I like to think of it as a fishbowl. A sphere that stays around each and every one of us, comforting. That’s how we all experience the world. Five feet in every direction, but then it fades to grey. Everything is clear, but then, nothing. I only know the faces of the people I’ve known all my life, my parents and my brother. And I almost never see them anymore. Strangers sometimes wander into the strange middle ground between clarity and the grey haze that takes up the rest of the world. We don’t know anything else. Once, I read a book about people who could see twenty feet around before it turned grey. What a strange world!
     It’s how all of us are born. Call it bad vision, call it a government conspiracy, but it’s normal. My life stays within four rooms, in building that has everything we need in it. The only time I leave the building is when I go running on the track around the building in the mornings. If I run off track, I sometimes reach a metal fence and I can see the edge of another track. I can only guess there’s another building there, but I guess I have no way of knowing without leaving the grounds. But I have no reason to do that.
     I sleep in a small room with a bed and a book shelf. It’s small enough I can sit on the middle of my bed and see every end of the room. The kitchen isn’t much bigger, the second room I frequent. The third room is the living room. A TV shows us everything. Like our eyes, the cameras here have a set diameter of vision. That means close ups with celebrities, politicians, or the door of a recently robbed bank. The robbery of Wallace Bank has been big news lately. No one knows how the thief did it. I can’t imagine how they were able to move around undetected. Every hallway and room of the bank is made small just for this reason; to prevent people sneaking past the guard’s vision.
But that doesn’t concern me know. It has no bearing on my life in my building. My money is safely stored under my bed. Every week, I find an envelope with fifty dollars under my door. As long as that is consistent, I have nothing to worry about.
     The final room I spend my day is a small office on the third floor of the building, room 229. In it, I sit at a computer and correct photos all day. It’s mostly faces, correcting any and all mistakes I find, blemishes in the skin, chips on teeth, unruly eyebrows. Very rarely, a picture of something else will roll in. It may be a flower or a tree. It’s extremely uncommon, but it does happen sometimes that I receive a picture of an animal. These aren’t pets, these are real wild animals like bears and snakes. How someone got lucky enough to survive such a close encounter, I’ll never know. But it’s not my job to wonder.
When I come home at the end of the day, I watch the news, eat dinner, read a book, go to sleep. Those are my days. Running, sitting, watching, reading, repeat. And I’m fine with that. There’s nothing more I want. I’m happy. The fishbowl is enough.
     My alarm blares. It shouldn’t have to. It’s right next to my ear. Light from my small window enters and falls across my pillow like normal. I sit up and stretch, careful not to hit the wall with my fist. The small dent in the wall can attest to my clumsiness in the mornings. It being a Saturday, my clock reads 8:30. Consistency is the key to happy living, so I was told by the hostess on Channel 12 News. I have time to go for a run before the ten o’clock morning report.
     Dragging myself from my warm covers, I pick out my clothes and trudge out the door. I’m looking forward to wake up in the fresh air and morning light. No one knows where the illumination comes from, but scientists suspect there must be a large lightbulb above us that moves as the day goes on, judging by the shadows.
     My foot falls on the red pavement of the track and I feel the relief and freedom I always do. I’ve been building up to make ten laps, but I don’t think I have that sort of capacity this morning. Maybe five. That makes just about a mile and a half. As I start my second lap, I hear someone else jogging behind my. They’re too far away for me to be able to see them so I just move over the side of the track and run a little slower in case they want to get around me. I can’t hear very well over the sound of my breathing, but are they yelling something? Yes.
     “Hey, slow up.”
     I turn but there’s nothing within my field of vision. And if I can’t see them, how can they see me. I stop. And make a few frantic spins in quick circles, trying to find the person speaking to me. Maybe they’re in that grey middle ground, or lying on the ground.
     I start to leave it and pick up my feet to run again when they shout again. “I’m right here. Just hold up for a second.”
I turn in the direction of the sound and then I catch movement in a part of my vision I never thought I would. I’ve learned to tune out the grey sphere around me but I catch motion there. There’s, a person. A very clear figure, a girl. How is that possible?
     “Hey!” She starts jogging towards me from what must be the middle of the track.
     “I can see you!” I yell back at her, slightly afraid.
     “Well, of course,” she laughs. It’s a wonderful sounds. There’s such an authentic and earthy quality to it, it makes me take a step towards her. She’s wearing a dark green skirt that barely covers her knees and a large brown sweater. In my field of vision, she’s floating in grey, nebulous and un attached. As she moves closer, the ground she’s standing on becomes more defined until I can put together the entire scene around her. She must be four feet away. I can see her perfectly clearly.
     All of her features of dark and inviting. Her eyes, almost a match to her sweater, sparkle in the light as she looks at me expectantly. Dark hair flies around her face and she has to blow it away. I look at her face, graceful yet simple, and think that if I had to correct a picture it, I wouldn’t do a thing to it.
     For a moment, she doesn’t speak.
     “Well, hi.”
     “Hi,” is the best I can do back. I’m still baffled.
     “Why didn’t you stop the first time.”
     “..well...I...I don’t know. People don’t normally call out to strangers. Especially not out here.”
     “Oh, I didn’t know that. I’m new here”
     I laugh. “Yeah, I guesses, I guess.” Even though I had just put that together. The light intensifies and it shines in her eyes. She moves a hand to block it.
     “Man, the sun is bright this morning. Spring really is here, yeah?” She keeps trying to start a conversation. I don’t know her. Does she think I’m someone else? But how did she see me?
     “The sun?”
     “Yeah.” She laughs again, but stops when she sees my eyebrows knit together. “Yeah,” she says more slowly. “The big ball of gas above our heads?”
     “I’m sorry, I can’t see it.” That’s the only way I can think to respond.
     “Well, you’re not supposed to look directly at it.”
     “No, I mean...You can see what’s above us?”
     “Yeah. Can’t you?” She sounds so surprised. Who is this girl? Does she no live in the fishbowl?
     “No. I can only see what’s in front of me.”
     “You mean, metaphorically? Like you live in the present?” She’s so confused.
     “No. I mean, anything that’s past a certain point turns grey.” Her eyes turn huge. She stares at me like there is something terribly wrong with me.
     “Where are your glasses?”
     “Don’t have them. My vision’s fine.” Another long pause and she turn in the direction I was jogging. She starts walking. Not fast, not slow. A perfect contemplative speed. I watch her watch out into the grey. She continues in a large oval, and I track her progress. Every so often, she glances at me and then quickly looks away. She looks anywhere else. I don’t know what she’s looking at but she’ll stare out into the world and keep walking, like she can see what’s ahead. And I suppose at this point I should believe she can.
     She completes she lap after a good ten minutes and stands next to me, unspeaking, still looking ahead. Suddenly she turns to me.
     “What’s your name?” The question is out of the blue. No one asks that, least of all strangers. But her eyes take me in and I answer. She looks at me a while longer and says, “Do you want to go for a walk?” She holds out her hand to me. I should be more cautious, I tell myself rationally, but there’s something else driving me now. Maybe curiosity, maybe a strange feeling I’ve only felt once before. But I can’t remember when or why I last felt it. So I take her hand.
     We make our way around the track without saying another word, strangely enjoying each other’s company. She glances around us and occasionally breaks free from my grasp to spin around, clearly looking at the world around us. She stops us after a while, in a spot I guess in where we started.
Again without looking at me, she asks, “What can you see. Right now?” I tell her. Again, that feeling I can’t name pulls at my chest.
     “I can see you. When I look down I can see the track and my shoes. If I look forward, I see grey. When I look up I see...grey.” I can’t help but feel a little disappointed. Here I am with someone who claims can see everything around her. She drops my hand and walks forward until she is immersed in grey. Turning back to me, she asks again.
     “When I look down—”
     “Louder! I can’t hear you.”
     “Sorry!” I’m not used to talking to people far away. “I see the same thing. But with you there, I can see you. But that’s it. It’s grey all around you.”
     She gives me a thoughtfully pitiful look. She takes my hand again and leads me off the track, and into the building. I guide her into my room.
     And she stays.
     For months, we live together, talk and walk together. It’s amazing. She tells me what’s around us, what the neighbors are wearing and what the building next door looks like. Turns out, there are four buildings just like mine that she can see from the track outside. She says she thinks there could be more beyond those.
     She tries to draw pictures of the world around us, but her hand is shaky. It gives me a sense of what she can see, despite the level of art. It is beautiful. The sky, as she calls it, is blue and holds a yellow dot that she told me gave us all of our light and warmth. The sun, she says. I love it when she draws for me. When she uses the color, the grass and the sky meet together in the middle of the paper and it’s the most beautiful thing I have every seen. In my world, the colors fade out to grey, but in her pictures, there is a straight line that defines the beginning of something new. How wonderful it would be, I think, if everything could be so precise.
     A few days ago, she tells me it’s been half a year since she called to me on the track. I can’t believe it. Every day has been easy and wonderful.
     I sit at my desk everyday thinking about her and how I wish I could leave and go be with her, but I need the money that comes under my door, especially with two of us. She told me this morning she has a surprise for me after work so I pack up quickly and leave as soon as the clock hits 5:30.
     She greets me at the door with a firm squeeze of the hand. She leads me to the couch and turns on the TV. There’s a story on about a new camera that can see everything passed the grey. She sounds so excited and then she brings out a box. Excitedly, I open it and low and behold, inside is a camera. She rushes me outside into the dark and urges me to take a picture, directing the camera to show me something very specific she can see but I can’t. Yet. I push the right button and a small click tells me I’m about to see the sky.
     The picture is dark, but in the middle is a bright white dot. I shout excitedly that I can see the sun. She laughs her wonderful laugh and corrects me. There’s a different sun for the nighttime, she says, called the moon.
     More months pass and every Saturday we go out and take pictures. I know what the world looks like snap shot but snap shot.
     Another six months and she pulls out another box. The reporter on the TV had just announced that someone had developed a way to completely change the fishbowl effect with surgery. Inside the box is an appointment card. She kisses me on the cheek and pushes me out the door excitedly, wishing me a safe operation.
     After the appointment, I run back home. I can see everything. I can see to the end of the hallway. It’s amazing how the world around me moves as I do. It’s just as beautiful as she told me it would be. I just to the door and knock. She doesn’t open it. Clumsily, I take the key from my pocket and open the door. My rooms are dark but I can see everything in them. Fumbling for the light, I shout “Hello, love! I can see!” Light floods the room and I look to the couch where she should be. Fear strikes my heart as I rush room to room. I keep shouting.
     The first feeling I ever felt with her has returned. I didn’t remember when it had went away. I feel lost. I fee loss and grief. I want to scream. I run outside and run to the fence. I run to the other buildings. I can see everything.
But I couldn’t see her.