LONG-EYED LASERS
Clancy and I spend a lot of time watching science-fiction TV series. We like viewing six or seven hour-long episodes one after another. Neither of us has the patience to wait to find out what happens from one episode to the next. This means that we don’t get much sleep between shifts at Infinity. Sometimes after work we stay awake all day staring at images of outer space and aliens. It makes it difficult to stay alert when we are next on duty. Olaf can be on the prowl any time. So we can’t afford to do this too often. When we watched Long-Eyed Lasers recently we were barely awake the following night.
Watching sci-fi programmes like this with Clancy encouraged me to learn how to sign. Clancy was the only person I knew who was a fan of War of the Megotrons and Interstellar Death Watch. So it was important for me to be able to communicate with him about them. It’s surprising how quickly you can learn stuff when you have a real incentive.
Sci-fi was banned from the state broadcasting channels six months after the Anticlocks seized power. They were afraid that programmes based on space travel might encourage citizens to start thinking about what might lie beyond the frontiers of Anticlockwise. Since virtually no-one has the right to travel outside the Empire anymore, they don’t want to give people fanciful ideas about mysterious galaxies beyond the rule of the Anticlocks. They’re terrified that inquisitive minds might be receptive to broadening geographical horizons.
We don’t watch Anticlock television of course. It’s utter rubbish. With the help of one of Max’s technical experts, we’ve adapted the Lightning Link to enable us to download sci-fi films from deep space. There’s a whole army of pirates out there dealing in black market sci-fi films.
A couple of days ago we watched six episodes of a Dark Spirit Media series that we’d heard about but had never been able to locate before: Long-Eyed Lasers. 
It’s about two brothers who’ve been conscripted into the Laserox space army at the height of a catastrophic interplanetary war. The war lasted three years and ended with the obliteration of an entire planet following the explosion of a tribulanium bomb.
Both of the brothers were deeply scarred psychologically by the brutality and destruction of the war. More than that though, as part of a crack military surveillance team they agreed to allow their bodies to be robotically enhanced – they were given superhuman vision with the addition of long-distance laser eyes. They had the ability to see thousands of miles into deep space and spot enemy spacecraft approaching. As a strange by-product of their bio-engineered vision though, they also had the ability to see deep into the soul of their enemies.
They knew that were they to survive the hostilities, their lives would never be the same again. After the tribulanium bomb had finalised matters, they chose to reinvent themselves in their own special way. Once they had returned to their `civilian’ life back home on planet Questerrion, they decided to employ their enhanced military skills to criminal ends.
They were very successful as gangsters, amassed enormous wealth and became extremely powerful. Yet they both knew that they’d lost something in the war that they could never recover. It felt to them that each time they stared into their enemy’s eyes, a part of their own soul went missing.
Long-Eyed Lasers left me feeling despondent. I knew why I liked it so much. It reminded me of my own predicament. I’ve not been caught up in a cataclysmic war. My body hasn’t been re-engineered. But I’ve lost a part of myself somewhere out there in space. I feel as if my Safronikan soul has been ripped out of me by the Anticlocks and there’s no way that I can get it back.
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