Twenty crystals to each mirror eye, the woman whose mother was a lace wing and father was a chameleon, sits in the security sector, drinking at the fountain of the multi monitor.
On the screens she watches a man sneaking into the safety depository, intending to steal the silver spike. She sees the waves crashing against the shop windows in the high street. She feels the ivy and vines dismantling the balconies of the high-rise estates. She senses the fields of broken satellite dishes gathering the last rays of the sun. She watches a pale wind shifting the crooked spires gently. She hears a broken radio stuttering in a distant city. She waits in the garden before the rain, clearly for the first time, the birds have lost their voices.
She sees the clock, only twenty minutes to lunch break, when she will be replaced by twenty people with ordinary eyes, who have already had their lunch.
Twenty minutes later, her coworkers take charge of the screens. They sometimes wish that they had faceted eyes too, as it brings promises of promotion and a higher wage, but others are not fussed because they might attract sidelong glances in the street. Also, accompanies great vision, great understanding and thus great responsibility. Broad shoulders a must.
She normally wears a dark glasses when she’s off duty, to reduce the content and vulnerability.
She sees rain inside those distant clouds, moving swiftly on.
She is so cost effective, she takes the place of twenty ordinary employees. But there is something else going on here, she sees everything and meshes it altogether in a great understanding so consummate that it cannot be expressed, artistically or in plain speak, or speak its name.
They send her to air traffic control, hoping to save paper. They sent her to watch all the numbers at once in the stock market, hoping to shift the indicators. She embraces all the stars in the sky in three dimensions, she saw all the fishes that ever were. Her eyes, sparkling, an image reflected in each little facet, drank the information like a camel in the desert who has just come across an oasis after a long journey, probably having carried a heavy load of porcelain and cutlery or small figurines of an eastern religious nature, each nestled in waste newspaper, printed in an alien script which is quite interesting in and of itself.
She saw the whole of the moon, the light, the bright side, the silver lining and the eye liner, all in one sweep, one multi glance.
She measured the summer air cooling after the storm, she counted the radio waves bouncing between the low hills, she saw the ultra-violas germinating beneath the warm soil, she saw pollen banks obscuring the distant mountains in gilded rows.
Tell us what you see, tell us that we may understand, tell us what you see.
She saw so much, an eternity of explanation.
Eventually they decided to put her into orbit, to function as a scientific multiscope, to rediscover new worlds and planets and are we alone out here?
She said, I will not be sent away alone, as I will be lonely. Crew me up, befriend me, people my world and man the pumps. Then I shall be happy to go, also I will need a laser gun for formalities and a space suit, fit for purpose and freshly scrubbed.
Ok, they said, and put an advert on the interweb.
Space crew needed for eternal exploration, only rhyming people may apply.
A cat with a hat and a man with a plan. Some hoi polio, a girl with a pearl, an engineer without fear. All in deep frozen packaging for defrost in orbit. Excellent, she said.
I shall need a suitable ship for my crew, she said, a ship designed for deep sea space.
We have just the thing, they said, and the ship Jellyfish was boosted casually into space for her very own decision-making process.
The Guardians of the Cave 