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snake. It was a terrible sensation. I forced myself up onto all fours, trying to find my voice for a scream.
    A second wave of pain hit me, this time all over my body, spreading into my skin, my muscles, my organs, my joints and my bones. A crawling sensation in every part of me, as if I’d been infested by a billion flesh-eating worms. The crawling reached a fever pitch and then diminished, replaced by a faint itch.
    And then something poked me in the side, sharp as a commandant’s jackboot kicking a prisoner of war. Momo? I thought I saw her hovering somewhere nearby. I felt in control of my muscles again. Full of adrenaline, I jumped to my feet and ran for home, the night air cold on my wet hair. I was running faster than I’d
ver run before in my life, yet I didn’t feel out of control. My arms and legs were wonderfully powerful.
    I cut between two blocks of houses to get to Silva View Crescent. My footsteps pounded across the asphalt. I grabbed the doorknob of our townhouse and rattled the flimsy metal. Locked. I pounded on the door so hard that I made a dent in it. Take it easy, Joe. I looked behind me. It was strange—in one way I thought I could see a ghost of Momo, yet in another way it looked as if our street was empty. I knocked again, not quite as hard as before.
    â€œCome on, Jena,” I murmured. “Please let me in.”
    And now, as I stared at the door and thought about Jena, I realized I could see the inside of my house. I had a third eye sticking up into the fourth dimension.
    This is hard to describe. I knew our little townhouse really well, of course. We’d been in there for almost four months. I carried a full mental image of it in my head. The difference was that now all of a sudden I was seeing the image in real time. I could see Jena stirring in our bed.
    Let me back up and try to explain this better. You can always visualize the place where you live—the rooms, the furniture, the stuff in the drawers. You know where everything is and you know what everything looks like. You don’t normally visualize your house from any particular point of view. It’s not like imagining a picture or even like imagining a whole bunch of pictures. You know where everything is in relationship to everything else and you know what everything looks like from every side. You know your house from the inside out. If you want to imagine it from any particular direction you can immediately do that. You know your house like your own body.
    And now, staring at our door and wondering if Jena had heard me, I was seeing a total image of our house—and not just as some
stored-memory mental database, no, I was seeing the real thing. The total contents of my house with real-time updates, everything at once, seen from any angle or viewpoint I liked. This was what Momo meant by subtle vision. I saw Jena sit up and feel around and say something, and then, as I knocked again, I saw her stand up and rub her face and walk to the door.
    â€œIt’s me, Jena,” I said. “Let me in.” My voice sounded the same as before. I used my regular eyes to glance all around the front stoop and sidewalk. A puddle of liquid had dripped off me. I didn’t see any Momo in the real world, but somehow my third eye could see her watching me from hyperspace. She was sitting on a little metal dish, a miniature flying saucer. Hopefully she was done with me for now. I’d definitely been augmented.
    â€œWhat are you doing, Joe?” slurred Jena, her narrow eyes squinting in the light. “You’re all wet.” My subtle vision made her look funny. It was like I could see the flesh and blood beneath her skin. But it wasn’t horrific, it was more like I was experiencing her body from the inside. A deeper form of reading someone’s mood from the expression on their face. I could sense Jena’s headache, her need to pee and brush her teeth.
    I didn’t know where to begin to