The Notebook

On the table, a notebook or a small box of staples. That was the test: find it, say where, reach out and touch it.

The cells that saw are gone. The ones that only carried were given a protein that answers amber, and goggles that throw amber in: a camera that watches brightness change, a projector pointed inward.

Ten people, one eye each. Seven caught a dimmer light than before. Four found the notebook, time after time, across a year or more of practice. The others did not, and that is written down too.

What's missing, the doctors say, is faces, and reading. So the notebook stays shut. It was only there to be found.

A hand went out across a table and stopped where the amber said, on the cover.