Chris Brosnahan - POV

She pushed the door open, walked into the middle of the room and folded her arms, her eyes glaring up at me. ‘They didn’t burn him!’

‘What?’

Her eyes blazed with anger. ‘They didn’t burn him! That’s just a silly legend. He did all that stupid stuff and he got away with it.’

‘Really?’ I asked, surprised. ‘You’re sure?’

She thrust her reader at me. ‘Look!’

I looked at the information on it. She was right. ‘Oh. I could have sworn that …’

‘He did all of that!’

‘I read that he got burnt.’

‘It’s not fair! The village women were meant to be clever. They didn’t do anything! ’ Her eyes, which had been so filled with light a little while ago, now swam with tears.

I knelt down. ‘I didn’t know that, honey. Are you okay?’

Rachel came over and knelt beside her as well. ‘It was a long time ago, darling.’

‘It’s stupid!’ Natalie said, her voice breaking. ‘He was supposed to get burnt. That’s the way it’s supposed to end. You’re not meant to do something like that and not get caught. That’s not how it’s meant to work.’

I hugged her, and she buried her head in my shoulder and sobbed. I could feel the wetness through my shirt.

‘I’m sorry, darling,’ I said to her. ‘I wouldn’t have told you that if I thought it would upset you.’

‘I know, Daddy,’ she said, and gripped my arm.

Rachel stroked her soft brown hair, and said in a voice that only she could do in such a soothing way, ‘Do you want to sit up with us for just a little while longer?’

‘Yes, please,’ she said in a small voice.

‘Okay, then.’

‘Thank you.’

Rachel glanced over at me. ‘I think hot chocolate rather than wine, don’t you?’

‘I think so.’

She gestured over to the display, and switched it from the game to a gentle background music stream. The screen showed slowly moving blobs interweaving continuously.

Natalie and Rachel went and sat back on the sofa, Natalie curling up with her head against Rachel’s chest. Rachel gave me a little smile as I went into the kitchen to make the hot chocolate.

I swiped my finger across the touch unit on my watch and used it to scroll my visual display through to media headlines while I made it. I wasn’t looking for any in-depth information – just enough to give me an idea of what was happening in my locality and the world at large. Small, bite-sized little bursts of information, allowing me to make some sense of the swirling cloud of information that was constantly moving.

As the hot chocolate heated up I made my sandwich, while vaguely paying attention to the headlines, and as I sliced the knife through the bread, I saw a headline that changed everything.

I put the knife down, no longer trusting my shaking hands, and double-tapped the headline using the touch unit. It expanded until it filled my field of vision, and I stood there for a minute taking the information in.

Artist Sarah Simone (more), 22, New York (about NY), was found dead in her home earlier today. The NYPD suspect foul play. There were signs of a struggle in the artist’s home (GPS/Photos) and evidence that an intruder had broken in. Ms Simone lived alone (Single? Cheating? Women in your area are looking for you now). Police indicated that a violent struggle had taken place. Items from Ms Simone’s home were taken, and her eyes had been removed. Police have asked for information from anyone who is offered black market IDRoPS (IDRoPS – See the world with a new point of view) and anyone who was around Queens Block Seven (GPS/Map/Photos/News Headlines for Queens Block Seven) between eight and twelve last night.

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I switched off the display and took a deep breath. Sarah Simone had been my patient a week earlier. I put her through the IDRoPS procedure. And now she was dead.

Killed for her eyes.

IDRoPS – Internal Display Retina Operating Systems – are big business, and have been for the last four years. Take-up was slow at first, as people had been skeptical for two years before that, but as more celebrities began to extol the virtues of them, and the procedure became smoother and easier, more people began to get them.

Then, more and more media outlets started streaming to them. They were easy to adapt information for and that was before you got to all the other benefits.

I was one of the optometrists involved in creating the procedure and working out a way for it to be as safe and painless as possible. Before they got us involved, it was damn near butchery, and early converts were left with unsightly scar tissue across their eyes. While some of them wore the scars proudly, almost as a fashion accessory, others found them embarrassing and took to wearing dark glasses, which pretty much defeated half of the functions of them in the first place. While some worked fine in the dark, others needed light in order to function at the proper capacity.

Getting the procedure right was a big part of the rise in popularity. We had the number of problem installations down to almost zero percent, and the procedure was now six times faster than it had been when it started.

Originally, the liquid was used primarily for display purposes, and for data information transfer during the slow upgrade to visible light communication becoming a standard way of receiving streamed information.

The nanotech is filled with receiver units and translation units, which allow for a number of uses. One of them is to use your eyes as a display screen, featuring windows of information that display straight onto your retina, automatically adjusting so it is comfortable for your own vision. You can also programme it using the touch units on your watch, which are configured directly to your personal IDRoPS and allow you to navigate through any options.

The system used to be two-way, and could send information as well as receive, but this was deemed to be inordinately dangerous and we were obliged to fit certain breakpoints into the software in order to make them receive-only. We had to track down the earlier converts – this was not fun.

The most popular aspect of the technology, though, is real time information mapping and visual transformation. This is called Personal Reality and was the single biggest selling point that brought people on board.

The IDRoPS act as a filter, using object recognition technology to remap information. So, you can use your visual display to, say, change the colour of a car from blue to red in your own personal viewpoint. But it isn’t clumsy – it’s fine-tuned enough to recognise face and body features.

This means that you can look at somebody and change your perception of them so that they look different. The most popular use of this is actually personal. Most people change the way they look at themselves in any reflective surface or pictures and videos, allowing them to see themselves as thinner or better looking than they are. It remaps the information across the recognition points, allowing you to look in the mirror and lose that spare tyre around your waist, or that second chin, or give yourself more perfect breasts, or a different shade of skin colour, hair … you can be who you want to be.

According to research, thirty-seven per cent of people who use the technology in this way become more confident.