It’s lunchtime. That means it’s my time again. My time to turn off the database and turn on the browser. Shut down the air control. I don’t want the hum to distract me. Close out the city smog and bustle by closing the shades. It’s just me and the screen for an hour. It’s time for me to shut away this fake world of corporate lies and see what’s really going on out in the street.

This is Wilhelm.vid, from Eye Catcher, Incorporated.

Johnny Wilhelm is the best of the beta testers, a true artist. Everyone agrees his visual uploads are the best, the grittiest, the edgiest of the Eye Catcher craze. He’s certainly got the highest rates of the Voyeur audience. True, the wetware is still pretty sketchy. The visual is really low rez and no sound yet. There’s even blog rumor that the optic camera that’s inserted into the eye gives migraines and eventual blindness. But the blogs are always paranoid. The point is, he makes do with what he’s got and then turns it all into emotion and reality.

Everything he sees we see. It’s all uploaded and streamed onto the web.

Real time.

That’s what I want.

His reality.

He starts exactly at noon, Pacific Standard Time.

The backseat of a car, a cab. The fuzzy black and white visuals jerk with every bounce of the bad shocks. Through the windshield the east bound lanes of the Bay Bridge are seen. Normal traffic, busy, for a Monday lunch hour. The back of the head of the driver is balding from the top. Dark hair circles around the scalp like a clown wig, but cut short. He’s going slow. Cars are passing him in the faster lanes. The cabby isn’t wearing a shoulder belt. Johnny concentrates here for only a few moments. Take note. But it’s not the story.

The driver side passenger window is rolled all the way up or down. I can’t tell. The cars whiz past with people in the front seats, never looking outside their little four-wheeled worlds. The cab begins to speed up or traffic slows, because the cars aren’t passing quite as quickly. As they pass the drivers and passengers are visible for longer periods of time. Johnny watches them.

I watch them.

A man in a suit picks his nose while he bangs with his free hand on the steering wheel in time to some unheard music. Then he’s gone. A woman, probably a mother, with a young girl in the backseat. The mother speaks without words while she stares straight ahead into traffic. Conscientious driver, but she doesn’t look to the right nor the left. The little girl stares out the window and sees Johnny. She waves. She waves again. As they pull ahead the little girl makes a face with her tongue and eyes, the ultimate insult of an eight year old.

Other images flash past at varying speeds. Old and young, black, white, but no color. No sound. No contact between the moving cars.

A sedan rolls up next to Johnny. The driver, a businessman, has a face of stone as he undoes his seatbelt. His passenger, a woman with dark lipstick and short hair, also unfastens her belt and leans over into his lap. Johnny concentrates on the far window of the businessman’s car. The reflection shows the action of a blondish head bobbing in ghostly form next to the solid face of the driver with no expression. He doesn’t even breathe heavily. No smile. No excitement. He just continues driving, while she continues driving.

Johnny’s finger reaches up and draws three curving lines on the window, invisible ink on a sheet of glass. Johnny’s finger is long and thin. But it has no grace. The movements are solid and sure. The picture is not yet ready to be shown.

After five minutes the female passenger sits back up and reattaches her security around her. Then she takes out a Kleenex and wipes the sides of her mouth. She reapplies her lipstick with no tears. They don’t even look at each other.

Other images flash past at varying speeds. Old and young, black, white, but no color. No sound. No contact between the moving cars. The sex sedan cradles backwards and out of sight.

A close up of the window and Johnny breathes. A frowning face with angry eyes appears for a second in the condensation before defrosting into nothing.

End Eye Catcher Wilhelm.vid Voyeur cast.

Copyright Eye Catcher Technologies.

End of lunch.

Back to the job.

***

Six months later. Johnny’s new upgrades should be coming online today. Hardly any recovery time for him, only two weeks. Some of the bloggers are crying “slave”, but I don’t really care. I’ve paid a good quarter of my pay scale this month for the computer upgrades, as well. We all try to get what we need.

I set my office up the way I like it. The way I need it.

Two weeks was difficult.

I’m ready. Give me reality.

He starts exactly at noon, Pacific Standard Time.

The picture is clear, digital, perfect. But still black and white. Still no sound.

Johnny is on Market Street just below City Hall. He’s on the south side, watching the traffic rush past in spurts. Stop in a frenzy of jerks. Like the beating of a heart, or the masturbation of an inexperienced boy. And then he focuses, and zooms, OHMIGOD, he zooms his vision to a woman, a bag lady across the street! Eye Catcher gave Johnny manual eye lens focus!

He watches the homeless woman rant at the cars, rant at the pedestrians, rant at the birds, as he crosses the street with the light. She’s black, dressed in so many layers of clothes that she looks fat, and has a pushcart of garbage. She guides it with one hand as she grabs at people with the other, trying to gain their attention. Trying to get someone to listen to her screaming. And she is voiceless on the screen.

He gets closer to her. Closer. Too close. She spins around and the vision jerks as she grabs a hold of his shirt and screams at him in mute visual. Her face is twisted with confusion, anger, pain, and fear. Spittle flecks from her crusted lips and flies free in chaotic directions. Her teeth and hair have valleys of emptiness, and the remains mill around the black holes like crowds watching a murder scene. The pocks in her face are deep ravines of drugs, disease, and death. Her eyes do not reflect reality as I’ve ever known it. I can almost smell the stench through the visual online streaming. She is disgust. She is filth.

She lets go as her tirade continues, and turns away from Johnny. She wanders in a Mandelbrot pattern, going generally east towards the Bay. Johnny follows.

The insane lady wanders into the indent of a closed down and boarded up sex shop on Market Street and puts her large back end against the wall. Johnny is now ten feet behind her and continues to slowly walk past, his eyes uploading the scene for all the Voyeurs in the world to experience. She lifts one layer of skirt, two layers, the patterns of international design and color showing briefly. Then another layer of the cloth is lifted into the pair of dirty hands that grab and hold. The last of the seven layers is the edge of a lacy dark negligee. The contrast is stunning. She leaves that hanging down, continues to talk to herself, even as she begins to pee.

A river of dark liquid flows from underneath her, from below the lace of the nightgown hanging between her spread knees, and over the sidewalk. It creeps, it runs, it pools. Johnny continues walking slowly past her.

She looks up at him as he draws even. She is still pissing in the doorway. There is little privacy, now none. The city streams past in cars, on foot, in airplanes. People walk through the middle of the eye contact between the homeless woman and Johnny. They do not look down or to either side. They ignore. Johnny watches her.

She pees and looks at Johnny with no more words to say. Her tirade stops as she is noticed and is given unwanted attention that she screamed for not five minutes ago. He continues to watch her as he passes. She turns her head, buries her face in her hands, dropping her skirts back into her own urine, and rocks back and forth as the wet liquid streams past her feet, onto the sidewalk, and into the gutter of San Francisco.

Why do I find it sexually riveting?

End Eye Catcher Wilhelm.vid Voyeur cast.

Copyright Eye Catcher Technologies.

End of lunch.

Back to the job.

***

I’ve put off closing a big deal over a lunch conference today. The next stage of Eye Catcher is premiering with Johnny’s noontime show. The customer didn’t sound at all put off. He’s probably a Voyeur, as well.

I’ve also put off a portion of my rent. It pissed off the landlord, but I gave him a sob story about my mother’s health and bills. He gave me an extra two weeks. So, I should be good. I needed cash for the software and membership upgrades to catch this worldwide entertainment coupe.

This is the thing that everyone is going to be talking about in all the bars and nightclubs. If I don’t have it in my collection, then I’m nobody.

I need to know the reality.

He starts exactly at noon, Pacific Standard Time.

The detail is in perfect color. Johnny is concentrating on the hair of a person in front of him. Deep close up. Every fiber is rich in texture and thick in dark brown color. I can almost count the individual strands before Johnny begins to slowly pull back his eyes.

As more of the view begins to reveal itself I can see that the shape of the head is oval, rather than the sharp, square angles of a typical male skull. The hair is beautiful. It slows like a waterfall, eddying and playing across itself in slight curls and swirls. The dark chestnut gleam is deep enough to make a man want to run his fingers through the softness and lose himself in the feel.

A left side of the head and neck show as the person Johnny is watching turns their body. Fair olive skin. Most definitely female. The line between the hard bone of the chin and the soft, delicate, prey portion, the part that lies just under the ear, is framed by the swinging hair. There is a single diamond stud in the lowest portion of the earlobe.

Johnny focuses on the rise and fall of the chin as it slowly chews, probably a piece of gum. The muscles clench and release in a rhythm of subtle sex. The minute actions of the mouth cause the throat to constrict and expand, swallowing the flavor and saliva brought on by the snack.

She moves her head even more to the left and smiles at something she has seen or heard. Her lips are faded pink, and gently pull away from bright white teeth, bringing into being a deep dimple just one half inch from the edge of her mouth. Small laugh lines frame her happiness in an alluring fashion. The age of the woman is both unknowable and inconsequential. The earring pulls up into her hairline with the contraction of muscles. Down again as she goes back to her gum. She is beautiful.

Johnny stares at this woman for five, ten, fifteen minutes with focus on the individual parts and movements of her body. The play of her long hair as it flows down between her shoulders to barely touch the shifting butt line of her light blue slacks. The swing of her ass as she shifts her stance from foot to foot. He concentrates so closely on her body and body language that it’s impossible to tell who she is as a whole person; or where she is located at in the Bay Area. But it’s easy to find her as fascinating and sexy and intriguing as Johnny sees her. She has, piece by piece, the body, flow, movements, manners, and texture of beauty.

She has been standing for this entire time when the camera jerks suddenly, forward and then back. A stopping motion. They must be on transportation. Probably the BART. She turns and faces Johnny in order to exit the car and Johnny pulls his focus outwards to take in her entire aspect.

The brightly smiling seventy year old Asian woman stands back and away, chewing her own teeth, as Johnny rises from a sitting position. He towers over her, showing her lack of height. She is only a little under five foot, maximum. She hobbles her way out the doorway and into the Montgomery Street station.

Beauty turned to repulsion in the literal blink of Johnny’s eye.

End Eye Catcher Wilhelm.vid Voyeur cast.

Copyright Eye Catcher Technologies.

End of lunch.

Back to the job.

***

I’ve been watching Wilhelm.vid for one year solid, now. I’m probably one of the most prolific blog writers in his fandom. It’s starting to affect my job, I know. I’m more than aware of the effect it’s having on my social life since Johnny starting doing shows of San Francisco’s nightlife on Friday and Saturday.

I had to buy a portable viewer. Otherwise I wouldn’t go out at all on the weekends. This way I can watch Johnny and wonder where he is.

On occasion I even tried to track down which club he was in while he was uploading. But I never found him. Nobody knows what he looks like. So the only way to figure the secret out would be to note the direction of the eyes and camera and do some really quick math. By that time he’s gone.

Lunchtime is still sacrosanct. My secretary doesn’t let anyone bother me. My boss no longer tries to get me to do the business lunches. That’s part of why I think I might be in trouble. I do my work before and after lunch. But lunch is for Johnny.
And the weekends are for Johnny.

I want to meet him, someday. In reality.

He starts exactly at noon, Pacific Standard Time.

I know the bus stop. It’s in Hayward. The 92. I used to take it from Chabot up to my other classes at East Bay. The combination got me my degree in computer sciences. That got me a job throwing other people’s numbers into my computer in order to further their profits.

The stop is just above a high school advertising the Hayward Farmers on the school’s auditorium. The upload has developed sound, when Johnny turns the volume up. He still tends toward the silent aspect of his vision.

Today is different. Today is all sound.

His view is the moving scenery outside the bus window, the occasional stops, and the quick views of those who step on or get off the line. The people he is listening to have obviously gotten on the bus before we, the Voyeurs, turned on to Johnny. The conversation starts in mid sentence.

A female voice, high and insistent: but you’re still wearing the clothes of the white man. What does that make you?

Male voice, subdued and confused: I’m just wearing…

You’re wearing what every white student would wear if the hip-hop scene had never happened. You need to be wearing what we wear.

That sounds racist.

It’s not racist to keep it pure. Listen. It can’t be racist if we are the suppressed. The white man has the power. So we can’t be racist.

That doesn’t sound…

Asians dress like Asians. Latinos dress like Latinos. Blacks should dress like Blacks so that we know who we are. You’re becoming white because you dress…

The bus stops and conversation fades as the two faceless people exit into a new high class development. All the houses look the same. All the cars look the same. All the lawns are dressed the same.

Johnny plugs his MP3 player into his ears as the bus continues down the hill to the Hayward Bart station. The tune “For What it’s Worth” plays through the rest of the set. The wealthy divisions of million dollar houses, all alike, make way to the older houses. These are the places that were kept by the retirees from the greedy developers, until they die. Until the land is sold for a quick money fix by the children.

“Something’s happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.”

Until they’re sold, the houses are one, two, or three stories. They’re mismatched. The lawns have been either clean cut down to the dirt or grown into small areas of local weed rainforests. The parked cars belong to days when America still made vehicles.

“There’s a man with a gun over there, telling me I’ve got to beware.”
Johnny stops the bus and gets off. He watches his feet, steel toed boots with no shape or form springing from army surplus pants, walk down the rubber steps to the cracked sidewalk. Then he looks up.

Three blocks that burned down two years ago. It’s still a tarnished hole on the rusting brass of the future. The chain link fence of the future has been recently built. It has a huge billboard strapped through the holes and kinks of the metal. The new home of Gold Lodges Development. Pictures of many two story condos on the sign, all the same. Three floor plans to choose from, all looking identical. The words and pictures are all in calming pastels.

“It’s time we stop. Hey, what’s that sound? Everybody look what’s going down.”

Every house is going to dress the same in the future.

End Eye Catcher Wilhelm.vid Voyeur cast.

Copyright Eye Catcher Technologies.

End of lunch.

Back to the job.

***

Johnny and I have been getting more and more morose lately, it seems. The themes have gone from shocking to disturbed. The government is clamoring for censorship control over what goes out over the air. The Voyeurs are surging into the reality death, reality newscasts, and reality porn uploads.

But I remain true to Johnny. I see what Johnny sees.

Nonetheless, in order to boost the ratings of Wilhelm.vid the Eye Catcher Corporation has been advertising the latest wetware development in Johnny’s eyes. I’m not certain if I like it or not.

They’ve added ImageSmith, instant imaging software into Johnny’s perceptual brain. This gives Johnny the ability to alter or completely cover some of the vision inputs he has before they are uploaded. Voyeurs can chose to see the original links or the ImageSmith visuals. I’ve been watching both, split screen, on my portable.

I pace my office now. I’m not certain I like what I see. But I’m fascinated. Johnny has been spending more and more of his concentration on the altered viewpoint. He’ll take a simple view of a suicide on the Golden Gate Bridge and turn the person into a seagull before the body hits the water. He’ll stare at the shooting scene of a bank robbery gone bad and highlight the blood splatters as the bullets rip through both the police and the thieves. Until the entire upload is filled with deep red liquid.

The original uploads are just as dark, depressing, violent. But that’s what brings in the ratings now. And Johnny is a creation of Eye Catcher.

I understand Johnny. I watch them myself. I’m just as fascinated as the other Voyeurs. But I see that he’s trying to say something.

I just can’t quite figure it out yet.

I can’t reach Johnny’s reality.

He starts exactly at noon, Pacific Standard Time.

He’s on the corner of Second Street and Market today, watching the traffic. It’s moving freely, for a change. Johnny turns and heads down the north side of the street on the sidewalk. He stops and concentrates on two men holding hands. The original in touching enough for the sentimental side. The Imaged side becomes black and white except for the bright red nail polish on one of the hands.

He blinks and resumes his walk south, toward the bay. At the corner of Leidesdorff Street and Market he stops and sees a man and a woman kissing. As she leans out the open door of a glass high rise the reflection of the door shows a car rear ending another. The sounds of metal against metal and blaring horns disturbs the lovers. She turns to look and the man walks the opposite way. The Imaged view takes away the carnage of cars. In the mirrored door he sprinkles a rainbow across a storm swept beach.

He blinks again. She has disappeared inside the wall of mirrors. Johnny carefully avoids allowing his camera eyes to capture himself in the reflecting glass.

I’m getting excited and I don’t understand why. I’m missing something, here. Something important.

Where First and Bush meet Market Street there’s a mess of confusion and lights. Within that confusion two women sit, middle aged, light and dark in both hair and skin. They sit next to each other on a bench facing each other. They do not touch. The do not talk. They simply stare. A mixed expression of sadness and joy. Then the lighter of the two stands and walks away. The other stays seated and turns her head in the opposite direction. The traffic continues to surge and rescind behind them. The Imaged upload has the lighter woman sink into the depths up red hell beneath the sidewalk. The darker woman rises to a flowing light from above.

He blinks again. He has turned back to the south, to the bay, and is walking again. Now I see it. The corner of my building. The window shades pulled down so that I can concentrate on the visions of Johnny Wilhelm. He’s coming to me.

I am frozen with fear and indecision as I continue to watch his visions within my hands, my portable view screen into his mind. Both the reality and the Imagery, side by side. And his physical form is approaching my office, from the other side of Market.

He stops, kitty corner from where I sit. He watches the traffic.

I rush to the window and yank up the shades in a desperate chance of identifying my hero in the crowd of pedestrians. I cannot tell which of the people he might be.

The sudden movement has revealed me to the populace. San Francisco shines in through the window in a sudden searing streak of light and pain. I cannot see.

When I look down to my screen and my eyes recover from the change in my vision I see that Johnny is looking directly at me looking down, through his eyes, at me again.

I look up and hold my portable to the side of my face to try and verify where he’s watching from. Trying to find Johnny in the crowd of people that I wish were not there. The original upload shows the ridiculous view of my desperate eyes next to the backside of visual technology. The imaged vision sees a knight, raising a sword, with a faintly honorable look to the brow. The visions step closer.

Johnny steps closer.

The original shows the surprise on my face as I realize that I am Johnny’s knight. The imaged view shows the melting of the city into a pastoral scene straight from a sixteen year olds’ romance novel.

A young woman, a girl, steps into Market Street and towards me. A girl. Johnny. Johnny is a young girl with uploading eyes. Looking at me. Looking at visuals.

The Imaged view shows perfection, shows an angel who cares and is frightened for his lover.

The original shows the front grill of a speeding car.

The window shows her body slammed against steel and falling 15 feet away, a vessel of rags and technology.

The vision shows black.

The image shows black.

I have lost my reality.

End Eye Catcher Wilhelm.vid Voyeur cast.

Copyright Eye Catcher Technologies.

End of lunch.

Back to the job.