home, you sneer at the volunteer on your corner who’s
collecting money for sick kids. Sick kids whose parents
can’t afford their treatments. Some people should never
have kids, you think.

‘Vhat night, your dreams are so Strange they wake you
in the night. Looking over at the alarm on the night-
Stand, the x-ray glasses look back at you. You placed
them there before bed so you could get a better look at
them in the morning, but now curiosity is getting the
better of you, so you turn on the lamp. With the Strange
spectacles on your face, you feel an odd sensation in
your eyes. It’s hard to see. You put your hand in front
of your face and squint. The harder you focus on your
hand, the harder it is to see, but if you relax your focus,
it comes into perfect view. How Strange, it’s the Stages
in between seeing your hand as it normally looks and
when your hand completely disappears that you're moSt
intereSted in, it seems like
ble
As you sharpen your focus from relaxed to tense, you can

but of course that’s impossi-
but it seems like the x-ray glasses are . . . working?

veins
is that
your carpal tunnel? Itis. How can this be possible? You

see your muscle tissues and connecting tendons
pumping blood _ the tiny bones in your fingers
look at the clock again and Struggle to focus to the right
amount of clarity to see the bright red numbers: 5:38. As
you practice looking at different objects and varying focal

lengths around the room, it becomes easier to navigate
this new power. This muSt be another Strange dream.
You decide to get up out of bed because if this is a
dream, you might as well make the beSi of it. You put the
glasses back in your pocket and make a Sunday break{aS1
in the microwave. While the turntable rotates you imag-
ine what you could do with a pair of working x-ray glasses
if you had a pair of working x-ray glasses which you
Still don’t believe that you do. Your firSt ideas are quite
grand: you could spy on the bank manager entering the
code to the safe, all while sitting innocently in your car
outside, waiting for your opportune moment. You think

better of it though, it’s a bit too risky. Finally you think of
a plan that balances the amount of risk you're willing to
take and will allow you to practice using x-ray vision on
a small scale. You Stopped seeing movies at the theatres
when they doubled the
price of a ticket from six dollars to twelve.

an outing that you enjoyed

You spend the day practicing your new ability around
the neighbourhood. It’s been enlightening, seeing into
your neighbours apartments and you think you'll have
to move to a better area. It was embarrassing enough to
see your overweight and overly hairy neighbour watching
TY. in the nude, but to realize you are the person living
next door to such a character is perfectly unbearable.

After a dinner out, guiltily spying on what’s beneath
the waitress’ top, you pick up a pair of sunglasses and
head over to the theatre in your sedan. You park just
outside the theatre at six-thirty, long before the lateSt
sci-fi action flick Starts but early enough to get a good
spot. You put on the X-ray glasses cleverly disguising
them with sunglasses on top — and wait in your car.
The movie Starts at seven. For half an hour you watch
patrons file into their seats, some with popcorn buckets
and large sodas in their hands. It’s an intereSting view
from this outside perspective, seeing where people choose
to sit and how the seats fill up from the middle outwards.
As you wait, you're also practicing Staring at the perfect
focal length to view the movie screen inside which, when
you have the correct focal length, looks as normal as if
you were in the theatre. An inexpensive listening device
only coSt you the price of one movie ticket and a small
popcorn, so you splurged in order to hear the accompa-
nying dialogue.

The movie finishes around nine and it’s already
dark. You feel a little silly, sitting alone in the parking
lot wearing sunglasses at night, but the movie was good
and worth the effort to save the unreasonable coSt of tick-
ets these days. On the way home you have some trouble
seeing the road. Reaching up to take off the glasses, you
realize you’re not wearing them. You Struggle and Strain
to see the road clearly but figure that your eyes muSt just
be tired from the movie. Surely they’ll feel better in the
morning. On the way home, you devise a plan to make
better use of this power you now wield. You won’t rob
a bank, not yet, but you could probably get away with
something smaller, something no one would notice.

The next morning, your eyes are not feeling better.
When you Strain to focus them, they hurt and everything
looks like it’s through a blurry kaleidoscope. But when
you put on the cardboard frames, everything comes into