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Compound Eyes

Cass&Ra
User review by: 4Goodnes_s8ke
Rating: 8.5/10

Nice surprise. Highly recommend the Faceplate lens— it's a lot more immersive than the standard size because Faceplate accounts for peripheral vision. I got the standard size last year; it held up to SightCast 2.1 pretty well but was ultimately disappointing! I could still see bits of my environment instead of my Caster's, and none of us are paying for that, are we? Cass&Ra with Faceplate makes me completely forget where I am most of the time, and for that I am grateful.

User review by: TomayTomahto
Rating 2/10:

I've been a Caster on and off for the past decade, but this latest model makes me want to go back to my day job. And it's not just the lack of blinking or that people are beginning to expect a ridiculous amount of visual quality with Faceplate— it's that the add-ons demand so much of my sensory input that I hardly know what I'm feeling anymore. Tip for fans of SightCast 2.1: remember that your Caster is human, too, huh? We've agreed to compromise some level of autonomy to share our visual field with you, so don't start a session by demanding HearHere as if we're just bursting to share our ears with you as well.

User review by: CasterCookie
Rating: 9/10

I know I've given Cass&Ra a hard time in the past, but they've made it all up to me and more. I've never felt the kind of connection I've felt with my clients before, and I feel like they really care about what I'm experiencing in my life. I feel like there's a lot of doubt about the viability of living on Casting wages, but we should really be pushing back against that pessimism. Personally, my sight is booked from 4:45 am to 11:30 pm, and my clients are all really cognizant of how hard it is on my eyes and always let me take a break if I mention it. I'm actually dating a guy who's been a regular client since January! After sharing a point of view for months, we really just connected on a really deep level— I mean, a relationship at its core is really just a shared quest to live through someone else, right?

User review by: MarkClaron22:
Rating: unrated

I start Casting with GreatSkies tomorrow— looking forward to using Cass&Ra.

Comments on MarkClaron22's review:
The_Josh_Berey: Lucky. My interviewer lost interest when he saw my glasses...
7Abbaba7: what's your salary?
Reerowt: good luck!
NightRose: Enjoy being possessed, moron. Close your eyes when you still can.


Mark Claron smelled citrus in the air. The woman, Miss Fin, smelled faintly of lavender, but the set of dandelion yellow lenses she held up to his face exuded an overwhelming and intoxicating aroma of lime. Mark took a deep breath in and allowed himself a lazy smile.

"That's right. Smells good, huh?" Mark heard Miss Fin say. "Now relax. The wires may tickle a bit..."

She had to call them wires for legal purposes, she'd said, but Mark saw nothing particularly metallic or mechanical about the fibers that rimmed the edge of the Cass&Ra's lens. The fibers were beige with a gold sheen and densely cropped like a lion's fur. They swayed in the breeze from the window. No, they were moving on their own, it seemed; as the lens came closer to Mark's grinning face, the fibers stretched out towards him. They were searching for something.

"They're trying to make contact with the nodes we implanted," Miss Fin explained as Mark felt the first wave of fibers brush against the skin of his cheeks. He made a noise in his throat, a noise of surprise mainly owing to the unexpected cold, a noise that Miss Fin acknowledged with a smile.

"A little chilly?"

Mark felt the fibers crawl. They rooted around the smile wrinkles around his eyes. They found purchase in the recently implanted metal freckles speckling the bridge of his nose.

He looked at Miss Fin through the non-active yellow lens. Had she said something? She'd said something, and he knew what to reply— only a little— but a feeling, maybe the feeling that something alive was creeping into place around his eye sockets, made him feel that he should not open his mouth, that he should not let it in.

Miss Fin gestured to the door to his left. The world was yellow. The movement of her hand was through a sea of golden honey. Mark followed the direction of the movement and forgot his qualms. The sign on the door read Casters Only.

Many watched Casters' sessions. But to be a Caster was to be the camera. The audience had no such requirements.

"That's you, now." Miss Fin smiled again.

She helped Mark up and sent him walking through the door. He smelled citrus and was drunk on it, and he was afraid because he still couldn't make his mouth open, not even to save his nose from the power of that scent. His palms sweat as he took his certificate from the man in the next room: SightCaster. His palms shook as he stared at himself in the lemon yellow window panes of the GreatSkies building, as he saw his mammoth set of compound eyes, like a bee's, like two huge drops of amber, of honey, mouthwatering in their viscosity and brilliance against his pale skin.

Mark pulled himself together and resisted analyzing his reflection until he was safely on the subway, where dozens of teens with Faceplate strapped to their faces reclined and let SightCast 2.1 lift the boredom of their commutes away. Some of them had HearHere on as well, and Mark could make out strains of audio from a dozen different sessions at once. He tuned it out. He stared at himself in the streaked glass.

The scar under his right eye. Gone. Covered. He touched the portion of lens that lay above the scar, and his fingers slipped over the smooth glass. He brought his other hand to the opposite side of Cass&Ra and let his wide eyes take in every line in his palms. But it was nothing like darkness. It was a mustard-yellow murk, a fog of polluted sunlight.

Don't try to blink. Just let the feeling pass. Miss Fin had been so clear, but Mark resisted the cool echo of her voice in his ears. He willed his muscles to contract, willed his eyelids to close, but Cass&Ra held his gaze, locked his eyelids open, poured golden light into his pupils.

He ran his fingers down the left lens, waiting to feel the cold metal rim of Cass&Ra against his cheek, but the moment never came. He paused and brought his hand back up to where the device met his face, but he could feel no change.

The wires. Mark made the noise again, that small noise in the back of his throat that meant nothing, that meant that he'd realized that there was a thick strip of beige wires digging into his skin that felt no different from the rest of his face. It was a negligible noise. It was a noise of a scholar gaining knowledge, of a now wiser man realizing that he was linked by human and mechanical flesh to bile-yellow bees' eyes.

Mark's hands trembled as he lowered them. He crossed his arms. He checked his watch.


User review by: MarkClaron22
Rating: 5/10
[NEW EDITS]:

So, the device is on. Been on for a few weeks. Not sure if it's the metal, but it definitely smells like citrus. Smells clean. Not sure if it's getting dirty (as I can't take it off), but by friends say the coating keeps it looking nice and sleek. I've had a few clients, and when it comes to visual quality, most are happy.

New Comments on MarkClaron22's review:
NightRose: But are you happy?
MarkClaron22: If you're talking about terminating the blink reflex, then all I can say is there's no need to worry. It feels weird at first, but you get used to it. SightCast 2.1 has pretty good moisture modulators, too, so I'm definitely going to push back against the "de-eye-dration" myth (smiley-face).
Deleted Comment [NightRose: You're a liar and you're scared and it won't feel like normal blindness when it happens. You know that, don't you? Inside? You know that.]


Mark went to the monuments and the murals, the tourist traps and hole-in-the-wall restaurants. He went to parks, laid out a fraying Mexican blanket, and listened to indie rock while he waited for his sessions to begin.

The yellow world flared with the incoming message.

Session with Victoria E. Chelsea beginning in 10, 9, 8...

Hi, Victoria. Mark typed into the keypad by the right lens. He welcomed her to his vision by waving in front of his face.

Far away, at some dining room table or on some bus, Victoria Chelsea can only see what I see. After two months of casting, he only dully felt that burden. It was just another layer of heaviness on his never-closing eyes. 

Look at the plaque, Victoria commanded, and Mark obeyed.

Pan up. His glance was her glance.

Walk around the statue. Leaves crunched beneath his shoes. Too softly.

Put your hand in the fountain water. It should have been cold. But his nerves had felt hazy lately. Scrapes didn't sting. Sirens didn't alarm him. 

You're zoning out, Victoria Chelsea typed. Stop it.


He learned to keep his sight trained on the scene clients wanted to see. Get those good reviews. Get those Quality Caster badges to pin to your profile page. Get back home and stare at the ceiling and play peekaboo until you black out because sleeping in true darkness is a long-forgotten dream.

Get closer. A client's words unspooled fervently across Mark's vision. Mark stepped closer to the mirror, keeping his eyes trained on his face. Your hair is so pretty. Your face is so pretty.

Mark clenched his fists and thought back to the GreatSkies Terms and Conditions document folded neatly in the bottom of his new mahogany desk. He thought back to the clients he'd rejected when their requests strayed into strange territory.

I wish I could see your eyes, the client typed.

Mark grit his teeth. He unclenched his fists. He typed, So do I.


"Of course I've tried. We've all tried to take it off." It wasn't a therapy session. Some GreatSkies Casters just liked to get coffee together. And talk.

"The wires will wear out after five or ten years." Mark's coworker sounded hopeful. "You can't expect them to fuse that well and also be easily removable."

Another Caster stared down at his uneaten muffin. "They're not removable at all."

"Shut up." Mark pulled his jacket tighter around him. It was snowing and he showed up in only a windbreaker because the chill didn't seem to get through his skin.

His friends looked at him. The sun glinted off a sea of compound eyes.

Mark stared back at Len, the employee who spoke last. "Shut...up."

"It's the truth," Len twisted the wrapper of his muffin between his thumb and forefinger. "We take Cass&Ra off, and she takes our eyes with her. I'm blind. You're blind. She caused it and fixes it. And what've we got then? 10/10 ratings, two dozen achievement badges, and good jobs, real good jobs."

Mark zipped up his jacket. "I'm not listening to this."

He walked away from the table, but he wasn't fast enough to miss Len's next words.

"You can forget about listening to anything soon. Touch, taste, sound, sight— all down the drain. Everything but the smell of citrus."


Direct message from MarkClaron22 to NightRose:
MarkClaron22: How did you know?
NightRose: We weren't meant to share the senses. 
MarkClaron22: I'll wait the five years. And then I'll quit. I'll get it all back.
NightRose: I waited the ten years. It doesn't come back.
MarkClaron22: I'll wait 20 if I have to.
NightRose: And then what? You'll sue them?
MarkClaron22: I'll rip it off my face.
NightRose: what face, Mark. What do you think is beneath the lens? 


Mark stared at himself in the bathroom mirror. He clutched his compound eyes. His palms ensconce the great globes of glass entirely. He pulled towards the mirror. 

The wires. They held fast, rooted too deeply in his skin. Mark grit his teeth. His arms trembled with the strain, but Cass&Ra stuck fast to him.
 
And then, and then! (He screamed.) And then a glorious flicker of the deepest black, the most profound and encompassing darkness! (He fell against the counter. He bashed the back of his hand on the faucet. His knees cracked against the tile floor) The lens still lay against his face, but that momentary, precious, short-lived...blink!

Not a blink. (He pressed his face against the medicine cabinet). A glitch.
I'm blind. Len's voice echoed in his ears.

No. He felt his eyelashes brush against the interior of Cass&Ra's lens.

You're blind. Len staring him in the face because he couldn't read Mark's expression— Couldn't read anything, not anymore.

What could Mark see. He gripped the edge of the cabinet door and felt the wood, felt the splinters and the lines of paint, but his eyes smarted. He saw a ghost. He saw a haze of cabinets, a parade of wooden doors, each less substantial than the last. He saw a replay of hundreds of sessions, each paid for by clients who used his eyes one moment and cast them away the next. He saw yellow. He smelled citrus.


User review by: MarkClaron22
Rating: 10/10
[NEW EDITS]:

It fulfills its purpose. I could have asked for more, but I didn't.
Cass&Ra has opened my eyes. It'll open yours.

Raquel Garcia