much. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong, that she was hiding something from him.

“Liar!” His voice cracked with rage, his hands trembling as he stood, knocking over a table. Glass shattered, the sound like an explosion in the small space.

The world around him blurred in a haze of red. Without thinking, his hands shot out, grasping Ember by the throat. She gasped, her fingers clawing at his arms, her eyes wide with shock and pain.

For a moment, time froze.

Patrick’s breath came in ragged bursts as his mind tried to catch up with his body. His grip tightened, his heart pounding. What am I doing?

Ember’s eyes began to dull, the life draining from them. Her lips parted in a silent plea. And that was when it hit him—what he was about to lose.

His hands released her, and she crumpled to the floor, her body lifeless at his feet.

The doorbell rang.

Patrick turned, his vision still sharp, but his world felt like it was closing in on him. Roy stood in the doorway, his face pale, his eyes wide with disbelief.

“Patrick, no…” Roy’s voice was soft, but there was a darkness behind his eyes. “What have you done?”

Patrick’s body tensed, his fists clenching. “You… You did this,” he spat, his voice trembling with fury. “You… ruined everything.”

Patrick lunged at him, fists swinging, but his vision blurred. His world turned dark again. Blindness returned, swift and merciless.

Roy stepped forward, watching as Patrick’s body twitched, the bionic lenses frying his optic nerves, burning away his sight.

It appeared that Roy could not only control his engineer's bionic lenses but also see through his eyes and gradually poison Patrick's mind with all sorts of paranoid visions. The one thing Roy never expected was how far the silent engineer would go.

“You shouldn’t have touched her, Patrick,” Roy whispered, more to himself than to the broken man on the floor. “I never thought it would come to this.”

With a deep breath, Roy turned and walked away, leaving Patrick alone in the cold, unforgiving darkness. Patrick Porter was later declared mentally ill and hospitalized in an insane asylum without believing any of his assertions.

In 2035, Roy Benson sold Bionic FutVision Corp. and became one of the richest men in the world. But his success came with a price. Alone in his luxury apartment, the weight of his choices bore down on him. There was no one to share his wealth with. No one to celebrate his victories.

Only the ghost of his only love.