Will had trouble dragging himself out of bed the next morning. He and Blue must have been out until about 2 a.m. so he’d gotten five hours of sleep, max. And this morning was a work morning. His mom kept having to nudge him to wake him up.
“Come on kid, time to get up and at ‘em,” she said, giving him a push with her foot, for the third time.
“Uh . . . did I fall asleep again? I’m coming, I’m coming. Just five more minutes . . .” replied Will in a groggy voice.
“Not this time, Mister. You’ve had your five minutes. Twice. Now get up! Honestly what has gotten into you the past week? You’ve been oversleeping almost every morning!” His mom felt his forehead. “No fever, so no skipping work. C’mon, your father’s waiting.”
Will managed to pull his clothes on, drag himself to the bathroom, stuff some breakfast down, and flop into the passenger seat of his dad’s car.
His dad didn’t seem to notice Will’s lethargy, and he launched excitedly into talking about what they were going to do today. “Will, I think you’re going to find this incredibly interesting. I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to experiment with this for a long time but never had the funding to do it. That and the technology has gotten more affordable and with my grant money, I’m finally able to do it. I’ve just received an infrared night vision camera for my research and, well . . . you’ll just have to see for yourself. It’s one of those things that you can explain and theorize about, and then one day you think of a way to visualize it and boom, there you go. It is so obvious! They say a picture can paint a thousand words, and it is true . . .” He trailed off as he appeared to slip deep into thought.
This outburst of speech brought Will out of his stupor, “Whoa, whoa Dad, slow down. What are you talking about? Night vision camera? But we don’t have night vision—not really, just infrared voice . . . eyes . . . vox oculis. What is it you are talking about?”
“Well, my ‘official’ research actually is about night vision and other types of vision, but for us, for vox, well you’ll just have to see!” said his dad.
The night vision camera was very cool. It had an infrared illuminator—like a night vision flashlight—on top of what looked like a small telescope, only with buttons and switches like a camera.
“Is this a telescope or camera or a flashlight?” asked Will.
“All of the above,” said his dad. “It has lenses like a telescope, but instead of the light going to your eye, it goes to a video sensor that then turns the light into an image and displays it on a tiny screen inside the eyepiece, which you look through like a camera. The sensors can detect not only visible light but short infrared, too . . . the same sort of light that our eyes use for vox oculis.”
“You mean you can see the light in our eyes?” said Will.
His dad smiled. “See for yourself. Just flick the red switch on the side, and look through the camera and focus on me, but don’t turn on the flashlight part.” Then his dad moved to stand opposite him.
Will turned the switch on. A slight glow came from the eyepiece as the internal screen lit up. He looked through the eyepiece at the screen and then pointed the camera at his dad.
At first, he didn’t notice anything except that the image in the screen was sort of off-color—more like a black and white image than a regular color image. He pointed it at his dad’s face and focused on his eyes. They looked normal but then suddenly they flashed bright and Will heard in his head a strange chopped up vox “C..a..r..p..e..D..i..e..m”. He nearly dropped the camera.
“Holy crap! Dad!”
His dad started chuckling. “Cool, eh?”
“Oh my God! Do it again!” He held up the night vision camera once again. This time, when the flash came he heard “T..e..m..p..u..s..F..u..g..i..t”. He put the camera down. “Dad, this is incredible! No one has ever tried this before?”
“Well, no one that I know of,” said his dad, “And I think I know every one of our kind that has studied this.”
“So why does your vox sound all chopped up? How did you do that?” asked Will.
“Well, it’s because this camera wasn’t designed for sound, it was designed for images,” said his dad.
“I don’t get it. Why would that make a difference? Isn’t sound simpler to capture than images?” asked Will.
“That is a very keen observation, and that is indeed true. But an interesting thing about our vision is that it responds slower than our ears. Our brain can only process images at about 40 images per second, but it can process sounds coming to our ears at up to 20,000 cycles per second! You see, this camera only captures light at 40 frames per second, but our eyes vox sound signals at much higher frequencies. You can only hear very low-frequency vox through the camera, which is why I said ‘carpe diem’ very low and slow.”
“So you’re saying that we can only hear really low vox tones through this, but it can still capture the infrared light?”
“I know it seems complicated, but basically, yes that is correct. Our eyes glow, but they change brightness like your vocal cords change sound pressure to make sound. That’s what our eyes can detect—the very subtle high-frequency changes in light. That is what was lost in almost everyone else around us—the ability to detect and process those subtle changes.”
“But why would people keep the ability to chiss but not hear it?” asked Will.
“That’s a very good question, and I don’t know the answer, just like I don’t know the answer to a lot of things. But I do know this: it is very easy to make sounds, however, hearing is a much more difficult proposition. Vocal cords are very simple organs, but ears are enormously more complex and delicate. I think the same goes for vox. It is easy to create light—just like a firefly or deep-sea fishes, but detecting light and processing it into images or sound is a very complex process. Your eyes are probably the most amazing part of your body, in terms of advanced sensing biotechnology. If you did not use your eyes, then your body would probably put its energy into better things rather than maintain a complex organ that is useless, just as deep-sea fishes still have eyes, but have lost the ability to see. They don’t need their eyes in the pitch blackness of the ocean floor.”
“So you are saying that people still need their eyes for vision, but they don’t need them for vox anymore, so their eyes have evolved to be just vision, and the vox part has just atrophied into glowing, but not listening? Sort of like an appendix?” asked Will.
His dad just stared at him. “Wow, son, that was amazing. You hit the nail on the head. I couldn’t have put it better myself.”
Will felt himself blush. The technology was starting to make sense to him now, though. “Dad, can non-vox discover us with this camera? Don’t they use night vision cameras for surveillance?”
“I thought about that. I imagine they could, but I think they would mistake it for something else. You know what ‘red-eye’ is in photography, right? It’s when the camera’s flash illuminates your retina because of its close proximity to the camera lens.”
“Sure, but red-eye happens to everyone, not just us, right?”
“True. The flash illuminates the retina of the eye, and the eye is focused on the camera, so the camera receives a magnified image of the retina of your eye. I think if anyone does see us in a surveillance camera, they would just assume it was some sort of red-eye effect. Fortunately, there is no camera that I know of that is designed to pick up modulated infrared light and amplify it into sound. Just like this camera, there wouldn’t be enough information there for them to decode it into anything.”
His dad went into deep thought again, which was fine with Will. He was starting to find it hard to follow what his dad was saying. But he was starting to go into deep thought, too, and he had an idea.
“Dad, can I borrow this camera sometime, just to see what it can do? It would be cool to just see what infrared light there is around us.” Will wasn’t very hopeful. The camera looked expensive, and his dad had just gotten it and was probably anxious to start experimenting with it himself. So he was surprised when his dad was actually agreeable.
“Why not? Sharing a discovery is part of the fun. But take pictures of interesting things you see with it. That is part of research, collecting interesting things you might want to study later. Remember, we are still looking for sources of infrared light. And I don’t have to tell you to take good care of it. Just make sure it comes back to the lab in the morning in good condition.” “Use, don’t abuse the privilege!”
Platitudes, platitudes. That was a Latin word Will was overly familiar with, but he was ecstatic about being able to borrow the night vision camera. And he was even more excited to see what Blue’s reaction would be.