Afraid of the Dark

Chapter Three

It was a ten-hour car ride from Miami to Pensacola, like going to Alabama. The flight in Chuck Mays’ new Cessna took a little over two hours. Vince practically kissed the ground upon landing, thanking God that Chuck hadn’t suffered a midair heart attack that would have left Vince at the controls. At the terminal they piled into a rental car-Chuck, Vince, and Sam. Sam was Vince’s golden retriever.

His guide dog.

Since losing his sight, Vince had heard all the amazing stories. The guy who blew his nose so violently that his eye popped out. The firefighter whose eye was left hanging by the optic nerve after a blast from a fire hose. The child who ruptured her eye on a bedpost while bouncing on the mattress. What made these cases remarkable was that in each instance the ultimate visual impairment was nonexistent or negligible, or so the tales of medical miracles went. On the other side of the coin were patients who seemed to suffer only minor ocular trauma, the globe still intact, but whose vision was lost forever. They were the unlucky ones, the Vince Paulos of the world.

“You are going to be amazed by this technology,” said Chuck as he steered into the parking lot.

Vince heard him, but he didn’t answer right away. All this talk about some kind of military gadget that could effectively restore his vision had him drifting back to the day he’d lost his sight-to that pockmarked door again, the opening to his personal and permanent tunnel of darkness.

“Vince?”

“Yeah, sorry. I was just thinking for a minute.” It was a lie, of course, at least the part about “a minute.” Vince had done far better than anyone had expected over the past three years, staying on as a full-time instructor with the police force and occasionally serving active duty as a negotiator, providing for himself, leading a surprisingly normal and enjoyable life without sight. Even so, a man couldn’t help thinking and rethinking from time to time, imagining how different things might have been if he just hadn’t pushed open that door.

The car stopped, and Chuck shut off the engine. “We’re here,” said Chuck.

Here was the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC), a not-for-profit research institute where Chuck had some contacts. Vince had never heard of the place, but IHMC research partners included everyone from NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to IBM and Boeing. They don’t just think outside the box, Chuck had told him, these guys are reinventing the box. The idea was to fit human and machine components together in ways that exploited their respective strengths and mitigated their respective weaknesses. For Vince, that meant the possibility of a whole new door to walk through.

“This way, Deacon Blues,” said Chuck.

Vince smiled as he and Sam climbed out of the car. Chuck had been playing “Deacon Blues” and other old Steely Dan songs on the car stereo ever since telling Vince that one of the board members at IMHC was Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, a self-taught specialist in terrorism, missile defense, and chemical and biological warfare who was better known as a guitarist with Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers. Skunk was one of those reinventing-the-box guys who worked alongside retired army generals, scientists, cognitive psychologists, neuroscientists, physicians, philosophers, engineers, and social scientists of various stripes.

They got a name for the winners in the world… call me Vincent Paulo.

Vince was trying not to get too excited, but if this new technology for the blind did everything Chuck said it could, Vince would literally be looking at life through a new porthole.

Fuck that door.

Sam stopped, and so did Vince. They were at the entrance. Chuck pushed the intercom button and announced their arrival. The receptionist’s voice crackled over the speaker, a buzzer sounded, and Chuck opened the door. Vince stopped him before entering.

“Hey, I want to thank you,” said Vince.

“No need, dude.”

“Just… really. Thank you.”

“I haven’t done anything yet.”

Nothing could have been further from the truth. The only man who had lost more than Vince in that explosion had been Chuck. McKenna’s body had been consumed in the blaze. Two months later Chuck’s wife was gone. Police had found Shada’s overturned kayak floating in a section of the Florida Everglades that was crawling with pythons and alligators. An empty bottle of Valium and a suicide note were in her car. Her body was never recovered. Not once had Chuck even hinted that Vince had dropped the ball while he was out of the country, that Vince could have done anything to prevent the tragedy. Indeed, watching Chuck rebound through his work had been a real source of inspiration for Vince. Eleven months after McKenna’s death, the fledgling data-mining company that had been sucking cash out of the Mays family was turning a profit. Six months ago, Chuck sold out to a media conglomerate for eight figures and formed a new venture-MLFC Inc.-which to most folks was an acronym for Mays Laser Fast Computers. It was over beers that Chuck and Vince had come up with the name My Last Fucking Company.

“You’re a good friend,” said Vince. “I mean that.”

Chuck sniffed the air like a golden retriever, then did his baritone Sam-the-dog voice. “Hmm, the shit’s really gettin’ deep here. Can I go inside and wipe my paws?”

The receptionist greeted them in the lobby and took them to the computer lab. It was a room like any other to Vince. He heard the hum of fluorescent lighting overhead. He felt the cool draft from an AC duct on the wall. It was actually too cool-a sign of how many computers they were trying to keep from overheating-yet Vince was perspiring with anticipation. Finally, Dr. Adam Feldman joined them. Feldman had a PhD in neuroscience, hours of experience with a device called Brainport, and the good sense to cut the small talk short. He quickly launched into business.

“The basic premise here,” said Feldman, “is that you see with your brain, not with your eyes.”

“Which means I’ve seen a lot of the inside of my skull over the past three years,” said Vince.

“I meant that all sighted species see with their brains,” said Feldman. “All the brain needs is the input. In your case, the eyes can no longer transmit. That’s where Brainport comes in. Could you remove your sunglasses, please?”

Vince always wore them. To the office, at the beach, inside the house. He even wore them on his rock-climbing vacation last August. He heard a panting noise as he tucked the sunglasses into his coat pocket.

“Is that Sam or me?” asked Vince.

Dr. Feldman chuckled. Vince figured he wasn’t the first blind man to get a little giddy over this device.

Feldman described what he was doing each step of the way, partly to educate Vince, partly to help him relax.

“These special eyeglasses I’m putting on you have a small video camera mounted on the nose bridge. The camera acts as the eyes to gather visual information. The images are transmitted wirelessly in black, gray, and white to this handheld computer,” he said as he slid the device into Vince’s hand.

It felt slightly larger than an iPod. “Okay. But I’m not seeing anything.”

“Hold your horses there, cowboy,” said Feldman. “The computer will translate the visual information into electrical signals. Let’s turn it on.”

Feldman guided Vince’s thumb to the switch. Vince pressed it and waited. “I’m still not seeing anything.”

“Vince,” said Chuck, “One step at a time, all right?”

The anticipation was even beyond his first step onto a battleground as a marine, at least a million times greater than his first time with a woman. Well, maybe not a million. He took a breath and said, “Sorry, guys.”

“No problem,” said Feldman. “Just to give you some idea of what’s going on, Brainport is built on the concept of sensory substitution, which means that when one sense malfunctions, another sense can compensate, serving as a stand-in. Even a blind person walking down the street with a cane is basically using a form of sensory substitution.”

“Been there, done that,” said Vince. He reached down and patted Sam on the withers. “Don’t worry, buddy. I’m keeping you.”

“You raise a good point,” said Feldman. “I don’t want to overstate the device. It’s meant to supplement the cane and the guide dog. The idea is to help you perform everyday tasks that may seem simple to the sighted, such as reading street signs and searching for empty seats on a bus. A little additional information will make your life easier and safer.”

“Tell him how you’re studying it here at the institute,” said Chuck.

Vince couldn’t see him, but somehow he knew Feldman was smiling. “Again,” he said, “we’re talking about sensory substitution. Imagine a Navy SEAL with superhuman senses similar to those of owls or snakes.”

“Are you saying I have to walk around sticking my tongue out at people?”

“No. But you’re on the right track. The tongue ultimately replaces the eyes in transmitting visual input to the brain. That camera mounted on your glasses acts as your eyes, the visual images go to the little computer in your hand, and the computer translates the visual information into electrical signals. Those signals are transformed into gentle electrical impulses that end up on your tongue.”

“How?”

“The lollipop,” said Feldman.

“The what?”

“It’s an electrode that you hold in your mouth to receive the electrical signal. The white portions of images become strong impulses, the gray become medium impulses, and the black result in no impulses. The tongue sends these impulses to the brain, where they are interpreted as sensory information that substitutes for vision. The whole process works in much the same way that the optic nerve in the eye transmits visual information to the brain.”

“That’s great if it works. What do you think about that, Sam?”

The bushy tail brushed Vince’s ankle as it wagged.

“You ready?” asked Feldman.

“Beyond ready,” said Vince. “Bring on the lollipop.”