Chapter 3: The Dawn of Austerity
It didn't occur to Lara until much later that the 200,000 pounds would actually be necessary to pay for the treatments that she would undergo while she was imprisoned within the Black Hole. The technology they used on her was cutting-edge, and it certainly didn't come cheap.
The first thing they changed about her was her eyes.
Lara always had 20/20 vision - an eagle-eyed huntress, she could hit a rabbit with a bow and arrow from twenty yards, even if it was hiding deep in the brush. So it was with great trepidation that she agreed to have 'vision adjustment' surgery. She would have never accepted it if it weren't a necessary condition of her getting out of her cell and joining their educational program. In the end, all Nurse Cerys had to do was dangle that carrot in front of her and Lara would begin finding reasons to justify it to herself.
She found herself on the operating table, sedated, staring at a pernicious-looking laser. It was controlled by computers, and spent quite some time carving grooves into her corneas. Somewhere during all of that, it sprayed a substance beneath her incision that created a tingling sensation she felt through the anesthetics, then she was blindfolded and led back to her cell.
That began an entire day of healing, but it also marked a welcome break from the constant pink light that flooded her cell. For the first time in her stay here, they allowed her a full night's worth of sleep. She even had dreams, although they all seemed to entail her working as a waitress or a maid for some demanding employer. Robin appeared in those dreams, not as a friend, but as an especially demanding customer who whined about how her feet hurt.
The next morning, Nurse Cerys removed her blindfold, and Lara found the difference bone-chilling.
She could see the woman's angelic face when it was just a few feet away from her face, but if she moved much farther than that and she seemed to dissolve into a pink fog. Added to this was a newly-developed nearsightedness. Even if the ever-present fog didn't grow thicker the more Lara tried to look into the distance, she still had an amazingly difficult time making out the woman's face. Squinting didn't seem to help, and the Tomb Liberator was especially concerned that even within this small cell she was having difficulties seeing clearly. What would the larger world look like?
She hurried over to the mirror, perturbed by how close she had to get to even see her own face clearly. Lara gasped when she noticed that her eyes looked completely strange! They were still grey, yes, but they had noticeable flecks of gold floating about around the iris - hypnotic things that looked a little like little golden leaves. They reminded her of something she would see in a snow globe.
"What - what is this?" Lara asked. It was beautiful, but in an otherworldly way, like she was some mythical nymph.
"It is a symbiotic colony of bacteria that reside atop the iris. They coalesce into different shapes, isn't it amazing? They say it provokes the appetite of whomever you make eye contact with, like it's the miracle cure for erectile dysfunction."
Lara couldn't believe such things existed. They were entrancing in a purely objectifying way, like she was a doll with a very specific purpose.
"But why the pink fog? Is that a temporary thing? And why can't I see very far - am I still recovering?"
"That's a side effect of the procedure. And no, it's permanent."
Lara felt a pit in her stomach at this news. She could barely see five feet in front of her - forget hunting for game and sneaking past guards. Practically anyone could get the drop on her.
"But it can be fixed with these proprietary glasses! Here,"
There wasn't much comfort in that. The glasses that Nurse Cerys handed her had large lenses and thick black frames, and they seemed to be made of glass. Odd, because nearly all eyeglasses were made of plastic these days for reasons of convenience.
When she put them on, she had to admit they accentuated her face nicely, but she looked like a sexy librarian! They only improved her vision slightly, for all that hassle. Sure, she could see Nurse Cerys's face, and they cut through the fog in the near distance at least. But she knew it was still there, just off a bit farther. This 'treatment' had effectively foreshortened her vision, and to an alarming extent.
The glasses threatened to fall down her face when she bowed her head even slightly, because their arms barely gripped her ears. It would take almost constant attention to keep them on - another subtle way that the institution was exerting its control over her. For how expensive they looked, she was certain that they would shatter instantly if they fell from her ski slope nose.
"Oh, and they will need to be polished very often with a proprietary gel, or they lose a lot of their effectiveness. We will get you some, but it's quite expensive and it must be kept in a special freezer to work."
Another jab to send the poor girl reeling! Already the glasses seemed like they were fogging - or was it her imagination? She could see it in her mind now: a new, nagging compulsion to tie up more of her time. A girl in the habit of meekly removing her bulky eyeglasses to reverently polish their surface, before putting them back on. And the freezer was just another layer of dependency! A subtle anchor to keep her tethered in a single place, for her constant need of refills. How could she possibly carry such a thing on an wilderness hike or an adventure? She fumed about it: trying to enjoy a winter forest or sweeping landscape, only to have the fog roll in and remind her that the institution didn't permit such things.
But to what end?
Nurse Cerys left her, and Lara had to leave the stupid glasses on to watch the smartscreen in her room. It was probably no more than an hour before the things had lost much of their effectiveness, and a pink fog cluttered her vision, lightly obscuring the small distance between her and the screen. There was nothing she could do about it, either, until Nurse Cerys came back and gave Lara a small plastic vial and a disposable eyeglass cleaning pad that was scarcely larger than her fingertip. It took the teenage girl quite some time to properly clean her glasses - at least ten minutes, and judging by the size of the pads, she would never manage to clean them much faster.
The institution responded by moving the smartscreen lower, since it was obviously impractical for Nurse Cerys to constantly give Lara more of the cleaning gel. This was worrisome. If this ritual with her glasses was impractical here, where she had basically nothing to do all day and a staff looking after her needs, how in the world would she fit this restrictive practice into her daily routine once she got home? Lara had to sit very near to the smartscreen when her glasses fogged up, her regal face no more than half a meter away from it, bathed in its bright lights and comforting images.
Was it her imagination, or did this help the screen dominate her thinking all the better?
She knew she should be more outraged, but this place did mess with her sense of reality. The march of days seemed to wear her down and make it difficult to rouse herself to meaningful action - she knew from the tattoo incident that any amount of resistance would be punished. Beyond that, the longer she stayed in this room the more her memories became jumbled and distant. The smartscreen was a blessing: she was sure she would have had a panic attack if not for its constant comfort. Whenever she felt anxiety or anger come on, it was so much easier to calm herself by stroking her tattoos and losing herself in whatever it showed.
