Merle 104

Back to serious business.... High time for the real experiment. The inventor produced a most extraordinary pair of glasses and handed them to the young artist.

"Before you put these babies on, can you hold them say at a foot distance from your face? It's a nice, gentle way to get acquainted with these lenses"

"These glasses look amazing, Rob. I have never seen anything like this in my life. They must be extremely strong"

"Twice as strong as the previous magic glasses. Minus sixteen and minus seventeen"

"Are they rare?"

"Yes, they were always white ravens in the streets. I can only recall a handful of sightings"

"The lenses seem to change constantly. How come? I mean, all the crazy effects"

"That's quite a technical story. I can tell you before you put them on your nose. What you need to know right now is that only the central part of the lenses have the visual correction the first owner of the glasses needed. Very limited peripheral vision and ghostly distortions near the rim of the lenses. So she had to move her head constantly to see things properly"

"Poor lady, she must have been quite handicapped"

"Not necessarily so. The first time I saw a lady sporting glasses like these was about thirty years ago, in Austria. She was lively, attractive and there was nothing handicapped about her at all"

"Are glasses like these rare because nobody is so shortsighted?"

"I read somewhere that one or two percent of all shortsighted people have lenses above minus ten. Nowadays, they go for surgery, implants. Or they wear contact lenses. That's why you don't see these glasses in the streets anymore"

"Amazing story"

"Can I take a picture of you standing, with the guitar in readiness? I'm after a special effect. It calls for a fair bit of navigation from both of us"

"Sure. Can you hold the glasses while I will get my guitar?"

When she came back with the guitar in readiness, the inventor handed her the glasses and they started navigating to get the image he was looking for. It took them several minutes before they got the glasses at the right distance and in the proper position. Then he snapped.