I had a hand over my left eye. I heard a click, and on the wall in front of me were words. The top word was large, but they got smaller as they went down.

“Okay, can you read these words for me?”

TUFT

VAIN

CHOP

DARE

TOOL

OPEN

WEEK

RING

MILD

G… GO- something. I read them out like that.

“Okay, switch eyes for me please.”

I did as I was requested. Another click, another set of words.

WAVE

SOIL

POLE

SAIL

OVEN

HOUR

EASY

SLAM

CODE, I think,

and I couldn’t make out the last one at all. Too blurry.

“Okay, you can put your hands down. And congratulations, by the way.”

“What, did I get them all right?”

“No, you were the first patient I’ve ever seen get them all wrong.”

I took another look at the wall. The bottom ones I guessed a bit on, sure; but the top ones? They were as clear as day. This must be doctor humor.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

“Care to try it again, Mina?”

“Yeah, let me see.”

He pressed the button, and the first set of words were back. There was no question about it.

“TUFT, right? The very top one.”

“No, that’s… That’s just the letter E.”

It wasn’t. The letter E is one thing, not four. And none of these four are E, either.

I hopped out of my chair and got face-to-face with the words. They didn’t change. I looked at him, then traced the letters with my index finger.

“T,”

“U,”

“F,”

“T.”

“TUFT.”

There was nothing else to it. I can fuckin' read.

“Mina, were you spelling the letters out with your hand?”

“Yeah. You can’t see them?”

“I don’t even have a clue what letters you were writing. A letter T doesn’t have eight strokes, no matter how you write it.”

We stared at each other for a while. I didn’t know what to say to him; he didn’t know what to say to me. I can bend my suspension of disbelief and sympathize with him, I guess. I don’t know what I would do if a girl with demonic skulls of goats in her eyes started telling me about words that weren’t there. This wasn’t even a problem with my sight, it was entirely out of his wheelhouse.

“Uh, you can… Sit back at the chair.”

I did, and he put the machine back in front of my eyes. This time it was clear at the end, and I could see the rest of the room. Then it clicked, and everything looked a little bit clearer.

"Which is better, first or second?”

I left with my prescription. I was right, I’m nearsighted. Not remarkably so, but enough to justify spending money on glasses. I need to remember to get them made. Tomorrow. Not today. A normal day would be different. I’d probably sneak to the cookie place on my left, or relive highschool to the place on my right. Not now. I want to go home.

Why couldn’t I see the words on the wall? Do bright lights make me anxious now? What was going on inside my eyes? I thought about this on the short bus ride back home. It’s late in the day now, with the sky just beginning to change shades. I found myself pulling the hood of my hoodie over my eyes to try and block any extra light. I almost missed my stop because I could barely see. I walked up the sidewalk back to my house, carefully stepping over every crack in the pavement. I’m not risking shit anymore.

2809, 7550, 0664, 5603… I’m watching the numbers flash on the little four-digit decimal screen. It’s plugged into a circuit doing… something. I forgot. I don’t think it’s generating them randomly, it’s measuring something. Humidity? No, I think I put that sensor on the board with the fan. This one doesn’t seem like it has any sensors at all on it. I scooted along the floor to inspect the Arduino board looking back at me. It has an ultrasonic sensor which looks almost like binoculars. In between the two circular little “eyes” is white text that reads HC-SR04. The sensor is used to detect distance from itself to nearby objects. You could use it as part of a home security system. I don’t remember what I was trying to secure, though. I flipped the switch on the back and was rewarded with a blood-curdling electronic screech. I turned it off immediately, and once my heart rate returned to comfortable levels, I lowered the volume of the speaker I had forgotten was also part of the circuit.

The last of my useless machines I could afford to spend my attention span on tonight is also the most complex. By a lot, actually. It was so distracting that I had to hide it away inside of a trunk in my closet. I lifted the lid, and looked inside. It was a giant mass of wires in every color imaginable. Roy G. Biv, tangled and stirred like capellini. Sprinkles, but extra long. I couldn’t even see the board underneath it all. The wires were so dense, looping back across one another unpredictably. I could make out a few various regions where particular colors were concentrated, implying some sort of structure or organization, but I couldn’t say what. I carefully lift it out of its closet casket. It’s roughly spherical with a radius of about 2 feet, and surprisingly light. I think I heard a wire or two pop out of its plug, however far inside the plugs were. I’m rotating it in my hands, trying to find some entrance into the onion-skin maze of strands. No luck. I grab the nearest of several half-filled grid paper notebooks I have lying around my cluttered bedroom floor. I want to study and dissect this, but I want to be able to put it back together afterwards. Though, in all honesty… It probably doesn’t have any purpose at all.