“Of course, but – that was never on.”
“The operation would have been totally irreversible. We would have needed to shave a whole lot of bone from the socket to fit the bloody thing in – it would have been ugly – very ugly for him.”

“Mmm.”
“I must say – Shard did well… waiting for the implant to be perfected.”
“We were always going to wait for the implant.”
“Well… I don’t know. There was talk.”
“Of course there was talk – there is always talk!”
“The car accident and all that.”
“They were just ideas – thinking things through.”
“Dave… if you’d gone ahead with the bionic eye, you and your sadhu mates would have begun your “innocent little experiment” by rendering your young protagonist permanently blind in one eye.”

“Mmm.”
“Not what you would call a great beginning to your little film.”
“Of course not.”
“You know, I would never have helped you with that.”
“We never asked.”
“No surgeon would have helped you with that.”
“No surgeon was ever asked.”

The surgeon smiled again at the camera –

“No – the bionic eye was nothing like this benign little procedure we have here.

“One stitch is all this requires – one single stitch.
“Watch closely.”

He looked down at Max –

“We place our stitch into the upper white of the eye…
“We pull the stitch down…
“And rotate the eyeball… like this.”

When the rotation stopped, the white of the eye loomed huge and lifeless, like a golf ball half-buried in a bunker.

“With the eye rotated we can place our insert perfectly into the back here… into the blind spot of the eye.”

He paused –

“This is the crucial, delicate part of the process.
“This… my friend… requires a little skill.”

David Brown watched the screen as it scrolled slowly over the vast moonscape of vitreous.