The professor was worried, for along with losing my sight of this world, I began to lose interest in it. A truly blind man wouldn't for he has nothing to replace vision with, he's still bound to the commonplace globe. He can improve his hearing or his sense of touch, but nothing replaces his sight. It was different with me. I was seeing something far more interesting than the dull, mundane world.
They fixed a cot up for me in the laboratory; an experiment like myself was far too important to risk on the streets. Even then, I'd bump into tables or smash lab apparatus. I suppose an important experiment like I was should have taken care of itself, sort of like a self-lubricating motor. I'd cost the university lots of money and I suppose I should have watched out for their investment—though I was probably the only one who didn't care what happened to me.
There finally came a day when my eyes didn't change. I had reached a sticking point. The end of the spectrum? The professor said he didn't think so.
I didn't think so either for just beyond my range of vision seemed a hint of something else. I caught "glimpses" of something—I couldn't make out exactly what. There seemed to be vague suggestions of form and color and life, indistinct figures that capered and grimaced just beyond my view. There was nothing definite, nothing that I could draw a picture of and describe like you could an automobile or a building. There were just suggestions, a feeling of something more. There was a hint of life in the masses of winking light that beckoned and burned.
The next day the professor brought my eyes back to normal. Familiar objects had a sudden fascination that quickly faded when I had regained normal vision for an hour or so. It was a prosaic world once again. Radios and aerials were just—cabinets of wood and plastic and glass tubes and strips of rusty wire and metal.
I wasn't sure the experiment was over. I asked the professor if there was anything that would take me further along the scale, beyond, perhaps, even the spectrum as we knew it.
He twisted his hands nervously behind his back and walked over and looked out the laboratory window. "I could do it for you, Charles, but I'm not sure that I could bring you back. Your eyes would be stranded in that world of yours. You could never look at ours again."
He turned from the window and faced me.
"Why don't you forget it for a few weeks and then come back here and if you still want to, we'll continue the experiment."