He took his glasses off and let them hang loosely in his hand. Instead of the screen behind him suddenly tracking the floor, the image of the audience held steady but turned distorted and blurry.

“I don’t get it,” Janine muttered, but Smith ignored her. He was pretty sure he did understand, but he was having a hard time believing what his mind was telling him.

Illegible words appeared across the top of the screen and he concentrated on them as they slowly came into focus.

PROCESSING VISION CORRECTION

Confused silence prevailed as Dresner returned to the lectern and leaned against it. “So then I thought, if I can send sound to my audio cortex, why can’t I send images to my visual cortex?”

This time there were no voices at all. The only sound was of a hundred people attacking their cell phones in a desperate effort to be the first to text word of Dresner’s new miracle to the world.

5

Marrakech
Morocco

GERHARD EICHMANN SLID his chair farther into the shade and tried again to wave off a shoeshine boy who wouldn’t take no for an answer. A few stern Arabic words from a waiter finally got the job done and the boy retreated into the road, dodging the chaotic traffic in search of a less resistant customer.

Despite having lived in Marrakech for more than a decade, Eichmann had never been to this particular outdoor café. Most of the tables were surrounded by local men drinking tea. The only other white faces belonged to a French couple battling the midday heat with bottles of overpriced local beer.

Eichmann nervously examined the people flowing by on the sidewalk, occasionally making eye contact that gave him hope this would soon be over. Every time, though, he ended up watching them hurry off toward the walls of the old city and the crowded markets beyond.

It was the constant motion, the tumult, the mix of modern and ancient that had convinced him to make Marrakech his home. It offered anonymity to those who craved it, without stripping away all the trappings and conveniences of the civilized world. It allowed him to be a ghost suspended between the past, present, and future.

A man in a sweat-stained linen shirt and blue slacks emerged from behind a cart piled with oranges and jogged onto the sidewalk. This time the eye contact was more than fleeting.

“Can I join you?” he said, pointing to an empty chair pushed up against the tiny table. “I twisted my ankle shopping in the souks.”

Eichmann’s mouth went so dry, he found it difficult to respond. “Of…of course. The cobblestones here can be treacherous.”

He hated this—leaving the tiny world he’d so carefully closed around himself, coming into contact with these types of men. But he’d been forbidden to use the Internet. It was too uncontrollable, too populated by clever and curious eyes.

“Do you have it?

The man—Claude Géroux—waved a muscular arm in the waiter’s direction and used French to order a sparkling water.