Eye Can See You

Glitch held her breath as Claire examined her eyes. She didn't want to twitch with the other woman's hands so near her face. That could end badly. Getting somebody's finger jabbed in your eye was painful. Very painful. A couple of drunk Russians had found that out the hard way on Glitch's journey across that country. She wondered if the Russians had enough interest in her to hunt her down. She internally shuddered. She had managed to avoid getting deported back to China by beating a hasty retreat over the border into Latvia then by stowing away on a ship from Riga to Amsterdam. That had been too close and she had vowed never to go back to Moscow again. Too many close calls. She had managed to smuggle herself into England by stowing away in the back of a car traveling the Channel Tunnel. Calais had been nice, but a country where she could speak the language had been the ultimate reason for risking the crossing in the boot of an automobile. "S-s-s-so? Wh-whats wi-with my eyes?" she asked the physicist.

The other woman pulled back after a minute and shrugged. "I honestly have no idea... I don't know why you won't go see an actual eye doctor..." the scientist said, half exasperated. At least for once though, she wasn't being sent on some dumb errand like a dumb sheep. Claire had actually been asked on an intellectual level what had happened. Which was definitely a step up. "The reality is, this is unlike anything I've ever seen on the internet or textbooks, and I feel a medical doctor would tell you something similar..." Claire sighed a little. She was no closer to the answer than she had been a few minutes before. "If I had some way of running spectroscopic tests, I could give you better answers without yanking your eyeball out."

Glitch looked at the scientist for a moment before hopping onto her phone and looking up the equipment and how it worked. She looked back up at Claire, the electric blue on black eyes flashing a moment of inspiration. "G-G-Give me a bit..." She stood up and began to jog to the door. "M-m-m-eet me in the w-worksh-sh-shop in a few." Glitch disappeared and made her way to the workshop. Neither Lacuna nor the traitor were in, so she had the chance to really get to work for once. She held her breath and began to work her powers. Claire followed in and watched, Glitch ignoring her as she went about her way. It wasn't long before the Madwoman had a working device. "Better h-h-hurry... Th-this thing won't l-last long." Claire quickly made her way to the computer while Glitch stood in front of the eyepiece. Several bright flashes of light caused the technopath to loose concentration, the device crumbled, but it was quick enough to gather all the potential data it had been built for. And they could now decode the data at their own pace. At least Glitch had the forethought to download the data into a non-power created computer with actual software designed for this sort of thing. The drivers for the monster creation though, that had all been her powers.

Claire watched in awe, this time distracted by something else. "Uh, Glitch? Your hair is turning pale blue..." Glitch looked at Claire, then dashed off to the bathroom before letting out a scream that could be heard throughout the pocket dimension.

Several hours passed as the highly intelligent pair converted the collected data into something that could be understood. Glitch wasn't certain what had happened, but had at least managed to convert the raw information into a format that could at least be marginally analyzed. It wasn't precise data, but it would at least give them a basic chemical analysis. Claire spent the next half a day comparing everything that they had received, while Glitch impatiently played with the new strand of coloured hair. The multitude of silence was broken by a shout of triumph that would have silenced Archimede's famous Eureka. "I think I have this! And... Well, the results would indicate something that doesn't parse right with everything that I know, which is still woefully inadequate. But I do know enough about biology from primary school to know it's not natural and that..." Glitch reached out and silenced her, grabbing the other woman's lips and holding them shut for a moment.

"What h-h-ave you f-f-f-f-found?" Glitch released Claire and let her continue.

"Well, um... Your eyes are made of a combination of non-biological minerals. Your sclera, that's the whites... er... blacks in your case... are made primarily of silicon dioxide, iron two-three oxide, and magnesium oxide... In other words... Obsidian. The iris is made up of aluminium oxide... Corundum. Or more specifically Sapphires." She said, mostly not believing it herself.

"So w-what you a-a-a-a-are saying is th-th-that...?"

"Your eyes are essentially made of of the materials used to make lasers with an obsidian mount for the optics... By all respects, you should be blind with glass eyes, but for whatever reason, they still work just fine. They dilate, they move, they turn light into usuable brain signals."

"So I h-have laser eh-eh-eyes?"

"No, just eyes that are made from laser materials..."

"Damn it! I-I-I-I wanted L-laser eyes..."

"We'll swing by the chemists lab at the uni and see if they can verify this all later?"

"F-fine." Glitch stood up and gave Claire a kiss on the friendly kiss on the cheek, before heading off. "Thank you, you a-a-a-are a real sw-sw-sweetheart, Claire." It didn't mean anything special. It was just Glitch's way of reminding the non-meta that she was still a valuable member of the team.