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Charles lay awake in bed. He had woken up with the same thought that had pursued him for weeks. He had made the preparations. Now, while his wife slept, he could do it. She would never know.
He turned in bed toward her, trying not to disturb the covers. She lay facing him. Even asleep she was beautiful, her long hair covering her cheek, her lips open slightly. Her hand rested near her face on the pillow, her long, smooth fingers graceful and inviting in the dim light.
Sitting up slowly, he leaned back against the headboard. On the nightstand, beneath his book, was a small tool, shaped like a toothpick. He retrieved it carefully, keeping the rest of his body motionless, gazing at her spotless neck and remembering how he had touched the nape of it three days ago and how Helena had recoiled from his touch.
His heart was beating fast. He expected Helena to wake and see him, see what he was about to do and stop him. He lifted the tool to his eye, breathed deeply, and slowly pressed the point against his cornea. Not too hard, the instructions had said, but firmly, enough to pierce the outer layer of the implant. The tool would temporarily neutralize the device.
An electrical shock convulsed the muscles of his face. He went blind in his left eye. He blinked rapidly, trying to restore his sight, trembling. It was supposed to disable the overlay, that’s all. Permanent eye injury was rare. That’s what the pamphlet had said.
Slowly, sight returned, disorienting him. Each eye was perceiving the world differently. He closed one eye and then the other, comparing, trying to understand what he was seeing. The dimensions of the room were the same in each. The furniture existed in each. His wife lay there, asleep, plainly visible with both eyes. But the world was darker through his left eye, now that the implant was disabled. The light from the street outside was dimmer, the shadows thicker.
He slid down under the covers again, lying on his back and trying to examine Helena’s face through his left eye. She was old. He could not distinguish individual wrinkles, but it did not matter. It was her face, but it seemed someone else’s.
Slowly, he reached his hand around to feel that place on the back of her neck. A bump, a growth of some kind. He had never seen it, but his fingers had found it. He knew he would see it now if she turned around.
Helena stirred, and he drew back his hand.
She repositioned herself, giving him a new angle to examine. Her chin was not so firm as presented to the world. Her hair was thinner, too, and the color was fading.
He got out of bed and walked to the bathroom. He closed the door and turned on the light. A strange man looked at him through one eye. He seemed familiar. Charles caught a memory of his father before the veil had fallen over the world, making all things beautiful.
Charles touched his face, turned in the mirror to view his profile, examined his hands and ears and teeth. He felt sick. He closed his left eye and opened his right. There he was, fresh and firm and eternal.
After a long while, he turned off the light and returned to bed.
“You all right?” Helena murmured.
He wanted to confess. He had seen. He had seen the lies they told each other, the lies the world shared happily, that they were young and gorgeous and unchanging. He liked the lie and it sat in the pit of his stomach, sour. The implant would reboot in another five or ten minutes.
Helena raised herself on her elbow. “Charles?”
“I’m fine,” he said. “Everything’s fine.”
She closed her eyes, drifting back to sleep. He tried to do the same.