![]() “WELL, IT CAN BE A LITTLE BIT ISOLATING.” “Sorry, I just mean, by yourself all day, all alone, in your lair, it sounds lonely! I couldn’t do that, I like working with people.” “OTHERS WOULD TRY TO STEAL THE GREAT WEALTH AND MANY POWERFUL ARTEFACTS I HAVE ACQUIRED DURING MANY MAGNIFICENT BATTLES.” “I hadn’t even asked you what you do for a living.” She led the beholder to an adjacent room with another piece of equipment, a bloated, white cylinder with an obvious place to rest one’s head at the front. Tracey tossed her hair back and toyed with it, smiling over her shoulder. “Alright then, and just a small test to see if you or any of your eyestalks are at risk of glaucoma.”īobbing through the air, the beholder followed. Eventually, Tracey shifted the arm of the phoropter aside. Her questions, and the beholder’s difficulties with the charts, kept it slightly off-balance. The optometrist, Tracey, remained upbeat throughout the entire process. To get through all nine of the beholder’s eyes took a while. “And how about now? Do you think you could read the line below that now?” “Very good!” The optometrist made an adjustment. THAT’S AN S FOR SLEEP, A P FOR PARALYSE, AN E FOR ENERVATION.” “How about we try the third line from the bottom?” “OF COURSE I CAN! A, FOR ANDROMEDA, Z FOR ZACHARIAH, UH, THAT’S AN O, AN-, E.” Of the lines on the chart, can you read the bottom row?” “Sorry, totally unprofessional of me! You’re just really easy to talk to. “I DON’T THINK HUMAN FAMILIAL DYNAMICS ARE REALLY-,” “Sorry, sorry, I shouldn’t make assumptions! I just get that, you know? My brother and sister resent that my parents treated me like the golden child, but they didn’t get the pressure it put me under either.” “ALL THE OTHERS ARE IMPERFECT COPIES! DEGRADED, INFERIOR SHADOWS OF THE GREAT MOTHER, PRETENDERS TO HER AND I’S GENETIC IMMACULATENESS!” SHE CAST ME EXACTLY IN HER IMAGE FROM PURE THOUGHT.” “I SPRANG INTO EXISTENCE PERFECTLY FORMED FROM THE MIND OF THE GREAT MOTHER. “ARE THESE QUESTIONS NECESSARY FOR THE DIAGNOSTIC PROCESS?” “Do you have any family back where you came from? Or here?” An eye chart was reflected by the mirror directly across the room. The rest of the office looked clean and white, sterile but soft. Tracey moved and stretched to make adjustments. It hung in front of the beholder on the end of a mechanical arm. The phoropter used by the beholder, with its singular primary eye and swarm of eyestalks, was all the more complex. Lenses and levers bristled off the heavy casing. Phoropters, even the kind used for humans, tended to look like gargantuan steampunk goggles. “Three or four?” Tracey adjusted the lenses on the phoropter in front of the beholder. Its voice reverberated, as if echoing down a long tunnel. Everything about the beholder looked alien. ![]() Eight wormy tentacles poked through gaps in the armour with a smaller eyeball on the end of each one. Chitinous, green plates overlapped the beholder’s dark red flesh. A gaping maw filled with dagger teeth parted beneath a single eyeball the size of a grapefruit. Roughly a metre across and round as a beach ball, the unearthly creature had a heft and weight to it that belied the way it defied gravity. The beholder hovered above the chair in Dr Cheung’s office behind a complex apparatus designed to test its eyesight. “OH, UH, I MUST SEE THOSE AGAIN TO BE CERTAIN.” WHERE YOUR MOST SECRET TERRORS AND DARKEST DREAMS BECOME A BALEFUL REALITY.” “I HAIL FROM THE FAR REALM, A REGION OF SPACE BEYOND YOUR DIMENSION THAT DEFIES HUMAN COMPREHENSION. She had introduced herself to the beholder as Dr Tracey Cheung. ![]() They seemed to have many complex and delicate social mores attached to said categories as well. To the beholder, all human beings were equally disgusting and it didn’t understand why they felt the need to separate one another into a multitude of narrow racial categories. The optometrist was relatively tall for a human woman, with long, dark hair and features of Chinese ancestry. I say that I grew up around here and people say, no, where are you really from? Sorry.” You’d think I know better, I’ve been asked enough times. “I asked where you were from?” The optometrist laughed lightly. “And what about now, one or two? One, or two?”
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